Sale Pending

When you put your house on the market, you can kinda settle into this mode of thinking wherein you try your best to actually let go of the idea of selling your house.  Otherwise you drive yourself crazy stressing over when you're going to get the call, and believe me I was a champion stresser at times in this phase.  This is especially true in the current housing market.  Depending on where you live, you could be waiting for months.  We waited 9.  I know some who have waited much longer, some less, and some still waiting.  Either way, it's quite the ordeal.

After getting the call this past weekend that we have an offer on our house, we now enter into a whole new phase.  We will now go through all the typical things like inspection, option period, the buyers financing period, closing, blah blah blah and yadda yadda yadda.  And here's the deal, the same crazy making stress and worry you can experience when you're waiting for an offer comes right back around!  You now have a whole new set of problems!  Now you hang on pins and needles just hoping you don't get the call that something has screwed up and the deal has gone through...AAAAAHHHHHH. 

OK, switching gears for a bit.  Did you see the movie Munich?  This film is about the 1972 Olympic games where terrorists killed Israeli athletes and the retribution that followed.  The Israeli Prime Minister then ordered a team of assassins to kill anyone involved in taking down the athletes.  As the movie progresses, the suspected murderers are hunted down and taken out, but then questions start rising in the minds of the assassins trying to kill their way to revenge.  "When is this going to stop?", "How will this ever end?", "How many have to die?", "By killing these men, we've now made killers out of some of the ones that loved them, now what?"...You get the point.

Well, it's quite the dramatic movie (and it also makes some political statements, which I am not by the way), but I don't think it's that far of a stretch to apply the central lessons of that movie to many in my own life.  Basically - You can't make the problems dissappear, they are just going to keep coming around.  Try and make it all right and you're really going to make it all wrong.  Instead, settle into the craziness of this world and let what happens happen, being responsible for you.  The only thing which has EVER conquered the world, is love (this last one they didn't get into very much but is one of my biggest beliefs).

So yeah, now we sit in a house pending a sale in less than 5 weeks, and because of the nature of our journey, we're not completely sure of what's next.  I guess many new enemies to our inner peace will sprout up all over the place now, tons of questions, lots of doubt, and of course opportunities to fear around every corner, and we could try and take them all out or even act like they're not there...but whatever, let them come (because trust me they will).  I can do nothing about them.  I can, however, do everything about how I walk through each day with my family on this wild journey we're on.  Lord, give me love.    

hud's prayer

As I walked past Hud's room shortly after tucking him in for the evening last night, I heard him whispering.  I stopped and listened by his door and heard one of the sweetest things as he was gently speaking the lyrics to his current favorite Coldplay song, Politik, into the quiet night air of his bedroom...

give me time and give me space
give me real don't give me fake
give me strength, reserve control
give me heart and give me soul
give me love, give us a kiss
tell me your own politik

amen hud.

It's All in the Genes!!

My son walked out of the kitchen upset that he couldn't keep playing DJ on my iphone as it was now dinnertime and throwing quite the fit.  After Kelly diffused the situation she quite lovingly points out "you know, he's just so convinced he's right somehow, and he just wants his way" (and she was very right).  After she said this my mind naturally started thinking "so this is what they were trying to say in the movie Teenwolf!  It's all so clear to me now!!"  What?? What do you mean that's crazy!  That's not weird or random at all!  Here, I'll show you...



We and our kids, we're the same.  Cut from the same cloth.  It's all how we choose to see it.  Hud was clearly playing out MY most stubborn attributes!  It was like watching a movie of myself as he stomped out of the kitchen.  Now of course my kids...they are dreams come true.  But let's face it, we've all got our crap.  And as I see it, it's either an opportunity to get closer to our children or it's just annoying how they act so, so, sooooo...just like us!!  And it's up to us!  Hopefully I'll be the Teenwolf Dad, waiting for my kids at the table with breakfast, inviting them into conversation of why WE are the way WE are.  Hopefully.

what's goin down

"I think it's time we stop,
hey, what's that sound
everybody look what's goin down..."

  

just a swingin

lovin life

hud

sous chef

hud's photography lesson

dinner

ahhhhhhh

no hurry...take your time holls





Things I've Been Loving

There have been a few things I've been loving lately, whether it be an album, an inspiring t.v. show, the occasional book (I'm a notoriously bad reader, but I'm trying), lyrics, or even a tool in my shop.

Anthony Bourdain.  I love this guy.  He's anthropologie meets food and I can't get enough of his show "No Reservations".  I started watching him a few years ago and have been hooked ever since.  I read his book "Kitchen Confidential" and really enjoyed that.  My most recent favorite episode was one featuring a restaraunt in Spain called El Bulli (the Bull) in it's last days being opened to the public.  The place was run by chef Ferran Adria and focused on a menu that did things with food people have never imagined.  I would love to try and explain the food, but I can't!  It's so new, so something you've never seen, so something you won't see anywhere else...and they closed it.   But this is where it got inspiring.  Chef Ferran closed the place because he wants to reopen it in a few years as a creative center.  A place where people can come and try new things with food.  A place where not only chefs are welcome but architects, writers, teachers, thinkers, musicians, builders, painters, and whoever else that wants to blaze a new trail is welcomed too.  He doesn't want to look at food the same way anymore.  He wants to expand the boundaries and find new worlds.  I love it!!  Anthony's episode that featured this place ended with a man who learned under Chef Ferran saying..."I came here with no spirit, and left with a soul."  It was beautiful.

Other things in the "I've Been Loving" category are Paul Simon's new album "So Beautiful or So What", the expanding vocabulary of my daughter (she's now saying "this, this", "hi!", "flowa" (or flower), and a few others...love it!  And lastly, really been digging my chisel.

So Beautiful or So What

I’m going to make a chicken gumbo
Toss some sausage in the pot
I’m going to flavor it with okra
Cayenne pepper to make it hot
You know life is what we make of it
So beautiful or so what

I’m going to tell my kids a bedtime story
A play without a plot
Will it have a happy ending?
Maybe yeah, maybe not
I tell them life is what you make of it
So beautiful or so what

So beautiful
So beautiful
So what

I’m just a raindrop in a bucket
A coin dropped in a slot
I am an empty house on Weed Street
Across the road from the vacant lot
You know life is what you make of it
So beautiful or so what

Ain’t it strange the way we’re ignorant
How we seek out bad advice
How we jigger it and figure it
Mistaking value for the price
And play a game with time and love
Like a pair of rolling dice
So beautiful
So beautiful
So what

Four men on the balcony
Overlooking the parking lot
Pointing at a figure in the distance
Dr. King has just been shot
And the sirens long melody
Singing Savior Pass Me Not

Ain’t it strange the way we’re ignorant
How we seek out bad advice
How we jigger it and figure it
Mistaking value for the price
And play a game with time and love
Like a pair of rolling dice
So beautiful
So beautiful
So beautiful

Lastly, two books.

1.  The Cathedral Within.  This book focuses on social entrepreneurship which is the field which Harp Design Co could be considered in.  The book talks about the ancient cathedral builders and the lessons we can learn from them.  So Inspiring!!

2.  Zen Way, Jesus Way.  This one is on the way and I can't wait!!  It was written by my great uncle, Tucker Callaway!  I just learned about it actually from my cousin Michael (his blog is bullarkey).  I've known my great uncle was a missionary in Asia for years and years but I didn't know he wrote a book comparing Zen Buddhism and Christianity.  He actually practiced Zen Buddhism for the book!  I'm so proud to have a great uncle who had the courage to expand his boundaries and explore what others in his world could easily just write off as stupid or heretical or just plain bad.  As a Baptist missionary he really could've gotten in trouble for the book, and maybe did, I don't know...but he did it.  I haven't read it yet, and I don't know what to expect but I don't care.  I'm just glad to know of another explorer in my family tree (there are quite a few of us I'm learning : )

  

Have a wonderful Tuesday.

Autumn, our way

Living in TX it's no surprise that we deal with some unbelievable heat.  While many of my friends and family back home on the east coast already speak of such things as changing leaves, cool evenings, and the smell of autumn in the air as we enter September, we've still been feeling temperatures of 105 and 108.  It's hot.  And humid!  But an interesting thing has happened this summer (well quite a few things if you're counting, but I'll just focus on a couple in this post) which has helped in the process of changing our hearts to accept our circumstances.
                                       

At the beginning of the summer we threw ourselves in the perverbial "oven" with quite a few life changes which I've spoken about before on this blog.  Since then we've been taking steps every day into a new life where we're doing what we love, discovering what we love, spending more time with our family, going for our dreams, and truly letting the persons we've created over the years to manage all the hurt and pain and dissappointment and fear die...and letting God resurrect the true us (which I believe is hidden deep within each of us already, we just have to allow those layers to be peeled back and destroyed to get to the good stuff).

That was in May.

Timing is everything.

Because then summer came.  And it really got hot.  We found ourselves sorting out our new life, working through so many different emotions, so on and so on, and the temp rose and rose and rose.



(pic from our trip to Asheville Nov 09')



But through it all, and this is the most important part, we've walked.  No no, I don't mean metaphorically.  I mean we've walked!  As many days a week as we can stand, all summer long, regardless of how hot it's been, we've walked.  We've loaded our kids in the double stroller, filled up the water bottles, bagged some snacks, and walked a two mile loop.  Over, and over, and over again.  We'll stop halfway and chug as much ice water as humanly possible and start again.  We've laughed, cried, argued, yelled, cussed, joked, figured out, gotten more confused, laughed some more, learned a lot about eachother and ourselves, and even lost some lbs.  So when it's been 100 day after day after day for almost 3 months, we've walked.  When 100 wasn't enough and we went into 105/106/107 territory, we've walked.  Then this last week a miracle happened and the temp went down to 96/95 and sometimes even 90 in the shade!!  And as we walked we realized something...if we had stayed inside all summer and avoided the heat, we wouldn't appreciate 95 degrees.  Low 90's would feel just the same as 100+.  But because we've been out there walking, we feel every degree of difference.  We know what it feels like in the furnace, and we feel the change.  We love, welcome, and appreciate the change.  The change is good.  And as a young boy growing up in GA and NC when Autumn starting coming, you felt it.  Everything started to change and there was nothing you could do to stop it, nor would you want to.  And now at 95 degrees we feel the change in so many different ways and the ushering in of a new season, and we're so happy it's here...and even more thankful we're alive and in tune to the difference. 

Why "Riverdog Run"?

Years ago I wanted to start building things for a living...maybe a furniture company.  I had decided I would call it Riverdog Furniture.  I liked the name a lot, but mostly for sentimental reasons.  I really hung on to it for as long as I could as it says so much about who I am as a person.  That being said, when it came to naming a company that...something didn't flow.  I even had a logo made (and my friend Sarah did an incredible job), but as the months went by there was just something there that didn't jive.  Well, in regards to a company name, my wife and I joined forces and came up with Harp Design Co.  That one works perfectly, and we're proud of it.  But what about Riverdog??  I couldn't just leave it alone, it just had to fit somewhere in my life!

Enter my blog, Riverdog Run.  This was the perfect solution!  Afterall, I started this blog to open up about me, and riverdog and run say so much about me.

Riverdog - growing up I spent a lot of time as a young kid playing with my family, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc on the Chattahoochee at my grandparents house.  There always seemed to be a dog, cat, or even a peacock running around.  The dogs were always my favorite.  I loved them because they seemed so at home.  This was even more true once my grandparents moved up to the mountains of North Georgia and lived on acres and acres of wooded land with a river running right straight through it all.  There the dogs roamed free, cut their own trails, played their own forest games, patrolled the river, and basically lived in there own little doggy wonderland.  Well, this is how I desire to live life.  Something in those dogs rubbed off on me.  I love to blaze my own trails.  Take me hiking and I'm the first to look for something new, wander off, and basically get lost in the wonder all around me.  Life should be an adventure right!?  Or should I say, it IS an adventure, and it's up to us to take an active part in it as opposed to sleeping through it.  I've found there to be this set of laws, general practices, basic understandings that have quite a lot of us feeling stuck.  I don't mean laws in the sense of "no shoplifting" or "can't lie on your taxes" or "can't shoot people".  I'm talking more about the laws that we've created as a society, maybe even accidentally.  These laws are more like "when you get old you have to get a job like everyone else and pay bills" or "if you think it's crazy it probably is so don't even think about it" or "hey that's fun to dream and all but get back to work" or "hey until you have all the money to take care of all the practicalities, accidentals, contengincies, and back up plans, keep your head down and don't ask questions".  Well, maybe I'm the fool, but I'm beginning to think that's a bunch of bunk.  Look at the riverdogs, see how they run and play, see how they are clothed in the finest of furs, see how they are fed and have shelter and need only to be themselves letting their Creator take care of the rest?!  (wait, where have I heard that before??)  But "being yourself", being who God made you to be, doing what He made you to do...this is where it can get tricky.  I mean, what's the answer??  I want to work, I want to pour myself into something, I want to be what He wants me to be.  I guess figuring that out is what the journey is about really.

And RUN.  Well, the "run" part is a little more self explanatory, but just as meaningful to me.  I love to run.  I can't think of a time where I haven't loved running.  Yes even all the way back to 1st grade and my first mile run at Haw Creek Elementary.  I think it was called the "Liberty Run".  Anyhow, everyone else probably just dorked around.  Me however, I ran that thing.  I didn't stop the whole way baby.  And after that race I knew I would run a bunch more, with as few stops as possible.  As it turns out, the little 1st grader was right.  I've run a bunch.  Mile after mile after mile.  There's something addicting to it for me.  There's also something freeing.  When I'm running it's just me, the concrete, and the Mystery...and oh what a glorious time it is.  I'll run as long as these knees hold up because when I run, I feel Him. (cue the Charriots of Fire music)

There you go.  Riverdog Run.  That's me.  I could keep going on, but you might pass out.  Have a lovely day!