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What we're moving in to looks nothing like this

Moving into a clean, fresh, empty house is a lot like having a blank sheet of paper in front of you. If i was a painter, I’d probably make an analogy to a blank canvas, but I’m not a painter.

There’s something great (and tiring) about being able to do things however it best suits you. This classically results in a woman making a man move furniture twelve times before she’s happy. In the Mackay household, I’m as likely to be the one requesting the moves. Either way, it’s refreshing to do things a new way. Hopefully it keeps us motivated to unpack all week.

For my American friends who may not have been introduced to Stompin’ Tom: enjoy.

The last day… the first day… all in one. Today, we’re beginning a two-day moving process. It’s been a lot of hard work, but we hope all the hard work to date will make today and tomorrow easier.

Moving is always a unique thing. Our child is not yet of the age where he’ll feel seriously disrupted. His parents, though, might. Getting used to different furniture arrangements, different kitchen cupboards, different paths to walk in the dark when the boy cries, all these things will be challenges. Well worth it, but the disorientation will last for a few weeks I’m sure.

Perhaps that all relates to why so many YA stories start with the protagonist moving… away from “comfortable, known” to “uncomfortable, scary, unknown.” Right now, the cliche is to add vampires. I’ll let you know how the neighbours look.

There are simply so many things to be thankful for this year that I can’t even start to number them. But, instead of writing about them this morning, I’m going to go be with two that appear at the top of my list. Go enjoy being with your families. Get off the internet. It’ll all be here when you get back (with the exception, perhaps, of some of the amazon deals).

You know, there are the classic motivations. Most of them come from Star Wars, in fact. The boy who doesn’t know his parents. The death of the only relatives a boy has ever known. A character who needs money desperately. A princess who needs to save the world.

Obviously, we relate to loss as a motivator. We relate to gain as a motivator too, although not usually in the same way (Han Solo gets painted as the bad guy when he’s obsessed with making money — the guy just wants to pay off Jabba and go on with his smuggling career.)

I’m curious about whether or not there are ways to motivate characters without loss. I’m not even sure what it would look like. Any suggestions? You know, other than “Not like star wars.”

And it starts. Our little guy has started to piece together the occasional sentence. That means I’ll start to be able to get away with posting something hilarious he’s said.

Yesterday was scary, though. I have a bad habit of saying things to my son assuming that he doesn’t understand and is probably just going with the flow. Walking through Walmart, we approached the TVs without my wife. I said to Luke, “When mommy comes back, you should say, ‘Mommy, New TV please?’ ” Now, at 19 months, I figured he might think “oh, Dad’s talking to me.”

Imagine my surprise when my wife approached a minute later, and Luke decided to speak up.

“Mama! Teebee Pease?”

Yep. He was listening after all. Hilarious… and a good reminder that little ears pick up more than I expect!

Moving is like a head-long rush into an explosion. Seriously. The closer you get to the move, the more damage you think the explosion is going to cause.

But it works out well. My wife is the queen of getting rid of stuff — it’s not “lets move this stuff,” it’s “lets move the stuff that’s worth keeping and throw out the rest.”

Genius. It’s so encouraging to me to know that when we get where we’re going, we’ll be “lighter” than we were before we left.

When you stop that key shoot-out goal: an educational video.

goalie celebration

You should’ve known today’s post would be lame!

Ladies and Gentlemen of the press, the President of the Writer’s Block State will now address the nation.

(Cue up Bagpipes… enters)

Good morning. I need to address the emergency that we, the people of Writer’s Block, began to experience this morning. At 3:55 am, EST, we came under an unprecedented attack. Without ever visiting this site (all I care about are how many visitors I get anyway… it’s all about approval!), some how, some organization managed to leave over 90 comments filled with gibberish and, likely, phishing links. While we have seen spam attacks here and there since forming this blog, we have never seen anything approaching this volume.

Other websites have experienced this phenomenon. Some have simply died under the weight of the attacks. Others have become police states, requiring “approval” before a comment can be posted. Today, as the President of the Writer’s Block nation, I stand up and say, “This far, and no farther. We can’t be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it’s fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom… Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution… but from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: “We will not go quietly into the night!” We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!”

Now, I know what you’re thinking… “Wasn’t that the speech Bill Pullman made in Independence Day?” Maybe it was… maybe it wasn’t. What matters is that we will fight the spam. We will defeat the spam. We might even eat the spam.

I will take one question.

Reporter A: “Um, Mr. President, sir, you mentioned the fourth of July prominently in your speech. How do you reconcile that with today’s date, Nov. 20?”

Did I mention the fourth of July? *Looks over script, turns to assistant, covers microphone not-quite-well-enough* that speechwriter is fired. I said like independence day. Hmm, you know, I’m not sure how that slipped in there. But, there are certainly analogies to be made between the struggles… wait, nope, no there aren’t. No more questions.

We have a battle to win. Thank you for your support.

(All that to say, if you see weird stuff going on in comments around here, my apologies… hopefully it’ll normalize pretty soon!)

I got to put my little boy to bed last night. On my own. On a typical night, he’s a generally affable little guy, usually quite happy to read some books, pray with dad, chill with mom, and go to sleep. Until now, there have been maybe four or five times where we’ve taken mom out of the equation, meeting with relative success.

Notice… until now.

Last night, my darling wife went off to a women’s meeting at church, where I’m sure they go over the ten steps to successful mommydom or something. (10 steps, not 12. Let’s keep the salacious gossip to a minimum!) Luke and I stayed home. He was pretty upset when she left, but got over it with the help of a gigantic purple dinosaur.

Yes, I dressed up.

That was a lie.

Hehe. Anyway, when bed time rolled around, we did as much “normal” as we could. The meltdown began when I mentioned mommy in our prayer. Luke recognized the name and was suddenly insistent that he find out where she was. He apparently didn’t understand my explanation that she was gone, would be back later, and would see him in the morning.

The wailing that ensued was heartbreaking. Thankfully it was also short-lived. He went to sleep in under three minutes. But in those three minutes, he made it clear that, as parents go, right now, Mom is the “it” parent. I’m Steven Seagall to her Kate Winslet. I’m the New Kids on the Block to her Owl City. I’m… you get the picture.

And that’s okay. It’s great, in fact. It’s a wonderful thing for a little boy to love his mommy and to develop attachments that are good, healthy, and all that jazz. My turn is coming (in fact, we did have a meltdown one day as I went to my office… in the house… so, I’m on my way!) It’s interesting to get to observe all this first hand instead of learning from Everyone Loves Raymond. I love being a Dad!