Sanger, TX had a population of 2,224 people when we first moved there in 1983. There was only 1 gas station, a Dairy Queen and a small grocery store called “Burrus” which was named after it’s owner Sam Burrus. Just north of Denton, Sanger was so small that many people hardly noticed as they traveled down I-35 on their way to Gainesville or Oklahoma.

There were very few businesses in the town, but when my sisters and I got older we seemed to work at all of them.  My oldest sister worked at Burrus when she turned 16. Our middle sister worked at a local daycare and cleaned the only newspaper office in town - the Sanger Courier.

Eventually my middle sister no longer wanted to clean the newspaper office and I took over for her with very little fanfare. It was like she just handed me the rag and the bottle of Old English furniture polish and I immediately went to work dusting  the layout tables and desks.

The Lemmons’ family was well-known around the town and in my eyes they were rich. They lived in a house that overlooked a huge field and all the windows in the house were huge picture windows that faced South. I did such a good job cleaning the newspaper offices that they wanted me to clean their house too.

“All of the cleaning supplies are under the bathroom cabinets, I like to take this Lysol and spray around the toilet for whenever Blake misses.”

Blake was their youngest and only son. He drive a white Camaro I-ROC Z that happened to be the best looking sports car in town. Blake could have easily been a Baldwin with his Ivy League good looks and his rakish smile.  I had to clean his bathroom, but I didn’t have to clean his bedroom.

I worked hard for the Lemmons’ and eventually I started labeling newspapers for them and doing other odd jobs around the house. I was a hard worker and Mr. Lemmons’ continued to give me work to do off and on for 6 years.

Everything I did for the Lemmon’s was pretty basic manual labor. Blake picked up on the fact that I was strong and that if he used phrases like, “Let’s see if you can carry that dresser onto the U-Haul by yourself” that I would actually try to do it just to impress him.

That is what I learned most working for the Lemmons’ - how to impress people with my strength and speed, but I also learned the true meaning of the word Envy.

Blake had everything, a nice house, a beautiful car, good looks, cool friends. When he moved in with 2 other guys they got a house close to the lake and drank beer and had a pool table. Neon Bud Light signs hung on the walls of their house and there was a large boat parked outside.

Blake was known to be an excellent skier and he dated pretty girls and I had to clean his bathroom. As hard as I tried not to let it bother me, it did. The Lemmons’ family was in a different class. They drove Mercedes and wore Polo. Their refrigerator was full of food and they had an entire walk-in cupboard full of food. Their house was fascinating, he living room filled with plants and expensive furniture and a cool mint green carpet that was thick and plush and clean. Compared to the two-bedroom trailer that I was living in it was a palace and it was then that seeds of materialism became planted deep within me.

I learned fast how to make money. By the time I was 24 I was making close to 55,000 dollars and I had nice Jeep Grand Cherokee and an expensive apartment. I made more money than all of my friends. I had a nicer car than my parents. Unfortunately, it took me many years to realize that no matter how much you gussy up the outside, it is the inside that matters.

When I look back on those crucial teen years I realize that what I envied most about Blake was his confidence and the fact that he seemed to be perfectly secure in himself. This is what I envied most… and there are times I still envy him that.

• That trampoline stuff in the Olympics can’t be as hard as a game of Crack the Egg. #
• If I was in the Olympics I would totally sport a bluetooth headset while running my 200 meters. #
• Man, this chocolate mint Clif bar is fantastic! #
• Reading the Bible while listening to the Black-Eyed Peas… next I plan to attend church as a clown. I love the juxtaposition. #
• I could really go for a big hamburger right about now! #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

When I tell people that I am training to be a football player they always ask, “Well, are you training?”

I wish that you could follow me around for a couple of days and see what my life is like. I wake up and start working immediately, then I take lunch which is usally me eating alone and reading a Wilbur Smith or Dean Koontz novel.

When I get off work I like to relax for about 30 minutes after I change into my workout clothes. I like to eat before working out and so I find some food in the house or I go and pick somehting up. I then go to the gym. If I ride my bike to the gym then I don’t do cardio at the gym, I just lift until my arms hurt - until the pain in my rotator cuffs is so unbearable that I have to hug myself to deal with the pain. I do curls and back exercises until exhaustion. When I try to do one more rep of anything my triceps, biceps or back muscles immediately Charlie Horse and I know it’s time to stop.

In the morning I eat Kashi high-protein, high-fiber cereal. I drink 50 grams of a low-carb protien drink. I take fish-oil tablets that are supposed to help the joints. At night I drink a Nitric Oxide beverage that tastes like diet fruit punch cough syrup called Nano Vapor.

What’s in naNO Vapor?

naNO Vapor™ delivers clinically advanced anabolic growth factors, a unique neuro-amplifying matrix, cutting-edge thermogenic compounds, potent cell volumizing complexes, and a never-before-seen combination of vasodilators for a powerful, multi-angled approach to musclebuilding.

This is only the beginning. I’ve got so many more things to incorporate into my overall training plan, but I don’t want to over-do it. What I’ve learned from years of failure and success is that trying to do too much at the beginning is a sure way to incur severe burnout and I need to make this program work for me unlike any other program in the past.

One thing I also must mention - the Fish Oil Joint pills are working fantastic. After just a few days use I already feel less pain in my elbows and heels. I should have done this a long time ago, but better late than never!

My sister sat proudly on my real dad’s shoulders. She had told him that her feet were hurting her and so he picked her up and carried her. After a while my feet hurt too and I complained non-stop. “My feet hurt so baaaad…” I whined and whined.

Our day finally ended and I remember my read dad pulling his belt off and whipping me for complaining so much. It was the first and only time that he ever spanked me. I couldn’t believe it. I was so upset, not because of the spanking, but because he never picked me up and carried me. My feet did hurt, but more than that I wanted his attention, the attention that he gave my middle sister doing very little to hide the fact that she was his favorite.

Over the years my real father continued to wound me with his lack of attention. He came in and out of our lives doing more harm than good, making promises that he rarely kept, inflicting wounds on me that he couldn’t possibly begin to fathom.

At 17 my real father wanted to take me to dinner for my birthday. He hadn’t called all year, hadn’t visited, but suddenly he must have wanted to play the father role and so he had given me a call. By this point I had built up some resentment towards him and I actually took a bit of pleasure in telling him that my step-dad was taking me to dinner that night and “could we do it another time?”  He responded somewhat tersely, “Well, call me when you have time.”

I didn’t call for 10 years.

When I turned 27 I thought that I had forgiven my real father for his transgressions. I told myself that people make mistakes, they often don’t understand what they are doing to someone. I made excuses for him. When my sister called me and said that he wanted to get together for dinner I said “Sure.” “Really?!” She was surprised and delighted. Unlike me she had kept up with him all these years. They had dinner monthly and she bought him birthday presents.

We went to dinner and made small talk. There were no big speeches, we just acted like everything was fine. We didn’t mentiont the fact that he had missed out on my entire life. We ate and at the end of the meal I hugged him and said, “I love you” - but I wasn’t really sure if I did.

I’ve always been an extremely forgiving person. I can normally let things go, especially if someone apologizes. However, the wounds my real father has inflicted on me are wounds that I deal with every single day of my life. It’s like waking up with a gaping hole in your side and trying to forget that it isn’t there or who caused it. My wounds are a constant reminder of how desperate I was to be loved by him, desperate to understand why he wasn’t around and why he didn’t want to be a part of my life.

Now I’m desperate to forgive him so I can be rid of the pain, but the fact that he doesn’t call me still burns a little. The idea that my own father isn’t desperate to be with me stings because if I had a son there isn’t anything in this world that could stop me from being with him.

• Started my morning with some serious Krumpin’. #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• Usain Bolt just won gold and made it look easy!! #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Okay, I finally got the site up and running, but I still have so much work to do. By looking at this simple design, you wouldn’t think that i spend around 20+ hours on it. I tried so many colors for the fonts and the stripes and finally settled on these and I’m quite happy with it.

www.brushandbarrel.com - the future of painting in the DFW area! haha.

• At Walgreens and these two girls just spent 226.59. ???? #

Powered by Twitter Tools.