Heeeeerrrr's Johnny!

In recent years, I have noticed that I am more prone to suffering from cabin fever than I used to be. I become very moody and restless. I become depressed. I stay up all night talking to imaginary bartenders. I have yet to grab an axe and attempt to butcher my family, but Alex has been known to curl his finger and say "Redrum" in a very unsettling voice just when I'm feeling particularly "off."

Last night, at about two in the morning, I think I finally came to understand the cause of my "condition." Certainly being a struggling writer cooped up with his family in a house miles from civilization in the dead of winter may contribute to my unbalanced state, but that is not the real culprit. The fact is that as a "stay-at-home" dad, I have no life outside of this house. My beautiful spouse says, "So go into town and do something" whenever I complain about going stir crazy after a prolonged spell of not venturing out. That's nice of her to offer me a hall pass, but it doesn't really change the reality that I have no life outside of these four walls. I explain to her that she is out of the house interacting with adults upwards of 50 hours per week. I am lucky if I am away from our domicile five hours per week. Prisoners benefitting from weekend furloughs spend more time in the real world than me.

Don't get me wrong: I love being a full-time parent. I enjoy being able to spent so much time with my kids. However, I am beginning to think it is unhealthy to spend ALL of my time with my kids. Sure, we drop the boys off at Grandma's house once in a while so Mom & Dad can have a little reprieve, but that doesn't come close to giving me the feeling of having a life outside of the home. Wintertime just compounds the problem. We live a half hour from town (Ashland doesn't count) down a mile and a half of snow covered gravel roads. Our house is tucked into ten acres of woods, completely hidden from view of the outside world. Maybe it is best to keep a Naughton boy hidden from the outside world, but nevertheless--when it is cold outside, when my hiking trails are too snowy or muddy to traverse, when gas costs $3.00/gallon and my gas-guzzling truck's four-wheel-drive is making a hideous grinding, metallic sound when it's engaged--Travis starts getting a little twitchy.

The solution? Bethany thinks everything will be better next fall when all three kids are in school. I should be able to get out and do my own thing for at least three hours a day while Truman is in his half-day preschool. I think she may be right. But between now and then, I need to make more meaningful forays out into the world. I feel some road trips coming on. If you hear an unexpected knock on your door at some ungodly hour in the near future, don't shoot! And don't call the cops. (Unless I have Bill Herrin with me.)

Blog Daddy's Sports Roundup

Mizzou football head coach Gary Pinkel was approached by the University of Michigan in hopes that he could be persuaded to interview for their "coveted" job vacancy. He declined. Once considered to be one of the most prestigious coaching positions in all of football, it seems that Michigan's mystique is wearing off. Stanford head coach and Michigan alumnus Jim Harbaugh spurned their advances. LSU head coach and former Michigan assistant Les Miles said "no thanks" to their offer. Now we learn that the Big 10 powerhouse program couldn't even persuade Pinkel, head coach of a second tier Big 12 program, to join the dark side. These are dark days in Michigan indeed. Perhaps one day soon, we won't have to see Missouri natives wearing blue hats embossed with the Michigan "M" anymore. Maybe the Missouri "M" will be the preferred "M" of college football fan merchandise from now on. Dare I dream?

Auburn quarterback, Heisman Trophy winner, and National Champion Cam Newton gave his father Cecil a warm embrace on the field after the big game Monday night. Big deal, right? According to some folks (especially Auburn administrators) it is a big deal--considering the fact that Dad agreed not to attend the game as a result of an NCAA investigation that concluded he had tried to extract nearly $200,000 from Mississippi State in exchange for his son's commitment to play there. Since no one has shown that he tried the same tactic with Auburn or that his son even knew about the pay-for-play proposition, Cam was allowed to continue playing for the Tigers, but Cecil was effectively banned from being near the program. Yet there he was at the game anyway, apparently thumbing his nose at his son's school and their wishes to distance themselves from the controversy. Should he be punished for this appearance? Should he be scolded for not staying at home to watch the big game on TV? Or should he be applauded for supporting his son despite how uncomfortable it made school officials? I simply cannot blame a father for being there for his child's big moments. In fact, I commend Cecil Newton for being in the stands that night. His son was playing in the biggest game of his young life. That's precisely when Cam needed his dad's support the most, and Cecil made sure not to disappoint his son again. As parents, we all make mistakes. Cecil made a big one when he tried to cash in on his son's talents. But bolstering his son's confidence by being there for him at the game was not a mistake. It was the right thing to do. I wonder how many players at the game that night looked into the stands and didn't see a proud father beaming back at them. Too many, of that I am certain.

WE'RE DEBT FREE!!!

In 2001, Bethany and I each owed over $15,000 in student loans. We owed a monthly payment of $400 for a brand new truck we foolishly purchased. We owed thousands of dollars on at least two credit cards. And we owed well over $100,000 on our home loan. Plus interest. Let's review:



$30,000 in student loans

$25,000 auto loan

$5,000 credit card debt

$110,000 balance on home loan

=approximately $170,000 of debt PLUS interest



Today: We're debt free. Here's how we did it. First and foremost, we followed the advice of financial guru Dave Ramsey. We obeyed every step of his plan called "The Total Money Makeover." We set up a monthly budget, paid cash for everything, and bought nothing on credit (if you don't have the cash, you don't buy it.) We worked on our "debt snowball" paying the smallest debts first, then rolling the extra money into the next smallest and so on. We sold the expensive truck and drove cheap vehicles that neared 200,000 miles on their odometers. We went to the movies about once a year. We bought virtually nothing but generic. In short, we lived like no one else, so that later, we could live like no one else.



Eventually, we paid off over $110,000 in debt by following Dave's plan. Bear in mind that we also adopted the cutest boy in China during this decade of no-decadence. (International adoptions are not cheap, but when you eliminate debt, you find the money for things that really matter.) Also worth noting, I only worked part-time for two of those years and not at all for two more. So our mountain of debt was removed with the help of only one full-time income for nearly half the decade.



With only four years of house payments remaining (taking only 14 years to pay for what was originally a 30 year mortgage), we were well on our way to paying off the house and being completely debt-free. But last month, our hard work and years of sacrifice were rewarded by a gift from Bethany's dad. After his untimely death two years ago, his estate was eventually divided among his six children and just yesterday the Naughton family was able to use Bethany's share to pay off the balance of our mortgage. I am sure Bill Lemon is smiling down upon us, proud to have helped his children in this way.



Another silver lining to the dark cloud of Bill's passing is that we will be able to fully fund the adoption of our little girl this spring with the money we would have spent on house payments. Our greatest regret is that he was never able to meet Truman or our little girl.



So there you have it. Even if we had never received a dime from Bethany's dad, we would have erased over $170,000 of debt plus interest by living within our means. By buying only what we needed. By saving every penny. By living simply. Oh, and did I mention we were able to start college funds for the boys and retirement accounts for us while this Total Money Makeover took place? Well, we did. I hope I don't sound like I'm bragging. I only wish to inspire others to free themselves from the bonds of indebtedness like we did. I assure you that it is worth every bit of sacrifice along the way. I'm only 39 years old and as I look around me, I know that everything I see around me--ten wooded acres, a four bedroom house, a minivan, a truck, a classic car, a party porch, a beautiful family--is all mine. That's a damn good feeling.

Happy New Year

As most of you know, I am not shy about writing about the various goings-on in my mind and my daily life. The number one reader response to the status updates I post on facebook is "TMI!" (too much information). So I am guilty of the occasional overshare. You know you like it. It's why you keep coming back to my blog or my facebook page for more. But when it came time to post my yearly New Year's resolutions, I decided to try something different. I am going to keep my list to myself. Nothing on the list is particularly embarrassing or anything like that, (how could a guy that writes about making snow angels in the nude be embarrassed about anything?) but I have decided that my personal goals for self-improvement should remain personal. That's all.

One resolution I will make public is the promise to write more this year. I kind of fizzled out last year and fell two chapters short of completing the book I have been writing. I will finish it soon and then I will endeavor to write several others throughout the year that were inspired while writing the current story. From one book, seven or eight others may spring to life. Stay tuned for more updates as the year rolls along. Also, check my blog often as I plan to post notes to it more frequently this year. I hope that in April or May I can start blogging about our second trip to China to adopt our little girl Tian Tian. You won't want to miss that.

I hope 2011 is good to you. Perhaps I can make it slightly more entertaining with my creative contributions. If you promise to keep reading, I'll keep writing. It's what I do. God knows I'm not gonna go out and get a job or anything. Who does that?

13 Months o' Music

After attending the fantastic performance of world-famous bluesman Robert Cray last evening at Jesse Hall on the MU campus, I stopped to reflect upon the incredible series of shows I've been lucky enough to see in the past year or so. It started last fall with a show at the Blue Note featuring singer/songwriters Robert Earl Keene and Todd Snyder. Then at the Roots'n' Blues festival in Columbia, I got to see blues legend Booker T and rockabilly phenom Junior Brown.

This past spring, Bethany scored tickets to see the greatest blues singer of all time: Mr. B.B. King at Jesse Hall. At this year's Roots 'n'Blues, I took Alex to his first concert to see Anders Osborne, a New Orleans-based blues guitarist whom I had seen several years eariler in St. Louis (which I ranked at that time as the single best concert I had ever been to.)

Last night's show took the cake though. On Friday, Bethany received an email offer for half-price tickets to see Robert Cray. We jumped at the chance and when we arrived at the ticket window to redeem our coupon one-half hour prior to the start of the show, we nabbed two tickets in the center section--in the fourth row! And the blues legend did not disappoint.

If you are unfamiliar with any of the artists I just mentioned, do yourself a favor and check them out. All have at least a little bit of the blues in them. A couple have a lot. A couple have an alternative country twang. A couple have some jazzy undertones. All are incredible musicians and entertainers.

CDs are great, iPods are pretty neat, but watching a live show featuring your favorite artist can't be beat. So take out your earbuds, get together with a couple buds, have a few Buds, and go see a concert. You'll be glad you did.