so far ...

Wow. It seems like forever since I've had time to sit and think and write. I've definitely not been the best at making time for myself to do these kinds of things, but I have vowed to start fresh and put a bit of effort into what I hope will be a wonderful and therapeutic outlet for me as well as an easier way to keep in touch with my many friends and family members. I am not about to make any promises as to how often I might update here, but I do intend to maintain a relatively regular schedule. *crosses fingers* Hopefully I can be disciplined about it. I figure if my sister-in-law with four growing children of her own can maintain a blog amongst all the other amazing things she's able to do, then so can I. Props, Tez. =)

I intend this blog to be a snapshot of my life here in Denver, sharing details about myself, my family, things that I'm contemplating, and even an occasional rant. I promise not to go out of my way to offend any of you, dear readers, but I'm not going to mince words either. This is my blog, and I'm going to be myself here in these pages, uncensored and undiluted. That doesn't mean I'm going to curse all over the place, mind you. ;) If you don't like something you're reading, either skim over it or better yet leave a comment and express yourself. But I'm not about to start editing what I say here to make people feel more comfortable simply because they might not agree with certain parts of my life or my personality. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, after all. Therefore, consider yourself warned. =)

Also, as you can see, this initial post is rather lengthy, and I don't intend for that to be the norm at all as I really don't have the bandwidth for that kind of chattiness. However, some of you may have been out of touch with me for quite some time, and so I have a lot to say in my efforts to bridge that gap. Please excuse my verbosity.

So, HELLO to all of you! *Xtian waves ecstatically* I miss those of you I don't get to see often enough, and look forward to seeing those of you whom are just a stone's throw away. Here's what's been going on over the last few years or so (in brief) of my life, and if you're local to me you can pretty much just skip this part as you've heard about it already.

What I have I been up to lately? Nathan, the wonderful and amazing guy I moved to Denver for, and I are still committed and happy together and will be celebrating our sixth year as a couple next month. Although moving to another state to live in a city I'd only passed briefly through before has been a huge and monumental transition for me, it was a good one, and I've never been healthier or happier in all my days.

These days I’m spending my time as a stay-at-home Dad while Nathan climbs the corporate ladder – I stopped working about three years ago. Nathan’s two sons, Forrest (age 13) and Jerrod (almost 10) live with us full-time, and they keep me super-busy! I spend a typical day (when they’re in school) shuttling them to their classes for the day, then hitting the gym, doing what it takes to manage our household (bills, planning, etc.), and then trying to catch a few precious moments to myself doing something fun (this ranges from visiting the local botanic gardens to read a book to having coffee with a friend to doing a bit of gaming)—you know, just living the daily grind.

This year, we did the usual for PrideFest in June; Denver has a really big festival, and we spent a bit of time (sans kids) catching up with friends and drinking a bit of course and booth shopping etc. =) What is PrideFest? It is an annual festival held in cities around the globe celebrating the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, as well as "the philosophy asserting that LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) individuals should be proud of their sexual orientation and gender identity. The word pride is in this case an antonym for shame, which has been used to control and oppress LGBT persons throughout history. LGBT pride advocates work for equal "rights and benefits" for LGBT people.[1][2][3] The movement has three main premises: that people should be proud of their sexual orientation and gender identity, that diversity is a gift, and that sexual orientation and gender identity are inherent and cannot be intentionally altered.[4]"(from wikipedia.org)

Last spring, the four of us spent a week at the Disneyland Hotel in California; it was Nathan’s and the kids’ first trip so I was anxious to show them everything I’ve been bragging about compared to Denver’s sadly pathetic amusement parks for so long. We all had a blast, and were able to spend time with my sister Julie, who lives in L.A. and spent several days at the park with us, and also with my mother and stepfather who flew down from Sacramento to meet Nathan and the boys for the first time and spend a couple of days getting to know them.

Summer just FLEW by – I’m always tons busier during those months than any other time of the year as the kids are home. We would've liked to send them to a camp as in years past, but frankly their grades weren't up to snuff at the end of the year and so as a consequence we enrolled them in Sylvan Learning Institute instead. Now that the boys will be heading back to school in just a couple of weeks or so, things will quiet down a bit as I settle into my ‘Taxidriver’ routine. I’m still trying to get the kids to tip me when they exit the vehicle, but they won’t do it. ;)

At least I’m more than comfortable taxiing in the Mercedes-Benz E class Nathan bought me a couple years ago for my birthday. See, even though I’ve changed quite a bit since coming out and moving away, I still kept a bit of my attitude from before. =) Forrest, our oldest, will be starting eighth grade, and spends much of his free time skateboarding and reading (we've finally found the right books). Jerrod will celebrate his tenth birthday in September, will be starting fourth grade and loves in-line skating as a counterpoint to Forrest’s skateboarding obsession. Both the boys are huge film buffs and are very attached to their beloved PS3 (the use of which is rationed strictly; I'm a real Nazi). Jerrod will also play the trumpet again in the school band this year, although he has expressed interest in the saxophone and might switch. Having them in more after-hours activities keeps me on the road more, but also affords me a bit of extra time to myself. Thankfully we offset all the driving I do by being green and organic in most other areas of our lives. I love Whole Foods so much! =)

So yes, I’m a stay-at-home Dad, and still loving that. Surprisingly, I’ve managed not spend too much time Martha-ing out by cleaning too much; I’ve spent much time at the botanic gardens and art museums this year, and have a series of lectures I want to attend lined up for the fall. I also tend to read quite a bit, although I’ve never let go of my passion for PC gaming and am currently still playing ‘The Sims 2’ and replaying ‘Bioshock.’

Nathan changed careers last year, having spent many months earlier studying for his PM (project management) certification exam, which he passed with flying colors last Summer. He promptly made plans to leave the bank he was working at, and successfully transitioned to another position as a project manager last August for 9squared, a ring-tone manufacturer with their U.S. headquarters just three blocks from our loft downtown (you might have used realtonejukebox.com? that’s them). After just a few months working there, he was hunted down by a recruiter for and accepted a position with ShotSpotter, a gunshot location systems company. There was a flurry of the two companies bidding to keep Nathan, but ultimately ShotSpotter made him the better offer and off he went to work for them. He won a huge bump in salary, stock options, and vast career advancement potential and now spends much of his time traveling to various parts of the east and west coasts and in between managing system installation projects for various metropolis's throughout the country. ShotSpotter is already expanding its scope to handle installations overseas, and if you haven't yet heard of them you almost certainly will at some point in the future.

Nathan is really enjoying Project Management far more than the systems analyst (read: I.T.)work he used to do. He’s been wanting to make that transition for a while, and is thrilled he was able to manage the change successfully. ShotSpotter flies him home to Denver every single weekend (and back out again) when he’s travelling, so we get to see him some of the time, but the rest of the time when he's off the road he gets to spend working from home which is nice. He’s racking up the auto, hotel and flight bonus miles, and has achieved super-duper platinum elite status or whatever it’s called with Hertz, Marriott and United so he’s always getting upgraded to first or business class and we’re able to rent autos and stay in hotel rooms periodically free of charge, always a nice perk.

However, having Nathan gone all week means I'm far busier than usual. Until recently, Nathan was our household executive chef, handling all things food-related (his beloved hobby) such as cooking, meal-planning, and grocery shopping. Obviously, this role for him had to be passed over to me in addition to all the other things I do to manage our household and take care of the children, and I am now something of a single parent Monday through Friday when he's not in town. I don't mind at all and am happy to take over this important part of our hearth and home, but the consequence is my time is now even more thinly spread, so after months of inner debate and trying to keep doing it all myself, I hired Nora to keep house for me on a monthly basis. She comes highly recommended from several friends and acquaintances of ours who have been thrilled with her services, and I was quite pleased and impressed with the work she did in her initial visit last month. She'll even cater and act as wait staff at parties should I require. Please don't think me a snob, however - it was through much inner turmoil that I finally broke down and allowed myself this luxury; I kind of have a teensey problem with paying someone to do things I really could do just fine by myself; it's just I can no longer effectively and efficiently manage it all. To that effect, to any of you that are/have ever been single parents, I take my hat off to you and will buy you a drink / coffee the next time I see you as a way of showing my respect and admiration. It's exhausting, and I don't see how any of you did this full-time without any reprieve (at least I get to have Nathan home to help on the weekends!).

A Note About Poor Tara: Unfortunately for my little family, tragedy struck early in the year, coinciding with Nathan's transition to his new position with ShotSpotter. On March 13th at roughly 8 PM, I received a telephone call alerting me Tara, our boys' mother and Nathan's ex-wife, had been in an extremely serious automobile accident. Nathan had just left that morning to begin his first day of work at ShotSpotter at their corporate office in Mountainview, California and planned to spend the next couple of days there for orientation and such. Initially, Tara was not expected to live through the night and reportedly had suffered extensive brain damage, spinal cord damage, etc., etc., etc. Our family was thrown into turmoil as we had to deal with the aftermath of this horrifying event, and we prepared for the worst. Desperately torn between being home to comfort the children and afraid to do a disappearing act so soon into his new position, Nathan was faced with an awful decision. We decided to wait and see what was going to happen rather than have Nathan hop on a plan right back to Denver. To make a very long story short as this tragedy is something that has literally consumed much of our time, emotional energy, and lives over the past several months, Tara beat the odds and lived on. We dealt with Forrest not wanting to see Tara right away because she was so badly hurt in the accident and did not look like herself. We've dealt with going from having the boys spend most weekends with Tara at her home to having them now live with us completely full-time. We've dealt with Nathan needing to take over coordinating Tara's extensive medical bills and forwarding them on to the correct insurance carriers and the like, fielding countless telephone calls and emails, all because there was simply no one else to handle these things for her. We've dealt with Tara moving through various levels of critical condition as she fought to survive and to recover. I'm sure you can appreciate what a horrible and completely exhausting thing this has been for all of us, especially for Tara. Early on, we put both the boys into therapy, and they've been seeing their psychiatrist separately on a weekly basis (though just recently Jerrod completed his treatment and Forrest has scaled back to twice a month). And so this is how things have been, and to date Tara is a patient at Craig Hospital, one of the best spinal injury rehabilitative centers in the country. She has very little movement in any of her limbs and significant gaps in her mental faculties, but her movement is getting better bit by bit although the doctors are extremely cautious about offering any possibility of full recovery and in fact it is believed Tara will probably be more like a quadriplegic than anything else. Her mental gaps have left her largely emotionally unstable, prone to fits of irrational behavior and bouts of crying. And yet, through it all, at times she is quite lucid; it simply depends on the moment and we never really know what to expect. Perhaps she'll be able to live something of a normal life, perhaps not. Perhaps she will remain in the hospital indefinitely, perhaps not. Perhaps she will require an assisted-living facility to take her on, perhaps not. We simply don't know, and for now must accept the not knowing. Send us your good wishes, your hopes, your prayers. We need them.

Most recently, at the start of the spring this year my sister and her husband spent a week visiting with us; we went camping and had a lovely time showing them the prettier parts of the state. We camped inside Estes Park, went white-water rafting, and visited The Stanley Hotel (she's a HUGE Stephen King buff, as am I) among other things. 

Then, a couple weeks ago Nathan was working on Long Island where he’s been managing a project for a few weeks now, and so rather than have his company fly him home to Denver as usual, we had them fly me out and we spent four days in Manhattan (the boys stayed over with a good friend of our family here in town)! I hadn’t yet been to NYC and I had an absolute blast! We did all the touristy things and ate in some really amazing restaurants like Les Halles and Haru for Sushi. We visited the very first licensed pie palace in the country, Lombardi's Pizzeria. We took a mini-cruise around Lower Manhattan as the sun was setting, and I got to see much of the city as well as some amazing water sculptures along the Hudson, temporarily installed for the summer and which I had only just read about by chance earlier that afternoon in Dwell Magazine (love that one) on the plane. Our hotel was just a couple of blocks away from Grand Central Station, so the subways were our green-friendly mode of transpo the entire time we were there; we hit all the museums, Rockefeller plaza, Park Avenue, and all the other boroughs and places I’d only read about prior. I snapped TONS of pictures, and will be spending some time organizing them in the coming weeks; I’ll try to post a few when I can. 

The weekend immediately after my return from New York, my Mother and Stepfather came to visit for five days; we put them up in a hotel right Downtown not far from our loft, and spent the visit showing them some of the fantastic restaurants Denver is so famous for (they’re very into food and fine dining like we are). We toured the Haystack Mountain Goat Dairy Farm and sampled cheeses, lunched at the Wynkoop Brewery and The Market, dined at Marco's Coal-Fired Oven Pizzeria, Vesta Dipping Grill and Sushi Sasa, and sampled wonderful wines at Trios Enoteca. It was an absolutely wonderful visit! Nathan and the boys are really enjoying getting to know my family, and vice a verse.

Other than that, there really isn’t too much to report – we aren’t planning on travelling anywhere too far from home over the winter (although that could change – you never know!), but will probably go snowmobiling or skiing or something as usual. I hope you and yours are doing wonderfully, and I hope you'll be coming back to visit me here in cyberspace from time to time. And if you made it this far, thanks for reading.