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http://www.woodfieldtechnology.com/blog

It’s a slow work in progress.  Either way, I’m re-emerging after a ton of computer trouble, a massive anxiety attack that landed me in the hospital and general business and exhaustion.  Don’t give up on me you guys.  My RSS feeds areback, my blog is up and I’m still around.  I’m also on MSN all day as bigstevereed. (I have to admit, the whole overinflated ego thing is even beginning to bore me.)

So drop by and check me out.  I’m looking for decent templates, so if you know any, give me a heads up.

That is all.  Steve

“Cheezits! Cheezits! Cheezits! Cheezits!”

It’s right in front of you.  It’s in the Holy Bible.  It’s clear, simple and at the same time very complex.  We were put here for God’s good pleasure.

That answer seems simple minded, doesn’t it?  It may make some of you mad, too.  We certainly don’t like to be bossed around or treated like toys.  It’s insulting.  It’s an answer that bears more investigation to make sense.

Right off, beginning in Genesis, God created us.  That’s the beginning of time for us.  And we weren’t like we are now. We were created perfect.  That’s what God does.  He creates and he does it perfectly.  You see, because God is the source of all that is good, which means just what it says.  There is no evil in him, because evil is a separation from the will of God.  He can’t do that.  So when he created us, he made us fantastic.  Imagine it: Perfect bodies, incredible intellects and a direct connection to God himself.  THAT’S what we were, and that, folks is what his good pleasure was.  To create us, beautiful, perfect and gifted with a direct connection to him.  He gave us everything we neede and we were without want.  That’s why Eden was a garden and not a city.  Cities are our invention.

Man fell far and hard to get where he is now. We chose to try and do His job ourselves and fell under the rule of a destructive spirit.And like any good father, God lets us learn our lessons. We’re lowly, selfish, angry and petty.  We kill each other, we kill his planet, we kill ourselves.  We do all manner of ugliness, and yet he still wants us.  Why?  Lots of reasons, but the one I want to focus on is that he knows what we really are and he says we’re worth it.  Think about it.  That says a lot.  God could just wipe us out but he doesn’t.  He wants us.  He loves us.

God wanted us to be happy and also to worship him.  There is not one good reason not to.

The Bible is not just a book.  It’s alive.  Bonaparte said this:
“The Bible is more than a book; it is a living being with an action, a power which invades everything that opposes its extension.”
That’s because the act of turning to the Bible opens you up to the spirit of God.  It’s your way to learn God’s purpose, his attributes and hear his voice.  And it’s not just information like reading the newspaper.  Honestly opening and studying the Bible is a spiritual exercise and a life changing event.  Everything you need is in it.

I know.  It seems corny.  Ridiculous even.  God could do anything he wants to reach us, a book seems dumb.  Anyone could have faked it.  But they didn’t fake it and God is in there.  He gave it to us.  That’s profound in itself.  We can theorize about all the ways God could reach us and yet the fact remains that he DID, and in a form everyone can have.  That’s what he does.

Try it out once.  You don’t even have to tell anyone you’re doing it.  You might be embarassed.  Do it alone if you have to.  Pray and ask God to show himself to you.  He knows you doubt him. He made you.  Yes you, he made you individually and knows you.  Open up the Bible and read.  Keep at it, because reading the Bible is like planting seeds.  The seeds grow.  Don’t expect some special effects plasma cloud to come over you becaue it won’t.  But be patient and watch and keep asking.  God works in your life.  It takes time, but if you’re honestly seeking God, you’ve begun to find him.  Believe me.  Better yet, trust Him.

email me if you want.

Cost an arm and a leg, but I don’t mind limping so much now.  At least I’m cooler.

And yet there lingers the unfinished task of applying the new coat of stain to the deck.  We had to strip it because the finish was literally pealing off for some bizarre reason.  I refused to wear gloves when doing it and the nails on my left hand turned yellow and began forcibly peeling upward until I agressively applied lotion to them.  They’re still a little freaky, but it’s getting better.  The skin on my left index finger began to harden somewhar at the tip as well, but, as with the nails, that condition is improving.  Next time I’ll wear gloves.

During the bug net trials, I nearly had a disaster.  We were chatting up the neighbors, who we both get a sneaky may be swingers, and drinking, of all drinks, Skip and Go Nakeds.  Thiose have vodka, beer and lemonade concentrate in them.  Tasty little things, but the lemonade concentrate has way too much acid in it for me and I began getting one of my famous heartburn episodes.  I drank a marguerita on an empty stomach once and it reduced me to tears in the restaurant.  Those types of attacks feel as though someone’s putting lit cigarettes out on my stomach wall.  Then the acid rises, I breathe it and my asthma gets bad.  This began last night, but our neighbor rescued me by fetching me Tums.  I took ten chewables before getting relief.  Then I was fine.  And bug bite free.

Yeah, that’s about it.  Just a quick ramble.

I’ll leave you with a popen I just dug up.  It sorta cracks me up. Modblog Days, people.

Unbridled Vanity.
You are a toad.
A toad with no wits or grace,
only bumpy skin and a really big mouth.
But if the world turns into a swamp
you’ll thrive and I’ll die.
That would be depressing.
It’s a slim chance, but
to prevent that
I’ll crush you with my car.

Lastly, I got a new toy.  No more electrics for this kid, I just suck at them and they require electricity.  Here’s what someone that can play has to say about them.

Red out.

As you can see, I’ve been a busy guy, but I had to give it up.  Time travel and shape shifting are not what you might expect.  There’s waaaay too much thinking involved and I’m too thick to even balance a checkbook.  Things got messy fast.  I settled into an ordinary life, taking on the odd sniper mission if the pay is right and that’s enough for me.

Whoa! There’s the “phone” now.  Perhaps since you’ve all seen this, they’re calling about you. Dangit!  I told you there’s too much thinking involved.

Reed out.

It’s been a plague, honestly.  But then out of the blue, as wives so often do, Karen had a brilliant idea.  “Try going to bed earlier.”

Crazy?  Sure.  But possible.  You see, I get up at five a.m. (wake up at five a.m., I get out of bed around 5:15).  Sometimes I was getting up at 4:30.  There’s so much to do with a house, wife and kids that I would get to bed around ten p.m. or so every night and would barely haul myself out of the sack the next morning.

So I tried this kooky thing the last couple of days and by jingle it’s making a difference.  I can think again and get work done.  I’m only moderately cranky at night, but that’s getting better too.

I’m encouraged, but cautiously, at best.  The memories of snapping my head straight up, seeing an oncoming car or corn field are still too fresh.  But it’s a start.  Life’s too short to work work yourself to death.

Sometimes you just have to let the laundry go, or get the deck finished another time.  Sooner or later something has to give and I’d rather it not be me.  I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to have conversations with people and understand what they’re saying, or remember what I had for lunch.  We take the little things for granted.

I stayed up until ten last night, fretting over some stupid crap and today I’m paying.  So, yeah, I guess I am officially a boring old white guy with achy joints and a minivan full of kids.

I can think of worse things to be.

Earlier this year Karen even offered to work things out with him outside of court so that things would be easier on everyone involved.  Of course he refused.  What she put in for was a basic cost of living raise and a motion for him to pay half of school registrations and extracurricular activities, as well as a DECREASE in day care expenses.  You read right, a decrease.  His dad likes to COME to his baseball games and take pictures, but he doesn’t  want to pay for them. Mister funtime dad.  Hooray for him.

For those looking for the old me, GO HERE.

Keep in mind that aside from paying some money toward his son’s care, this man never calls him, has no idea about his school work, his friends, his level of maturity or any other matter of importance.  He sees Jake 4 days a month and that’s it. He actually wants to sit in the driveway and honk his horn on visitation days so Jake will just run out and he doesn’t have to get out of the car.

He hired a lawyer to contest the matter.  The lawyer cost him more than the child support raise.  He said he doesn’t care what it costs him. Apparently he only cares about money when he goes before a judge, then he cries about his other kids. A guy needs money to take his three kids, wife and MOTHER to Disney World or rent a condo in Florida for a week each year.  Yeah.  I drive a beater and we both wear ten for ten dollar tee shirts and years old jeans so our kids can have what they need, but this guy will pay a lawyer more money to fight paying his son than he’d actually pay his son.  Nice.

Oh yeah, did I tell you he told Jake that his mother is stealing his child support checks?  Correct.  He told Jake they are supposed to be sent to him directly.  This forced us to show Jake the court papers and bank statements so he knows exactly what is going on.  We never lie to him.

I’m straying from the point. Sorry.

One funny thing the judge said was :”You’re contesting the decrease in child care?”  Mister Wonderful wanted our childcare records for the twins.  He had some idea that we were rolling their costs into Jakes and milking him for the money, even though this year is- wait for it-waaaait- about forty dollars cheaper per week than last year.  Forty bucks.  The discount wasn’t enough.  So the judge said “Okay, if you’d like, you can divide your bill into thirds and pay that.”  Which worked out higher.  He opted to pay the current rate.  What Mister Wonderful had asked for was to pay nothing for daycare since Jake is twelve.  Twelve.  First off, a twelve year old has no business taking care of himself.  Second off, Jake is twelve going on eight.  He’s not ready by a long shot, but only someone that knows their son would understand that.  It’s about the money.

The entire thing went like that.  Just one illogical problem after another.  He’s very hostile in person.  Like, nutso hostile.  All of this filters down to Jake, which is not right.  It eats him up.  So I tried to extend the olive branch by telling him that I could only imagine how nasty it must feel to have your paycheck divided up right in front of you, but he’d never been tricked out of a dime, and that it was time that we all just moved on and got along like adults for the sake of his son.  As soon as I mentioned money he told me to stop talking.  Twice.  I told him he’d regret it one day and he said he already did.  Clever and insightful.

Then he and his wife attacked Karen.  This attack was cleverly disguised as attempting to make peace.  They did this by telling her she’s hard to get along with and that their whole family is scared of her. This piece of soothing information was based on Karen’s insistence that Jake is picked up at the door, not by being honked at.  Jake’s dad pulled into the driveway once, called on the phone and told Jake to come to the car.  Karen called him back and said “You come get your son.”  As we all know, people respond best when attacked and cornered.  There’s no common ground, either, because honking and other slothful hillbilly behavior is fine with them.

So here’s the upshot.  He once again has to pay for his son, he also has to pay reasonable costs for things like school and baseball.  He could have avoided the hassle easily, but he’s nuts.  He could give a rat’s ass about his kid’s welfare and paying his share to raise his flesh and blood makes him mad.

RANT

What a scumbag. He doesn’t even know his own kid.  He complained that Jake’s getting tutored during daycare.  The discounted, in-home professional nannying he’s receiving.  “We’re paying for that and he get’s A’s and B’s in school.”  I want to choke him.  Literally choke him.  A few years ago, the principle of his old school told us that Jake would never be a good student.  He more or less called him a retard.  We got him to doctors and specialists.  He hass ADD.  He’s one of the rare kids taking medicine for it that really needs it.  We spent countless ours on homework and schoolwork and encouraging and punishing and pulling our hair out getting him to where he is now and this jackass has no idea.

He’s never been screwed out of a dime.  Not one ever.  He has no idea how bad some ex-wives make life for men.  They torture them, they whore around and neglect their kids, they look for any reason to haul them into court and make their lives miserable.  He only has to support his son and he’s welcome to be involved in his life but he chooses not to be.  Part of me wants to just drag him out into the parking lot and mop it with him.  A good old fashioned humiliating ass whipping.  The kind where it hurts some, but it’s more humbling than anything.  The kind where you get a guy’s attention and show him a thing or two about his place in the universe.  But he’s seriously too stupid for that.

And I hate to admit it, but my place in the universe is not much differnent than his in the eyes of God.  It’s just that I think he’s an angry toolrod with a stupid stupidface.

Karen’s grandfather died.  He’d been ill for a long time and had made it 92 years, so it was’t unexpected, but sad nonetheless.

Well, at that time we’d just begun being able to attend to all the landscaping chores around the house that have fallen into hillbilly-like disrepair for the last year and a half. The landscaping was shabby, the lawn was brown and the finish on the deck had literally begun to peel off.  Just peel right off I’ve not seen that before.  Grandpa was to be buried about 2 hours from here, so the family would be coming in from around the country  and we’d have some of them staying with us. 

Needless to say we kicked into overdrive and started getting things done fast.  Not that anyone would really care, but you know how it is when company comes.  Things have to be their best.  That meant planting a couple of trees super fast.  The dirt here is so hard you have to dig with a pickaxe and haul the chunks away somewhere remote to get rid of them.  It took me a day and a half to dig two holes about four feet across by 2 feet deep.  Add to that all the cleaning and baby chasing and work stress and you get the picture.

Karen got a serious case of stress anxiety the day of the funeral to boot.  SERIOUS.  It happens to her from time to time.  This time she got stressed and sick at the same time.  On the way down to the funeral she had to lay on the floor to keep from puking.  She was achy, weak and shaking, not to mention a somewat lovely shade of greenish-pink.

It was at that time, my wife sick on the floor, my babies strapped into their car seats and my oldest son safely in the rear of the van that I fell sound asleep at the wheel and woke up screaming and heading for the cornfields.  Yeah.  That was bad.  Real bad.

To make a long story short, Karen got sicker, the kids got fussier and I was a living zombie the whole day.  I actually had to have my sister-in-law drive us home because I couldn’t stay awake.  That was hard to take.

Two days later Karen ended up in the Emergency room and was diagnosed with pneumonia.  We were both wrecked.  Wreckeded and stuff.

But that was then and thins is now.  She’s much better, I’m pretty rested and we both have taken things a little easier.  The message in this was very clear: You’re not Superman/Woman.  You can’t do everythhing.  And in a very real way I realized that I’m not going to live forever and life can fade in an instant.  We’d better cherish what we have, the lawn can wait.

Until next time.