The Ghost Kitty

About a month ago I was watching some Animal Planet show about cats with the kids.

One of the cat species profiled on the show looked a lot like our old cat Ginger.

I had never had a cat before her and, quite honestly, don't know if I'll ever have another cat. She was an awesome kitty right up to the end. So when we saw the cat that looked like her on TV we started to talk about all the Gingerisms she had like sleeping in the bathroom sink in the summer to her tendency to paw me in the nose in the morning to wake me up.

It was good times fondly remembering the family cat and shortly after, we all went to bed and drifted off to sleep.

And then it happened: In the middle of the night I swear I felt like she was walking on my bed. You know the sensation if you've ever had a cat or dog. I woke up the next day and thought about how I must have conjured up her spirit; about how talking about her brought a piece of her back into my life. I joked about how I thought her ghost was in my room and the kids and I just shrugged it off.

My son Cole asked if she got lost on the way to the Tropical World.

But since that night, I have had several - maybe a half a dozen - encounters in the middle of the night where I felt like she was walking on my bed. It's a very calming feeling despite the actually creepiness of thinking there's a kitty ghost up in the joint.

This one's for you Ginger...

Friday Foto

During my recent excursion with my boys to the old neighborhood, I took them to The Cave.

We had gone there before with their cousins and my brother - the place is part of the local lore of the area (at least it was for me and my brother growing up) so when we got to Maryland it is a must-see attraction.

On a cold morning after Thanksgiving, we made are way down the path to where the cave lives, walking briskly to stave of the shivers.

They wanted to climb to the top, like they have done before, so we did.

When we got to the top the place was littered with empty beer cans and bottles. And of course, there was years worth of party phrases carved into the bark of the surrounding trees. I snapped a photo of this gem.

My 10-year-old said, "Does that mean because we are on top of the hill?"

He took a long pause glancing at the ground and then said, "Or does it mean high on alcohol?"

"A little of both," I said.

I guess it is time to have that talk with him.

When did you have that talk with your kids?

A Family Tradition - The Wishbone

This year me and the kids got to spend Thanksgiving in Maryland with my parents. It's always a good time bringing the kids back to the neighborhood I grew up in because it triggers all kinds of stories to tell them about how I grew up.

Sometimes these stories involve the basement, sometimes these stories involve the woods down the street, but stories are told none the less. In recent years it has occurred to me that I come from a family of storytellers - we often sat around the dinner table as kids and, after a meal was finished, listened to my father tell stories about growing up in Philly.

The story, or the telling of one, has become a tradition. One that I am starting to see passed down to my sons whom I've witnessed telling tales to their friends.

Another family tradition is the breaking of the wishbone at Thanksgiving. And this year my boys got to take part in it. They both grabbed the wishbone with their pinkies, made a wish, pulled and... snap!

And wouldn't you know it? The fucking wishbone split in half evenly. I don't recall ever seeing this happen. What does this mean? Do they both get to cash in on their wishes? Or does a tie cancel out your wish?

DST

Sounds like some Jersey Shore shit doesn't it?

But seriously I'm talking about Daylight Savings Time.

The older and older I get, the more it fucks with me.

For real.

I get the DST hangover.

Everything seems super off-kilter, the day slogs by, I get a wicked case of man PMS or something, and just have this general feeling of being off.

Of course that feeling seems to be par for the course these days.

Crazy still is as crazy does.

The earth, sun, moon and stars have a huge impact and affect on me.

What's the remedy? I need a remedy.

Friday Foto

The past two months have been all about soccer. My oldest has played for years but this year his little brother finally decided to get into the act. He had played once, briefly, a few springs back but lost interest and let a few seasons slip by. Now he has finally caught the bug... and he's got a few goals under his belt to prove it.

Perspective

My youngest son has always had an eye for composition.

When he was 4 and 5, oftentimes I'd catch him wandering around the house with the digital camera taking pictures like this.

It's awesome, and refreshing, to see your child's artistic bent through their creative lens.

So last weekend, when he suggested his brother ollie over him at the skatepark while he filmed it, I said why not.

Spencer was afraid he wasn't going to clear him. So we put a skateboard in as Cole's dummy and shot a segment so Spencer could see just how much room he had.

Anyway, this is just plain fucking cool.

Maniac Magee

My 10-year-old son is always pestering me to read some of his favorite books. It is one of the downsides to instilling a love for reading to your children.

I got them into it at an early age. As the stay-at-home-parent, I became an avid reader. It's not only good to read books to your children about green eggs and ham or toads and frogs (or about frogs that sing), but it is also good for your children to see you read.

And my kids have seen me reading a lot.

One of the things we have carved out over the years as a father-and-sons tradition is going to the local library book sales. Early on they'd get coffee table-sized sports books on how to pitch a baseball or kick a soccer ball. But by the time they both had entered into elementary school, young adult fiction became all the rage. Of course everybody remembers the Harry Potter craze. But I never had an interest in reading any of those books. I mean there are plenty of books on my must-read list that will get tackled before I ever crack a Potter book. But I admired my son's desire to have me read one of them.

This was followed up by the Percy Jackson series, which seemed slightly more interesting yet still not compelling enough for me to want to pick up.

Then one time at a book sale he got Jerry Spinelli's Maniac Magee.

"This is one of my favorite books," he said.

"You've already read it?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "It's awesome."

For weeks after he got the book he would nudge me to read it. Then one day he said, "Just read the first page."

I did.

"Is it good?" he asked.

"My interest is piqued," I said.

And before you knew it, I was knee deep in the book. It is, in my humble opinion, the Catcher in the Rye for middler schoolers. Both share similar themes. Social Misfits. Homelessness. Loneliness. Children living in an adult worlds etc. etc.

I had asked my nephew, now toiling away in his mid-twenties as a frustrated grad student, if he ever read the book.

He texted me back some questions.

"Does he run on the rails of train tracks?"

"Yes."

"Does he sleep in a zoo?"

"Yes"

"Hits a frogball?"

"Yes."

He then confided to me that he is shocked he remembers more about a book he read in middle school some 15 years ago than he does from any textbook from the last five years.

Maniac Magee - a timeless book for all ages that I highly recommend.

But please avoid the movie version at all costs...

Friday Foto

While I was out in Denver last week for the Great American Beer Festival, I broke off from the usual festival fare and wondered the streets with two cohorts.

We stumbled upon this bar called El Chapultepec.

It looked like our kind of bar: simple, unassuming and far away from the teaming masses of beer festival attendees. Nothing but booths and stools and sign that says "Cash Only. No Credit Cards." The walls were littered with pictures of legendary jazz artists. The bartender ignored us because he was at the other end of the bar doing tequila shots with two girls. Like I said, my kind of bar.

We agreed that we should return on our way back from wherever we were headed at the moment.

When we came back, The Pec (as it is affectionately known) had transformed into an entirely different place. It was now packed with twentysomethings singing along to a band doing a cover of "The Joker" by Steve Miller.

I felt like I was in an episode of Twin Peaks.

Looking Back on 9/11

Today marks a day that will live in infamy for our country.

I'm not going to bother getting into conspiracy theories, what went wrong with how it was handled after the fact or any other debatable nonsense that will get the blogpshere in an uproar.

I merely want to share my experience.

Before I took up blogging I kept a journal. I used that journal and excerpts from my blog to pursue a book deal on the story of my life as a stay-at-home dad. My bubble was burst when several publishers refused to even publish anything that mentioned the events of September 11th. Other literary agents told me men didn't want to read about parenting so I'd better tailor it to my feminine readership. But I wanted to be a dadvocate, I wanted to write a book for men and for men who might considered being the primary caregiver or for those fathers who wanted some insight into the life of a man raising kids.

Of course, I am stubborn and decided not to take their advice.

So I remain unpublished.

In June of 2001 I unceremoniously lost my job. I spent the summer navigating the nether world that is the Employment Security Commission in this state while coming to terms with what would be my new job: Stay-at-home dad.

What follows in an outtake from my journals at the time...

September 12, 2001: Yesterday two planes flew into the World Trade Center in NYC. By the end of the day both buildings had collapsed to the ground.

Total fucking madness.

I was driving with my son in the car when I heard the first report over the radio and immediately you could sense from the reporter that all hell was breaking loose in New York. So I drove home and turned on the television. I don’t think I left the room for hours. I just sat there and stared at the TV dismayed at what I was seeing. At some point my sister called. She is an attorney who lives in Cleveland. She called me because she knew I’d be home. We were talking on the phone when the first building went down. There was not much to talk about after that so we got off the phone.

After awhile it was just too much for me to take so I went in the other room where I my son was and got down on the floor with him to finished watching the block programming for kids on PBS.

What kind of world am I’m bringing this child into? It was all just too much: a jobless father with a baby in a world going to hell in a hand basket.

Grinding Through Life

I hope this weekend will be a lot like last weekend.

Friday Foto

ron, originally uploaded by greg.barbera.

This is a photo taken with my phone and part of my Random Phone Pics set. As you can probably deduct, this was taken at my friend Ron Liberti's place.

Years ago, on the corner of Franklin and Columbia Streets in the heart of Chapel Hill was a copy shop called COPYTRON. It was the place most professors from UNC had their course packs made. It was also the place that hired a lot of local musicians because of the flexible hours and the easy access to copy machines.

I logged some pat-time hours there on-and-off at the beginning of semesters to help with the course pack work load. It was like being in a fishbowl: there were big, windows that looked out on both streets. People watching during downtime was of high regard amongst the full-timers.

Then it happened.

Gentrification came to town, the mom-and-pop stores went away and professors started using web-based applications for their syllabuses. It's currently a Qdoba.

And Ron got the sign.

The Clip Show Of Archivalism

The clip show is a popular way for television shows to stretch out a season.

The blogger archive recap is a way to add content to your site by trolling your old posts.

I've got five years worth:

BLOG ARCHIVE

► 2010 (27)
► 2009 (10)
► 2008 (166)
► 2007 (130)
► 2006 (68)
► 2005 (125)

Archivalism is in my blood. Just like it is with my friend Mike Daily.

Around this time in 2007, I was writing about my job as a pool boy at the Beverly Hills Hilton.

On 2008, I was talking about losing my lake virginity (I grew up vacationing at the beach), Cloris Leachman and the summer Olympics.

In 2009, I had a total of ten posts in six months for the whole year.

Now, it's 2010, and punk rock still never gets old for me...

Friday Foto

gettingThegreenLight, originally uploaded by greg.barbera.

If you asked anybody who knows me what my favorite color is they would probably say blue or black.

But green does have a special place in my heart.

Green is the color I see most in nature from grass and trees to those fuzzy halos around street lamps at dusk.

Green also means go.

A green light means to move forward.

What does green mean to you?

It's Perseid Meteor Shower Time Folks

I love a good meteor shower.

I do.

Two years ago, I pined for a telescope.

I'm still pinin' for one...

Friday Foto

Some say it is a sign of drugs to see a pair of shoes hanging over power lines. Others say it is a sign of gang activity.

Some say it is a sign that a murder occurred there.

In some countries, it is a sport.

In other countries, it is a male past time.

Shoes hanging on a telephone could mean anything.

I'd like to debunk the first three myths by saying this photo was taken across from the Durham Police Station on Foster Street by the skatepark.

But then again, it is Durham, and anything is possible.

The Yawn Heard 'Round The World

That Smell

I don't know about you, but certain smells conjure up specific memories for me.

And if anything conjures up the past and all those things that made me who I am today - bmx, skateboarding, punk rock - it is the smell of a new pair of Vans.

This week, I passed on the smell of new Vans to my oldest son.

At some point in the near future, I'll introduce him to the pungent smell of Rector pads.

Friday Foto

crashed_car, originally uploaded by greg.barbera.

I took this picture with my phone a few months ago. My boys and I had gone back to one of our favorite spots - Bolin Creek - from when they were in preschool.

We used to hang out at the park there and walk the bike path up to a spot where you could climb down to the creek's bank. We'd often skip rocks here (and keep and eye out for snakes).

The last time we went I saw this faux Hot Wheels car wedge between some rocks, clearly washed up and jammed in there from heavy rains. I wonder what the story is behind this little lost car?

Pantalones!

I don't know why or how it came to be, but the word pantalones has become a term of exclamation with my kids.

If somebody rides by on a Harley or passes the car in a monster truck, they yell out, "Pantalones!"

I'm still unsure of whether it is a term of endearment or a something you say to jone on somebody.

Either way, it's something that deserves to be exclaimed during momentous moments.

Yes, I just said "momentous moments."

Pantalones!

That Guy

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a new camera.

I was finding myself in a pinch at work more and more for the need for a simple photo that didn't require paying a professional photographer. I needed a cheap, utilitarian point-and-shoot that I could carry around and put to use when duty called.

And besides, I think I can take a decent photo.

I was surprised to find just what a digital camera can do these days, especially one as affordable as this handy little Sony.

Face Detection? A Smile recognition function? An "easy" mode?

WTF? This thing does everything but wipe my ass... and it comes with a 96-page manual (as a pdf file of course).

I took it out to lunch one day to experiment with the settings and modes and basically just try to familiarize myself with the thing. I snapped a picture of my lunch. My co-worker looked at me as I readied the camera by my plate and said, "You're not going to be that guy."

"What guy?" I said.

"The guy who takes a picture of everything he eats," said my co-worker.

I laughed.

"Oh, that guy," I said.

That guy.

Haha.