The first in hopefully a series of articles about my life with my new son Patrick who came into our world on September 17, 2004

And so it begins, just about a week before Patrick was born I found out why my wife got me a brand new set of mechanics tools and a fine looking black Craftsman Tool Chest and Storage Cabinet last year for Christmas....to build stuff for my son. Not because I might have aspirations of one day finally learning how to change the oil in my own vehicles at worst or becoming the world's top mechanic at best...pipe dream..., just because I am going to be spending the next 20 years of my life building stuff for my son.

About a week before Patrick, who came three weeks early, arrived, my wife came home from her baby shower followed by a tractor trailer busting at the seams with brand new baby furniture, swings, changing tables, carseats, diaper disposers and all kinds of imagineable and unimagineable stuff and gadgets and widgets and whatnots all with the warning, on the box, in small print "Some Assemble Required by Dad". A whole friggin' lot of assemble required by Dad along with the ability to decipher piss-poorly written directions and really awful diagrams is more closer to the truth. Someone needs to open a store for fathers that carries this kind of stuff called "No Assemble Required Ever Baby and Kid Stuff". It will be a great hit, I'm sure of it.

So today after two weeks or so of feeling like I was living on Henry Ford's assembly line, drinking 6 pots of coffee a day, trying to stay awake day and night, knuckles scraped and bandaged and scraped and bandaged again, 23 phone calls to manufacturers for assistance on obtaining missing parts, missing instructions, missing braincells, I've finally got everything together, covering every square inch of open floor space in my living room and middle room. Now I've only got to figure out how it's all supposed to fit upstairs in Patrick's room before I go back to work next week and how many trips to the dump I've got to make, in my F150, with all the packing material and empty boxes....I'm guessing at least a good dozen.