Friday Zen

When it comes to cleaning the house I’m the guy. It’s something I’ve always done in the marriage. My wife isn’t much of a picker upper. Her superpowers lie elsewhere, like with dealing with school volunteering, budgeting, and dealing with the kids Dr. appointments. Me? I buy the groceries, cook the meals, pay the bills, […]

Things Found In A Midwestern Safe

A couple weekends ago my dad came over at his usual time of 9am for our Saturday coffee and conversation. As he came into the door our miniature schnauzer greeted him with the usual shrieks, barks, and bellows… excited for what grandpa had in the Ziploc baggie for him. As I was walking to the […]

Plants And Chairs And Trees And People Forming As One

I was off work the last week. No trips to the beach or cabin in the woods, not that kind of time off. I spent the first four days in the hot Midwest sun taking apart the play set that my dad, father-in-law, and I put together in May of 2005 for our kids. It […]

Sorry Mrs. Jackson(I Am For Real)

I feel like growing up everyone had that one friend that lived in the neighborhood whom you kept in a very particular relationship bubble. You had your school friends and sports friends and maybe some weird YMCA club friends that might have intermingled and bled over into each other. You have your best friends that […]

Paper Or Plastic

I had a dream the other day that I was back in the old Owens grocery story on Market St in my hometown. This was the store my family shopped at for all of our groceries growing up. From the time when I could fit underneath the cart where you typically put bags of softener […]

This Is Where We Used To Go

Growing up in a small town in the Midwest the options for shopping were limited to ordering from JC Penney’s and picking it up at the sad little storefront where your goods were shipped to. You’d walk into something that kind of looked like a Little Caesars, but without the smells and stoned teenagers greeting […]

New Year’s Day

I always remember New Year’s Day as a quiet day. It was the calm after the New Year’s Eve drinking and laughs. As a kid New Year’s Day was spent with the curtains closed in the living room while my mom watched TV on the couch lying down, while my dad stayed in the bedroom […]

Christmas Blues : Clapton, Beck, Page, Dad & Me

It was the Christmas of 1988. I was a budding guitarist who had just received his first electric guitar, a 1986 Fender Squier Stratocaster, for his 14th birthday a mere three weeks before. Prior to that, the last two years were spent toiling on a generic dreadnought acoustic with the kind of action that’s meant […]

The Long Goodbye

I started working for Medtronic on September 27th, 1999. I was jumping from one orthopedic company to another. In the town I grew up in, if you didn’t go to college you either worked at Dalton Foundry, R.R. Donnelley & Sons(major printing company for years), or you lucked out and got in with one of […]

Labor Of Love

The true meaning of Labor Day weekend has nothing to do with not laboring because you do that crap all week long. No, laboring doing something you love is perfectly fine. Why? Because I say so, that’s why. For me, I started a Labor Day weekend tradition many Labor Days ago. Maybe in 2014 or […]