Well I had to laugh.  I certainly hope mind a few of these nostalgic pictures, but this one was pretty pertinent to my life as of late.  It was when Ben was just one and a half months old, and about 9 months before my stroke.  And what I can clearly say was I was a lot smarter then, or at least living in similar times.

You see, Ben is a talker, and when I say talker I mean an incessant one unless he is distracted (i.e. Spongebob, Minecraft, etc.) I generally work from home and have an office there too, and whereas he would interrupt me all the time to see him in some sort of costume, (regardless of what I was doing yes, even while on important phone calls),  now he does so by talking incessantly (see above).

Now this absolutely baffles me as well as my family, especially my kids.  I would tell them to stop something or give them “the eye,” and they would stop.  Ben however seems immune to such things.  I can be on the phone talking and have given him prior (advanced and detailed, definitely advanced and detailed) warning, and yet I can be on a call and he will walk right in to impart some pertinent and urgent information (meaning probably pertinent and urgent to no one on God’s good earth but him) about something (generally off topic) about anything but what I need to talk about.  I am on the phone!

And yes, he has been through the entire gamut of of warnings and punishments short of anything “currently” illegal like pubic stockades.  Yet despite such things he still will come to you talking and when you remind him of what he is doing he looks at you with a baffled look as if he is thinking, “Surely dad you have come to you senses. Now let me tell you about this.”

But this picture tonight reminded me that I need not give up looking for a solution.  At about 45 days the solution was obviously formula, but it not only kept him from interrupting, but put him to sleep too.  Yet I am sure he will figure all this out before I do.  But it is just nice to remember a time when it was pretty easy.

Goodnight my friends and God Bless!


Tommy+

I have been exceptionally busy all day and was looking for a particular picture when I found this.  It is a Saturday food drive we held in Greenfield, Indiana as a way for us to introduce ourselves to the community.  It is not a new picture as we were just forming what became St. Paul’s in Greenfield, plus Father Chuck (second from the left) is now working from the “home office” (heaven) and Father Templeton (far right) is now working in what I think may be “purgatory” or as we say in the theological world “Ohio.” (The two extremely good looking ones are me on the far left and Fr. PT in between Chuck and Sean)

But the picture really made me laugh and miss some pretty fun times.  We got permission from the Greenfield Wal-Mart to advertise and hold a small donation site and we just sat out there meeting and talking to people while drinking coffee.  AND, the best part was that the Hancock County Food Pantry was able to receive a nice donation for work in the community.

In time, Father Chuck became the permanent priest for St. Paul’s and they went on their own with him (that is not a bad thing but what you want a Church plant to do)  It was his final assignment here on this earth.  When Chuck became terminal, he still worked, but it became harder and harder.  Father Tony, then Deacon Tony, asked to go out to help him and we sent him there.  Tony helped Chuck through those final days and after became a priest and took that parish for a time.  It still exists, but Father Tony is now the Vicar of one of our first Churches, St. Patrick’s in Noblesville.

I spent a couple of hours with Father PT today, as I am now an assistant on HIS staff and he is my assistant in the Order.  Father Sean serves as an assistant in a large parish in Ohio, and writes and does a variety of things that young smart priest do.  I still see him and talk t
o him on occasion too and he is doing well.  But I think we all miss those times.

It surprises me, as I was talking about this today on a couple of occasions, how much fun being a priest is when you just are being a priest.  Sure there is a lot of institutional stuff and details that need to be done, but that is not the core of that call.  And PT is the famous one to us in all this as when we get too overwhelmed with the stuff he will say, “This isn’t fun anymore, we need to plant another church.”

He’s right, and that’s just what I intend to do.

Goodnight my friends and God Bless!

Tommy+

I was thinking tonight about obsessions as I tend to see them in everyone.  Yes, most people seem to be obsessed by something.  But when I speak of obsessions, I am not talking about them in the ways that a psychiatrist would, especially as I am not a psychiatrist.  I am talking instead about things we are both drawn to and think about A LOT.

Some people are obsessed with sports, others fashion, others cars, others working out or running, and others like my son Ben, stupid video games with worse graphics than if they were produced in 1980.  Ben cannot seem to get enough of these, even though he is limited to the amount he plays, but part of his obsession is that he wants to share with us (or anyone around) every single solitary detail about playing.  And it excites him more that a Jehovah’s Witness in the doorbell section of Lowes (I will pay for that joke dearly when I see my sister Sarah again, as she will not find it nearly as funny as I do, but it cracks me up!)  So let me digress here into a side note joke she and I both used to enjoy (she was a Jehovah’s Witness)  But what do you get when you cross a Jehovah’s Witness with an Anglican? The answer is, someone who will ring your doorbell and not say anything!!  Yep she’d laugh at that!  But let’s move on.

I however have a lot to do, as does my wife.  And hearing about the intricacies of Minecraft or whatever he is playing is not a big value added thing.  Spending time with him is, but he is not interested in that.  He just wants to talk about the game…..ALL THE TIME.  But since my stroke, I developed a kind of OCD, so I am always cleaning stuff and very busy at it……bwhahaha.  (Now tell me that isn’t funnier than my wife…no, I don’t have THAT KIND) But I do have a stroke induced OCD and since I work from home I require ALOT of concentration.  And the point is, how many worlds one walks in within Minecraft is not really connected to any of that work.  In a way I wish it were because I could just buy some tokens and make my life a lot easier, but until that develops in life I will just have to tough it out.

But for now there is peace as he is in bed……and my bed at that. (I will be moving him as 6 year olds are boneless and unwakeable after they are out)  Amanda worked these past two days despite teetering on the edge of a migraine.  It is awful as she will be miserable all week. Normally she takes a bunch of meds and sleeps at least a day and just gets back a little slow.  This “obsession” to work though it makes her pay and it is painful to watch.  SO I have been taking the Minecraft hits and for her he just dishes out the hugs and snuggling.

I clearly need some better obsessions.  Mine are not paying off like his.

Goodnight my friends and God Bless!

Tommy+

Before writing tonight I should start with this disclaimer…….*no, I was not coerced at gunpoint, knifepoint, drugged, threatened, nor harmed in any way to write this.  And no animals were either.

But yes, this post comes to you generated by some guilt…..at least on my part, as last night my wife said to me, “Why don’t you write anything nice about me?”  I told her I always do, yet in her perception she apparently felt like many might think she is mean or kind of wife-ish (my term).  And this comes from the person who not only married me, but who insists she is far funnier than I am.  Yet when I tried to explain the concept of “sarcasm” it got about as much traction as that Geo Tracker we saw sliding off the road just an hour earlier.

But here’s the honest truth…..I love my wife.  There’s not a lot that is very funny or even interesting about that I would suppose, although in this day and age I do not see very many men admit it. (Actually, if I did hear any men admit THAT, these posts would be only as often as I could get on the computer at the State Prison, so I hope you understood that I meant a lot of men don’t publicly admit they love THEIR OWN wives)  But Amanda is really pretty awesome. She is pretty, funny, confident, smart (other than the whole marrying me thing), a great mom, and overall fairly together for a person who chose to go to, and graduated from Penn State.

In other words, as I OFTEN TELL HER, “Listen honey, no one looks at you and me together and thinks that I am the moron.”  I have got it good and I know it.  And if there is something wrong with her, as there certainly could be, I will be first in line to pray against any cure.  I really do like her the way she is and I am thankful for her.

Please understand, as she is “sarcasm-resistant” that there is absolutely no sarcasm whatsoever contained in this post.  It is all just plain old love and appreciation.  After all, she is the Kardashian to my Shapiro, or better yet for you younger folks, she is the OMG NO to my Justin Bieber.   I just mean it when I say I am blessed to be her husband.

And concrete reasons why are all around me, but tonight I will close with just one……Ben.  Tonight as I wrote this he was heading in to lay down with Amanda as she has a migraine and is now medicated and in bed (in came on quickly).  But Ben came in to tell me, quite seriously in fact, that he was going to go take care of her as she was sick……but first he needed to tell me something.  I asked, “what?”  And he said, “Dad, I know why you had your stroke.” So turning to him I said, “Why did I have my stroke?”  And he said, “Because you aren’t getting enough fiber.”

I am thankful I love her and she loves me, because you see it is not about who the funniest is at all, it all just basically comes down to DNA……after all, I know what side that little brain of his comes from and how it thinks.  And quite frankly I would be scared to live with that little mind on my own.

I love you Amanda, and thanks for marrying me, for staying with me, and for allowing me to believe that somehow, someway, that weirdness I can blame on you.  You really are a saint!

Goodnight my friends and God Bless!

Tommy+ 

Well since we are heading into the sub-zero temperatures again, and because I have been given the Stephanie Tirman mark of disapproval for posting pictures on my blog that I thought were quite wonderful but she deemed as embarrassing, I have decided to redeem myself.  Yes tonight I am posting a picture from many years ago with Stephanie, Scott, and me at Lake Michigan enjoying a blazing hot summer day, and one I fondly remember tonight.

Yes, as you may have guessed, this picture was taken in that era when I was the actual “body-double” for David Hasselhoff in “Baywatch.”  And although we (the kids and I) had a great time at the beach at Warren Dunes State Park, we could only do to by staying in the States as I was very big in Germany at the time.  Of course those days are now gone.

I suppose I might receive some sort of text from my daughter protesting her in a bathing suit, and a “one-piece” at that, but who could even look at her with such fine specimens such as her brother and drawing all the attention away?  And if we reposed this today, all we would see is that both kids are quite a bit taller and I would now be surrounded by all those Greenpeace activists waiting to tag me and keep me in the water.  But other than THAT, not much has changed.  I still wear that same crucifix, I still have the same color hair (the same amount too, though I wear it shorter), and I am just as big in Germany as I ever was, and even bigger now in the States, but I am always watching what I eat.

But regardless, here is one of me that  maybe even Steph can laugh at.  I didn’t hear about yesterday’s picture with Lance Corporal Scott Tirman USMC with a kitten (now a vicious evil monster cat) quite few years ago, but I can only assume it was not enough.  So I will try this.  It’s certainly not all I have, but without being able to get ahold of my lawyer, it is all I will do.

Goodnight my friends and God Bless.

Tommy+

Yes, one of these two now protects our country as a US Marine and the other is all about herself, but I recently learned something about one of them that has both excited and irritated me all at once.  And what I have discovered concerns the very touchy and hot button issue that many people deal with, “cat treats.”

You see, since Puddy (still pronounced like pudding….see Bugs Bunny for why) has been a kitten (see picture) we have always bought her cat treats.  Sure, we created an addiction as once they get them they are “hooked,” and constantly looking for a “fix.”  And Puddy has two specific times where she seeks her fix and both are quite predictable.  The first is in the morning just at that precise moment that you wake up just a little exhausted and look and see that you are able to go back to sleep for just a little more.  It is a great feeling at that moment, that is unless you are living with a cat in active addiction. Addicts can be obnoxious and she is, so you get up in the midst of that moment knowing that it is indeed far better than what you create in her by waiting.  The second is far less stressful as it is just her little pick me up (not literally as she is looking for some “smack*” (*-cat smack) and will be quite put off if you do not comply.

But over the years I figure we have spent roughly 60 million US dollars keeping this cat hooked.  So you can imagine my fear in the midst of the sub-zero cold snap here to discover I was out of those treats.  At first I did not know what to do, as for 11 years she has never detoxed.  I figured there might be anger and then possibly bloodshed as Dr. David Banner’s line came to mind, “you won’t like me when I am angry.”

So with no other options I took the empty bottle of cat treats and filled it up with her cat food, which of course we have in abundance as cat food is also known as “dog treats” and the reason she is fed up high.  And I then gave her this placebo with all the confidence of a bartender giving a vodka drinker water and telling him it is Grey Goose.  It would never work.

But to my surprise it did, and it has, and apparently it will continue to!  Ben calls things like this “solutions.” I call things like this “miracles.”  But regardless, my mind is racing with possible ideas.

You see, we will save a lot of money not buying cat treats, but Ben has a problem too.  I just need to now figure out how to trick him about Pop Tarts.  After all, it’s not about the treat, it just really all about the love.

Goodnight my friends and God Bless!

Tommy+

Well I have only seen “Fiddler on the Roof” one time, and that’s only because my brother Mike was the lead in it for Cathedral High School’s play.  I had only heard about it before, and as a kid my dad was always singing songs from it as he had the “album.”  (kids, if your parents are old enough to remember albums you can ask them)

But in all honesty it was awesome.  Mike as Tevye, as well as everyone in the play was outstanding, and that made it the best.  But one rea
son it really stuck out was because of the dynamic of the family. The family was faithful.  The father was always talking to God and worries about his children.  And they were embedded in their “Tradition.” (capitalized on purpose)  And more than that, they were proud of it too.  Wherever they may find themselves does not matter.  Tradition is important.

Now this may seem like a much larger deal to you than it is to me, as I was upset after I took the picture I am using tonight as Ben refused to get on the dog.  And in doing so, or rather not doing so, he broke what in my mind (and from what you can see) was a tradition.  No, not a capital T tradition by any means, although we a big Butler Bulldog people, but enough to where I considered taking him out to have his DNA checked to see if he might have been switched for our real son at the hospital.  But he, as they say, is (often, way too often) his own man, so he made it clear he would just stand by the statue of Blue instead…..thus the disparity in the two pictures.

And all of this reminded me to include the ever popular third picture which is of Steph and Ben at Brookfield Zoo (my favorite) in Chicago this summer.  Yes another statue for my children to sit on, and Ben was once again “his own man,” but this time I had him.  You see, times have changed, and where my dad might make some “direct suggestion” to me to get on that, let’s just use the word “lion” here, I would understand clearly that my life could be in danger.  (To paraphrase Bill Cosby, he used to tell his children that he brought them INTO the world and he could take them right back OUT too)  Kids of my generation understood that kind of parental advice.

BUT apparently, that type of “advice” is no longer socially acceptable, unless of course you are a sibling.  When Steph and Scott are now together they tell me stories and all I can say is “NO NO NO….I do not want to know.”  You see I remember “sibling justice” and whereas parents are often afraid of violating social norms, your brother or sister doesn’t really care.  I fortunately could not hear, but I am pretty certain it was not “Please oh please my dearest brother and come sit with me on this stone lion.”  I just know he got up (reluctantly) smiled, and moved on.

Ben also did other BU family traditions like walking around Hinkle Fieldhouse, climbing to the top and sitting by himself, and talking me into expensive food that he wouldn’t eat.  But hanging with my kids is always a lot of fun.  I just hope to get all three of them there together someday, because I love reliving our Traditions.

Goodnight my friends and God Bless.


Tommy+

I was looking for a picture that I was hoping to post with another I already have, but the such for it is proving to be much larger a challenge than I had anticipated.  I did however run across a few others, and this one I had to post.  And although Stephanie generally receives a texted apology shortly after I post anything about her, this one I believe she will have no objections to whatsoever.  It is actually one of my favorite pictures.

The picture was taken at the end of her sophomore year in high school, a few years after her “math-nerd era” and at the end of the second year of her “athletic era” of which she is still in.  This is just weeks before she was awarded the first of three consecutive MVP awards for lacrosse, and the “gang sign” she is making (although it looks like a peace sign) actually indicates that she went underground with all the nerd stuff and is part of the dreaded “Pythagorean Fear-ems” which are very secretive and are just as influential in the world as the Illuminati are to people who think we still exist, I mean that they do exist…pardon.

But looking at it made me laugh.  Steph now is in her last year at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri, and they finished last year at number 15 in the country in NCAA Division II.  So this is to say that her “athletic era”……… continues and she is majoring in CHEMISTRY which shows that she is every bit of a “uber-nerd” as my wife.  And although I am not sure if she is still part of that secret group, she does roll her eyes when I tell a hilariously funny joke or story, and I believe that may indeed be a new kind of sign, as I am clearly very funny.

But now I can post this and go back to find that other picture.  This one however, made my day.  Steph far exceeds what I ever imagined a daughter could be, and is also far more than I deserve.  And I am a very blessed dad…..even if she does not acknowledge how very hilarious I am.  But then again she is just like my wife and nerds are just that way.

Goodnight my friends and God Bless!

Tommy+

Math is a big thing in my family.  Lots of us are good at it, a few make of living of it, and had they even known that during high school algebra I truly wondered why in the world we learn this stuff (as I thought it was useless) I probably would have been disowned.  But math, even simple math, is a part of our everyday lives.

Take probability theory for instance, the branch of mathematics concerned with probability, or in English, the figuring out of the likelihood something will happen.   This infiltrates my life daily.  For instance…..the probability that Ben will be some weird character the next time I talk to him, high; the probability that I will read about the Chicago Bears playing in the Superbowl in a matter of days, low; the probability that I will do something wrong today, high (I am both male and a husband); the probability that I would do something wrong if I were female and a wife, not enough data or brain damage on my part to make such assumptions; and the probability that it will snow and be cold in Indiana in January, high….after all it is WINTER.

But as most of you know, I, unlike much of my family, did not travel down the sciences path.  I was instead in the humanities field (Religion) which means of course I have a high probability of working for you, but I digress.  What I can say though, as just a general observation, is that in SOME cases one does not need to rely on math, nor all the “mathy things” like Doppler radar and elaborate algorithms to know what we know from just good old, get ready, “common sense.”

When I was a kid there was what we used to call a “weatherman” on TV, WNDU (W Notre Dame University) in fact,  named Dick Addis.  We would turn on the TV and he would tell us what was going to happen outside, and he actually was what they used to call “right” all the time.  And this was before all this technology, (although not math as it is eternal – ask my family) and so anyone who would watch him, oh I don’t know, let’s say in January, might not be surprised to hear him say it was going to be cold and it will snow.  People down here in the deep south of mid-Indiana seem quite put off at what we used to call “WINTER,” but to us followers of Dick Addis, I need to confess we are not phased.

The snowman in tonight’s picture graced our yard for a few days in late December as it snowed then.  The highlight of seeing it built was Ben throwing snowballs at Steph and missing her wildly, despite the fact he was close enough to touch her and she was not dodging.  (He may very well have a career with the Cubs or Indians)  But it was gone in just a few days.

The snowman’s demise however tragic, indicates math.  He was built, the temperature went up a bit, he melted, and he was gone.  But here is the big lesson from humanities for all you mathematicians…….we can build anther, in fact many more.  A melted snowman does not indicate SUMMER!  Trust in Dick Addis, it is WINTER, it is cold, and there is a high probability of what we call “snow.”

Goodnight my friends and God Bless!

Tommy+

Our cat Puddy (pronounced similar to the word pudding) is 11 years old.  I have written about her before, as she is considered one of the meanest most dangerous cats in the world.  On the outside she looks sweet.  She is a small gray and white cat, and has never been outside other than by accident.  As you may remember, she was declawed in ALL four paws (you cannot declaw her evil and dark soul) and compensates for that over the years by biting, with teeth that I am sure she makes time to sharpen multiple times a day.

What is a complete oddity however is that she loves Ben.  He is young, way too busy for a cat’s preferred environment of lying around contemplating killing something, and yet for the two of them they make it work.  She sleeps with him, hangs with him, and all in ways that reflect far more than just tolerance as no one on God’s good earth has ever been able to tell a cat what to do.

But Puddy does have, or at least had, a problem…….addiction.  For as long as I remember she has been addicted to cat treats, and not in what some might deem “recreational use” but full blown addiction. The cat word “meow” means a variety of things, as they are linguistically not all that diverse, but when she doesn’t get her treats and she meows perhaps 1000 times in a row while following you wherever you go, I am pretty sure there is a problem.  And the first part of recovery is admitting that there is a problem (which she hasn’t yet…..to her it is still OUR problem and she works hard to make it so).

So imagine my worry a few weeks back when I opened the container of treats that Ben handed me and it was empty.  Her dealer is generally Walmart, but it was late and a long way to go to get her a fix, and really I understand I should not enable this kind of behavior.  So out of desperation, I went in and filled the treat container with her regular cat food and prayed that it would work.  Oddly enough it did, it has since then, and it does.  It was never about the addiction.  For 11 years apparently it has all been about the love.

But for 11 years I have come to realize the utter stupidity of my actions.  Treats cost A LOT more than that food I have always had in abundance, and had I figured this out years ago, perhaps Amanda would not have to be thinking about getting that third job.

But that is the world of addiction.  Sometimes we just don’t get it.  But when we do figure it out, things get better.  Puddy is just as happy, I am a lot happier, and it saves us all from having to send her to a daily meeting of CTA.

Goodnight my friends and God Bless!

Tommy+