I was completely enthralled with international relations at the time, so logically when planning my post-grad life I looked into international law. So I studied up on the LSAT, took electives that helped the cause, and even started the application process. As the story goes that has been told here before, I met a girl that didn’t want to move. Which was a problem since all the good international law programs were in DC.

A few years later when it came my turn for grad school I explored again going legal. This time staying local and going to UALR’s Bowen law school.  Ultimately I decided to go with a MA in communications leaving any legal ambitions behind. Or so I thought

Last week after unexpected twitter request I found myself with a photo shoot out at the law school. I think more than anything I was excited about being able to hang out at the law school for the day, with permission to bust in on a few classes and full access to the building. For one day I got to relive what could have been, at least behind a camera lens.

The photo shoot went great by the way. Here are some of my personal favorite photos.

The pre-married us

There is this magical way of forgetting the way things were when those things take a sudden and dramatic change. I can’t imagine living by myself like I did for a couple of years in college. I can’t imagine what it is like to not have to let the dog out every night before bed. I can’t imagine someone not throwing their leg across me in the middle of the night pinning me down.

The memories of life before the girl are similarly starting to fade. What, for instance did I do on the weekends when the wife worked and I had time to myself? How did it feel to sleep in until 6:45 every morning before day care? What was it like to actually watch a movie with wife and actually hear the words instead of watching the subtitles because that is the girl’s time to talk the loudest? I still remember the answer to these questions, but it is a little fuzzy around the edges.

There is one question that has changed the most in my life. What is love? The answer is not the same as it was 8 years ago on our first Valentine’s day together.

First of all, that was a complete disaster. We went to college about 2 1/2 hours apart, so getting together involved one of us driving to the other on the weekend. Vday fell on a Monday that year. She came over to my apartment. I decided to be all romantic and buy rose petals and spread them out, mostly because I didn’t have enough money to buy actual flowers since I was saving every dime I had to buy a ring. I made dinner, which likely involved rice since I would buy it in a 50 lbs bag and make it for every meal for the same reason as the petals.

Rose petals, as it turns out, has a magical way of staining light colored futon covers, just FYI for any other poor kids out there.

Monday I get this rather angry call expressing how bad of a boyfriend I am since I didn’t send her a Valentine’s day card. I thought the whole weekend experience was enough, turns out I could have just skipped it and bought a card. She really loves her cards, something I’ve never forgotten again.

Love back then was about trying to please. Trying to make magic where none really existed. It was about making mistakes and trying to find the right words to fix them. It was awkward and unruly. It was an untamed beast that would either run away alone or take you with it to a new beginning.

This morning the wife and I took our few minutes in passing together. I made her a cup of coffee and she gave me my Valentine card. I had taken the opportunity to give her the one I bought for her yesterday because I wasn’t sure how much time we would get.

I gave her that ring that forced me to only eat rice and buy rose petals 8 years ago, and another one several years later. Last spring she gave me a daughter in return. That daughter threw a fit this morning when she realized that I was taking her to day care instead of sitting at home with her for another not-so-snowy snow day. After giving her a bottle she laid her head on my shoulder and repeatedly whispered in my ear ever so softly “dada. dada. dada”.

Love is now magic in every corner, waiting to be discovered not created. It is about overcoming perfection and hoping for a mistake, because you just might find something wild and unexpected. It is confident and controlled. It is being the world to someone and having them return the favor.

That is what love is.

Oh how times change.

It all starts with the con. She knows when she is due for a full clothes and diaper change. She acts calm and innocent. Sometimes she will even cuddle just a bit while you are taking her to the changing table. When you lay her down she will stay still. She easily lets you take her pants and shirt off. Sometimes even helping a bit. The first diaper tab comes off fine…

Then bam.

As soon as she hears that second tab undo she flips over like an acrobat and starts crawling all over the changing pad. She grabs everything she can. If you try to grab her she kicks and squirms and eventually gets out of your reach. As you try to put a diaper back on she rolls over and over on the pad trying to keep you from putting it on. She kicks her legs for the pants and does this crazy little Arabian belly dance trying to prevent her shirt from going on.

This is a child who wants to be naked and have fun doing it. Next thing she will be doing naked cross country skiing in our living room like @amybhole’s boys.

About half the time I take her out after this full service change she has an article of clothing on backwards. Yesterday I realized when I put her in her car seat for day care she had her entire outfit on backwards, and part of it was inside out. Kris Kross’ style may be staged for a comeback fyi.

I am very sorry for those of you who think I have it all figured out. I’ve got nothing. In fact my brief obsession with chaos theory has yielded more insight than anything else I’ve come up with at this point.

For starters, I have absolutely no clue what makes my wife cry. There are moments when Ava does something new and she gets excited and there are times when she does something new and the wife burst into tears.

Example:  The girl has been pulling up on things and standing up lately, which has up until this point made the momma excited. Ava is sort of a poor judge at how high she can stand up when she pulls up on things. She has a pillow that she will stand up on, of course it is only about a foot off the ground so that does almost no good.

Last night we are watching a show and letting Ava play a bit. She crawled over to the pillow and stood up with it, which results in her butt significantly higher than her head. For the first time however she decided to just push back from the pillow. So there she was, standing without support on her own. I immediately get excited and congratulate the girl, telling her good job. The mom burst uncontrollably into tears for a good 15 minutes.

I am offering a free lunch to anyone willing to explain what makes the momma cry.

I went home and proceeded to not shave for a few days. Finally when time came to burst out of my face fuzz cocoon and become a beautiful mustached butterfly I hesitated. Grant it most of my hesitation was a fear of looking like a 90’s porn star. So instead I found a technicality, if I just went full beard I would not look half as ridiculous and technically I would still have the mustache along with a chin friend. (the friend by the way took my idea and did the same)

Somehow the beard stuck. The wife liked it mostly. So when December 1 came around I decided to keep it. Now I’ve got a year and some change behind my beard and I’ve learned ways that it is awesome. (note that I did actually shave it one time while on paternity leave, hated it and grew it back out before anyone noticed)

1. Do it like a Big Bear: Bears (the grizzly kind, not the other kind) with the exception of the honey badger are probably the most ferocious woodland creature. Everything and everyone is scared of a bear except other bears. The beard gives you certain bear like qualities which scares off lesser woodland creatures while giving you rapport with the indigenous bear population, which keeps you from being ate by said bears. Note however that certain female bears might want to hibernate with you for a bit. Might I suggest spooning to keep your cover.

2. Protection from the Cold: Believe it or not we are in the dead of winter. You wouldn’t know it by the 70 degree temperatures, but we are here. Eventually it will get cold or global warming will trigger an ice age and you are going to have a sudden desire to become warmer. A beard is like a wool coat for your face. You get to sit back and laugh while the smoother types have frost bitten chins. For added protection, you can even throw on a beard warmer.

3. Portable Food Storage: Let’s face it, if you have a beard you are going to at some point walk away from lunch with some leftover enchiladas. Embrace the food storage. Come 3:00 and your office neighbor is scavenging for a snack you have one a tongue swipe away.

The pinnacle of beardness, there is no questioning his gender - Brett Keisel

4. Extra Sleep: Think about the mass number of men who have to get up and shave their entire face every morning. Now dream about that while you are enjoying your additional 4.5 minutes of sleep that you get because you do not have to shave. As an added bonus you can simply shampoo your face along with your head instead of having to do a separate face washing. Just make sure to not grab your girl’s shampoo or you will walk around all day smelling strawberries and cream. Might I recommend my favorite Beer Shampoo

5. Easily Identifiable Gender: My friend @kellimarks has made me aware of something called a “gender reveal party” that she discovered when she opened the bakery. Now I have no clue what goes on at these parties, but I am picturing a bunch of gender questionable people standing around in a circle placing bets on what they think each other are. Then in some way shape or form revealing this to the others. With a beard you never have to experience this.
*note, in extremely rare instances this could result in a false positive in gender identification. Never use beards to judge the gender of circus workers or librarians.

Don’t get me wrong, yesterday was a bad day. It was a bad day on top of a bad week on top of a bad month. In fact I pretty much hate 2012 so far, I do not think I’ve seen one thing go right. So I needed a little unexpected pick me up.

I was on my way to a meeting and as soon as I turned on Cantrell I heard a small pop. Almost immediately my low tire pressure light came on. No big deal I thought, I have a small service station that I use on Cantrell that was only about 2 miles away. I figured I would just pull in and have them plug it real quick. Then as I drove I watched my tire pressure go from 30 (when the light came on) to 25, 20, 15… it was losing about 2-3 pounds of pressure every second. There was no way I could make it.

For those of you local to here you know the only real place to pull over in that stretch is either the Dillard’s HQ parking lot or the Episcopal school. I went with Dillard’s. I was around 5 ppi when I entered the parking lot, quickly saw there were no visitor spots I could park and change a tire. At the last second I just pulled into a handicap spot for the extra space. I figured I could talk my way out of that ticket if I needed to.

I grab the spare and the jack and realize that the tire iron does not have a way to lift the jack and there is nothing else in the car to do it with. It is a new car and this is the first time I’ve had to change a tire on it. For whatever reason the manufacturer forgot to put something in to lift the jack.

I sit and think for a minute, then I realize that I pay $20 something a month for OnStar roadside, I’ll just have them come change it. I go through the 20 minute process of calling OnStar to have them send someone. They tell me they will call me back with an estimated time.

About that time a Dillard’s employee walks up and ask if I need some help. I say thanks, I’ve called OnStar and they will get here at some point. He absolutely refuses my refusal for him to help. Instead he drives his car over, digs out a floor jack, and starts lifting my car before I can tell him no. I got that call back from OnStar shortly after I was pulling out of the parking lot with my spare on. The estimated time was 50 minutes to 2 hours. I just told them no thanks.

See, that is the thing about this area that makes it special. People don’t just offer to care, or do it because they feel some obligation to offer assistance. They do it because helping people is just who they are. It is a cultural thing. I am fully capable of changing my own tire, the guy could see that. There was an issue with the jack and I was using what resources I had, and none of the facts of the situation mattered.

There is a kindness in certain people in this area that makes them shine out against the dirt and trash that make up things like what happen on Monday. We are still talking about a select few of our society, I’d venture to guess that there are more that shine than the others. However the content of their character is what really sets them apart.

I took the tire down to Austin Brothers, another example of people helping. We have been taking our cars there for 6 years now, after one day I (again) had a flat and it was the first place I could pull into. They promptly plugged it, aired it up, checked the air in my other tires, and then refused to let me pay them for their service. Since then we have bought 2 sets of tires and countless oil changes. All because they are the right kind of people.

The guy at Dillard’s name was Steve Brown, who was almost hesitant to tell me his name. Humility is a common characteristic of people who truly have culture of helping. I’ll probably never run into Steve again, but some of you may. See people with this culture are serial, they don’t just stop with helping one person. They do it over and over again. This was not the only thing that went wrong yesterday, but it ended up being the only one that mattered because of Steve.

Those are the type of people in this world that I want my daughter to know exist. That is the world I want her to know.

It was inevitable.

With all of the moving and bouncing around the girl does it was only a matter of time before she hit something. I was just desperately hoping it was not on my watch that she did it.

There have been a few times when she has fallen back too hard and bumped the back of her head or rolled off the side of something. Those mostly startle her more than anything. There was this one incident with her crawling off the edge of the bed while the Mom was suppose to be watching her, but I am not allowed to talk about that or I give up the rights to actually sleep in said bed.

This one hurt though, unlike the others. The girl and I were sitting in the chair after a bottle, she was sitting up on me watching TV. Out of no where she lunged forward and before I could react she smacked her face on the edge of the hard wood armrest of the chair. We spent the next 10 minutes looking at each other with tears streaming out of all four eyes. I felt terrible.

Somewhere in all of that I looked at Brandie and said “Punch me in the eye”. “Why in the world would I do that” she said. “So I can take her to day care tomorrow and it looks like you just beat both of us up. If not they are going to think I did it.”

Sometime before bed she got a knot to the side of her left eye, which was gone by morning, just a little puffy but no black eye. Which makes it a good thing that Brandie did not punch me in the eye because I would have looked a bit ridiculous flying solo with my black eye.

This is not that post. I assure you there is no humor to the following words.

As I was relaxing with the house to myself all day, something that has not happen in quite a while, I stumbled across something that made me sick at my stomach.

A local television station, KATV, posted the question on their facebook page “What does Dr. Martin Luther King mean to you?” I would have missed this completely if it were not for a brief acquaintance in my life who mentioned it on twitter. Thankfully he grabbed a screen of the first few comments. Some have been removed. As of this writing there were a little north of 200 comments. Most written in a manner that represents the ignorance of the authors.

The comments range from “not a damn thing” to “a day off work” and about everything imaginable in between.

I grew up in Arkansas. Some people know that, few people believe it, but I swear to you it is the truth. I like to imagine for whatever reason that racisim, which has no real place in this world, is on it’s way out the door. I try not to live in too many bubbles, but this is one I cling to very hard.

I did something I shouldn’t have done. I dug into this a little more. I’ve found example after example of people from this state bursting my bubble. This is not to say that everyone in the state is, that is far from the case. The voice of a few does not make the consensus of many. However in our own ways we accept this activity by as a state sharing Dr. King’s day with Robert E Lee, or allowing those around us to make these types of comments with nothing more than a shrug of the shoulders or at best a bad look.

This is not the type of world I want my daughter to know. In the words of Dr. King I believe in a world where people are not judged by the color of their skin but the content of their character.

I must say, that for some people the content of their character is in a sad state of affairs. For the rest of us I believe that it is past time for us to sit back and allow this virus of society to continue to spread from generation to generation. I believe it is our job to do everything we can to end this now. For my kid, for your kids, and for a better world.

My fellow Arkansas Bill Clinton once said “I still believe in a place called Hope”. One thing I learned a long time ago Bill is that hope can give you a vision, but it takes people who share that vision to make it a reality. I think you understand that, in fact I know you do.

Dr. King’s I have a dream speech will be 50 years old next year. That hope has gone on long enough. Let’s make the next year about bringing that to a reality for all our sons and daughters.

Several months back I introduced you all to Little Rock’s ugliest bathroom. That bathroom is no more thank goodness. This weekend we were able to put the finishing touches on the new bathroom. I know several of you have asked, and no I did not do the work myself. It was way beyond my handy man skill set (which pretty much stops at screwing together furniture). I did however for the most part design it, because designing things is sort of what I do.

Being such a small bathroom this represented a bit of a challenge. I went with a clean minimalistic look. We used ceramic tiles made to look like wood which helped carry the hardwood from the house over while still giving it a distinct look. The longer tiles also added a bit of visual space to a room that really needs it.

In the shower we went kept the longer tiles but added in an accent strip. We ditched the old shower door that had a frosted look in favor of clear glass, which gives the full dept of the room. I again kept the clean look with the shower head and valve. I went with a river stone shower floor which turned out really nice.

In the rest of the bathroom we went with a slim toilet to add a little additional space. I had a custom cabinet built to fit the area that was narrower to save space. Then I went with a vessel sink to attempt to re-capture almost all of the lost storage by being able to utilize the space directly under the countertop. The only two things kept from the old bathroom were the mirror and light fixture, which were purchased new just a year or so ago.

Before

After

Now I am not one of those guys who take pride in beating my wife. It is a necessary evil. Some guys like to come home every night and beat their wives. That is a little out of control and they should get that checked out with a psychiatrist. But I think a good strong beating at the appropriate time is necessary to maintain balance and remind my 1st girl that she does not always get her way. I am sure at some point I’ll have to introduce carefully planned beatings for the little one as well.

All this of course stems from the wife’s love of board games (you didn’t think I was talking about a physical beating did you?). She loves those things. I however can’t stand them. There is nothing more soul sucking than pushing a little thimble around a board. So typically I just sit back and let her have her fun when the need to be thrilled the same way our forefathers did before video games arises.

The fun part about it is that the mom hates to lose, but she doesn’t want to feel like you are letting her win either. This is a fine balance that must be played at all times and almost becomes a game within a game. One that is infinitely more interesting than the game itself. If played poorly she goes into a meltdown and thinks that I don’t enjoy spending time with her.

The flipside is that it can go on forever. This woman really likes playing games after all. Things start getting a little out of hand, and after the 4th or 5th time I’ve let her hole my army up in Kamchatka I lay the beat down.

Now just beating her at the game a little would be pointless. She would either write it off as a fluke or want to resume play after a brief intermission of popcorn and some home decorating television show. The beating has to be severe enough where she is afraid of it happening again that she calls off playing all together. Occasionally this means just picking up another game, in which case a follow up beating that is equally as severe is in order.

I do however worry about my future. The girl is not old enough to play games yet, and she has actually put a temporary embargo on all fun in our house that does not involve her. However when she does become old enough it reduces my ability to beat both of my girls severe enough to cause a cease fire to just 33.3%. I might soon have to take applications for reinforcements. I’ll keep you posted.