“Those are Ding Dongs!”
“No, they’re not. These are Swiss Rolls. Ding Dongs are those chocolate cupcakes with cream filling and the swirly white loops on top.”
“No, those are called Hostess Cupcakes! These are Ding Dongs. Trust me. Do a Google search for ‘pictures of Ding Dongs'”
“Let’s not and say I did.”
Maly came home with a note from her school today. One of her classmate’s dad died last Thursday from a heart attack. This struck a chord with me, and I wanted to talk to Maly about this sensitive and sad subject.
“Does it make you sad that your friend’s dad died?”
“Not really.”
“…”
“Well, a little bit. I don’t know.”
“What if I died?”
“Well, mommy’s smaller and weaker than you. So I’d have to start exercising a lot and stop watching Wild Kratts.”
Twenty years ago, on this exact date, I attended, what I like to think of as my very first concert. I’m certain I’d been to concerts before this one, but this was the one where the parents dropped us off in what used to be an old Kroger grocery store on Tidwell in Houston called The Unicorn.
It was Matt, his then-girlfriend and me. I’m pretty sure this was the first time I’d smelled pot. I remember that smell wafting from the dark corners of the warehouse and how interesting I thought it was. Once someone answered my inquiry with a, “dude, that’s pot,” I forever associated that smell with the fact that I knew it was illegal, instead of being that perpetual interesting smell.
Fifteen years old and Eddie Vedder takes the stage with Pearl Jam. They’d just released their first album, “Ten” and I think the only person who knew of Pearl Jam was the guy behind us who screamed, “Let’s jam, Pearl Jam!!” And that they did. Eddie Vedder owned the stage and the band created the loud, raw, distorted and flowing ambiance that was every bit of what “grunge music” became in the 90’s.
I was mesmerized. The music was hard, heavy and aggressive enough to warrant moshing and jumping about by most of the packed in crowd. At the same time, the music and vocals also promoted a sensual and calming rhythm that captivated and created an ocean-like flowing of those in attendance.
It was like the entire local ecosystem had congealed together in a vacuum bubble of aural and visual meld.
I was probably high from second had pot smoke.
At one point Eddie Vedder jumped off the stage and into the crowd. My first thought was, “holy shit! What the hell did he just do?!” And then he bobbed up from within the crowd and started slowly drifting across the crowd on a sea of hands. He rolled over onto his stomach by the strength of the audience and pointed to the sound and light booth. And the ocean crowd obligingly carried him to his destination.
We were standing mid-stage, probably 20 people back and I watched Eddie being carried straight toward us with the stage and the band blurred in the background. Within only a few seconds, he was on top of us. I put my hands up and he latched on to one of my hands as he was slowly carried away in his drift. A he passed over, I thought, “man, that’s influence. That’s a rock star. He just rode above the entire audience on a sea of hands.” I had no clue who Eddie Vedder or Pearl Jam was prior to that show, but I was a pretty devout fan a few years after that show.
Pearl Jam’s set ended and within a half hour, a really ugly, emaciated woman with a bushy red mop on her head took the stage and she and her band whined and screamed to some pretty heavy (heavier than Pearl Jam) tunes. I quickly learned that the ugly woman was Billy Corgan and his band, the Smashing Pumpkins. Whatever the first song was, I didn’t really like it. It wasn’t until their second song, and throughout the rest of the set that I acquired a sense of this new groove. The Smashing Pumpkins provided a heavier sound, but still maintained a rhythmic and flowing cadence.
It was somewhere in the Smashing Pumpkin’s set that I came down with the flu. It hit me like a brick. Thankfully I didn’t get sick sick, but i could feel my energy drop, my throat started hurting and my head felt like it was going to implode. It wasn’t secondhand pot I’d been subjected to for the previous hour, it was the full-on flu. I think I even missed the following week of school.
I had just enough energy for the headliners: The Red Hot Chili Peppers. I don’t remember too much of their show as I was really feeling under the weather, but I do remember they were on tour promoting their Blood Sugar Sex Magik album. Of course the crowd really went nuts when RHCP took the stage, so not only was I coming down with the flu, I was also having to make sure I didn’t get caught in a mosh pit and kicked in the head.
I’ll probably always remember that concert quite vividly. To this day, I’m very much a Red Hot Chili Peppers fan. If I hear a Pearl Jam song today, I usually hit next on the iPod or change the radio station. That probably holds true for Smashing Pumpkins, too.
I’m baffled and amazed that it was 20 years ago that I saw Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins and the Red Hot Chili Peppers in an old grocery store in Houston.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go chase some kids off my lawn.
Today is my last day at the company that I’ve been with for seven months. Earlier this month I was presented with the fantastic opportunity to run a small web-based software company. Elise, who is really excited about this opportunity for me, and upon my decision to accept the job offer asked, “So, what is this, something like your 10th job since Maly was born?”
She said this in a jovial manner, and I, of course, said, “No. This is only like my…” And then I saw her eyebrows rise as she watched it come to realization in my mind.
I’ve had 10 jobs in five and a half years.
1) The Drug Dealer
When Maly was born, I was running a small pharmaceutical-grade nutritional and wellness product wholesale company. This was a great job. My boss was great. He taught me how to run a business that maintained inventory. I managed a team who ran our fulfillment center, I learned strategies to cut costs, increased our margins, built a team who liked their jobs, kept our clients happy, grew revenue, and sold to pharmacists and physicians without having to get a boob job. I lost this job (and so did my entire team) when the company was sold to large pharmaceutical company.
The Dark Period
Then I entered a very, very dark period. Maly was but a few months old. I was happy to be a new dad, but having an infant added to the household made for some new stress. My dad died about a week after I’d lost my job. I was close to my dad and loved him very, very much. We had a new baby, my dad died and I was the unemployed breadwinner of our house. That’s why I call it the dark period. I was very isolated, confused and drunk.
2) The Organic Trail
A month later I was recruited by a little dot-com start-up in Austin. The owner was interested in me because of my accounting experience (I owned the P&L at my previous job). This job turned out to be three young adults working in the owner’s and her husband’s garage-turned-office (formally known as the husband’s mom’s apartment before she passed). One was hired for sales and advertising. The other for marketing. I was hired to manage ecommerce, financials and operations. What we all ended up doing was manually populating the website’s database with product photos and descriptions for $10/hour while our boss spent her days at Whole Foods and getting colonics. The economy and job market weren’t that bad at this point, so the three of us had options. I came into work on a Friday after having been employed for only 2 weeks. I politely and professionally told my boss that I just didn’t think the job was a fit for me and that I was going to pursue other endeavors. She was amenable to that and gave me a hug and an all-natural fiber cookie on my way out of the garage.
3) The Email Law
On my home from quitting the job above, I called my best friend in the whole world. I told him I’d just quit a job and that we should go get lunch and have a few beers. He asked if I might be interested in coming to work at the software company he was running. I didn’t have anything better to do, so I went to his office. It didn’t take long and I wound up working at this little software company. And we had lots of fun for a couple years, growing the client roster and revenue. Invariable the management structure at our company and at the parent company changed, and the overall company culture changed, and things just started getting ugly all around. It wasn’t a fun place to work anymore. We were losing clients and people weren’t happy anymore. I looked for another job and quickly found one.
4) The Spammer
I left my previous job to run the email program for a business-to-business lead generation company (a spammer). I was oversold (financially) on the job. It was a terrible job, but the coffee was really good. This company was listed on a world-renowned email blacklist, which completely shut down the facet of the business of which I was supposed to be in charge. After I started, the company was miraculously removed from this blacklist. And then 3 days after I started, they were blacklisted again (by nothing of my doing). It was a terribly toxic environment. Since the email operation was at a standstill, half of my team had to be terminated.
The Gray Period
Then I entered a brief gray period. A tree fell on my mom’s head (I can’t make this stuff up). So I rushed to her house during the middle of a Sunday night after she’d gotten stitched up and received a clean bill of health at the emergency room. Elise and Maly drove in the following morning so they could stay with my mom and so I could get back to my job. After making the long drive back to Austin, I was informed that my services weren’t needed any longer. I was effectively fired. That was a relief and a blessing. My boss was a tyrant and I was honestly fearful of my own and my staff’s emotional and physical well-being. I drove over to Starbucks after learning that I’d been terminated. Usually patronizing a Starbucks isn’t a memorable occasion. This time it was.
The Beige Period
Then I entered somewhat of a beige period. I had a lot of clarity, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do next. I couldn’t put my finger on what I wanted to do when I grew up. The creative juices were flowing. I did some soul searching. I read quite a few books. I enjoyed the downtime. I even wrote a hip-hop album that wound up being huge in Denmark.
5) My Own Business
I remember lying on the couch reading Jason Fried’s Rework, and that’s when I decided to try my hand at starting my own company. I worked 10-17 hour days for an entire month and started a little software business. I invested my own money (which was hard to do seeing how we were now living off savings and state unemployment compensation) and worked my ass off. And I had a total blast doing it. I was happy. I was motivated. I smiled and laughed a lot and sent screenshots of my software as it worked to my father-in-law and he said things like, “Wow! That’s fantastic!” and I’d pump my fist!
I started a software company in exactly 30 days. Three months later, I received my first sale. That, to me, told me I’d done it. I’d built something that was of value to someone else. That was, and still is, a great feeling. I’d never known a feeling like that (that I can recall) up until that point.
On October 17, 2011, my little software company turned a profit. It took me one month to build and less than a year in sales to be able to say that I started, own and operate a successful and profitable software company.
My “job” at the time was building Scrubbly, but I didn’t have an income. It was time to get real, be a man and support my family financially. I decided I wanted to try my hand at full-time, commission-based sales.
6) The Coupon Peddler
I don’t exactly recall how I came across the opportunity, but I was quickly and eagerly hired on as an outside sales representative for an Austin-based deal-of-the-day website (a Groupon competitor). It was a hot industry and I was ready to rock and roll and make gobs of cash. Come to find out, deal-of-the-day group buying coupon sites are a dime a dozen in an already overly-saturated market. Before even making my first sales call, my colleague told me she was on her way out the door the moment the next opportunity presented itself. She was already tapped out in her short-lived online coupon-peddling career. That wasn’t very inspiring or motivating. But I thought, “with one less sales person, that means twice as much business for me!” And then I learned that the competition required exclusivity in their contracts. I couldn’t work with a client who was already working with Groupon or Living Social. And Groupon and Living Social had already swept the nation. The only local client I could go after was Bubba’s Fresh Dead Bait and Discount Tanning Salon, and I just didn’t want to do that.
7) The Host
I don’t recall how I came across this next job either, but I was quickly hired on with a local web hosting company. My boss and I hit it off immediately. We met for barbecue at Rudy’s one afternoon and chatted for hours. He was like the father figure kind of boss and I liked him a lot. He was really leaning on me to drum up some new business. I think he was really leaning on me because he was having a really hard time drumming up new business himself. Neither of us had much luck generating an even lukewarm lead. I could sense that my boss was on his way out, and being a commission-only sales guy meant that I had absolutely no cash coming in until I sold something. And even then, it would take many months before I could build up enough residuals to cover my family’s expenses. I had the come to Jesus conversation with myself and realized that I need to get a real job with a steady salary and health insurance.
8) The Association
My father-in-law, who lives in Des Moines, IA (which is a French word for the Moines) has always touted a vendor that he’d used for a couple years. This software company provides database-driven websites and member management for non-profits and associations. They’re a really great, stable, profitable, service-oriented company and it seemed like a good place to plant myself. I looked them up and, sure enough, they were hiring. I submitted my application, was told that I was overqualified for the job I was applying for. I told them, “I don’t care, I want to work here,” and a week later I was sitting in a cubicle. And they even brought in kolaches on my first day. The people I worked with were great. Even the people I didn’t work with directly were great. The handful of clients I interacted with were great. The CEO knew everyone by their first name and he liked me. Everyone was just great. But I was bored out of my ever-loving mind at this job. I was hired to populate databases (again). I don’t know how I’ve managed to get myself into two database-populating jobs in less than five years. I’m not even a database kind of guy.
After around a month, I decided I was going to put some kind of plan into action. I really liked the company and the products & services that they provided, I just didn’t enjoy my particular job. So I started poking around internally to see if there might be another part of the company in which I could work. I’d also started putting my resume back out there and I let people know that I was casually looking for work. I began a correspondence with one of the Vice Presidents at the company and we were finalizing our plans to get together and put me on a path that would enable me to not only have fun at my job, but to also make a direct contribution to the growth of the company.
And that coincided with another conversation I began having with the CEO of the company that I’m leaving today.
9) The Agency
Over the years, both professionally and by my own personal doing, I’d gained valuable experience and knowledge in online marketing. That boded really well for me with this small agency that specializes in affiliate marketing. During our first phone conversation my boss asked, “did you read the job description?” to which I said, “of course! It’s right up my alley.” He then said, “You know you’re way overqualified.” And I told him that I didn’t care. I wanted to work there. It was a small company and I envisioned lots of room for me to grow. So he hired me just as he was moving to Austin to open up a new office. It was great timing. The company had previously been a virtual one with ~25 employees scattered about the U.S. I was going to be employee #1 at the company’s new home in the heart of Texas. I helped open the new office and hire the next 5 employees.
The job was great. The people were awesome. I really valued the work/life balance that I was afforded. All-in-all, I was happy, but I didn’t feel like I was doing much for my own personal and professional growth.
Then one morning I got a phone call from a friend. He said, “I have a buddy who needs someone to run his software company. I recommended you. You should be expecting a phone call from him.”
10) The New Job
I start that new job on Monday. On Halloween. It’s the job that I’m the most excited to take on since receiving my very first job after graduating from college over a decade ago.
Ten jobs in five and a half short years. I’d always thought that I’d grow up to be like my dad; that I’d graduate from college and work for the same company for 30-some-odd years.
My, how times have changed… and how I don’t really know any different.
A little software company I started over a year ago turned a profit this afternoon. I can now say that I started, own and operate a successful and profitable software company. It was never my plan to get rich from this project, but my heart is rich with a sense of accomplishment right now, and I’ll gladly take that to the bank.
Click here to see the new website announcing the pregnancy and to watch the video where we tell Maly she’s going to be a big sister. Needless to say, it’s been a crazy, exciting and exhilarating past few weeks. I’ll update soon with posts about “feelings” and “emotions” and “fart jokes.”
I don’t know when I did it, but many months ago I urged our daughter to get into the habit of making her bed first thing in the morning. I didn’t think the idea would stick, nor did I expect the bed making to become a habit, but it did. And what I thought would be a healthy, tidy habit, has turned into a textbook case of obsessive compulsive disorder. There is a process to the making of the bed, and there is an equally intensive process to the turning down of the bed.
She has a select entourage of approximately 87 stuffed animals, each of which having their exact place on top of the bed while the bed is made, and when the bed is to be slept in. She has four pillows that also have their exact spot. When it’s time to go to bed, the decorative pillow is placed vertically at the right top of the mattress, slightly bent so half of the pillow is on the bed, the other half is propped up against the headboard. The pillow on which she lays her head is placed horizontally at the top left of the mattress. The cross-stitched pillow is placed against the wall, with the hearts facing toward the bed. Going down toward the foot of the bed, the bean bag pillows are also placed against the wall – pink pillow first (southern positioning), then the green one. And at the foot of the bed, and still against the wall is a tightly-rolled pink blanket. The crocheted blanket is carefully and geometrically folded down, as is the sheet. She has a purse-like duffle bag in which a segment of her stuffed animal entourage is carefully occupied. This bag is then placed in the center of the mattress, a foot away from the footboard. Riley (the real cat) sleeps at Maly’s feet, just before the bag of stuffed animals. Maly shares her pillow with a My Little Pony named Sweetie Belle, who also has her own little purple pillow and blanket.
My documented recollection doesn’t do this process anything near justice. What’s become a topic of debate and instilled a house-wide sense of urgency has been the making of the bed in the mornings, especially since school has started. It usually takes Maly 10 minutes to make her bed. Ten minutes is a lot of precious time in our house in the morning. The solution here would obviously be for everyone to wake up 10 minutes earlier. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Usually I’m the calm one with time on my side, however, this morning, I somehow subconsciously joined in verbalizing the sense of urgency in getting ready for school. Maly became distraught because she really needed help with making her bed. Elise graciously helped her this morning, and I think somewhere in this process, Elise had a talk with Maly about the time that bed maintenance has been taking.
Tonight Maly decided to rectify this problem. She insisted on sleeping on top of her bed. I just checked on her and she’s all curled up on the bottom half of her bed with her entourage and pillows at her head, and the cat snuggled up in his normal spot. It’s a tight squeeze, all in the name of a made bed.
A year ago our little neighbor friend came over to the house to visit Maly. I immediately noticed a little brace on both of the girl’s wrists.
“Carter, did you hurt your hands?”
“No. They’re guards to get me to stop sucking my thumbs.”
“Oh, wow! Those are cool. Let me look at those.”
I inspected the little guards that went around her wrists and the surgical plastic that encased her thumbs. The guards are a very well thought out design and product. I made a mental note and filed it away for later retrieval.
Fast forward a year to present day. Maly has started Kindergarten and it’s about time we start working on getting her to stop sucking her fingers. Ever since she was an infant, she has sucked her middle two fingers. Over the past year, she’s scaled back to only sucking her fingers when she’s tired or stressed, and Elise and I have both been okay with that. Maly’s even admitted to us that she doesn’t suck her fingers during school, but she’s expressed an interest in quitting.
Elise and I have never pressured her to stop sucking her fingers – we’ve just asked or talked to her about it. Elise and I were both thumb suckers when we were young, so having a child that sucks on her fingers wasn’t a surprise, and we’ve recognized it as a self-nurturing and soothing ritual.
On the past two occasions that I’ve talked to Maly about the finger sucking, she’s expressed an interest in quitting, and she said she wanted the same guards that Carter used. To me, that’s a win-win. The child is willing to quit sucking her fingers, and there’s a no-brainer retail solution.
But I’m cheap, and I have a tendency to try to do things on my own. This past weekend I decided to look into those finger sucking guards. I was kind of shocked that they cost $70. I guess if you compare $70 to the cost of orthodontics to re-allign crooked teeth from years of finger sucking, the $70 pales in comparison. But $70 just seems like a lot of money for something that could be turned into a Do It Yourself solution; and a redneck one at that!
Here’s the Finger Guard kit I could buy on Amazon for $70 to help my child stop sucking her fingers:
And… here’s the Vista Mega Tuff Glove archer’s glove I could buy from Cabela’s for $7.88:
I figure I can modify my redneck finger guard with a week’s worth of 5¢ zip ties and save myself $60. And I might just use that money I’ll save and buy a nice bug zapper for the house and a two pack of sausage casings.
This conversation took place ~10 minutes ago, as close to verbatim as I can recollect:
“Daddy, how does a baby go from being in a mommy’s belly to being born?”
“Well, you see, Sug… there are tiny eggs that live in a mommy’s ovaries. Then they take a ride through what’s called a fallopian tube where they land and rest in the uterus. And this is where the egg gets fertilized and then turns into an embryo, which is an itty itty, bitty baby. The baby lives in this little protecting bubble called and embryonic sack for nine whole months. That’s almost a whole year!”
“Wow!”
“Yeah! And while the baby’s in the mommy’s belly, it gets its food from the umbilical cord, which is a tube that goes from a special sack in the mommy’s belly straight into the baby’s belly. That’s why everyone has a belly button — because that’s how we were all once fed while we lived in our mommy’s belly.”
“Hey, Daddy?”
“Yeah, Sug?”
“But how does the baby actually get into the mommy’s belly?”
“Well, you see. Ahem. That’s something that the mommy and daddy do. You see, with me, I took a 15″ sheet pan and greased it with a lot of butter, then set it aside. Then I took 4 cups of flour, 2 eggs, a teaspoon of vanilla extract, a tablespoon of baking soda, a cup of milk and a package of active dry yeast and mixed on high until I had a good dough. Then I proofed the dough in the oven at around 150-degrees for about a half hour. Then I took the dough out and pushed it down onto the kitchen bar that I’d spread flour onto. Then I took the rolling pin — you know, the rolling pin you used the other day to make your little cake? — and rolled the dough out to, oh, I don’t know, maybe a half inch or so. Then I folded it over once length-wise, then over again. Then I folded it from the top, and then again from the bottom. And then I put the dough in a padded envelope, walked it up to the mailbox and sent it to God…”
“…”
“Yeah, and then a few days later, God sent an email to your Mom to let her know that she was pregnant with you!”
“…”
“Alright, Sug. Love you! G’night!”
“…”
First day of school today:
First day of school last year:
First day of school 2 years ago:
First day of school 3 years ago:
Maly starts Kindergarten tomorrow. Our little baby will be attending her first day of real, public school. Elise and I have known this for months, years even, and yet, I don’t think either one of us is really prepared. I think we’re both feigning its acceptance and together we’re strong, but apart, we could just as easily be the ones starting school for the very first time tomorrow.
Maly knows she starts school tomorrow, but it won’t affect her until 7:30 tomorrow morning when we’re having to pry her clutching fingers from one of our forearms as tears pour from her face.
I think tomorrow beholds the most painful event that Elise and I will have to endure as parents to date. I say this because I’m pretty sure this past Friday was an indication as to how this whole starting Kindergarten thing is going to play out. We had our “Meet the Teacher” event at the elementary school on Friday afternoon and it was ten times more brutal than Elise and I had anticipated. The first 30 minutes were spent with the principal addressing the incoming students and parents, and the last hour were to be spent touring the classroom and meeting our daughter’s Kindergarten teacher. Maly was holding up really well until yours truly took the 15 pencils that she had carefully sharpened and poured them onto the collective pile of shared pencils on the table in her classroom. And that’s when she lost it. She needed the excuse to release her fears and anxieties through tears, and I’d given her just that. Thankfully we had the opportunity to make formal introductions with her new teacher just as we arrived at the room, but once those pencils dropped, so did the tears.
She cried non-stop for a good 30 minutes. There was nothing we could do to console her. She told us that she was upset because she wanted to keep her pencils all to herself, but we think she was just overly nervous and scared. Elise couldn’t get our daughter to articulate her fears or anxiety, so we were that family with the bawling daughter. Our teacher did a great job of temporarily calming Maly down for a few minutes, but even still, she didn’t want to interact with this new stranger. Even the principal came in and took the time to kneel down and talk to Maly. It was valiant and very much appreciate, but, she too was a stranger, and Maly was still stressed and nervous. The tears started flowing again and our only recourse was to just leave. We had our opportunity to meet the teacher, principal, see the classroom and get all of the paperwork we needed for our new Kindergartener; so, albeit is was stressful as all get out, it was a fruitful and necessary Meet the Teacher event.
The stress of this past Friday afternoon took it’s toll and set the tone for the rest of the weekend for us. In fact, Elise and I almost divorced over a dispute about children’s chewable vitamins on Saturday morning. Ordinarily a conversation about children’s chewable vitamins in our house would go something like this:
“Hey, I bought some new chewable vitamins for the kid.”
“That’s cool. Hey, come here and check out this picture of penguin wearing a hat!”
We’re all a little on edge and a little out of sorts. We’re all nervous. Elise and I want to make sure our daughter’s feelings and fears are heard (or not heard) and validated, and we want to make sure that she knows that everything is going to be okay.
Elise has always been great in new places, new things and with new people. I’m not in that I prefer order and familiarity. Maly definitely takes after me in this regard. But we both know that once she gets used to her new environment and schedule, she’ll do just fine – it’ll just take her a little bit longer to adjust.
I’m excited for her. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’ll have fun at school. I’m also sad because our little baby is going to real school now. It still seems like only yesterday that we were bringing her home from the hospital.
This evening Maly rode her scooter and I my longboard to the mailbox where we were both pleasantly surprised to find a card from my sister. The card was well wishes for Maly’s first day of Kindergarten, and included a gift card from Target.
When we got back home five minutes later, we had this conversation:
“I can’t wait until tomorrow. I want to go to Target and buy something!”
“Now, Sugar, why don’t we wait until there’s something that you really want or need, and then we can go to Target.”
Without hesitate, her eyes grew as big as saucers and she said:
“Ooh, Daddy! I know! We could take the money to your Rotary Club. We could use it buy a toy to give to the kids who don’t get to get any toys at Christmas!”
I’ve had some proud moments in my 5+ years of being a father, and this is one of those that ranks mighty high on that list!
