Dan in Real Life

If you haven't seen this movie, I highly recommend it. Steve Carell is not only funny, but this film proves that he is actually a great actor.

Peace.

How to make it rain for weeks:

Easy. Start building a tree house.

Now you know.

Memorial Day Dedication

My hometown had a Memorial Day service this morning to dedicate the monument that was put on the courthouse grounds in honor of its veterans, especially those who gave their lives during their service. Though I didn't get any pictures, I did find some on the website of those who conceived this fitting memorial: jdcva.com.


The center monument has a list of those who died in service.




The names were listed according to what conflict the veteran served in. There was also one monument which was completely bare on the back, so that new names can be engraved in the future. These are screenshots, so you'll have to click on the picture to get a better look.



Here is the list of veterans who served, but did not have to see combat. My name is here, thanks to my sister and parents who sponsored a spot on it for me. Thanks so much. I felt very honored.

Thanks also to all the folks who had the vision for this, got the ball rolling, and saw it to completion. From what I heard at the dedication, it really was a community-wide effort. For a town so small to do something of this magnitude is truly great.

And most of all, thanks to those whose gave their lives. Freedom is not free, it is precious, and is most definitely worth fighting and even dying for. May such sacrifices never be in vain.

Working with layers

I've been walking around with the idea in my head for years. I've always wanted to write and illustrate a comic book, but lacked direction and know how. Recently I've been working a little with Photoshop to learn the program and see exactly what I might be able to do. Below is my first attempt at illustrating and coloring a 'panel'.

For this panel I've selected a scene from the one and only book that I wrote. While I'm pretty sure the book would translate well into a graphic novel, I'm not sure yet how to attack something of that scope. The novel is about 120,000 words, which translates into close to 400 written pages. Some stuff would have to be cut. (Ya think?) So while that idea germinates and blooms, I may try tackling some of my short stories first. Who knows.

Except for the initial drawing this is all digitally rendered. Photoshop has a feature called layers, in which you layer on color and effects while leaving the background and other layers intact, so that you can manipulate and even delete layers at will, without losing work you've done on previous layers. Anywho....here is a sort of evolution of my panel. :



The initial drawing. Pencil in the scene, then ink it.



Next crop away the dinosaur study to the right and clean up the image.




Some basic color for the background, some basic color and textures for the dinosaur and water.



Shading, add a cloud, some color variations, and color for the human.



Add a little splash to the water and some indication of movement streaming from the man.


There. I'm sure I'll do more on this one later, but for my first run it didn't turn out half bad.

Peace.

Wisdom of a 4-year-old

So me and Levi are having a discussion the other day. It goes thusly:

Daddy, how do you know everything?

(Laughing) Levi, daddy doesn't know everything.

Daddy, do you have God in your heart?

Yeah, Levi, I do.

Daddy, God knows everything.


Wow, the boy is deep I tell you. And though I'm still pretty sure I don't know everything, I do have intimate access to the One who does.

Peace.

4 wonderful years

Levi just turned four. We celebrated this past weekend.



Little Einsteins for the cake. Thanks Melissa; you did a great job.





We had the party at the local recreation park. Tire swings rock.






Pinata's = sugar raining down from heaven!





Opening the presents.





Happy birthday Wildman!

Happy mother's day!!!

Here she is; the woman of my dreams, the mother of my children, the answer to my prayers, the love of my life.

Happy Mother's Day darling.

Now excuse me while I go watch America's Next Top Model with her. (And if that aint love I don't know what is.)

Peace.

Spring... the beautiful, yet tragic season.

Oh yes, the colors of spring are creeping forth in all their splendid herpetological arrays. In other words: The critters they are a movin'.

I caught this beautiful red rat snake right down the road, not 100 yards from the house. This one is about as long as Caleb, as you can see.

The patterned belly kind of looks like what is called 'Indian corn', hence the local common name, corn snake.

Levi is holding a box turtle, also caught while attempting to cross the road.

Here is a barking tree frog that Caleb caught on the dock of my parent's pond. Alas, the frog has since died due to...well let's just say that boys are kinda hard on frogs around here. The snake has already been set loose and the turtle will be shortly. Which brings me to a tragic, but true, story.

Sometime last year we got one of those new fangled disposable toilet brush thingies. So we took the old brush and threw it away. The old container that held the brush was somewhat decorative, so we put it on the back porch, up on a porch rail.

Imagine my surprise about a month ago when Caleb discovered (or perhaps remembered) this inside the container:

Now, one thing you can be sure of when you find a turtle on a fence post (or inside a toilet brush container, in this case)...the critter didn't get there by himself. I don't know when it happened, but sometime last year someone in this family apparently captured this poor reptile and put him away for safe keeping. Then, as suggested by the evidence, they forgot about him. How it was that we never smelled him rotting away is beyond me. All I know for sure is that he died a terrible death. Heat stroke, dehydration, consumption by scavenger beetles, all that.

RIP little box turtle.

On the bright side, the shell, skull, and skeleton are all there, though not exactly intact. With some glue, skill, and time, however, I believe we can reconstruct this turtle's frame and have a really cool addition to our collection of oddities. Maybe a knick-knack for the tree house.

Peace.

The Autism post

For a while now I've been wanting to put up an extended post on autism. So, here goes. First let me start by posting a few pictures from the Autism Walk in Atlanta this past weekend.

The Walk:


My wife Staci (2nd from left) and three of her friends. All these ladies have someone in their family affected by autism. For those of us who couldn't make it, I'd like to say a big thank you to these ladies for participating. Thanks also to everyone who sponsored them. Staci was able to exceed her goal much quicker and easier than she believed she could. It was truly a God thing.



Here's a shot of participants. I think Staci said there were about ten thousand people there.



Celebrating crossing the finish line. Great job, ladies. Way to go.

*******

For the next sections of this post, I'm going to write about autism as it relates to our family. Specifically, how I came to accept my son's diagnosis.


Facing Autism:

Our oldest son was a late talker. Verbally he just wasn't hitting the milestones. Then there were some behavior issues.

Of course it took his mama to step up and get the boy some help. I was content to keep my head in the sand, hopeful that, by denying whatever this was, I would force it to just go away. Ridiculous, I know.

But there was a spiritual reason for this as well. I know that the words we speak have power. I did not want to speak anything negative over my son. I didn't want to give place to this 'thing' whatever it was, that was holding my son back. He'll grow out of it, I kept thinking. He's just moving at his own pace. I knew all about that--never been in much of a hurry myself. So I professed health and wholeness over him. Nothing wrong with that, of course. And I still do it, for both my boys. But whatever this problem was, it persisted, even in the face of my denial, rebukes, and prayers.

Yet even when it looked like my prayers were powerless, God was beginning to answer them.

Thank You Lord, that You gave me a persistent wife. Because of her, Caleb got speech therapy and other services. And then we decided to take him to Emory to see if the autism suspicions were true.

We were really not expecting to get an autism diagnosis. But that's what we came away with. I still wasn't 100% on board. But I was no longer insisting that nothing was wrong either. I just didn't like the label that I felt was being put on my son.


Labels:

Here's how I came to be okay with the whole label thing. Someone (I don't remember who) pointed out that a label is not something to define my child. It is a way to define the problem. It is also a way to get him the help he needs. If you want special services, therapy, and the like, then you have to have a reason.

I realized how much sense this made. After all, if my child had cancer, I would expect to talk to the doctors in those terms, using that word. It would not mean that my child was cancer, only that my child had cancer. It also would not mean that cancer had my child. My child might have autism (might, I still insisted), but it would not have him.

So, slowly, I turned a corner. If it would get Caleb the help he needed, then I would use whatever label was necessary.


Overcoming denial:

My wife began to read all kinds of books on autism. Probably she had already started reading, I can't exactly remember. What I do remember is my reluctance to read any of them. What was a book going to tell me about my child that I didn't already know? The author of the book didn't live with my kid, I did. This was some PhD that dealt with extreme cases and made money off of them by publishing his research in the guise of a parenting book.

I don't remember which book it was, but as my wife kept reading different ones, I finally cracked open the cover on one and started reading. I guess if my child was going to have an autism diagnosis, then I should probably start to learn a little about it.

First there was this term 'spectrum disorder'. I'd heard it but hadn't paid that much attention. Now I was finding out that it meant that autism can look very different depending on where one happened to be on the spectrum. Just like light is a spectrum and can be many different colors depending on the wavelength. Okay, I thought, so now Mr. PhD has an out and can slap the label on just about anything. Not quite, but it's what I thought at the time, and I suspect it's what a lot of people think.

But I kept reading. And then I started stumbling across things that sounded very familiar. I mean eerily familiar.

Now, it's not what you might think. I wasn't recognizing traits in my son. I was remembering my own childhood. 'I use to do that,' I'd realize. I was also seeing things that persist even now. 'You mean everyone doesn't think that way?' And the recurring, 'So that's what that was.'

The more I read, the more I recognized the signs that had dogged my footsteps for most of my life. The rules I made up for myself (can't walk around that tree and come back a different way - have to retrace my steps). Numbers being 'good' or 'bad' (5 is evil, and I swear it still looks like it is laughing at me). Places where I forbid myself to talk and words that I could not bring myself to say (not because they were swear words, but because something else made them 'bad'). The indescribable difficulty of making eye contact. Selective mutism. Emotional detachment. Fixating on things. Wondering when someone was going to give me the book on all the social rules that everyone else seemed to know, but that I couldn't figure out.

I accepted my son's autism at the moment that I recognized my own.


From there to here ... and beyond:

I'd like to say I've become as diligent a warrior as my wife. I haven't. She is still the driving force behind getting Caleb what he needs. I thank God for her again and again.

For those who might still insist that he is okay, there is nothing wrong with him, he doesn't have autism, then I would agree with only part of that. He is okay; he's glorious and wonderfully made as a matter of fact. But as for the autism part, if I said anything it would be this:

He looks and behaves so normal only because his mama has made sure that he's gotten therapy. A lot of hours and effort have been put into making sure he gets the tools he needs to succeed, thrive, and overcome.

And he will overcome. His name is Caleb. It's the first prophecy I spoke over his life. He will have a different heart. He'll take possession of the land and stand apart from the crowd. And these things that we might regard as weaknesses now, will strengthen him. God will use even Caleb's obstacles to draw him close and equip him to do his Father's work.

Amen.

Tree House (thus far)

I'm not a carpenter by a long shot, but this is turning out better than I expected.

Here's me screwing in the deck. The double joists on either side of the post may be overkill, but since I'm planning on suspending a tire swing from a bolt driven through their centers, it does have a semblance of function.

Here's the deck from the front. The tree house won't actually be supported by any trees; it just has the one passing through the deck. But the location is nestled amid several small oaks and is very nice and shady.

I've still got to build the fort section and put up railing, all that sort of stuff. But we are making good progress. One thing I've discovered, dumpster diving is not beneath me. I snagged an awesome door. More pictures once I'm finished.

Peace.