Peyton Manning is a Chump...and other random thoughts....

• Let's start with my title complaint...Peyton Manning just signed with the Denver Broncos turning down among other teams my 49ers...Fine but Peyton be honest about why you chose Denver...Because you don't want to hurt Eli and Archie's feelings and potentially keep Eli from reaching a Super Bowl, so you stayed out of his conference. San Francisco has a better defense, more offensive weapons and would have made you a king if you took them back to their glory days of winning Super Bowls...
• That being said I am glad Alex Smith decided to stay away from Miami and come back to the Niners...
• Finally got around to reading The Hunger Games, decent book. Not life changing but good. Pretty excited to go see the movie. 
• Been a pretty rough Lenten journey this year for me. I haven't been very good at trying to better myself and pray more. Course it got of to a rough start what with grampa's funeral right before.
• Tommy lucked out this year his spring break from school has coincided with a nice warm spell here in Minnesota...
• Saw The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo last night, as usual the book was better, :-). But it was a decent movie. They changed a few too many details from book to screen for my liking...
• Things on the job front are looking good, I have been temping out at a cold storage place pretty steady and I guess they are looking to bring me on...so that's a good thing.
• Things are going pretty good on the family front too, Matty is doing more new things every day. I tend to get frustrated trying to get him to use words but I have to keep reminding myself he is only 19 and a half months old. 
• His little cousin is on the verge of her first steps, she is at the point where she will occasionally let go of whatever she is holding onto to do something and as long as no one notices she can stand but if you notice she falls down...
• Looks like Mitt Romney is going to be the GOP nominee for president. Sad I was hoping Rick Santorum could rise up and take it away from him. Romney is just Obama lite in my opinion. Santorum is a good man and a solid conservative.

A Brave New World

Sorry I ripped the title of this post off of a Disney song, but it seemed appropriate. Sorry also for the lack of updates of late. Been dealing with my grampa's funeral and just haven't had the time to write. My Lenten discipline really should be to force myself to sit down and write every night.

Anyway on to the reason for tonight's post. My sweet little happy Matty is entering his terrible twos a solid 5 months too soon. He used to run around all happy and would say yes to everything. Now he loves to say no. Every question you ask him he answers with a no. What's up with that.

I think it was the hair cut. He got his first hair cut a couple weeks ago and he started turning at that point. But this weekend he really picked up the whole no thing. He is such a little brat.

At least big brother is his usual happy self. Tommy is doing so good. We finally got organized and got him into outpatient therapy just to augment the stuff they can do at school, since they never get enough time with him. We finally got a PCA for him so I definitely feel a little better about the whole work situation if I find a permanent job.

Been nice to have a little more work, last week I was out at a place twice loading a rail car full of frozen turkey. Good, hard, work, I wouldn't mind a job like that for awhile maybe I could hustle my chubby ass into a little better shape.  

Thoughts of Home...

Been sad all day, my Papaw (my mom's dad), is in hospice care and close to the end. He's 83, a nice long life. The last 14 and a half years lived without his one great love.

Memaw and he raised six kids, saw 11 grandchildren grow up and I have lost count at the number of great-grand-kids he has seen.

The thing I will always associate with my grandparents is stability, we moved around seemingly at the whim of my dad's work in the grocery stores, but Memaw and Papaw's house was always home. It was always the same. I think you could show me the daytime TV schedule for any year of my youth and I could tell you what shows Papaw watched and which ones he wouldn't have been caught dead watching.

I can close my eyes and call to mind so many memories of him sitting in his recliner working his crossword puzzle while watching The Price is Right or Scrabble or the Today show. I think a lot of the way I am about needing to know things came from his crossword puzzles. I remember he would sometimes get up and leave the paper folded by his chair I would sit down in his chair and look at the puzzle. I can't count all the times I would read a clue and have no idea, but he had it filled in.

He's also the reason I want to get on Jeopardy! He never did but he should have. I used to marvel at the knowledge he had at his command, and the ability to remember it and shout the answer at the TV. Well, okay, there was no shouting in his house while Jeopardy! was on, hell loud breathing could get you tossed out.

As I got older, we never kept any kind of score or had any official contest or anything, but I started noticing I was holding my own against him. One day I noticed I usually did better than he did, I never told him that, but it sure made me feel good.

I have him to thank for shaping a lot of my faith too. Once when I was a young pup we were at Mass in Carlsbad and I was not yet old enough to share in Communion. I remember hollering something about not wanting the stupid cracker anyway. I've never made that mistake again.

He always liked the wrong teams though. The Yankees and The Cowboys. I had to give him a pass on both though I mean he was sort of born into the Yankee thing I guess. And the Cowboys were his team from the first day of their existence.

But in the middle 90's when that Cowboy-Niner rivalry was boiling it was hard for me to accept his liking the Cowboys. In 1994 the Niner-Cowboy game coincided with deer hunting. I remember seriously telling my dad I might not go out that Sunday and instead watch the game.

If I would have had a little more faith in my team I might have. I was so worried I would be watching the game with Papaw and see the Niners lose. I just couldn't do it. So my mom and dad and I listened to it as we drove the boonies, whooping and hollering as San Francisco won the game, 21-14.

He always likes to remind me that I once told him he wasn't my Papaw anymore. He always did the grocery shopping and one morning I got to go with him as he collected the week's groceries. I decided I deserved and/or needed some piece of candy. He wasn't going to let me have it and I hollered at him in the store that he wasn't my Papaw anymore.

He always was and always will be my Papaw.

May the angels welcome him to Paradise and may Memaw be there with them.