CKT’s school was cancelled today due to weather, so he came to school with me. He stayed in my office during class, playing with the iPad and drawing on my whiteboard.

I met with both of my classes today for the first time. I think I have a group of good students this semester. I did make a mistake in class today, though: I confused Maurice Lamarche with Phil Lamarr.

This evening I worked with my graduate advisee on his capstone project, then took CKT out for dinner. In a few minutes I will read a little more from The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Tomorrow I plan to work on my self-evaluation and my alumni talk.

The semester begins tomorrow. Today I was in my office fielding last-minute course change requests, hosting meetings, and attending a training a training session. I also watched a drone fly outside my window.

I worked on my alumni talk a little this morning, too. It’s coming together nicely, and I’m excited about the presentation.

I ran the Joe Davis Memorial Resolution Run 5k this morning in freezing temperatures. The race commemorates a young man who died from substance abuse and addition, and raises money for substance abuse treatment. After the race I told AMKT that if she were to lose me at a young age I would be honored if she sponsored a 5k race in my memory. The funds could benefit mental health treatment centers.

I ran a personal best: 9:12/mile. That’s a relatively slow time for runners, but a very good time for lazy people.

This afternoon I went consignment shopping with AMKT and my mother-in-law. I bought a 1985 book titled The Seduction of Christianity. The writers argue that the Christian faith is being transformed by unbiblical and anti-Christian New Age practices. I’m curious if there is any overlap between fundamentalist Christian fears of New Age beliefs and what I’m calling the “mediatization” of Christianity in one of my manuscripts-in-progress.

Last night I laid in bed thinking about my goals. I pretty much have three: to be an accomplished scholar (e.g., writing, research); to be an accomplished academic (e.g., teaching, university service); and to be a good father. I am confident that I could manage to do two of those well, but if I try to do all three well I’ll end up doing them all half-ass. I’m not sure I have the capacity to do all three goals equally well, even though each of them are equally important to me. My time, patience and strength are finite–my ambitions are infinite. Well, that’s not true. I only have three primary ambitions. But still.

We have no hot water right now. The hot water heater stopped working this morning sometime after AMKT’s shower but before my shower. That’s a little TOO convenient, if you ask me.
I’ve completed my syllabi for the semester, pending approval from my department chair. I’ve also started working on my 2014 self-evaluation, and drafted some more of my alumni talk for the end of the month.
I have a 5k scheduled for Saturday morning. I did my last training run tonight, but my shin began hurting after about half a mile. I didn’t want to risk hurting my leg further, so I did about thirty minutes on the elliptical. I still plan to run the race Saturday morning, but we’ll see if my leg starts to hurt again before then.

Today the family Trammell returned to a normal schedule. CKT and EJT went back to school, and I went to the office for the first time in about six days. I think that’s the longest stretch I’ve gone without going to the office without being out-of-town. I began composing my syllabi for the spring semester, and I reviewed the ACEJMC pre-visit report.

This afternoon I took CKT to his piano lesson. During the lesson I sat in the car and drafted a few paragraphs for a presentation I’m giving at the end of the month to alumni. Then CKT and I went out to eat. I wanted to make sure I got some good father-son time with him after his bad night yesterday.

Tonight CKT read four books to EJT before bed.

CKT has been asking me if he can wash dishes. I’ve said that he is too young to do them, which only made him want to wash dishes even more. Today I “gave in” and let him rinse the plates and spoons while I filled the dishwasher. If this keeps up, he’ll be doing all of our dishes by the end of the week.

He had a pretty poor evening. He was playing with his LEGOs in the playroom with EJT right before bed. EJT did something to the LEGOs CKT didn’t like, though, and he got upset. I recommended that CKT move his LEGOs to his room so he could play with them alone. (I tell him this a lot.) He put on his pajamas and came back into the playroom to read with me before going to bed, and he told me he was upset because he was thinking about how his life would be better if EJT was not around. About an hour later, after he had been asleep for about thirty minutes, AMKT heard him crying in his room. CKT told her he had a dream that she, his brother and I didn’t love him anymore.

It is hard to be seven-years-old. You are old enough to begin to articulate how the world works, but too young to understand it or do anything about it. It’s also hard being thirty-eight-years-old. I can feel my son’s little boy grief, but I cannot take it away.

The entire family is together at home again. AMKT and I brought the boys home this afternoon, and they were excited to see the new playroom. So far, they have kept their toys contained. Mission: accomplished.

Before we came home we ate lunch with the in-laws at a diner in Mt. Holly, North Carolina. While we were eating I draped my left arm over a chair near CKT. He saw that as an opportunity to be cute, and tickled me in the armpit. CKT did not know how much I despise being tickled in the armpit, and my response surprised him. It surprised me, too. I said rather assertively, “Whoa. Don’t you ever do that to me or anyone else ever again. Do you understand?” He froze a little, said he was sorry, then buried his head in his arms on the table to softly cry. I let him cry for a minute or two while rubbing his back. Then I told him that I overreacted, and that I was sorry for overreacting, but I did not like being tickled in the armpit. He said he was sorry, too, and that he forgave me for overreacting. I’m glad he forgave me, but I know this was an incident he’ll remember for the rest of his life. It’ll be that moment when he realized he could raise the ire of his father by doing something innocuous.

We picked up the boys this afternoon from spending a week at my parents’ house. We’ve had them back for four hours now. I’m already in exhausted.

Fifteen years ago I went to a New Year’s Eve party where I reconnected with AMKT. Of course, she was AMK that night. We talked all night, then rang in the new year, then talked all morning. The next day we had breakfast together. A week later we went out on a date. Eight months later we got married.

Fifteen years later AMKT and I spent New Year’s Eve at IKEA buying cabinets for the kids’ playroom.

I did a little reorganizing today. I had the television set moved from the living room to the playroom. The plan is to convince the children to watch TV in the playroom in the hopes that they will consolidate their clutter in that room. As they get older the playroom will become a den.

I also cleaned the living room and the study a little. And I worked a little on the ACEJMC self study. And I printed out the framework for my manuscript in progress for me to edit tomorrow.