this is what "adult" is supposed to feel like?

I'm 24 now and rapidly approaching that lovely day where I am awarded a discount on my auto insurance for having lived 25 years without using too many airbags, am still happily married and continually learning what a dunce I and other husbands are, have two healthy, poop-producing daughters to stare at longingly full of wonderment, and a need for a new driver's license, seeing as how I am no longer a resident of Texas, but rather a squatter at my uncle's house in Tennessee while I scrounge and scratch my way though downtown Nashville in search of gigs on bass .

The aforementioned blurb of a definition is pretty much how I can nutshell myself these days. I used to think that I would have more to say about myself as I got older, but I am slowly coming to understand that as I age "I" become much less prevalent in my little world's stage. Granted, I am here, and "I" am more-or-less a constant player in my world's script, but I am steadily learning that I don't have the lead role.... I like to believe that I am higher up on the pay-totem than the chorus members, but I wouldn't be surprised if they have all figured a way to form some sort of coalition or cooperative to snag some extra bills under the table that I didn't even know to count in the safe...

All that to say, I'm just getting older, and I just don't care as much... about myself... I guess...

I DO care about myself, but not in terms of serving myself or creating a basis upon which to build my self's future edifice, or some other philosophical crap... I'm here to be a husband to my wonderful wife whom I desperately need to readily have my lines prompted so that I don't get hit in the face with a big fat tomato. And I am here to be a father to two girls who, with their current level-of-skills combined, wouldn't be able to open an Advil bottle. I have to teach them things. And I suppose that I have to convince them that some of those things were from my brain, and not just from my wife's or from someone else in my family or little-world's stage who know more than me.

These are all good things, by the way... I've got something figured out that a lot of people never even know exist: I'm not the best/smartest/funniest/purtiest/goodest person I know, but I know how to learn from them, or at least stand next to them and clap first...

What I do know how to be, is a fine supporter. I was a decent offensive lineman, a good little brother, a fair-enough youngest son, and a golf-clappable junior-high trombonist. I'm not a quarterback, or an only son and heir to the British Crown, or a symphony-ready whateveritsacalled.... I am a good husband, and I am a good dad.

And I think I've got at least one foot in the door of being a reliable bass player in Nashville.

You see, I've been in this wonderful, middle-Tennesseean town for about a month now. I left a job in west Texas helping kids find homes and seeing paperwork get filed into black holes of drawers, to come to Nashville to be a bass player. I've held basses and played them on stages around Texas and the southern US for 8 years or so, and I've never considered myself to to be a "bass player" or a "musician."  I guess I do now, because that's how I intend to spend the next 20+ years or so paying for my family to get from one day to the next, and I've already started with a few steady gigs already lined up over the next few weeks.


That's really weird. How many times, before you get married/have kids/"grow up"/get outta college/blahblah do you think "how am I gonna put food on the table, pay rent, keep the lights on, buy new shoes for 3rd and 1st grade girls, pay hospital bills for the first time they break their arm, pay bail for what I do to the first boy who makes them cry, take my wife on dates, and a bunch of other stuff that our parents have done for us and their parents did for them and so on for decades?

I've been letting that little egg sizzle on the back-burner of my cortexes for more than three years. And that delicious little well-cooked poultry diamond has led me here.
To Nashville.
With two basses.
And a guitar.
And an amp.
And a cab.
And one car to share with a hero/teacher/wife.
And two kids' carseats.
And one duffel bag of clothes that fit into one drawer for me.
And (at least) 700 tubs of clothes and toys for the three female Hoopers of my clan.
And a lot of books I haven't read.

I live with my uncle and his family in Franklin, Tennessee, about a 30 minute drive from downtown Nashville. They have been the most wonderful of hosts, and they insist on us staying here long enough for my grandchildren to use the other bedroom.

And I have met some of the most talented, humble, non-drunk or -stupid musicians on the planet, each of who has been completely receptive and helpful.

And I have been blessed enough to be able to move a 2-year-old, a 10-day-old, and a wife of four years(ish) and all our crap we couldn't sell on craigslist in Texas, without a single bump in the road worth mentioning.

Ladies and gentlemen: do not ever feel like you have to take some job you don't want, or like you have to do anything that you don't feel is the absolute best thing for you to do for YOU AND YOURS.

I'm kind-of an idiot, and check me out.... When I fill out W2s, I have what the state and the country recognize as people who depend on me....... and they all let me.... and I do my best.... and nobody has fallen into a wood-chipper yet, so I call this whole "heading a family" thing a success so far.

That's what parenting is all about: keep you kids out of wood chippers.

That's the secret.

you're welcome.


Ill try and do this bloggy blog thing more often, so you guys can have something more to do at work or at 3am.

(There are probably some typos back there.... don't hate me for it, and save your breath. It took me five years to get an English degree, and I've wasted a lot of its knowledge reading stuff and saying "ooo, he has a typo... tisk, tisk..." Typo/grammar/spelling-tisking doesn't do anything, no matter how many boogery tears we frag our monitors, books, magazines and newspapers with.... just smile instead, and drink some coffee.)

-Caleb