The New Floodgates of the Mind

sometimes, there’s not enough coffee in the day…

Okay, my time is being sucked into some unknown vortex to a degree heretofore unseen by myself. This makes it rough on so many levels, not the least of which is my freelance work. Luckily the deadlines I have are flexible. Not so the deadlines I have to face on a daily basis…

Anyhow, be that as it may, I finally did get the chance to add a number of photos to my Parenting page. Head on over to http://www.aragona.info and click on Photos.

You know you want to.

You can’t resist the cuteness.

Happiness is…

A lazy Sunday morning, relaxing in our pjs, sipping coffee on the couch with my beautiful wife while my joyous son toddles around the living room floor, smiling and clapping his hands along to The Muppet Show… peace and a soft breeze filtering in from our open windows…

*very happy sigh*

Every morning should be as glorious as this…

My son will be 1 year old in two short weeks.

Absolutely incredible.

I could not imagine life without him.

What an absolutely wonderful joy to be around.

Lots of pictures being readied for sharing. I should have some available this weekend 🙂

I need a mirror on my desk just so I can look at myself and ensure I’m still “here”. To be or not to be isn’t the question, it’s being and thinking at the same time…

Time away from home was both good and bad. Good in that it was nice to be in Lac St. Jean – fresh air, no pollution, able to go jog along a bike trail and not cough out car exhuast fumes, etc. Bad in that there were many moments which just felt LOOOOOONG and, unfortunately, I did not get *any* work done. Not one line written, not one word reviewed, not one sentence translated or edited. I really should have taken a few more days off this week in order to be able to rest at home. See, I love my home, I really do. Just being at home is refreshing enough for me without needing to be elsewhere. To me, vacation is the ability to just BE without worrying about things like meetings, reports, commutes, or clothes. I have to find some days somewhere to be able to spend doing nothing…

One incredible thing about my time off last week is that I spent pretty much every waking moment with Kyle. I adore my little boy and love having him around. Heck, I spent hours on the trip to and from Grandma’s just watching him sleep in his car seat…

As usual, I had tons to say/ write about, and now find myself unable to complete a sentence. I’m exhausted and have been battling a migraine since I got up yesterday morning. It’s not difficult to imagine how quickly I’m losing my train of thought since then… even Advil Migraine isn’t helping…

Anyhow, I’m back. Comicopia 95 is completed and time, of course, to begin preparing 96. Francisco is in the hospital recovering from his surgery. Work at work is piling up and Work is piling up at Home (I *may* have taken on more writing projects than I can handle… I have to confirm deadlines). Kyle took his first official steps yesterday which was cause for celebration 🙂 but he’s also caught something (doctor today said it might be croup – ick). Sister-in-Law is settled into her new apartment in Ottawa – right across from the Bayshore Mall where she’s managing two stores. We visited her last week and had a really nice day. Imagine that – another reason to visit ottawa… 😉

And i’m exhausted. Have I mentioned that? …

My Father’s Day today more than made up the fact that I didn’t really “have” a birthday last month. Really. There were two moments of “sigh” but the rest of the day was simply fantastic.

One of the sigh moments was due to the fact that I couldn’t get James or Melyssa today. She had her dance recital at 1pm and James had a baseball game that he really wanted to go to at 6:30pm. It would have been extremely hectic and crazy a day trying to fit in any “real” family time within those constraints and thus I agreed to not fight for them. After all, legally I’m entitled to having them on Father’s Day. However, in a continued attempt to keep things cordial between everyone – and the fact that I’m trying to keep their best interests at heart – I agreed to let this slide. What with school ending this upcoming Friday and my beginning our summer visitation schedule, it was easier to do.

The way I looked at it – I simply thought of them as living in another city (which, technically, they do) and accepted being able to talk to them on the phone. It’s private enough and we did get to talk about a number of things so it was nice. At least it was real. Unfortunately, when I called my own father to wish him a Happy Father’s Day and chat with him a bit, he was just beyond grumpy. I guess in his eyes there’s no excuse for not getting together today or any other day.

Yes, I only have one father, and yes there will come a day when he won’t be around any more, etc etc etc. However, there is another important fact for me. I have a new family and I wanted to spend my day with them. I’ve never had a chance to be “spoiled” on Father’s Day before and I wanted to be. If my parents for one moment truly BELIEVED in the spirit of Father’s Day (or Mother’s Day or celebrating ANY event) then perhaps things would be different. But, as it is, although they may look for any reason to get together – we often DON’T celebrate the fact that we ARE together when we do so. Every such visit ends up being a Forumla-1 style race to eat as much as possible as quickly as possible (yes, I’m obviously Italian) without any true interaction. And then, after the meal, my dad excuses himself to go lie on the couch upstairs feigning fatigue and a desire to rest. As he’s done for as long as I’ve been alive.

What compounds the sigh factor during these family events is the fact that whenever James and Melyssa aren’t around, there’s my Mother lamenting the fact that we’re not all “together” (yes, even when they are around, she usually ends up lamenting the fact that we’re not ALWAYS “together”). Of course I love my family, and of course they’re not perfect. But I guess like most everyone else, there are some days they’re easier to deal with than others. Heck, seeing as I’ve always been the black sheep of the family it doesn’t bother me in the least to continue being the black sheep 🙂 And thus my desire (more and more often) to spend my time in happier circumstances. Trust me, there’s quite a different atmosphere whenever I pop in for an unplanned visit. Those usually end up a lot nicer mainly because there’s no “stress” involved (of my Mother trying to feed a dozen different plates to a dozen different tastes).

And thus, shrugging my shoulders to the things outside my control (being things I was in no mood to fight for, with, or about), my very happy day went thus:

Early this morning, Chantale and Kyle took me to Cora’s for a Father’s Day’s Brunch 🙂 Chantale’s parents also joined us and it was a pleasant morning. In fact, it was the first time Kyle’s been there without being stuck in his car seat 🙂 He sat in a high chair and enjoyed a wide variety of fruits along with his milk 🙂 Afterwards, Chantale’s parents came to our place in order to pick up Casey and left with Kyle whom they would watch. Chantale and I stayed home, chatting, looking through photographs, and then relaxing in the sun until it was time for us to leave. We headed out to Kirkland theatre where we finally got to see X-Men 3: The Last Stand. Wow. Really. Outside of a few small items I wasn’t expecting, I really got a kick out of this movie. Yes, there were some things they could have explained more on or taken more time with, but overall it was a solid edition to the franchise. And should it really stop here, well that’s okay, too.

After the movie, we headed over to her parents’ place where we were to have supper with Chantale’s sister and her boyfriend’s parents. Their daughter was also there with her young son (14 months) and it was fun to see him and Kyle play together. Chantale’s sister got a promotion to manage a store in Ottawa/Nepean and since she’s leaving on friday, we all got together for a good-bye supper (along with father’s day supper). It was a nice evening but by 7pm Kyle was wiped.

We headed home and as we parked in the driveway, Chantale handed me my Father’s Day gift. Yeah, I know I was super spoiled. Breakfast, a movie, supper, and now a gift? Woah! A beautiful, sentimental, and heartwarming card came first and then, a most amazing sculpture. It’s a resin figurine cast from original carvings by Kansas artist Susan Lordi. This one is entitled “New Dad” and it’s distributed by Willow Tree. Actually, I’ll upload a picture of it 🙂

It touched me so deeply that I was incapable of speaking for a few minutes afterwards. Tears welled up in my eyes at the love that was displayed through that figurine. When you hold, play, and care for a little child, you know they love you as only they can. But to feel that love magnified by the actions and emotions of your wife – the person you’ve dedicated to sharing your life with – well, smiles and tears really do speak volumes 🙂 What a wonderful, beautiful, and amazing day I had today. It truly felt like a Father’s Day. A day where *I* was celebrated.

Nothing like realizing you’ve been away from LJ for so long to make you start questioning your own existence…

I think therefore I am… but if I don’t blog do I still “am”? (shrug of shoulders)

I don’t know where the time has gone, I can barely tell where I am some days. Been rather busy at the day job, had a lot to do there as well as at home, and had shut myself off from everything else by immersing myself in the Tarzan of the Apes novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Seriously. I’ve got a review for Comicopia, too. In fact, I’ve recently written up a number of reviews I’m keeping for Copia as well as posting on Library Thing… and I’ve started wondering if some of them I shouldn’t also cross-post to since they’re also comics-related…

Speaking of Comicopia, deadline for issue 95 is less than a week away. I’ve got to finish my Paradise Comics Toronto Comicon/ Shuster Awards Convention Venture and I’ll be done. Then it’ll be a matter of getting all the other sections together (although I’ve already received 4 others). Oh yeah, gotta print up the covers as well…

On another strange tangent, I recently started breaking down an idea for a Work-Life Balance book/ training session. There are a number of lessons I believe I can share that a lot of folks can benefit. Heck, one of the best things is that I would easily be able to test-market it with a lot of folks at work right now 🙂 I’ve always had these ideas, but specifically in the last week I realized that my brain had been putting chapters together all along, on its own…

Still on the pending to-do list is to get my emails out to Canadian Comic Shops and other Canadian Comic Folks in the hopes they might find potential, worthwhile candidates for this year’s Shuster Awards Nominating Panel. Not a “big” rush but something I’ve been wanting to get to for a while now.

okay, I need a break now. I wanna go read some comix 🙂