Blogging?

You know what I kinda miss? Blogging. I mean it got to be a pain in the ass there because I found myself so restricted in what I could say or show or do. And I suppose I still do, its why I rarely post anymore. I over examine everything that I want to say and if I think that I can't perfectly defend it or that it'll receive too much backlash, I just don't worry about it.

But there are a lot of great things happening around here that I want everyone to know about. Things I want to share because they're MY news. Rhonda and I are having a baby... a baby. We even know it's gender and I want to scream it from the rooftops, but MOM doesn't want to know so SO ONE can know. Frankly, bullshit. We're having a beautiful little girl. And I cannot flipping WAIT to see her. I've been to ultrasounds in the past.. cool but no real connection. Felt it kick a bunch and watched my wife balloon. Nothin. But damn it finding out it's a little girl... NOW THAT'S MY BABY! The passing of the Midwifery Act unfortunately means our home birth has turned to a hospital birth.

The pregnancy has been hard. Rhonda is very sick and really hurt and beyond taking on as much of the housecare as I can handle, there's little I can do about it. Things get tense sometimes, we've gone through a lot of change over the past year, and I think we're still learning how to BE with each other. I know it's worth it and I know it'll be all right, but you know, just hard sometimes.

Also made a poorly timed decision to start a record label. I know, I know, why in the hell would you want to follow up getting married, buying a house, getting pregnant, oh yeah and taking on a kickass stepchild with starting your own COMPANY? In the MUSIC INDUSTRY no less?!?! Because I'm a sucker for punishment. And frankly, its an attainable dream too. I've spent the past 6 years working shitty jobs and having a generally bad time of things trying to figure out what I should make my lifes work. I knew a family was in there, but there was something else there, something entrepreneurial, creative, media related and I always wanted to involve music and the internet. One of the benefits of the kind of work I do in Facilites Management (fancy eh? that's skilled janitor to the rest of y'all) is you have a lot of head time. You can just put on some music and just THINK about stuff. Try it sometime. Through this process I arrived at record label about two years ago while working at the pool. And I kept thinking, formulating, thinking, formulating and just researching this and that and getting it together. Around Christmas time this year it started getting big again, and I started putting things on paper. That was the catalyst. Rhonda, Scott and I incorporated last week, we've got our first major project in preliminary stages and we've begun building a shockingly large and widespread network from places as far as Bristol England (hi Mark), Las Angeles USA, Cleveland OH, Montreal PQ and all over Saskatchewan, not bad! Check it all out so far at maentrecords.ca or swing your cell phone to maentrecords.mobi.

Bought a car... a Honda Fit. It rules. Speedy little blue demon with like 546 Miles to the gallon. Hatchback is cool and this little compact will fit all of Lingers guitars and three amps. And still have room for driver and one passenger.

The dogs are kickin ass as per usual. Bootsy is more neurotic than ever, but she's kind and loving. Shadow like to think he's a prick, but he's a pansy.

Tai is doing pretty damn good in school for a girl that missed half of a semester of French emersion. She has trouble following the rules at school and still needs to be walked through the steps of getting up and going to school by her mom and stepdad everyday, but at least she's cheery about it. We built a family of snowmen together, complete with baby and dreadlocked mom. I've amassed a collection of over 45 paintings from the Tai-Lin collection. They'll buy me a yacht someday... or decorate my office forever.

With baby coming and Rhonda soon off work, we're coming up on some tight times financially. We may have to change how we do things and that transition is becoming hard already, but I know we can make it through this spell, some of our dreams... our vacations and our record labels... might have to go on hold for a couple years. Too bad, so sad.... no one said life would be easy.

Work sucks, but that's ok, it pays me well, and I'm starting to get used to having the extra cash around. I'm actually starting to see surpluses from cheque to cheque, which is reassuring with the coming of the baby. I have a feeling that if I could spend some time concentrating on getting our finances lined up (and a financial advisor that was more interested in our well being than leading us on and fucking us over so he can buy a new car) that we might be able to get through this nicely. I'm starting to see why we had so little sometimes when I was a kid. I cannot imagine affording 4 kids in todays economy, let alone 4... or the 7 kids of my grandparents. But they made it through, I just have to follow their lead. Right?

And finally, the house. While initial response to owning a house is "Oh shit, we fucked up," after the knee jerk reaction, I'm starting to see its benefits and really enjoy living here. Our mortgage payment is a little less than we were paying in the house before and since rent rates have spiked in Regina of late, its not unreasonable to think that rate would have gone up, so we're in a pretty secure payment place right now. That's reassuring. And I'm starting to get used to the fact that I OWN the house so I can DO anything to it I want. Like if I wanted to paint racing striped on it, I could, and the only thing that would happen is my wife would institutionalize me, which would happen if I lived anywhere. I am nervous about something going wrong. I mean we are insured so like all that stuff is cool, but if we blow a water heater or the furnace... well I have savings now, but everyone seems to have bookmarked it... including me, and that could lead to a bad situation (I don't think my parents are in the lending business to me anymore). I am hoping to plan a big work-bee/cleaning-bee and try to enlist some help for a weekend, have a big garage sale, then just lie low for a while... no major renos, no changes, juat ride out the next couple years. Batten down the hatches and ride out the storm. It is gonna be a pain in the arse, and I think I'm gonna piss off some friends, a few family, but in 2010 while Canada is trying to explain why our emissions are like 700% of what we said they would be, I should be ready to look at the rest of the picture.

Here's hoping. Maybe I should start blogging again......