Author: Josh

Merry Christmas from the Janicek family. We hope this holiday season finds you and your loved ones with full hearts and, if you’re in Texas, in an air conditioned structure with ample electrolytes.

Thankfully this is our year to spend Christmas with Elise’s parents in Des Moines, Iowa where they experience “seasons.” Unfortunately it’s not looking like it’s going to be a white Christmas this year, but at least the air temperature is cold and crisp and feels more like Christmas than washing cars in flip flops weather like it does back home.

It’s December 23rd as I write this. Like most years, I struggle to muster up the gumption and mental fortitude to write the newsletter because it’s always difficult to recount what happened in the past 12 months, and most of my memory needs to be reserved to do really important things, like remembering if I wear 1.25+ or 1.50+ magnified readers, if I scheduled my colonoscopy, and what I was setting out to do when I walked into the garage with a socket wrench and a fist full of zip ties.

I was commiserating with Maly about having to write the newsletter, and she said something like, “yeah, we didn’t really do a whole lot this year.” I looked at her for a minute, wondering how, at such a vibrant age, she couldn’t easily recount all the joyous and memorable recent memories of her young life. And then I asked her if she needed any zip ties.

In January I started a new job. I’m now the Director of Operations for a metal roofing supply company. It was during the Christmas season last year when I’d found myself depressed and unfulfilled with my then-current job, and pretty much the previous 10 years of jobs. Now everyday when I get home from work, I feel like, as my friend Michele used to say, I’d made a fair pitcher of lemonade. I’ve sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of countless tons of steel and custom roofing trim, I’ve learned to drive a forklift, I now know what a bill of lading is, and I’m up-to-date on my tetanus vaccine.

In February Elise turned 50. I think that might’ve been what I needed the socket wrench and zip ties for. I can’t speak for Elise because, if you know Elise, she speaks enough for the both of us, but I like to think that age is just a number. And I didn’t want to make a huge fuss about her turning 50 because I’m wise enough now to not remind her of how significantly older she is than me.

A week after Elise’s birthday I paced the 3:15 group for the Austin Marathon. That was a race that I thought was going to end my running career. It was a tough day, I came in two minutes slower than planned, and at mile 21 I’d told myself I was never running one of these “&$#&@$#@ing mother @%&&^#!#ing &#^&y things again.” So in September I signed up to run my fifth Boston Marathon.

In March we flew up to Cleveland to see Maly and the UC Golden Eagles in an early season lacrosse tournament. We all went back to Charleston, WV after the tournament and spent a little time with Maly and her friends and roommates. Maly had to go back to classes while Elise, Mara and I were on Spring Break. We drove out to Snowshoe Mountain on the eastern side of the state for some mountain lodging and snow skiing for a couple days. Then it was another road trip to the northern part of the state for another UC game against Davis & Elkins. Then we all headed back to Charleston where we were able to spend the last couple days of our spring break with Maly before we said our goodbyes and had to leave Maly at school and head back home.

In April Elise and I replaced most of the joists and decking on the backyard deck. We had a bunch of leftover 2×6’s, so I built a large above-ground planter box and Elise planted peppers, squash and tomatoes. The girls had their respective birthdays. Maly turned 19 and Mara turned 14. We’ve learned that during the week between the girls’ birthdays is prime for dewberry harvesting, so we’ve made it a little tradition to go dewberry hunting. Last year we brought home over 10 pounds of dewberries and I couldn’t give away cobblers fast enough. These year we intentionally brought home half that amount of berries and I made half as many cobblers. And yours truly ate most of said cobblers.

Maly came home in May after finishing her freshman year at the University of Charleston. We had her spend her first year at college sans car, and since she was home for summer, everyone who was legal to drive needed a car, so we bought Maly a car that she was able to drive back up to West Virginia when the fall semester started.

We took a week and flew up to Des Moines in Early August to spend time with Steve and Joanne. We escaped the heat of home and helped with some house chores, went to an Iowa Cubs game, the Indianola Balloon Classic, and played with baby goats at Howell’s in Cumming.

The summer just sort of flew by. I have a tendency to get depressed after a summer break or the Christmas holidays when life has to get back to “normal.” I was really depressed when Maly moved to college last summer, and again when the holidays were over last year and I had to go back to a job that I didn’t like. So, to keep myself busy I learned how to weld. Jared (Maly’s 340-pound offensive lineman boyfriend) came over one evening during the summer and sort of accidentally broke a bench that belonged to our outdoor dining set. It was an old and inherited set that needed to be replaced and Jared gifted me with the opportunity to learn how to make new deck furniture out of steel.

The girls went back to school in August. Maly started her sophomore year at the University of Charleston where she’s majoring in business and plays defense for the lacrosse team. She’s in Honors College and is a member of the local chapters of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Delta Phi Delta. Mara started her 8th grade year, and last year in middle school. She plays offense for the Southwest Austin Girls lacrosse team and, if she chooses to, will play for Bowie High School next year. It’s baffling to think that she’ll be in high school next year. I’m always reminded of what I think is the best parenting advice I’d ever received: it doesn’t get any easier and it doesn’t get any harder. It just gets different. I guess if I were going to add to that parenting advice for any of you who may be new in the role: you’re probably going to need a lot of zip ties.

And like most of us when we age, the Jeep’s rear end went out a few weeks ago. Elise and I have owned that Jeep for decades. Because of that the time it would take to source the parts and the cost of repairs, we decided to garage the Jeep for the time being and buy ourselves a gently-used late model truck. Merry Christmas to me, I guess.

Elise and I are doing fine and dandy, adapting as usual to our ever-evolving life together. We both work at our respective roofing companies, still not really sure how we both got into the roofing industry. Jobs, the kids, the cats and the dog keep us busy. Next year we’ll celebrate our 25th anniversary. I don’t think we have any plans just yet, but that’s kind of how we’ve always rolled.

We hope this Christmas finds you happy, healthy and warm and with the ones you love.

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

With our love,

Is the best kind of racing.

I’m finally finished with a cedar and epoxy resin experiment that I’ve been working on for the past six weeks. I harvested the cedar from the trails behind the house and sawed it into manageable crosscuts. Then I did an epoxy pour with swirls of black onyx, emerald green, green envy, iridescent blue, and deep blue sea mica powder. I fabricated a router sled with angle iron and 1.5″ steel tubing and planed the board down to 1/4″ inch using a 2″ surfacing router bit. And then I sanded. And sanded. And sanded. And cussed. And sanded more.

This was very much an exercise in learning and patience. The latter I am really having to work on.

I don’t know what this thing is, but whatever it is, here it is.

Nineteen years after he died.

Last month I trimmed the big cedar elm in the backyard. While I was up on the 30-foot ladder, I dedided to replace the nylon rope that I’d tied up in the tree. I put that rope up there when Maly was a little girl. It was used for a plastic tire swing that I finally found and bought for her. It was the same plastic tire swing that I had on the back patio at our house in Bear Creek.

That nylon rope somehow got cut and spliced in the middle, and Mara had since put all kinds of knots in it, probably as a way to shorted the length of the rope as she’d gotten older. I didn’t like that old nylon rope with the splice and the knots in it. I’d found this old tow rope that dad had in the barn a long time ago, not long after he’d died. I kept it because I knew it was a good piece of rope. Dad always had good ropes. I decided that this good piece of rope could be for the tire swing. No knots. Just a good piece of strong rope.

But the rope was tied in a loop on one end and latch hook on the other. The looped end is hooked into a carabiner and an eye bolt that’s screwed into a limb in the tree. The other end has the latch hook looped into the rope. I needed to shorten the rope, which meant I had to untie Dad’s knot. But I studied it and took pictures of it before I did.

I shorted the rope and hung the tire swing where it should be, with some room for the rope to strech. Although I don’t think it will. That rope is probably older than me.

I sat there alone in the backyard, grinning to myself as I tied the new loop through the latch hook, just like Dad’s knot. And I could hear his voice. He said, “There ya go. That’s not going anywhere.” And then he’d give me that smile.

I miss the hell out of him.

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?”