Introducing the Stanley Man

For most of you, "the Stanley man" probably doesn't need much introduction. You all have a pretty good idea of who Adam is if you've been around for more than a minute or two. In case you haven't, let me remind you that Adam is serious and responsible and rarely silly. Or the opposite of that.

See? Very serious. In fact, this weekend, I pulled out the wooden box that Adam made me as a "memory box" for our first dating-anniversary. I spent hours pouring through his notes. Most were scribbled on notebook paper in his high-school Spanish class and delivered through my locker slats or tucked under the windshield wiper of my Canadian-rusted Honda Accord which only clocked my speed in kilometers per hour. Others were hand-crafted cards which he probably made at the scrapbooking store where I worked for most of my high school career. Anyways, many of the "love notes" which I collected as tender recollection of our first days together, were actually poems he wrote mocking my Canadian heritage. They were brutal, and also hilarious. Someday I should read them to you. We will drink diet coke and giggle over his drawings of beavers and Canadian geese and me being deported. Romantic.

Today, Adam can accurately be depicted as a "dreamer." He loves big ideas, new ventures, trying new things, breaking all the rules. . . Also, he loves anything that has to do with the outdoors, coffee, cooking, science, and the environment. For two years, he worked as a high school chemistry teacher, before leaving to start a mentoring program for inner-city kids. He taught his students dance moves, such as the "wash and rinse" and his favorite, the sprinkler. So he is dangerously smart, while also being ridiculously funny and crazy and silly. And also a strange combination of the hardest worker I know, and shockingly lazy when it comes to laundry and personal hygiene.

It's all a dangerous combination, really. I like to tell Adam that my least favorite thing he says is: "so I was thinking . . . " Because he typically follows that up with a crazy scheme involving rain barrels or urban farming. Here are a few of Adam's ideas which we have implemented in our family: cloth diapering, Jayci's pet fish, chickens, vegetable garden, eating paleo, renovating our house ourselves, making our own granola and bread. . . I could keep going but I think you get the picture.

Many of the questions you guys have for me are actually more pertinent to Adam's areas of expertise (since, if we're honest, my "expertise" is generally limited to eating Mexican food, drinking diet coke, and taking pictures).  So I was thinking that I could get Adam to hop on the bloggy once a week or so and answer some of your questions. And since Adam LOVES being the center of attention, he quickly agreed. Hopefully, y'all will appreciate his domestic skills and show him more love than I typically do over his hare-brained (and admittedly slightly-genius) ideas and schemes.

So stay tuned later this week (or possibly next week, you never know with us) for the first installment of The Stanley Man on The Stanley Clan. I know that I, for one, am excited.