What's going on?

They say you should write about what you know. I know what it is like to be a married father raising two young daughters and the joys and challenges that go with it. I am a white, male, Catholic. I am 39 years old. My wife is 43. My daughters are ages 6 and 3. I live in Ypsilanti and am a conservative (rare in this city). I am a sports fanatic, but I really don't watch a lot of games from start to end. Parenting, laundry, yardwork, shopping, cleaning, dishes, etc. usually get in the way. My wife and I both work full time, but money is tight. Blah, blah, blah.

When you are single, you can be the center of your own universe. When you get married, your spouse and their needs have to be at least equal to your own. When you have kids, their needs become #1 and your needs move down to #3 on the list. Is this fair? I am trying to teach my oldest daughter that life isn't fair. If her friend gets a new bike, that doesn't mean she has to have one too. But in a deeper sense, having kids is more than fair. The joy and blessings I have received from being a father are astronomically greater than the sacrifices.

This blog will fail if all I post about are philosophical musings. Details. People want details.

So . . .

What am I dealing with right now.

We had a large storm on Sunday. It rained for three days straight. Of course, the basement flooded again. Dammit. I fear my foundation is cracked, but I don't have any money to fix it, and it is darn near impossible to sell a house in this marked. After seven years in the house, we still don't have any equity in it after the housing market collapsed. On Sunday night, we heard a big crash on the roof. Our first thought was that the huge maple tree in the front yard had lost a large limb, which it is apt to do periodically. So far no branches had hit the roof our cars to cause any damage. I looked in the front of the house and saw nothing. An hour later, we heard another crash on the roof, towards the back of the house. I went in the back yard and saw a few bricks. I was afraid that the chimney was blowing down so I looked up. I saw a racoon poking his head out of the top of the chimney. The little bastard had deliberately removed the bricks to get in. My wife asked me to go on our steeply pitched roof to scare him away. In the rain. I told her to tell the girls that I loved them if I fell off the roof and broke my neck. Thankfully, she agreed that it was too dangerous to go up on the roof to try to whack the racoon. The weather has been better, so this weekend, I'll go up to assess the damage.