Hey kids, I know it's been a while

My life has taken so many turns. So many twists, so many aspects are just so different. Here's the big thing, I LOVE IT. I love the direction my life has taken. The house, the wife, the kid. Yes the kid. He's the best things i've ever done in my life. I love it.

I wish I could do more, but honestly I just love my son so much it's crazy. It makes your life so much not yours, but it's the most rewarding thing you'll ever do.

Other than that, my life is just rolling along. My mother is a point of contention, my sister is still one of the greatest friends I have on this planet and my wife is constantly proving to me how great she can be, not just as a wife, but also as a mother. It's really an impressive thing to watch.

Year in Review

2009 was not a great year. It just wasn't. It started out pretty wack. Losing someone that has been a huge part of my life for a long time. A person who was along for the ride of my life Since I was a little tiny kid with a hightop fade with no shape-up.

Theresa Sykes, my second mother, lost her battle with cancer. The amount of loss I felt was incredible and I didn't think at that time that there was anything that could shake me to my core and cause me to sit back and think about the way i viewed the world. Family I was incredibly wrong about this. I didn't know it at the time, but death would become a theme and was slowly moving closer to my front door.

I was sick as a dog at the time of her passing with walking (New-moania) and I had to drive to Rhode Island on 3 hours of sleep for Christmas (it was her family's turn for the holiday), this was one of the most treacherous trips we have ever taken up to RI. There was Ice everywhere and we saw no less then about 12 accidents, 4 actually happening the rest we saw on the shoulder or over in a ditch, after spending those days spending time with family we were back in the car back to MD, sleep for 4.5 hours collect some of the crew and then head to North Carolina for the funeral. I was sick congested and couldn't breathe (sorry Carl I know the snoring was tough that night) I was dying, and think that if i'd continued at that pace I would've ended up in the hospital. It was a horrible couple of weeks, but at the time I couldn't comprehend what my man was going through, so my health was secondary if not tertiary.

It made me think to what lengths we will go to for the ones that we consider truly special in our lives and realized that there are a special select group of people i'd wear myself down to the bone for, and I would do it all over again without thinking

January 20, 2010 my man Matt lost his Father. It was just a huge shock to see people in my age group just losing parents. Seeing that it happens so quickly and we never know when those numbers are going to be called was a huge shock. I just couldn't wrap my mind around what its' like to not be in this world, in this life without a parent. It's one of the things that I've taken for granted because i've had such strong influences from both my mother and my father as I've grown up. So I always just assumed that they'd always be there. In the back of your mind you know that at some point they will go, but you anticipate it being at like 90, old having lived an amazingly full life of no regrets and with tons of grand kids around. Little did I know this was not to be for my father.

After seeing this happen to my friends, I realized that i need to spend some more time with my pops. So my father and i hung out more, we talked about life more, and I got a much better appreciation of what my mother and father had been going through as husband and wife. Things that can't be explained but have to be lived and experienced for them to make any real sense to you. In the midst of all that, my wife and I made one of the hallmark purchases of couples lives, we bought our first home. We went through so much to get this house and we're so happy with the place that we got. We love it, and we love having accomplished the feat of buying. Without her pushing us I'm not sure we would've done it so quickly, but i'm happy that she was the driving force behind it. I must also thank members of her family for being behind us and helping out. We couldn't have done it with ya'll. So that was a huge thing that happened for us in this year and I was happy on February 11, 2009 when we got those keys. And even happier March 7, 2009 when I got 8 of our closest friends and we moved all the stuff to the house. It was a great feeling and I was happy, truly happy. I was surrounded by people who loved us, and helped us get all of our stuff in the house. I remember my pops working so hard to get stuff in and out of the truck and into the house. He was right along with us the whole way and i'll always remember that.

So after all of that our conversations started to take on a very different sort of feel. He was back to not just being a great, bestfriend for me, but also being a teacher and relating to me about the things I was experiencing. Things that he and my mother had gone through, but as a kid you just don't have the capacity to understand. I was now going through them. So my father and I were bonding on a level that to me I didn't know was possible. I loved it and cherish it to this day. I told him and made sure he knew how much i loved him, but I just wish i could've told him one more time.

The morning of July 20, 2009 at around 5:43 I found out that my father has passed away. There was a fracture in world. The ground that we stand on, and the way we see things broke and changed for me. Even today 6-7 months later I am a much different person then I was on July 19, 2009. I found that I am stronger and weaker than I ever imagined. I found that I could withstand much more emotional pain than I thought possible, but at the sametime noticed that being strong and not allowing yourself to deal with what comes along with losing a parent is that it manages to come out in other ways. Ways that i didn't think would ever happen to me. So in that way I felt as though I was weaker than I knew.

For those that know me in any way most of you have met my pops, because as i've said before he wasn't just my father he was one of my closest friends. I could tell him anything, I could share, we would laugh. I just remember being on the phone and laughing until we both had tears in our eyes crying about something foolish. As I sit here and recall this memory I now have tears in my eyes.

My relationship with my pops wasn't perfect but man we were so close, he was my man, he was my ace, if i needed someone to roll I could call on him and he'd be there, he might 15 mins late but he was there. I will always love my pops for that, and I won't ever begrudge him for of the decisions he made. He was a fantastic father and I love him, and miss him immensely.

It's amazing that honestly that is the one thing that colored my year of 2009. I had some amazing experiences to add to the list of them, and I'm thankful for them. I turned 30, and 12 days later I didn't have a father. It hurts me to even think about this year.

I feel like I should in someways be thankful for the perspective that is given when ones life is changed in an instant. I don't know if I'm there yet. So basically what I'm saying is love the ones you love and tell them often. It could all change so quickly .

Its taken me a long time almost two months to write this, but I feel that I should stop now, because it's been sort of like the year of 2009, it was long, sort of drawn out and something that shouldn't be held onto.

Bring on the best 2010 has to offer.

I see ya'll

Before anyone asks why i chose to write this, just know it was not written out of anger. It was not written because of a particular incident, it was however written after I sat down with myself and decided that there is no way in the world everyone that I know could possibly be THAT supportive.


I am a black man, my wife is a white woman. We both have similar educations and have similar values. We both have careers. We recently bought a house. Throughout the years there have been a lot of folks who have shown us love. I mean true and unconditional love. There have been tons of folks who treat us well and smile in front of us, and invite us into their homes, break bread with us, and even share alcoholic beverages with us. Some of these people I believe they are genuine in their actions and feelings.


Then there's others out there, that I can tell, there's not a specific thing that they do. In their actions and over time you see that these folks aren't as happy for us as they claim to be. Instead of looking at us as another happy newly married couple they look at us as an abberation and are sort of waiting for the other foot to drop. They come hang, out, but in their minds I can see it, they don't see our relationship as real.

Some folks look at both of us seperately and are shocked at the fact that together we work. As a team we work. That we genuinely love and cherish each other. I've had people acted sincerly shocked that my wife was white. "No way, you're way to black for that, you're not even corny!!" that sort of shit blows me away.

I'm not gonna get into some huge sociologic thing, but just know I see ya'll.

Its not all love and I know. So don't come to me and be fake happy for me when in reality you have a problem with my union and prolly want my wife to yourself.

I see ya'll.

Growness

Well on February 11th, my wife and I started another chapter in our lives. We signed papers and closed on our first house.


Ok, so off the top let me just say that embarking on the road to purchase a house is by far one of the most arguous tasks that any couple can go through. There are aspects of the actual house shopping that in and of themselves can tear a couple apart.


For a small example, my wife and I have very different tastes when it comes to anything that she actually cares about. So really this makes choosing certain things a much larger process than one would imagine. Now keep in mind in the end we both want the samething (the house to look nice and be to our liking) sometimes we just have differing ideas of how that's going to happen. I'm ok with that, and I think most everyone who's ever been married and bought a house has been through it as well.


The little things about picking a house become huge when you heap on the enormity of "forever" now this is not a house that we're planning to spend the rest of our lives in, but damn if the idea of forever doesn't weigh quite heavily on you. Now throw in someone else's ideas of what they would like to do with the house and now you're looking at trying to find a middle ground about something that is the largest investment that most any of us will make.


The process is crazy long, we saw so many houses. Each one, you go through you think to yourself "could I live here". You go through your commute to work, and you think where would i shop, where is the nearest carry-out (Ok maybe that's just me) but you get my point. You picture your life as you know it going forward from this place.


You're now planning your life around this place and it's not yours yet. It's a cruel thing to do to yourself, but it's totally natural and i think everyone does it once they see a property that they like.


Now in our particular situation we chose a house, had an offer accepted (but not signed) then had the offer accepted and signed to someone else. At the time we were heartbroken and angry. Little did we know that it happened for a reason and that reason was to get us a better house, for less money.


It's amazing how things work out. We saw some beaters, some places with roaches on the ceilings, walls, floors, everywhere you looked, mold in ever crevice of the house, and floor plans to make your head spin.


We had one guy allow us to walk through his house, while he was cooking a meal for his family, then tell us that the house is off the market.

We went through all of that to find the gem.

The gem that we weren't even looking for. We were across the street lookin at another house and as we're walking out, a guy from across the streets comes over and tells us he's putting his house on the market too, and we should look at it. We're game so we do. It was the by far the best house that we looked at. It was everything we both wanted, and everything that we needed. The right size, the right location, and the right price.

It was an amazing process that I'm glad that my wife and I went through together. We now have a place that we're going to start planning for the future in.

Psst come here for a second

I just wanted to let you know that I don't drink nearly as much Maker's as i used to, or nearly as much as people tend to think I drink.

Just a PSA for ya'll.

Carry on my good grinders.

Life

- In our lives most of us will invariably have to do what we all think will never happen. That's either burying a child or a parent. This is something that i've witness more than i'd like recently. In watching someone lose a parent there is something inherently scary about it. The idea of losing one of the people that gave you life. Regardless of how angry they've made you, or how many times they've disagreed with decisions you've made, they're still your parents. They're still the life givers, and the ones (for the most part) who taught us how to walk, talk, tie shoes, throw balls.

They're the ones that gave us our work ethics, the ones that showed us what sacrifice was. The ones that showed us what discipline was, how important it was to be responsible and accountable. It's amazing how much we owe to them. Yet through our travels we lose sight of these things sometimes, because we don't always get along with them, in the ways that we do with other folks that we've chosen to be in our lives.

The hole that I imagine is associated with losing a parent is something I recognize at somepoint I will have to stare in the face. The problem is that usually when we go through this with our close friends we inevitably put ourselves in their place. It's unfair to do so, but it's natural and I think most have done it. It opens your mind up to think about all the things that your parents have done for you, all the things they've gone through for you. All the things they've given you, the birthday parties, the checks for college, and care packages, the trust to allow you to drive their car. To think and ponder what it'd be like to live in this world without the ones who gave you passage. It is a cold cold lonely feeling, one of which i've only experienced visa-vi so I can't even imagine the pain and regret i'll feel when it really turns to me.

Love your folks while you can.

I have so many things in my head that I can't even properly get them out. I just know that i'm hurting, but feel bad in saying so because I know my bro is hurting 100x more than me. We must laugh, and press flesh with those that we love and not take our time with them for granted. I need to take my own advice sometimes.

I need more sleep

Thanksgiving

I've realized a few things my people.

#1. Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, we spend WAY too muh time with family and such. Folks need a break or three.

#2. Families coming together are never as easy as one would like to believe. Things that one person never even sees, may in some way be hurting your partner. You've got to keep an eye out for that fams. I haven't been great at it, so that's something I have to work on.

#3. Everyone needs to find the things out of life that they want. Be honest with yourself and be honest with those in your life about your dreams, goals and intentions.

#4. I need a little time to myself and time outta the house.

#5. All I want is Maker's that's all I want.

#6. Fried Turkey is the way to go, if you havent' done it yet then you're missing.