Life and times of a father in America

The month of November has been declared the month of Movember. Men are asked to grow mustouches to raise money for prostate cancer awareness. My office has a team doing this, so I shaved mine off in order to participate. Luckily it will grow back.

My father died when I was 10 years old. A few years later my mother remarried Terry Morton. Through many highs and lows in our life we were bitter rivals and eventually friends. We have visited Disneyland and Las Vegas. Together we sang in the church choir, and as a family we traveled and shared our testimony in song at many churches. You can read in my last post a little more, but recently Dad had both his hips replaced. The first one took 2 years to heal due to complications. The second was doing great when he was rushed to the hospital after a fall. Unrelated to the fall he stopped breathing, and shortly after that his heart stopped. Sunday he was declared dead, and this Sunday we are having the memorial service. He had an infection that was unknown that basically poisoned him. He would have died even if he hadn't had fallen. Now my mother is facing the reality that she will probably lose the house. Without Dad's disability she doesn't have enought to pay the m...

Personal update: For those that don't know it, my step-father has been going through an ordeal recently. Over the years he has been a national champion diver, played professional football, been in the Navy, and worked as a fireman. Among the physical problems that have manifested themselves, an x-ray found a broken neck that had healed incorrectly (a broken neck that was never diagnosed or treated), knee surgery, back surgery, and both hips have been replaced. While trim and fit in his youth, he has been well into the obese category for years. Standard lifetime of a hip replacement is 10-15 years, with increased wear and tear with increased weight. One hip has already been replaced twice, the other only once, and now they are both going bad again. The first hip replacement began a little over a year ago, and resulted in problem after problem. I don't remember everything in the correct order but: Staff infection, stabbed in the hip with a dirty needle, kidneys shut down ca...

September 21, 1996 I married Harmony Dawn Walker. That means that yesterday we celebrated our 13th Anniversary. I would love to sit here and brag about surpassing the national average of years married before a divorce. I would to expound on how 13 as a traditionally unlucky number is a significant number to survive. But lets face it, we are not of this world. Our standards for marriage are established by God and listed in the Bible. 13 years is no big deal to remain married, divorce is simply not an option. 13 is a number given to us by the dominions of hell to be afraid of. Any little foothold given to them leads to trouble. I for a foot in for a mile with satan. Happy Anniversary Harmony. I love you, and thank you for always being there and taking care of the kids. Thank you for stepping up and seeking a job. Tonight is your first night on the job, and right now you are training. I am home with the kids and remembering all the wonderful years together. I remember our wed...

I sit and read the Texan Adventure and listen to Noelle try to convince herself that 90 is an acceptable temperature. Yesterday we packed the kids up, I was expecting a warm 80 degrees, and headed to the beach. It was breaking 70 when we left the house. All 4 of us were in t-shirts and shorts. 2 hours of driving, and we hit an overcast Washington coast. The van told us it was 61 degrees. OK, we lost the shorts, and put on pants, but 61 is still warm enough to run around, play in the sand, look for pretty rocks and shells. Evie could not get enough of the water. She just loved how the tide going back out made her dizzy. Sam wasn't into the wet as much, but loved finding shells everywhere. Evie napped for the 2 hour trip back home, where it was back up at 72. Overall a great family outing, and we found a beach we really like.

Noon - I went to lunch as usual. Enjoyed some spaghetti leftovers and an apple. Continued to read my book. 12:30 - the light show began. A little spot of brite light in the middle of my left eye that slowely expands until it becomes a ring of light. Eventually it expands beyond my periphial vision, but that can take a full hour by which time.... Nausea kicks in, leading to tension in the neck and shoulders. And last, but definately not least, the throbbing migraine headache follows, making sure I am as miserable as can be while trying to survive the second half of the day.

Wednesday after work I made my way home, helped Harmony finish loading the van, and hit the road. We arrived in Hillsboro between close to 8 PM, and soon after attempted to put the kids to bed. Thursday morning we woke at around 6 AM, and after breakfast hit the road heading over to Chuck and Shari's house to hook up with Jacob and Talia. A little before 8 we all hit the road. After pretty much 8 hours straight of driving, enjoying sandwiches on the road, we arrived in Sagle , ID. The story goes that the people of Sagle wanted to name their town Eagle, but Eagle, ID already existed. Thursday night, we took about 4 hours packing and organizing the house before collapsing in bed. Friday morning we woke up and headed into town for breakfast and to collect the truck. Jacob and Talia chose to use Budget rentals to save a little money. Technically a commercial truck, a higher bed in back, just not as clean as a U-Haul, and the customer service was lacking a little. But a large...

Last night was a long one for me, and a bad night for Sam. I didn't really look at the clock, but somewhere in the midnight to 1AM area I woke up to realize that Sam was walking around our room. He was shuffling from Harmony's side of the bed past me towards the door. I could hear him sniffling like he was trying really hard not to cry and wake us up. I called him over and confirmed he had a bad dream and started to pick him up to snuggle with me a while. YUCK! Sam was soaked from the middle of his back to his knees. He stumbled along with me to his room, where we found a 2 foot wet spot on his sheets. His pillow was wet, his favorite blanket was wet, his mattress was wet, on top of his pajamas. He was so out of it and miserable he couldn't even begin to take his PJs off without help. After getting him into dry clothes I put him to bed with mom and grabbed some clean sheets and a new pillow. He snuggled a little while as I pulled out the trundle we keep for Aiden...

Let me start by saying that in today's market I am extremely greatful to have a job. That being said, I would just love to tell my boss's bosses to "BACK OFF"! This month has been hectic to the extreme for me. My position is to obtain copies of all rebates being paid to ProBuild for the entire country, evaluate the backup information, and provide an accurate distribution so that this money goes to the correct region and location. A normal month so far has hit around $3M coming in. This month broke $8M coming in. WOW. On top of this, we have a project from the corporate office that is realistically a 4-6 week project by itself, to be completed in 3-4 weeks, on top of processing the rebates for the month. I am not about half way through both projects, with 1 week available to concentrate on each, and beginning to feel overwhelmed. The biggest problem with always managing to succeed at impossible projects is that they will always give you something more challenging...

Not sure what I'm gonna type this time, not much is happening. Or maybe I should say a lot is happening but not much new. Harmony has decided to volunteer with me in the 2's and 3's at church. Since we made the decision to home school I have come to realize that working 40 hours a week will make it difficult for me to be active in my kids education. My solution is to volunteer in their Sunday School class. Beginning with Sam when he was in the nursery, I have given 1 weekend a month in his class. When he moved up to the 2's and 3's class, I did the same. With Evie I am doing the same thing. Well Harmony has repeatedly heard me mention how we just don't have enough adults to help in these preschool classes, and decided to come help me out. We also decided to move Evie from the Nursery up to the 2's and 3's early. As a result we are in that class twice a month, usually as the only two teachers. Potty training is going well. Sam has been using a p...

Mid 2006, Harmony and I invested around $1800 in a washer dryer set. GE front load, high efficiency, and we paid the extra for the bottom drawers. January 2007, I accepted a position in Lacey WA and we moved north. Our brand new washer and dryer set went into storage at Mary's house. November 2008, we move into a manufactured home in Tenino WA and finally have a place where we can use the washer dryer set. August 2009, the drum stops spinning in the washer. Initial diagnosis is that the belt went bad. After driving over and hour to Tacoma to pickup a new belt, it takes almost 2 hours to get home Friday night. After installing the new belt we discover that it still keeps falling off. There is a little extra wiggle in the drum pulley. Harmony sends an email to GE and the response tells us that the drum bearing has gone bad. A $400-$650 repair that we won't be able to afford for a couple of months. My parents head to the bank and deposit some money into our account so I can get t...

Today Harmony called me at work to inform me that our washing machine has stopped spinning. The pump still drains, but no spin to the drum. After getting home I opened up the back to find that the belt has stretched/melted and come off the 2 pulleys. So far the only price we have is if we order directly from GE, $65.00. We have a full week until our next pay check and nothing to spend until then. So we still need to try and find this belt locally, and then we either was dirty underwear (remember Evie is potty training) by hand in the sink, or we put it on a credit card (which means we will are that much farther from every paying it off). Prayers for a little miracle would be greatly appreciated right now.

Back in 2005, back when Sam was just a dream yet to come true, we had a very comfortable living. Facts are simple, Harmony and I both maintained a full time job. The income we evenly split, with Harmony bringing home a little more than me each month. With the insertion of a child, this miracle named Samuel, we made a decision that Harmony needed to stay home and take care of him, at least until kindergarten. So overnite our income was cut in half. Coming up on 4 years since and this decision has shadowed every decision, every move. I do not regret it, both of my kids are amazing, and Harmony is definately making a difference with her hands on care. Fact of the matter is that if we put the kids in day care and Harmony took a full time job again, her entire income would go towards paying child care. We as a family get the best benifit with her being a stay home mom. Now we have the lingering debt we are still trying to pay down, mixed with an increasingly difficult economy, and ev...

That's the score after one day of potty training. We decided to try and potty train Evie. At the same time we chose to take Sam's potty seat away and make him use a big potty. Now he as to stand and pee or sit and hold himself up. Evie has a smaller potty seat just her size. For a partial success Evie gets a sticker on her chart. Sam has to make a complete success, including flushing, and he has to remember to ask us for his sticker. So at the end of day 1, Sunday 8-2-2009, Evie went through 14 pairs of panties, 1 T-shirt, and had 1 official success. Sam is doing really good, but is afraid to stand up, and always seems to pee under the seat and on the back of his pants. Harmony is home feeling under the weather (great timing) and dealing with the bulk of this potty training alone while I work.

Today my boss to us out to lunch and we visiting a local sushi bar. Brand new experience for me, and quite pleasurable. We sat at a bar kinda table that wrapped around the main floor. In front of us was a track that kept circling with little plates of food. Each plate was color coded and the price per plate was set accordingly. Grab what you want and eat. When you are done the server tallies up the plates and charges you. http://sushigoround-lacey.com/ I have had a few tastes of sushi here and there at the all you can eat Chinese buttets, but this was my first complete sushi meal. I liked it and would love to go back.

Yesterday was a good day, yet one I had been dreading at work. My boss is out of town, in Denver at our national corporate offce for the week. This meant that I had to lead the weekly conference call. UGH! I'm a doer not a leader, yet it is part of my job. Rodney made it to the Denver office in time to dial in an listen to the call, but remained mostly in the background. About half way through the call a particularly touchy question came up. I did hear Rodney begin to answer, even as I spoke up. After I had my say I received and email he had sent from this blackberry "good job". This topic we had not had a chance to discuss in detail together so I was speaking from my own personal view point as if it was our teams policy. Thankfully he agreed with what I said. Two more conference calls this week, both tomorrow and Thursday. They look to be quite well attended with a lot of people I haven't had a lot of contact with. Your good thoughts and prayers will be app...

Not really an update, just some thoughts that have been rolling around in my head. Melody recently asked a question in her blog that has started me thinking. Melody asked about "Christians" who don't live up to the written laws in the bible. The response touched on the topics of sin vs uncleanliness and how they apply to us as gentiles. I believe that there are defined sins that apply to everyone. From day one as a Christian we need to know that "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind. And you must love your neighbor as yourself". This is the basis of obedience to God. This is God's law - Love. I also believe that there are personal sins. These are things that God brings to your personal attention, makes known to you that this particular thing is wrong, and you are now held accountable to obey this commandment. Many Christians come from a lifestyle that is not looked upon as hol...

Samuel Dean Malakowski. Samuel was Harmony's choice. She really wanted a biblical name for our son, and something that could be shortened without having to a cutsie name. Dean was my father's first name. It wasn't a requirement to name Sam after my father, but Samuel Dean does have a nice ring to it. Evelyn Rose Malakowski. Evelyn was a group choice. We stuggled for a while to come up with a name we would both like. Evelyn, like Samuel, can be shortened without having to become a cutsie name. Rose is a name I've been in love with for a very long time and Evelyn Rose also rolls off the tongue. Malakowski is my family name, or surname. According to my research Malakowski is a common Polish name which means "Son of Malak." Interestingly enough, we can trace our family directly to the Malak's in Holland. Historical records show that the original Malakowski, Jan Malakowski, came to American from Russia. Because of this there is a family debate as to...

This chapter of my life was, at the time the greatest and most frustrating, and now, one of the most difficult to talk about. In the last post I mentioned a time when I broke a young woman's heart. Where to begin. In 2nd grade, or more accurately, the 2nd grade Sunday School class, I first met Roxanne Stokley. Her mother, a single mom, brought her 2 daughters to church that day. Roxanne is virtually the same age as me. The first time I met her she got sick in class and vomited. I remember me and a friend going into childhood panic mode to get on top of a table to get away from the puddle. The family chose our church, the Hillsboro Assembly of God, as thier home church and due to the age similarity, I spent a lot of time with Roxanne. At least on Sunday's. Wednesday night was "family night". The adults had a little worship service of their own. The girls had Missionettes, kinda a christian girls scouts if you will, and the boys had Royal Rangers, a boy scout like club ...

I'm not a blogger, but I love to follow the blogs of my family. On the other hand I am a Facebook addict. That being said, I'm gonna try to begin updating this blog on occasion. I am married, turning 38 this November, and have two wonderful kids. Samuel turns 4 in January and Evelyn turns 2 in September. They are currently home schooled by their mother for pre-school level learning, and showing amazingly different learning styles. I know Harmony desires to be a stay home mom and continue their home school education, but final judgement is being held off until they are ready for kindergarten. I have been married to Harmony Dawn (Walker) Malakowski since September 21, 1996, and these have been the happiest years of my life that I can remember. Many of my earliest memories all surround my father, Dean Paul Malakowski. He went to be with our Lord in December, 1982. I was 11 years old. My whole life he was sick, struggling with brain tumors. Multiple surgeries to remove th...

To be perfectly honest, I'm only signing up to blog so I can leave comments on family blogs I am following. I spend more time on Facebook.com.