championable.com

“Love is a mistake that God is glad he made.”

- Me. 1994.

I am certain how I feel about this.

Regardless:

Love to all. Even you.

Greetings from west palm beach. Possibly online soon. If not, see you on January 3.

Love to all. Even you, DSL provider who shall not be named.

You know those ultra high-speed electric hand dryers that make the skin on your hands move around when you hold them in the airstream?

Um. Well.

If, after thoroughly washing your hands and just before you were about to put your hands underneath the dryer, which you love to do anyway, because they are such fun toys… if suddenly and without warning your nose started running like a faucet, and you HAD to wipe your nose with your finger…

…wouldn’t you have to hold it under the dryer to see what happened? Wouldn’t you?

I would. Did. Whatever.

Love to all. Even you, the superintendent who got angry at us for tellling her that her ceiling was leaking.

Everything I write about my daughter, every time I grow through STAYING in a tough relationship and learn to be a better person, every time I experience the best of the things life has to offer, it almost always comes back to being married.

Sometimes, marriage is purely functional.

And look, it may not be the BEST reason to be married, but being married makes it HARDER TO WALK AWAY. Which means that instead of walking away, I actually breath for a second, and then realize, holy shit, I have part a part in things, and holy shit, I’m still in love, love, love.

Then my daughter gets to keep living with her Dad.  My boys get to have an example they can emulate (usually.  ahem.).   And my wife has a husband who acts like a partner, friend, and good old-fashioned horndog.

Marriage is a good thing.  I really believe that.  I think society, as a structure, need to support couples, because couples support healthy children, and healthy, happy children are everything.

So that’s why I support marriage.

You might be wondering:  why aren’t I talking about GAY marriage?

Because I’m not one of those people who says we should focus more on the important issues like global warming than gay marriage.

I think the hot topic of “Low-Sodium V8 vs High-Sodium V8″ is more “important” than Gay Marriage.

Unlike almost every issue on the planet, this is an inarguable no-brainer, and to engage the topic is to engage the void.

Marriage is marriage is marriage.  Love is love is love.

Support love.  Support love.  Support love.  

There’s another way to say it, you know:

Love to all. Even you.

I wrote myself an email:

“Rich, you got away from your Father. Quit worrying about perfection and get fucking psyched, yo.”

I’m paraphrasing, because I’m posting from my iPhone.

So I’m sitting here on the train remembering to revel. When I was running late for the train because the clocks were set wrong, and I was stuck behind the ONE other person on the road at 5am, I said “god, thank you forvthe opportunity not to tailgate this guy and ruin his morning.”

It’s a start.

I am tinged with my father’s inability not to equate minor conflict with overall evil, but unlike my father, it’s an attribute I was dusted with growing up.

This love I have? That shit’s built in.

Love to all. Even you, the accidental three-seat occupier from Iron Worker’s Local 40.

…Four sets of hideous green sheets
plus
…two sets of lights from Home Depot
plus
…3 kids
plus
…one digital camcorder
plus
…one amaeteur After Effects guy…

and you get a Happy Birthday DVD delivered tomorrow morning of the kids standing on a semi-psychedlic platform with clouds drifting by, singing happy birthday as pictures from their earlier years fly through the air, with them eventually falling asleep on the tip of the Corgi’s nose as they try to get through the “Are you 1? Are you 2? Are you 3?” thing that’s so popular with the kids these days.

The DVD will be in the LCD TV I got her when she wakes up tomorrow, wrapped in a bow, with a note that says “press play.”

Love to all. Even you, the guy who knew what he had, but lost to the disease. Come back brother. I need you.

At the 11th Step meeting I chaired today, we read the St. Francis prayer:

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

And that was the whole thing.  Right there.  It doesn’t matter if Maggie has a PART in the problem.  What matters is what I do.  How am I acting even in the the face of legitimitate irritation.  It doesn’t matter if there’s 10% - 40% CORRECTNESS in my being pissed off at Maggie.

What matters is how I act.

Can I spread peace today?

Love to all. Even you, snorfle-dorkus.

In the books people have been asking me to read for years, they say that when you confront your childhood abuse, when you truly face the issues and try to effect real change, you’ll worry that you might go crazy. “But you won’t,” they say.

Wrong.

Suicide. Drinking. Vortex shit. It’s all so available in ways I’ve not felt in 20 years.

I’m crying daily. I don’t do that. I’m catapulting from mood to mood, certainty to certainty, in ways reserved for people with a completely different diagnosis.

On the other hand, I did set up a fully functional green screen studio and film the kids. So that’s good.

Nothing else to say. I’m doing this in moments.

Love to all. Even you, cat-on-a-wet-shingle-roof.

Last night, my daughter was laughing as she went to sleep.  This morning, the last thing I heard when I left for work were those same incredible notes.  It was the extra-real stuff.  The kind of laughter that sometimes ends with her telling me, in sort of an offhanded way, that she loves me.

These moments are everything to me.

Today is the first day I feel like myself in a long time.

Love to all. Even you, the guy whose utter lack of commas made it appear that he was describing peeing in his own pants.

I just broke the middle toe of my right foot.

End of story.

Fucking OUCH.

Love to all. Even you, the TWO people who nearly ran me over as I was trying to help an old lady out of her car and off the road as she nearly passed out from the flu.