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So our baby girl is due next week. We are both very excited, but we recognize there is still a lot of work to do before our little girl enters the world. Here’s what we’ve accomplished in the past two weeks:

Candyce’s Baby Chores, as dictated by Candyce:

1. Cleaned out all dresser drawers and donated unused clothes
2. Washed, dried and sorted baby clothes
3. Sewed bows on the bassinet
4. Placed orders online for a million things, including a waterproof cloth bag.
5. Researched healthy green products
6. Wrote in the baby book
7. Read books
8. Took naps
9. Attended water aerobics
10. Made hospital supply list
11. Completed birth plan
12. Cleaned out old books and art supplies
13. Sewed big flowers onto headbands.
14. Made onezees with ruffle butts (I have no idea what this means.)

My Baby Chores:

1. Re-plastered kitchen and dining room walls. Taped off everything in my house and then sprayed on texture. Sanded and then painted. Then I spent 8 hours cleaning up the mess.
2. Installed crown moulding on kitchen cabinets.
3. Weedeated three yards, or is that weedate three yards?
4. Mowed three yards
5. Raked three yards
6. Hung pendant lights above kitchen island, completed wiring at the switch (made possible with the heroic help of Grampa Howard)
7. Built two box beams, installed on kitchen ceiling (Two down, two to go.)
8. Broke down boxes to be recycled
9. Assembled and stained two wood barstools
10. Cut butcherblock table top, installed sturdy metal legs
11. Repaired antique dresser / baby changing table

Let’s talk about antique furniture. I’ve watched enough of the Antiques Roadshow on PBS to know that many people have ruined their antiques by trying to “restore” them: “In original condition, your armoire is worth $15,000. But since you restored it, it’s now worth $2000.” We’ve all seen this, right? This show has been on television for about a decade now, and most people have adopted this hands off attitude toward antique furniture.

The problem is that most people can’t afford to have a professional recondition/restore/repair an antique into working condition. I’m one of these people. One option is to store the antique dresser away for twenty years with hopes of hiring a pro when I’m loaded with cash in the future. Unfortunately, I run the risk of having termites, moisture, or mold destroying it in some storage unit on the outskirts of town. Plus, we won’t have the pleasure of using the piece of furniture in our home. So this can’t be the best option.

So my other option is to carefully and discreetly repair the dresser in a way that would please the original carpenter. So here’s what I did:

1. Used wood glue and small brads to hold the thing together, making the drawer openings perpendicular again
2. Tacked small woodblocks inside the dresser to prevent drawers from going in too deep
3. Tapped the runners up 3/4 of an inch for two drawers so that the face would be flush with the front of the dresser
4. Sanded the sides of the drawers to allow them to fit comfortably in the dresser body
5. Thinned out the sides of the most reluctant and warped drawer with a hand planer
6. Rubbed a candle along the wood runners until the drawers were able to slide in and out with ease

Now it works like a dresser is supposed to work. What’s wrong with that?

I’m trying to get rid of as many things as possible because I’m unnerved about the number of “baby boxes” that are shipped to my house everyday. Candyce and I made a pact that we wouldn’t purchase anything unnecessary for our newborn, so I trust that these boxes contain only the essentials. But those essentials are adding up fast.

Since I cannot stand clutter, I’ve spent the last three days exploring my house with hopes of finding unnecessary possessions. If this new stuff has to stay, then this old stuff has gotta go!

I’ve already eliminated 99% of my “nostalgic stuff” from my home shortly after I got married. That means I trashed at least 150 pounds of stuff from The Real World, college, Boy Scouts, high school, and various art classes. These all were fished out of the boxes marked “keepsakes” that I dragged from house to house. I could not have been happier than the day I dragged my black trash barrel to the curb because I knew that once the trash truck flipped that barrel upside down, there was no turning back.

So honestly, there wasn’t much left to throw away. That is until I decided to see what was inside a footlocker my dad gave me two months ago from his years in the Navy. For the record, my dad brings stuff from his house in Georgia every time he comes out Arizona. My guess is that Mom wouldn’t let him throw the stuff away and muscled him into bringing it out to me. So as their house became more simple, mine became more cluttered.

Junk in the Trunk

I popped the latches open and then lifted the lid and got a waft of crypt-like air from Mom and Dad’s basement. I lifted away the layers of old T-shirts, yearbooks, photo album, CD cases, and letters from girls.

Over the next two hours, I held each item and tried to remember the moment in my life when that item meant a lot to me. Once the nostalgia evaporated away, I ceremoniously dropped each item into the metal trash can. That includes about 75 CDs.

I mean really, what do you do with old CDs? I converted most of my music to MP3s two years ago, and do you know what? I haven’t touched those MP3s since. It seems like too much of a hassle to go digging for them on my hard drive. All the music I could ever need is on Rhapsody.

I decided to sell those grunge/alternative CDs to a trendy music store in my neighborhood. He slid the stack back across the counter and flatly stated: “I can’t do anything with these.” I ended up donating them to a music store on 7th Avenue downtown because the store was cool (think High Fidelity) and I knew they needed a lot of help to keep their doors open. So here I am on my second round of music, and I didn’t even bother ripping them onto my hard drive. I just threw them away.

Welcome Freshman

The last two items in the footlocker were two yearbooks from a huge part of my life:

1. Young Harris College 1996-1997
2. Georgia Tech 1997-1998

Young Harris College had a fantastic program that allowed local high school students to attend classes like college kids. This was a big deal to me because I had too much ambition to sit around my senior year and pretend to be king. In a lot of ways, YHC was the high school that I always wanted.

First of all, I couldn’t believe that these things are 10 and 11 years old. A lot can happen in eleven years. A couple weeks ago I hosted a week at Camp Covecrest for teenagers who were toddlers at the time that yearbook was printed. That blew my mind.

I eagerly flipped through the pages of both yearbooks and saw the names and faces of classmates I’d forgotten about. This made me happy. So I went on Facebook to look up some of my favorite people and see what they are up to. I could not find anyone! What’s the deal here?

Everyone in those yearbooks are around age 30 now, and maybe they don’t waste their time with social networks. Who knows? I’m concerned that this is becoming a trend in my life. Nobody from The Real World New Orleans cast showed up for The Real World 20th Anniversary earlier this year. It was just me representing the seven of us. It seems like everyone I met between ages 18 and 21 have disappeared from the face of the earth. I care about these people and it would be nice to know how they are doing. (So if you are reading this and you were in one of those yearbooks, send me an email!)

So now my teens and twenties are reduced to a cardboard box just large enough to hold a pair of Dr. Martens.

Yesterday was a difficult day for me. I got word that my friends Charlie and Ali lost their infant daughter Cate because of complications after heart surgery. This was very hard news for me and Candyce to take. We both cried together in the kitchen.

Compassion is a mysterious gift that ties people together. Last week, Charlie wrote in his blog that when he woke up in the hospital room and looked out over the city and watched cars scurrying through the streets as people move on with their lives, unaware of the pain and uncertainty that consumed his life.

It seemed like I would be a bad friend to Charlie by writing about something as trivial as cars, music, or stuff about remodeling a house. Whenever I got the urge to write, I instead clicked over their blog to get updates. What started out as a sign of solidarity became something I never would’ve predicted. My heart became heavier each day, and I continued to check for updates on their blog I needed them to comfort me through all of this. Its seems ridiculous and backwards, I know.

This morning was the first update since Baby Cate passed way. You should read the whole thing yourself, but here are some thoughts that Charlie shared that meant a lot to me:

About priorities…

You know, we always have enjoyed our children, we make it a priority of our family, but with Cate’s passing, there is even a more renewed sense of the day to day. To literally slow down, to listen when they talk, to play paper dolls, and to shoot spider man webs all over the room. And so that is what we did, we enjoyed the beautiful gift that God has given to us, what we call our family.

About hope…

We have learned that hope is not based on a certain outcome. That hope is what gets us through everything. Just because the prayers of many were not answer in the particular way, that we thought they should be, doesn’t mean that WE, all of us, should give up HOPE.

About solidarity…

We love you all so much and thank you for journeying with us, and running this marathon. The race is over, and Cate was victorious. We all win that way. We do ask that you remain, Hope Filled, with us as we stand together, plus many, minus one.

I got word from my friend Darla Hickman that young Cate Cantrell died yesterday in the hospital. Thank you all for the prayers and support that you’ve offered to her family.

Today is my first Father’s Day. Although our baby girl isn’t born yet, I absolutely know I am a dad. It’s a complicated emotion to explain in something as crude as a blog, but those of you who are fathers know exactly what I am talking about. I love it.

I am writing this from lovely San Diego, California. In years past, this weekend has marked the beginning of two months of fun at the beach. But this year Candyce and I decided to stay in Phoenix to get our lives ready for the baby. It’s our first child, and we want to be sure to get this right.

I am infinitely grateful for my father’s help in remodeling my home. He drove across the country in September of last year with my brother to kick off the whole project. Then he came back again around Christmas and helped me make more progress. Then during his visit last week, Dad helped me get very close to finishing the project. There is still some minor touches to complete with lighting, the bead board ceiling, and some drywall repair, but the major work is complete. Dad’s the man. He’s such a good father.

Dad flew back to Georgia on Thursday the same time as Candyce and I came out here to San Diego. I am actually really excited to go back to Phoenix so I can admire the finished product. I actually live in a nice house now. I doubt a newborn baby will appreciate it in September, but at least there will be no dust or scary-as-hell power tool noises haunting her first months on earth. Instead, she’ll listen to Coldplay, Matt Maher, Postal Service, and maybe the PG version of Lil Wayne’s new album.

I am writing this while I watch the final day of the U.S. Open in Torry Pines. We went to Open yesterday. I imagine I’ll write more about it later this week.