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I went for an overdue walk this evening after dinner. Elise went to her faith group meeting. Mara was sideways staring at her phone and didn’t want to go with me. I walked to get the mail. There were two flyers posted, both advertising free events at our neighborhood community center this upcoming Saturday. One flyer was advertising “How AI Helps Business.” The other advertised the “Senior Health Fair.” I was more interested in the latter. The mailbox contained the latest edition of the Costco Connection magazine. I’ll read that before I’ll open Facebook or TikTok.

I walked up to Gorzycki. The sky was a light gray-blue with some pink swirls low on the horizon in the west, and long, whispy trails of clouds throughout the sky. It looked like a cold Fall or Winter sky.

I walked the back drive of the school slowly. I started getting that nostalgic and depressed feeling that I seem to be so succeptible to these days. Things like the light pole I’d always stop at at the top of the hill on the school grounds when I’d walk Mara to school. I haven’t walked her to school since late-January. I started working in an office back then.

And then I walked down Allerton. Between running hill repeats and almost 6 years at that school with both girls. It’s not the same as it was when they were in elementary, but it’s still the middle school that our girls attended, and is so close to the house. They build that school shortly after we bought our house.

Maybe it’s the change in seasons. Maybe it’s the nice, walkable weather. Maybe it’s just life flying by as it seems to do nowadays, and I need to acknowledge and heed the notion of slowing down.

Back in mid-May, Jared came over to hang out. He and I were out back, shooting pellet guns from the deck. Jared sat down on one of the wooden benches of our deck dining set and said bench broke. Mind you, the furniture had long since seen its better days. And Jared’s also a 340-pound offensive lineman. That was the moment that solidified my decision to design and build a table and benches for the deck. Two-by and four-by treated lumber is heavy and clunky and wood. I wanted to build this furniture out of steel.

My friend Jeff invited me as his guest to Asmbly, and he spent an hour with me to teach me the basics of MIG welding. At the end of that lesson I was able to stick two pieces of metal together. I’d figure out the rest later.

And over the course of four weeks of many nights and weekends, I built our new patio furniture framing out of 11-gauge 1.5″ hot rolled steel tubing. I grinded (ground?) every square inch of every piece of tube. I miter cut each piece to make right angles. I grinded more. The part that I was most excited about–the welding–really only comprised of about 10% of the project timeline. Then there was more grinding (of my welds). I recently read a funny quip: “grinding and paint make the welder I ain’t.” I did leave a lot of my welds still exposed. They might not be pretty welds, but they hold two pieces of metal together, and I got a dollar that says one of those benches will easily hold three 340-pound offensive linemen.

It was a lot of hours in the evenings and on weekends, but it was a ton of fun to think about, research, and build.

We’ll give it another shot from Hopkinton to Boston. This time I want to see if I can beat the Boston course, and maybe PR the marathon at age 50.

When we were a young couple and we’d visit other people’s houses, I’d sometimes notice a child(ren)’s height markings inside a door jamb. My dad used to measure me against a 4×4 post that supported our patio arbor at the old house in Bear Creek and mark and date my height with a pencil on the post. If that post is still there, I’m sure my growth has long-since faded or been painted.

I guess we waited until Maly was three before we started measuring her at our house for fun and nostalgia. We always knew that this probably won’t be our forever home, so I wanted to mark her height on something we could take with us. So I bought a stick of 1×4 composite primed trim and screwed it into the drywall right next to the garage door. And that’s where we’ve marked our children since 2009.

Today I was helping Mara hang her really cool 3D sea animals that she made out of cardboard frames and paper mache. I went out to the garage to get the ladder, which is right next to the girls’ measuring sticks, and I caught myself gazing at the last 16 years in a blink. As fast as it takes to scan the 46 meticulously-drawn lines is how fast it feels those years have passed. But I’m happy and thankful to have these lines. And the five(ish) years we still have with Mara and more lines to be drawn.

I haven’t cried once since Maly left for college a couple weeks ago. I’ve gotten a little weepy at times, but I hadn’t shed a tear. In two whole weeks — actually, closer to three weeks now that I think about it. This time last year I would’ve been crying 3-4 times daily.

Today I got the weepiest as I looked at the top part of that left measuring stick. That one’s Maly’s. I got weepy because it wasn’t until she’d already been down the road for five hours on her way back to college did I remember to measure her. I texted her a few hours later to check on her, and to jokingly tell her that I needed her to come back so we could measure her. Except I wasn’t really joking. I really wanted her to come home. So I could measure her. And so I could hug and hold her again. So I could take away whatever hurts from her. So I could tell her I love her over and over again.

And for whatever reasons, I had this thought for the first time: when do I stop measuring her? Should we do it during her winter break? Or does it just become an annual tradition that we do before the start of a new school year? And then I thought about how she’ll be 20 years old at her next birthday. And then I had a thought that set me on my heels and took my breath away. That top one. That last one. That’s the last one. That was the last one.

This is where you stop.

I remember walking behind her as we were headed to the driveway to pile into the rental van. She stopped in the office to say goodbye to Blue and she was crying. I was crying too. I just didn’t let her know that I was.

I’d measured her earlier that morning. I don’t remember if it was hours or thirty minutes before we’d left. I think it was Elise’s reminder to measure her. I thought it was cute. “Oh, yeah. This is a big one! The day you move away to college.” And never did the thought cross my mind that it could be the last. But maybe it should be. She was 18 years old when she moved out to go to college out of state. As her Boppa always told me, “you’ve given her roots and wings.” She’ll always have a home here, but she’s an adult now. I hope one day she’ll be marking my grandchild’s height on a nice piece of wood and not a cheap piece of primed particle board trim from Home Depot.

I think I’d like to leave that cheap piece of trim measuring stick as-is for as long as we stick it out in this home. I’d imagine I’ll look at a lot more these days. That’s why I put it there.

Last Wednesday was Back to School night at Gorzycki. At some point during the day I realized that this will be the last Back to School night that we’ll attend at GMS.

There’ve already been other “lasts.” I don’t know why it didn’t maybe sting more that it did, but we said goodbye to Kiker Elementary two and a half years ago. That should’ve been tougher than it was — and maybe it was tough and I just don’t remember — as that was the girls’ first school, and we were very involved in the school all through elementary.

I stopped and took this picture of us while we were in some hallway at Gorzycki Middle School at Back to School night because that’s the last Back to School night we’ll attend. There was a herd of people walking toward us as all the parents were transitioning to their children’s next classroom, but I didn’t care. If I didn’t take this photo, then we wouldn’t have a photo of one of these last moments and experiences.

Today we unloaded and inventoried a shipment of 16 tons of steel. Then Saul and I drove out to Lago Vista to roll 4,500 linear feet of roofing panels at the home of a nice gentleman who showed us his completely rebuilt 1962 Corvette.

We can only haul a total of 4,000 linear feet of metal between the truck and the trailer, so I left Saul to roll and haul panels while I drove all the way back to the shop to pick up a single 500′ coil and haul it back to Lago Vista. I spent 7.5 hours driving today. The rest of the day was lugging metal trim, roof panels, screws, clips, and underlayment under that Texas summer sun. I’ll take that over spreadsheets, Zoom meetings, and emails any day.

I told her that I was going to sit on the driveway and shoot mosquitos off my ankles and that she was welcome to join me. She brought her phone, suctioned it to the hood ornament, watching “Love Island,” and hunting mosquitos. she told me what “Love Island” was about but I wasn’t really paying attention. I told her to not admire or emulate whatever’s done on this show. I also told her to never get a credit card while she’s in college.

And it’s probably this little moment that I’ll remember when she goes back to school next month and I get all sappy and nostalgic and wonder “did we do enough?”

My mom used to always tell me, “things don’t make you happy.” I’m almost 50-years-old and guess what? Mom was right.

I heard about this minimalist snowball thing somewhere recently and thought I’d give it a whirl. I’d guess that this concept would be better suited for someone who wants to get rid of a lot of things. The concept is simple. On day 1, get rid of 1 thing. On day 2 get rid of 2 things. On day 3 get rid of 3 things, and so on. I’d imagine that when I get into the double digits is when things’ll get tough. For now I’m just going to concentrate on just trying to get rid of something every day during the month of June.

DAY 1 – June 1

I’ve had these stencils in the garage for years and they just get in the way whenever I’m digging around for whatever it is that I’m looking for in the garage. I bought these stencils 10+ years ago when I made a deal with Maly. She really wanted a pet turtle, complete with an aquarium and all of the accoutrements that come with a pet turtle. I told her if she created the money to buy the things needed for a turtle, then she could have a turtle. We decided on a lemonade stand. I helped her with a marketing spin. Somewhere locally there were a lot of tornados that caused a lot of damage. I told Maly that we’d do a lemonade stand and anything she made beyond what she needed for a turtle aquarium, we’d donate to the American Red Cross for Texas tornado relief efforts. She wound up getting her turtle, aquarium, and I think I donated $400 to the American Red Cross.

And we made a pretty neat lemonade stand and called it Tornados and Turtles.

DAY 2 – June 2

Today I moved my cell phone number from AT&T to US Mobile. I always knew the day would come, and now here I am. I have 4 people in my family who all have iPhones and an AT&T bill that’s pretty much $300 per month. And looking at my AT&T bill just leaves me shaking my head between service fees, convenience fees, just because fees, and whatever balance I owe on any number of phones that I guess I’m leasing. I started paying attention to the “budget” wireless carriers (Mint, Cricket, Visible, US Mobile, etc.) commercials and started doing my own research. They all use the big companies’ (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile) networks at a fraction of the price. After a little research I settled on US Mobile and I moved my number to them today.

According to my math we’ll be saving $170 per month once I’m satisfied with the service on my phone and get the girls’ phones ported over.

DAY 8

Well, I already missed the train for the downhill snowball. Or something. I missed jumping into the snowball. I was pretty confident it wasn’t going to happen. That would mean that today I’d need to get rid of 8 things. I think I’ve gotten rid of some stuff this week — I just can’t remember what it was. And I know it wasn’t many things. Anyway, I guess the whole point of this being a minimalist snowball month is so I’ll conciously get rid of stuff. Like today I remembered that I’m supposed to be getting rid of stuff. It was a facepalm moment.

Today I got rid of the DVD player that’s been sitting on the dresser in the window nook of our bedroom for more years than I can remember. And there was a little kiddie compound bow that I picked up for Mara when we took up archery five years ago. I took them both to Goodwill. It was hard getting rid of the bow. It reminded me of spending a lot of time with Mara; out back or in the front yard, just shooting arrows. And that was during COVID, so we had a lot of isolated family time. I can’t remember, but I’ll bet that DVD player spun a lot of kids movies and TV shows. I think that was a the DVD player we had in our bedroom, which rarely got used. I think we had a DVD player in the living room, or maybe it was a gaming console.

They served their purpose. Now hopefully someone else will be able to use them, and maybe make memories.

DAY 19

Haven’t done much snowballing at all, but I got rid of these hokey beard products. As a bearded man who has used beard products, I can tell you that those products (that I’ve used) are placebo. Doesn’t make the beard smoother, softer, fuller, or cleaner. These were taking up space in my bathroom vanity, and taking up space in my head. Less inventory equals less mental inventory.

It doesn’t seem long ago, but long gone are the days that I’d travel these aisles with the girls. For some reason, neither Maly or Mara really spent much time in the toy aisles. They always seemed to get along just fine with whatever they had. But we still spent our time in these aisles. I remember many a time that it was me that was dragging the girls down the toy aisles.

Today it just kind of hit me. Maybe I’m feeling empathy because I know there are a lot of parents who are facing a bird fleeing the coop soon. I was also just being nostalgic. I miss having young kids who play with toys. But that doesn’t stop me from perusing the toy aisles.

It wasn’t that long ago that I was walking these aisles and picking out toys with my daughter. Today I walked down these aisles after picking up auto parts for my daughter’s car that she’s taking back with her to college in the fall.

Yesterday we closed the shop 30 minutes early. Saul and I were on a job site most of the day and I had some desk work I needed to catch up on. Fifteen minutes after I found myself all alone athe shop, a customer called me and asked if he could get one piece of roof trim before the weekend. I told him my shop manager and fabricator had already left for the weekend, but that I’d always wanted to learn to work the Autobrake from start to finish. He said he had faith in me.

What this video doesn’t show is the hour-plus it took me to figure out how to get everything to work. I was able to use an existing bend profile on the brake’s computer and modify it, but then I had a hell of time getting the computer to talk to the brake, and even more of a hell of a time figuring out how get past the “pedal deactivated” warning. There is a pedal system that’s used to operate the brake, which is what actually bends the metal.

There was a lot of computer time, geometry, profanity, research, mistakes, headscratching, and more profanity, but I finally figured it out, and I’m damn pround of having fabricated my first piece of metal trim.

This is my waist versus Jared’s thigh. I weigh 140. He weighs 340. He’s an offensive lineman. I’m an okay distance runner. He can sprint faster than me.