pimp my crib: nursery edition

No this post is not about a new MTV series, but I am going to kick off this post with an MTV reference.

If you have ever watched ‘Pimp My Ride’ or “MTV Cribs’ you have found yourself wondering . . . “is this a joke?  can these people’s taste really be this bad?”

A junker car remade into a rolling Starbucks with spinners, a house boasting real saltwater aquariums (made from Swarovsky crystal) in every single room, can these people be serious?  Don’t they have enough money to hire a designer who will tell them gold plated urinals are not in good taste?

I ask these questions all the time.

But what it really boils down to is personal taste.

Whether its mansions, cars, or nurseries, design aesthetics are about personal preferences.

All that to say, the feeling I get when they pull back the sheet to reveal the gaudy paint job on a girls suped up VW Rabbit or open the door to a 15 foot diamond encrusted “Artist Formerly Known as Prince” emblem, is similar to the feeling I get when I ponder whether Abbey will grow up and like her bedroom.

What if she likes metalic leopard print?  What if her heart resonates to the sheen of neon green?  Is it possible that any color brighter than oatmeal will be offensive to her eyes?

These are the thoughts you have when you are working on a nursery . . . will she grow up to like it . . . or hate it?

What if she has “bad” taste?

The jury is still out, but maybe a video sneak attack will bring about some resolution to this parental dilemma:

Consider me encouraged – for now.

. . . . . . .

How would you describe your personal sense of style?

Feel free to talk fashion, interior design, cars, tree forts, martial art of preference, whatever.

dad’s eyeball plus needle . . . times four

I considered including a real picture of a real eyeball with a real needle inserted through the membrane – but I decided against it.

. . . . . .

About a year ago Lee’s dad woke up one morning with his vision slightly blurred in one eye.

He thought it would go away.

It did not.

So he went to the eye doctor, who informed him that he had a detached retina and he would have to undergo surgery.

He did.

The surgery involved the use of a needle to remove the juice (that’s a medical term) out of his eyeball, allowing the doctor to use a laser to reattach the retina, and then replacing the juice with some kind of gas.

The recovery involved my dad spending 5 days laying, sitting, and (only very rarely) standing with his face looking at the ground.

The surgery was bad, but he said the recovery was worse.

. . . . . .

Then the retina pulled away again because scar tissue formed.

So he had surgery again, this time having his eyeball filled with silicon.

. . . . . .

Then the retina pulled away again.

So he had surgery again.

And he walked around for 5 months with a silicon jelly filled eyeball, playing golf, driving to work. meeting his granddaughter, being a great husband and father.

. . . . . .

Then the retina pulled away again.

So he is having surgery again . . . today.

He may be done with the surgery as I write this, I don’t know for sure.

What I did know is that my dad said it was likely he would never see out of his left eye again . . . that his doctor seemed to indicate that they had to get the retina re-attached so that he could keep the eye.

. . . . . .

Needless to say, this has been hard on my dad (and my mom), and we would all appreciate your prayers that the surgery would go well and the retina would remain attached.

Pray that he would retain vision in his eye, perhaps even be able to see with normal clarity.

Crazier things have happened.  God has done crazier things – after all, didn’t Jesus rub spitty mud in a man’s eye and turn blindness into sight?

. . . . . .

Have you ever been plagued by an ailment that wouldn’t go away, only to eventually learn that God was using it to teach you a lesson?

If so, what did you learn and how does that lesson affect your life?

questions, questions, they return

So a friend of mine harassed me over dinner last by turning to my wife and saying, “Beth, the only time I read your blog anymore is when you post on it.’

He looked mischieviously at me, trying to elicit a response.

So gave him a dirty look – playing along with his joke.

To which he snidely commented, “I stopped reading Lee’s posts when he stopped including questions at the end of what he had to say.”

Okay, the people get what the people want . . . and if Mike Evans (pictured below) represents the people (and he always has), then I will answer their demands.

mike evans, ultimate leapfrogger.

. . . . . .

What are the contributing factors that make you want to leave a comment answering a question at the end of a blog post?

Would you consider yourself a “blog post commenter” or a “blog post observer”?

‘watchmen’, my first graphic novel

I didn’t really get into comic books when I was little – they just didn’t grab my attention.

As it turns out, I didn’t have any trouble getting hooked by ‘Watchmen’ – though I did have a hard time putting it down.

A warning: if you are a big fan of  heroic good guys, sinister bad guys, and a story plot lines that end with a tidy moral resolution, this is not your kind of book.

Take a look at Alan Moore’s photo on the back cover of the novel and you will quickly realize that ‘Watchmen’ is not going to be your typical predictable storyline.  If you look at the picture and think “evil super-genius” you may not be too far from the truth.

Alan Moore is an absolute genius – a master of his trade.  As a self-styled literature buff and a newcomer to the graphic novel genre, I was blown away by the brilliance of Moore’s storytelling ability, craftsmanship of compelling characters, and the shear power of this man’s words.

The story of the Watchmen is told through comic book style graphic storyboarding brilliantly interspliced with criminal dossiers, biographical exposes, business papers snagged from the desks of corrupt businessmen, and other “non-graphic” texts that are alluded to in the narrative.

Moore weaves diverse and unexpected genres, a multiplicity of plotlines, and compelling philosophical discourse into a cohesive story that unfolds before you, well, with the morbid beauty of a mushroom cloud.

It’s incredible.  It’s genius. It’s brilliant. It’s really good.  But there is nothing good about it.

But its not bad either – what it is, from beginning to end, is fundamentally amoral.

‘Watchmen’ is incredible because of Moore’s ability to take the Spirit of our Age, the prevalence of pluralistic “your good and my good don’t have to be the same” thinking of Western postmodernism, to its ultimate logical conclusion.

And that, if your conscience can bear it, is what makes ‘Watchmen’ worth reading – and worth my writing about a couple more times.

. . . . . .

Check out Watchmen at Amazon.

how far would you go (for a hunk of cheese)?

Cheese.

Evidently, the people of Gloucester, England will do just about anything to get their hands on it.

Case in point, the Cooper Hill Race.

“Hill” might be a misnomer – here is a photo of the action:

© Will De Freitas

The goal?  Catch a downward bouncing, rolling wheel of curdled death and cross the white line at the bottom of the “hill”

The prize?  The cheese.

The payoff?  Well, the guy who is upside down in the photo joined many of his other cheese-chasing companions in the emergency room of the Gloucester Hospital.

How is it that people will risk life and limb sprinting after a cylindrical dairy product but they won’t risk their lives for the sake of the glorious life consuming truth of the gospel.

What are you chasing after?

Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

. . . . . . .

Thanks to The Big Picture for introducing me to the craziness of Cooper Hill Cheeserolling.

pawpaw update

My grandfather’s surgery went well this past Sunday morning.

They ended up doing a laproscopic appendectomy in which they punched three small holes in his abdomen, inserted a camera and the necessary surgical tools, and removed the appendix . . . all within 45 minutes.

He is recovering well, though there were some unexpected complications that are best left undisclosed.

The good news is that the surgery went well and Pawpaw was discharged from the hospital this morning.

The bad news is that he is about 5 hours from home and will have to ride in a car for 5 hours, only a couple days after pretty serious surgery.

. . . . . . .

Please pray for the car ride and for the complications hinted at above to go away.

Thanks friends.

You can be expecting photo and video of our trip to Kingwood in the days to come . . . of special interest is Beth’s reaction to a massive Texas cockroach – caught on tape.

pray for lee’s pawpaw

Pawpaw (don leach), Abbey, Nana (sue leach)

Lee here.

Yesterday my family came to spend the weekend with us at Beth’s family’s home in Kingwood, Texas (outside of Houston).

The most exciting prospect abot their visit was that my grandparents were going to meet their great granddaughter, in person, for the very first time.

It was awesome, a really exciting and enjoyable time with the family.  There was a  lot of laughter and joy surrounding sweet little Abbey and her rosy disposition.

This morning is another story, however.

While Abbey’s sweet disposition remained the same, my grandfather started to feel sick to his stomach and developed an internal pain in his lower abdomen.

I took him to the La Quinta to sleep off the sickness (he didn’t mention the internal pain) and – as my parents went to check up on him this afternoon – his pain only became worse.

They took him to Kingwood Hospital where they have decided to make him drink some terrible liquid, stick him in a big whirring tube, and run a CT scan to try to figure out what is going on.

There are a lot of questions with few, if any, answers.

What I do know is that my grandpa is a tough old man who said that he was at about a 7.5 on a pain scale of 10 – and that means something coming from him.

. . . . . . .

Pray for him please.  I love him and want him to get better fast so he can enjoy time with Abbey before we have to leave to head back to West Tennessee.

. . . . . . .

UPDATE:

Pawpaw has appendicitis and will be having his appendix removed sometime tonight or first thing in the morning – as soon as the surgeon on call can get in to do the surgery.

Pray that his appendix wouldn’t burst and that the surgeon would be able to get in and get the appendix out, as soon as possible.

Pray for Pawpaw, that the surgery would go well and he would recover quickly.

back in the game: first date

we are back in the game.

tonight was the first time since Abbey was born that Beth and I were able to go out on a date without a sleeping baby in tow.

it is funny that Abbey’s absence made us want to talk about her more than we do when she is sitting in the chair besides us.

we hit up the Cheesecake Factory in the Woodlands, Tx while Beth’s parents endured one of the greatest curses of grand-parenting (from what I hear) – cuddling, snuggling, playing, and smiling at a content and happy 3 month old baby.

i am not quite sure how they held it together for the five hours that we were gone, but they somehow managed.

. . . . . .

in all seriousness, thanks to Mama K and Papa K for taking care of Abbey and telling us to go have a night of fun to celebrate 4 years of happy happy marriage.

more importantly, thank God for Mama K and Papa K for the incredible blessing they have given to me (Lee) by birthing, loving, and raising this incredible and delightful woman to whom I have been married to for these past 4 years.

i am a blessed man, indeed.

. . . . . . .

Stay tuned for a “Abbey’s 3 Months” post . . . but I may need your help in encouraging Beth to sit down and write it.

english literature and candid camera

If you know Lee, you know that he absolutely loves books and loves reading.

If you really know Lee, you know that somewhere in the middle of seminary the joy of losing myself in a great book gave way to the anxiety of “I-must-know-everything-about-the-contents-of-this-book-or-else” choking out my ability to really enjoy reading.

Let me be clear – I am not blaming seminary, its not seminary’s fault.

It’s my own fault (but I can go more into that in a later post).

If you really really know Lee you know that I have embarked on a personal mission to remind myself why I love reading by diving into a long list of books that I have: 1) read before and absolutely loved, and 2) always really really really wanted to read.

So I picked up Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and started reading yesterday.

I should be done tonight.

That’s a good sign.

Another good sign – how pleased Abbey was to just sit with me while I read for about an hour this afternoon.

She was rivited:

. . . . . .

Right after I shot this photo, my sweet and lovely bride sat down to check out some fabric samples at Etsy.com.

Photo Booth was still open, so she decided to take a quick silly photo.

Fortunately for you and I, it was on the video setting . . . and an unprompted and unexpected pose-off ensued:

In this case, the ‘law of unintended consequences’ resulted in blog gold.

My girls are the best!

abbey marks her territory

When Abbey was about a 5 weeks old, Lee’s mom came to Jackson to visit and get her “grandbaby fix” for the month.

One of the most fantastically special moments of the trip was when Mom, the seasoned baby-raiser, stepped to the foot of the changing table and quickly found her left arm covered with Abbey poop.

We are talking about a projectile fecal explosion.

Consider the first grandma marked.

. . . . . . .

Fast-forward nearly two months.

Abbey, always looking to advance in her personal goals, added grandma number two onto her list of “marked grannies.”

We have never been so proud:

. . . . . . .

Stay tuned for photographic evidence of actual Abbey poop on the floor of the church gymnasium.

I know you are excited!