Rickety

Well, I'm not getting any younger, that is for sure. If crawling around the living room with six month old wasn't enough to make this old man feel that way, decisions about life insurance, 401k plans, muscle pains, physicals, the disgusting feeling get when eating childhood favorites like hot dogs, bologna or Cool Ranch Doritos and maybe most of all, the general inability to function the following morning when I stay up past 10 o'clock certainly do.

I can't complain though...I take that back. I can complain and want to complain, but that just makes me feel even older.

Are you my friend?

There a lot of times I feel unsure of who my friends are. I wish it was easier to tell who actually enjoys my company rather than just being polite. I don't like the idea of being the annoying guy who hangs around unwanted. Maybe it is a trust issue or a self-esteem issue or probably a little of both. I can't help but doubt my own value in a friendship. Trusting new people to hold onto a piece of my heart is a scary thing. Believing in my worth is even harder.

What choices do I have though? There are no glowing lights that indicate whether a person likes you or if that someone just doesn't want to hurt anyone's feelings.

Maybe I just expect too much. I'm sure that is part of it. Perhaps my idea of friendship is unrealistic in a world broken.

I do have great friends. Friends I trust and who make me feel welcome. My wife is first and foremost on that very short list. She is without a doubt, my best friend. While I still think she is crazy for being in love with me, I do not doubt that she is. I can't say I've always felt that way. I wish I could, but even after marriage, I still wondered about the sincerity of her love.

Now though, I can fully see the love that she has for me. I missed it before, not because it wasn't there, but because I wouldn't let myself believe that anyone could truly love me. As I have learned to accept myself as I am...as God made me, my eyes have been opened to her love and it is an amazing blessing.

Nothing Much

So this has really been a pretty calm last few days. Nothing much has really happened.

I mean there was the awesome 4th of July weekend with brats and baseball. It was nice to get a little more sun and toss a baseball around.

Of course getting to the weekend was a dream after the week of work. Even though it was a short week, with the storms it made for some pretty long days.

Did I mention that my daughter now has two teeth? Yeah, she is growing so fast and still trying to figure out that whole crawling thing. Currently she holds herself up on all fours and rocks back and fourth. Every once in awhile she will actually go backwards. This annoys her to no end, but she grunts and growls and keeps right on trying.

Oh, and I sold my old laptop so I had to get a replacement and I ended up choosing a sweet little MacBook. This is the first post I'm typing on it as I listen to Rick Hopkins and Olivia plays the empty the basket game. It took me a few hours to figure out the best way to transfer all the data over, but it worked out great. I didn't realize we had so many pictures. They are mostly of Olivia and she has only been around for six months!

Which reminds me, I made a neat slideshow and an even sweeter DVD with it this weekend. I was so excited when I burned the DVD, ran downstairs to test it on the actual DVD player and it really worked. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was.

Aside from the several walks and working on the yard and making brat patties (Yes, patties! Jess brought them home because she thought they would be a good alternative because I'm not allowed to have red meat and they were surprisingly good. Jess and I like our brats more well done than most and these pretty much gave the same effect.) and generally just playing with Livy we've had a pretty uneventful weekend.

Yup, nothing much to say since the last time I posted. Maybe next week will be more interesting.