TWEET- A Tale Of Deception And Intrigue.

About a week ago, my daughter was at her mom's house. It had rained heavily the night before, and when they went out in the back yard that morning, they found a baby bird floundering in a half-full bucket of water. Mom got a broom and together, her and Ruby got the poor bird out of the water and left it on the grass. Soon it dried itself off and flew away.

When I heard this story, I couldn't resist running with it- So I sent Ruby this text on her mom's phone:

"HI RUBY. I AM THAT BABY BIRD YOU SAVED. MY NAME IS TWEET. THANK YOU FOR HELPING ME. THAT'S NICE OF YOU TO GET ME OUT OF THE WATER."

Upon receiving the text, Ruby responded with what can only be described as "apeshit joy". So I waited till that night, and decided Tweet needed to send Ruby an email.

FROM: FRANK FENCEPOST (hey, she can't read, it's cool.)

TO: RUBY SUNALI FENCEPOST

 SUBJ: TWEET TWEET!!!

HI RUBY.

IT'S ME, YOUR FRIEND TWEET! I JUST WANTED TO SEND YOU A PICTURE OF ME. SEE, I'M GETTING BIGGER NOW. MY MOM SAYS I'M BIG. I'M 3 YEARS OLD LIKE YOU ARE.

CAN WE BE FRIENDS? I ALWAYS WANTED A FRIEND WHO WAS A REAL GIRL.

PLEASE SEND ME A PICTURE OF YOU.

LOVE, YOUR FRIEND,
TWEET

Of course, Ruby called me after her mom read her this email, flipping out about her new bff Tweet. Since then, there's been several instances of Tweet activity, such as: yesterday, we were sitting on the couch when I said "Ruby, what's that noise?" We went to the back door to look, and sure enough, we saw Tweet out on a power line. We went outside and Ruby said "HI TWEET!" I told her you have to talk to Tweet in bird language, so she said "Cheep cheep!" We also saw Tweet's baby brother and Tweet's mom.

If any readers have suggestions of how I can continue the Saga of Tweet, please email f.fencepost@gmail.com or text me at 405 532 2499.

Thanks for reading!

A Quick and Easy Guide to Babymama Drama.

You know that old saying, "shit happens"? It seems so cliche and trite, until the shit happens to you- until you're the one up to their eyeballs and still sinking, with nobody there to help pull you out.

Divorce, in our case, is often another word for "shit".

Divorce happens. In fact, it happens a lot; in the United States, the divorce rate hovers around 50%. Millions upon millions of people are currently in the middle of what are, in many cases, some particularly nasty divorces- in which, often times, the biggest victims are the children in the family.

Here's what I've learned in the last two years of dealing with the anxiety of divorce, the hell of not seeing my kid for a while, and the long, slow recovery period:

1) DON'T DIVORCE YOUR KIDS. This is number one for a reason. I don't have any proven numbers on this, but just from what I've seen, a good 30-50% of fathers just walk right out of their kids' lives when their wife splits. You are the man of your family and no one can replace you, in fact the courts will back you up when you put forth the effort to take care of your children. It is your right to see your kids, and further, it's your duty. Without your positive influence, your children will certainly have difficulties in life that wouldn't have existed (or wouldn't have been as bad) if you'd been around to help them.

2) DON'T WITHHOLD SUPPORT. Whether you're being ordered by a court to pay child support or not, and whether your children's mother allows you to see them or not, spend the money to take good care of your children. Whether that means you personally buy them the things they need (which you may need to do if you're unsure you can trust your ex to spend child support money on the kids) or you give money directly to your ex, your kids need their father to keep them in diapers, food, and clothes. There is no excuse for doing otherwise. If you have to live in your car to pay support, do it. If you have to sell your car and live under a bridge to pay support, do it. No matter what you do, take care of your kids.

3) DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE. People will tell you again and again- without you even asking their advice- that "the court always favors the woman". This is not true. In recent years, most states have changed the way their courts look at things like joint custody, sole custody being awarded to fathers, etc. The reason it seems like courts so often favor the mother, is because quite honestly, most fathers act the fool- throwing around a bunch of threats, refusing to pay child support until ordered to, etc. This kind of thing will not make you look like a good person to keep in a child's life, and if you act that way, be prepared for a pissed-off judge to dry-hump you without so much as a kiss.

4) COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR EX. Yeah, I know. "Fuck that bitch, she's the one that left." "Communicate with her? Maybe she should have communicated to me that she was fucking all my friends." Sure, those things happen and they suck a lot. But you know what? You have kids with this woman. It wasn't your kids that blew their boss in a limo or punched you in the face or ate the last of the lasagna or whatever. Suck it up, smile and nod, be polite and do what you have to do to have an open line of communication with her- no matter how much you may have to grit your teeth to get through it. Who are you? You're the man. That's right. Now act like it! Your kids are counting on you to be able to discuss things like school, sports activities, discipline, and bedtime routines with their mother.

5) CANDY BARS DO NOT EQUAL "GOOD DAD". I think all us single fathers have felt the urge to spoil the crap out of our kids, to be the favorite parent, to indulge every little whim and desire our kids might have. This has been referred to as the "Disneyland Dad Syndrome". Don't fall prey to it. It's fine to have fun activities scheduled for your kids on the days you have them. It's not fine to spend all day, every day doing all the fun stuff, and then send them back to mom's house and let her deal with the tantrums, discipline issues, laundry, diaper-changing and the other difficult parenting issues. You're a dad, not an older sibling.

6) BE INVOLVED. BE INVOLVED. BE INVOLVED! I can't stress it enough- be in your children's lives as much as you possibly can. Make it to their recitals, school plays, baseball games, and everything else. Just because you're only scheduled to have them at your house on certain pre-determined days of the week, doesn't mean that's the only time you should see them. Oh, your ex won't "let" you see them during the rest of the week? Well, return to step 4 and repeat it. Communicate with her peacefully, honestly, and keep repeating what you have in common- a desire for your children's happiness- and she'll come around.


There's nothing I can say in this brief space that will completely equip you for dealing with the ol' "babymama drama"- especially given that I'm still in the process of getting through it myself. It's been nearly two years, my ex is remarried and has a new kid, and I still struggle to communicate with her. We're very different people.

All I can tell you is that you HAVE to be where you are, you HAVE to put up with only seeing your kids half the week or in many cases much less, you HAVE to be dealing with this divorce and maybe even the issue of your ex having a new significant other-

 But you DON'T have to be miserable, you DON'T have to waste your life, you DON'T have to drink or use other drugs, and most of all you DON'T have to walk away from your family. You're the man here. Just plow through this in the best way you know how, and eventually things will get better.


"Only after disaster can we be resurrected." -Tyler Durden in Fight Club

Stolen Ponies

I need a woman who isn't afraid to load the magazine of an AK-47
30 little brass warriors, seven point six two millimeters by 39
But would much rather heat the skillet
And knead the dough
And feed bread to her tired hunter who's been chasing deer all night.


I need a woman who favors my bloody shoes and tangled hair,
Who feels me coming a mile away. When I ride into camp
Atop a pickup full of firewood, concealing illicit meat,
I want her to drop everything she's doing and stare.


I need a woman who understands
That a gift to her father does not make her my property;
That it's a promise, the taking of a vow,
And the most romantic gesture I could possibly make.
Who needs flowers, after all, when you have stolen ponies?

For Ruby

We have a secret, you and I.

As I watch your tiny chest rise and fall

In the soft light coming through the open doorway

From the hall, I understand.

You are the keeper of my heart,

And I am the protector of your body, mind, and soul.

Mine was the first face you ever saw.

I spoke the first words you ever heard, in a language

As old as time itself, the language of proud

Fathers, the words of duty and love

And the promises fervently made in

Nurseries across the world.

Now, alone, you and I

Have nothing in this world but

The love we give to one another.

I am nothing without you- a captain without a ship,

A bow without arrows,

A tattooed angel with broken wings.

I pray you never leave my side.

Be with me always, guide me in the ways of adulthood

In that unknowing, unsuspecting way-

Trust in me always,

And trust in me completely. In so doing,

Hold onto your innocence forever.

The Saga of Hardware Store Joe

I remember the first time I walked into a hardware store.

Okay, maybe not REALLY the first time, but the first time I went in there for something as an adult. The first time I walked into a hardware store with purpose, with the intent of buying a thing and using it to fix or build another thing, the first time I walked into a hardware store with boots on my feet and a few bucks in my pocket and a pickup out in the parking lot on a cold fall morning.

I remember how hardware stores were, then. You'd walk in and there'd be a buncha old junk behind the counter, old scythe blades and gears and esoteric bits and pieces of equipment and machinery you could never, in your ignorance, ever hope to understand. The lights, yellow and bright, showed you a narrow path through the clutter, into the back of the aisles where all the good stuff was. Invariably, there'd be an old guy with a canvas apron, a pair of glasses, and if you're lucky, a big white beard. That beard is where Hardware Joe kept much of his knowledge and power.

Hardware Joe. Every small town had a guy named Hardware Joe. He knew everything. He knew every thread pattern the world over, without consulting a manual. He knew where the galvanized nails were, and the brass flathead screws, and the 1/16" flat steel stock- over there, next to those rebars.

Hardware Joe couldn't remember your name, but he could remember every Craftsman catalog going back to 1970.

I mean, this guy had it all. The wisdom, the confidence, the voice, the beard. Everybody had a quiet reverence for Hardware Joe.

Then came Walmart.

With it came the defeat of the local hardware store. There was no way Joe could compete with a store selling stuff for half as much- even if it was at half the quality. Slowly, Joe was replaced with younger guys, guys with nametags- Joe never had a nametag- tags with names like "Trevor" and "Terry" and for god's sake, "Tracy". I mean, I can't ask a dude named Tracy, a dude 10 years younger than me no less, where the bronze stock is or if I can use this solder for a material other than copper. I just can't, and even if I could, Tracy doesn't know. Tracy knows nothing of the mysterious world of Craftsman catalogs and wood dust. He doesn't care. He wants to get off work, get in his Miata, go home and play Warcraft.

Fuck you, Tracy.

First Entry. Bear with me, folks.

This will be the first entry in my new blog, "The Fencepost Chronicles".
You can expect me to make you laugh, piss you off, take all your money, mark you for life, steal your books and be the best friend you've ever had.

If you've arrived here from my website, www.fencepostmachines.com, you can expect to see very little here about machines and more just a daily insight to the life I live.

I'm going to attempt to show what it's like to be me- all the fucked up shit that happens to me, the smile on my face when I encounter adversity, and the day to day boredom and tedium that I go through in order to orchestrate those occasional black-out, fist-fight, stranger-sex, railroad-painting nights of doom. If you already like me, read this blog and you'll love me. If you already hate me, hey, fuck you, keep hating... you're making me famous.