Here Comes Fall

There is just something about Fall time. Maybe its the chilly nights or the cool days. Maybe its just the relief from the heat. During the July months it seemed Fall would never get here. Just a distant dream. Now we stand on the precipice of our first Fall cold front. The long wait is about to be over for all of us lovers of Fall. 
   I love most everything that comes with this time of year. Lots of great memories growing up.  It would be the time of year we would start preparing for the winter. That involved chopping logs and kindling for the fireplace. We would make sure all the outdoor water faucets were insulated for the winter months. There would be raking the yard for leaves to compost in the garden for the next spring. The heavy blankets were brought out for the beds because we didn't have central heat or air. We just had a few gas heaters spread throughout the house.
    There were football Sundays for the 5 guys in my house growing up. We would sit and spend an afternoon watching our Cowboys. Sometimes we would be at our high school football field with a group  of friends making like we were the all pro players, at least that's how I saw it. I loved hanging out with my older brothers.
     The fall brought Thanksgiving celebrations growing up that are hard to replicate. There was love and you could feel it. Our extended family was together and in a word, it was greatness. The food, and there was a lot of it was spread out over lunch and dinner. There was laughter and joy. Lots of great memories.
    As I have gotten older I have made lots of great Fall memories. Working in a pumpkin patch, lots of high school football games and trips to the state fair. In a little over a month we will prepare for another Thankgiving. We will all get together to give thanks for blessings from the past year and there was a lot to be thankful for.  Right now for instance I'm am so thankful summer is behind us. Enjoy the changing of the leaves, the weather and this time of year. PS make a great memory by getting out to The Texas State Fair.
 

All We Need Is Love

The Beatles had that right. All we need is love. Love will go a long way in correcting what is wrong with our society. Sometimes we get caught up with our own life we forget to show compassion for others. We are selfish to a point. I admit that because of the actions of a few panhandlers I rarely give to those asking for money on the street. I have to just ask myself what if that person were me? I don't know the circumstances that led them to where they are. I am guilty of judging and that is wrong. I even think to myself " Hey if you can stand there for hours on end, couldn't you find a job somewhere ? " Who am I to judge? The truth is if we saw Jesus Christ on a street corner he probably would resemble a lot of homeless people. He depended on others for sustaining him. He did not work a paying job. Those who refused to give to him missed out on a blessing.
     That is just one example of not loving one another.  We are living in a nation divided. There are the haves and the have nots. Look at our Presidential candidates. Both are wealthy with millions spent on campaigns. We have racial tension now in our country the likes not seen in decades. We have people protesting our National Anthem. We are celebrating 15 years since a horrible terrorist attack took thousands of lives.  Why can't we as a nation go back to that mindset on Sept 11? We came together as a nation. Churches were full and prayers were sent up coast to coast. There was love amongst every race. There was no judgment amongst us. We were just concerned how to take care of our nation. We have lost our way. We need to stop wagging our finger at one another. There is racism all around us from every race. There is criticism and judgment coming from all sides. Who are we to judge anybody. I was taught in God's eyes sin is sin. We were all born into it. No one is perfect. We want to put labels on it and say this sin is worse than that one.  We are all guilty.  That's a pretty unpopular belief and I'm sure I will take some grief over it but that's cool.
   The point is this we need to love more and judge less. We need to put  God back to first into our country.
   All we need is Love.
My hats off to those who lost their lives
On 9/11/01
 
  
  

I Promise

I sit tonight and think as the big day approaches. We've both been down this road before but its different this time. We both have come out of 20 year plus marriages so we know what to expect. We both know what we want and what we don't. We have been together 4 years so there are no surprises. That being said I still feel the need to say this.
I promise to put you second only to God. I honestly believe you are the gift God has sent me. After our first go round with marriage we could have both been turned off by the thought of committing to another human being. I will not take lightly that you believed in me enough to give me your heart.
   I promise I will be with you for as long as the Good Lord gives me.  I have never had a another person love me like you do. Therefore I choose to stay. You have my heart.
    I promise to always take interest in the things that interest you even if it means watching a thousand hours of Harry Potter or getting all geeked out to go to some Harry Potter resort for vacation.  I want you to know that first its not all about me. Second your likes and dislikes are important to me.
   I promise to spend as much time doing things together as possible. Even if it's just sitting on the patio watching a sunset.
   I promise to protect you. I want you to always feel safe. I want to be your protector your muscle. I will always have your back unconditionally.
  I promise I will be your sounding board when you have had a rough day and accept I can't fix everything. Sometimes you just need an ear and a shoulder.
   I promise that I will be here through good and bad. I will be your constant. I want to be the one who wipes the tears from your eyes or hear your laughter.
  I promise I will always provide for you to the best of my ability. We will work together to build not just a house but a home. I will support your family to the best of my ability whether it be financially or emotionally.
   I promise to always try to make you laugh. Your laughter brightens my day.
    I can't wait to grow old with you and show you I am a man of my word. Words are cheap but actions say it all I promise.
   

Music and Memories

There is probably nothing save Cynthia that I am more passionate about than music. Cooking would be a close third I am guessing. Music however has always been a big part of my life. I guess it started like everyone else. Church hymns and being a part of the choir. Before that was music class in Elementary School. At that age I did not get how powerful it was. It was a living breathing thing and very powerful. I had the privilege of having two older brothers who had some influence on the music I was exposed to as well as my mother who had an eclectic taste in music. My dad was not really into the whole music thing at the time. I think over the years he has come around a bit. Who can live without music in the life for goodness sake? Whether you like it or not you are exposed to it. Whether you know it or not it is powerful. It can evoke emotions and memories. What else can take you back and even bring you to tears? What other way was there to express to your significant other how you felt than a mix tape. You remember the mix tape. A collection of power ballads that said all you couldn't.  You can even recall certain events and times in your life by just hearing a song. Music is always present except maybe birth at all of our special occasions.
    I remember as a young preteen discovering my musical taste. I remember my first album bought. It was "Some Things Don't Come Easy" by England Dan and John Ford Coley. I still love that album. I still have it and its well worn with all of the crackle and hiss. One of the coolest things I got to do in radio was interview John Ford Coley. I explained to him that he had an impact on my life because of his music. He was an awesome interview and a really cool dude. As we were talking off air prepping for the next segment after the commercial break. We were talking about the record and I told him about one of my favorite tracks on it and he said that he hated the song. Not in a mean way he just thought it was too simple. That was cool I learned then and there just because it is on a record it doesn't mean the artist loves it.
   A lot of the artist that I listened to growing up I had the opportunity to sit and talk to them one on one. I especially was intrigued by the ones that wrote their own music. You could feel the excitement in their voice as they explained how a song came to be. After that you listen to a song with more appreciation for understanding where it came from.
     As a teenager I never thought as I was listening to these artists on American Top 40 with Casey Kasem, that I would be conversing with them.  Its funny how life turns out. That is the power of music. It takes you to places you never thought you would go. It takes you back to your childhood. I remember breaking up with my first serious girlfriend and hearing a song on the radio. A light came on and I thought to myself I get it, I understand it.  Music can make you remember people and places and in your mind its so vivid. You could almost touch it. That is why music is so powerful. It can help you remember or forget. It can comfort or evoke pain.  But most of all it can put a smile on your face as you find yourself drifting to a time far away thinking about some of the greatest memories of your life.

A Little Imagination

How many can remember going outside as a child and playing. Can you remember how much imagination and creativity we could come up with. We would look around and use whatever was available in the yard to play whatever game we could come up with. If we wanted to play war we could venture over the neighbors fence into his huge garden for dirt clods. These were clumps of mud that had dried into nice little grenade pellets that would explode on impact. They were soft so they did not hurt when you were hit with them. They were far superior to the clay clods in my dad's garden. Those would not disintegrate on impact and were quite painful when hit by one. Lots of trial and error in the war games. Nothing would bring the game to a close quicker than someone running into the house crying to mom. That would get us all in trouble for throwing dirt clods. As long as no one got hurt the war games went on unnoticed by mama. If she happened to stick her head out the back screen door to check up on her little angels she saw us scramble to get into freeze tag mode. A harmless playground game. We were sneaky little devils.
   Maybe sometimes we wanted to play like we were on a Sunday drive. We would assemble a makeshift car out of scrap junk my dad collected. If we needed a steering wheel my dad had an old cast iron hand plow with what looked like a bicycle rim on it. If you turned it upside down using the free spinning rim you could imagine a steering wheel. 
   One of my favorite shows on air at the time was C.H.I.P.S . It was a show about two California Highway Patrol Officers on motorcycles. We would rummage through dad's truck find a couple of hard hats and hop on our bicycles and voila we were Jon Baker and Ponch.  Very imaginative if I don't say say myself. As a side note, if you turned the helmet around to where bill was in the back you could be Gage and Desoto from another one of my favorite shows Emergency. That was a show about two Los Angeles Paramedic/firefighters.
  We played hide-go-seek and the like but my favorite times was going out in the field next door to play football with oldest brother. I would imagine I was a star receiver running a pass route as he hurled the football 60 yards. He had an arm.
   Cynthia tells me stories of her childhood as well and apparently they were very imaginative as well. They would use sticks as guns and they had sound effects. I do kid her occasionally about the stick thing. Sometimes today we go out and play fetch with the dog and I tell the dog to go get the gun. Its not a gun until she makes the sound effect. I just see it as a stick. With the sound effect its like a light comes on and I finally get it.
   Then there were the ramps made to emulate our hero Evel Kneivel. Bricks, cinder blocks and plywood make a deadly ramp. Crashes were not uncommon and bumps and bruises were not abnormal.  Mama learned not to ask what we were doing. I don't remember any serious injuries just Kids using the imagination God gave us.
    I believe that imagination has served me well over the years. It has made me to often look outside the box at what could be. Sometimes life gives us a pile of junk or random objects to get around. If you step back and think about it maybe you could use it to take your own Sunday drive. 

The One I Never Thought I'd Find

You never know when inspiration will strike. On my way home the other day I'm listening to the radio. Its a song I've heard hundreds of times in my life. I own a copy of it so I've heard it many times. I've always really liked it. Johnny Rivers "Slow Dancing" is the song. I heard the line, "The one I never thought I'd find" and it got me to thinking. With my wedding coming up how fortunate I am.
   Everyone looks for that special someone. Sometimes the search takes awhile. We start out dating slowly weeding out those who don't measure up to what we are looking for. There is some heartbreak along the way because you lost what you thought at the time was the one. At the time you don't know how your world will turn after such a heartbreak. We know it does eventually. Maybe you marry who you thought was the one only to find out years later that you wasted a lot of years. The point is that it can be a very time consuming search. I have always wondered how do you know they are the one? There is no bell that goes off no alarm that tells you to stop looking.  Truth is you just know. Let me just say from experience, its a lot easier to know you've found the right one when you have experienced the opposite.  Let me also say this, never settle because you don't think you can do better or because you are tired of the search. 
   When I separated from my ex wife and eventually divorced, I was scared because I had no inkling what the future held. I dated a few women but did not really find what I was looking for. Match.com is a great tool. I say that only because that is where me and Cee met. She indicated she was interested by winking at me. I contacted her and we had our first meeting. It was a low key mid morning mid week meeting at Barnes and Noble.  When she pulled up she watched me for a few minutes as I was helping a stranded damsel jumpstart her car. That was a good sign to her that I would help someone in need. That first meeting was great. She was bubbly and talkative. We had a lot in common. We talked for a couple of hours and neither knew where it would lead if anywhere. Fast forward a couple of weeks on my Birthday we had our first date. I was emceeing a concert and she was watching me work. Being in radio at the time it was like that a lot in the beginning. I loved that she wanted to be where I was and she still does.
   We are on the same wavelength most of the time. We love the same music, activities and food. We never fight. We have disagreements but we don't fight. We both come from 20 plus years of marriage so we know what we want. 
I love her and can't imagine my life without her. That's how you know you found the one. Don't get me wrong its still work it is 100-100% all the time. But I have always felt if you love it, it ain't work.
   If you are going through a divorce don't despair there are still some good ones out there but you will have to draft from the second round. I found the best one.
     Happy dating and God Bless all of those who found the one they never thought they'd find.

The Weekend

As I stir from a peaceful sleep this Sunday morning, I glance at my watch it's 7:05. My first thought is one of panic. I am late for work......no wait it's Sunday a day off. I am sure we have all had that moment of panic. That just means we were sleeping so sound that it took a few seconds for our minds to reboot. That's exactly what weekends are for. Its a time to recharge physically and a time to make memories. Sometimes it means recharging spiritually sitting in a church pew on Sunday just to thank God for getting you through said week. Maybe even praying for patience to get through the next one.   We spend the whole week putting a weekend plan together.  Sometimes it's months of preparation to make the weekend special.
    No matter how much you love your job, you still love the little mini vacation each week brings. It is like a little reward for working hard. The weekends are tailored or custom fit for the time of the year we happen to be in. Weekends at the lake in the Summer or hunting trips in the winter we make it work every weekend.
  As a child we took those 2 days for granted especially in the Summer when we had 7 days a week to do nothing. These days find us making plans with family or catching up with friends. 2 days is never enough time to do that. I have also come to realize it doesn't matter how long or how much time you have off you still come back tired and ready for the next one. Time to start on the plans for next weekend. Its a never ending cycle. Then there is the lazy weekend binge watching Netflix. I love those weekends but for some reason feel guilty for not doing more around the house.
Some weekends are yard work and house cleaning and some are just spontaneous. No plans just whatever happens we will roll with it.  I don't know about you but having that special someone in your life make each weekend planned or unplanned 2 days of greatness. It gives us opportunity to express our love in thoughtful gestures such as going to dinner or just being together that  the weekly job's time constraints make it hard to do. 
  Whatever your passion is enjoy it. Mine is football and it will soon be upon us.
Fall time football weekends I can't wait.
As you are planning that weekend keep one thing in mind.. ..Kenney loves BBQ too.  Have a great weekend and happy Monday......too much too soon? Sorry one day at a time. Happy weekend