For my daughter

A daughter is like a flower
She brings beauty into the world


Once upon a time, in a hospital not very far from here, our first child was born. She was a shining jewel, and the world recognized it. The heavens parted, the sun shone down, and there was peace on earth.

And then you started to cry, demanding even more attention. In hindsight, we’re not sure if you were crying because of the trauma of birth, or the fact that you didn’t have a purse yet.

Words fail when trying to capture the essence of our love for you, or to truly express how incredibly proud of you that we are. During the daily travails of life, we don’t make enough time to express all of our feelings for you, to communicate how deeply we care about you.

I am very proud of you and all that you have accomplished. I know that you have worked very hard in school and your grades reflect all of your efforts. But, in 20 years, what you are going to remember is all of the friends that you have made and the good times that you have had with them. The people around us are a reflection of ourselves, and your reflection is impressive indeed.

So, go forth and take the world by storm, knowing that we will always be here for you, supporting you and loving you.

Love,
Daddy

PS – I’ll make sure the young one moves back into her room before you come back for Thanksgiving.
PSS – I’ll also promise not to sell any of your purses on e-bay while you’re gone.

Everything Everywhere

http://everything-everywhere.com/

I love this picture that Gary took. I thought that I'd plug his site and share the picture with you. This is Wadi Rum in Jordan. If you have some time to spare, I highly recommend Gary's site. It will show you parts of the world that you'll have never seen.

Please buy my widget.

It’s a good widget. How do you know? Because I told you so. And you should believe that it’s a good widget, just because I’m telling you that it is.

Some people may say that my widget is exactly the same as my competitors, but it isn’t. My competitor is a bad, bad person, and while superficially, to some, it may look as those our widgets are exactly the same, they are not. He’s a bad dude and thus his widgets are bad, whereas mine are excellent, because they are from me.

There are a few true believers out there, those that understand that while my widgets may look and feel and operate exactly the same as that bad dude’s, that since they are from me, they are excellent. I appreciate these true sheep believers, and wish that there were more of you. Those of you that are not true sheep believers don’t worry, because we’ll just pass some new laws that will make your beliefs obsolete. Or, in case that isn’t possible, I’ll go on TV and tell everyone how you’re bad, bad people, that you’re standing in the way of progress and I’ll generally try to intimidate you as much as I can.

My widgets come in slightly different packaging than that bad guy. My packaging, which is eco friendly and morally superior (again, because I told you so), blows away that lame ass packaging that the other guy has. Once again, I would sincerely appreciate you not utilizing your critical thinking skills to realize that our packaging is almost exactly the same, as well as our widgets, and just accept the fact that my product is way better than that other guy, who probably hurts little bunnies in his spare time.

Biking

When I was younger, I used to do a lot of mountain biking. I loved it. Since I’m also a bit of a klutz, there was some crashing and falling involved. In those days, if there wasn’t some sweating and a little blood loss involved, I really didn’t think I was trying hard enough. It’s not like I was some crazed fanatic, out there on the edge of sanity. Nope, I just had a habit of decelerating through the use of trees, rocks and the ever present ground.

But, with the arrival of the kids, my mountain biking slowed dramatically, until it got to the point where I only pulled the old girl out when we went on vacations. I really didn’t mind this so much until my brother-in-law, who has everything, started taking it up. Then the old pride kicked in and I convinced myself it was time to get back on the bike, as it were, and relive the glory of my past.

That is, until, I refreshed myself with some of the finer points of gravity and wiped out in the bike store’s parking lot. Embarrassing? Sure was. Having my teen son there with me, bending over laughing, made that point loud and clear. I also realized that the monstrous road rash(s) and blood loss really didn’t have the same cache as they did 20 years before.

After eventually purchasing a bike, my-oh-so wonderful brother in law convinced me that I needed to have these clip peddles, instead of just the regular, normal peddles. Clips give you the advantage of not having to worry about your legs flailing around during a crash. Now, instead of your feeble attempt to stick your leg out to save your life, you’re guaranteed that the first items to hit the ground are your elbows, shoulders or your head. This has the advantage of saving your bike from any serious harm during the crash, so when the ambulance pulls away, some lucky bystander now has an almost perfectly new bike to scamper off with.

So, last night, I’m out for a little road ride when I have to cross this bridge a few miles from our house. It’s kind of a back road, so there really aren’t any shoulders on the road or the bridge. Just the road, guardrails, and the four lane expressway about 35 feet below. As I’m approaching the bridge, I’m starting to realize that it’s not wide enough for me and two cars passing at the same time. Something’s going to have to give, right? Right there, out on this beautiful night, I start freaking myself out. All I can imagine is someone racing up behind me, swerving to avoid oncoming traffic, knocking me over the guard, and as I fly off to my death, they are looking at my bike going “you know, that looks like it’s in pretty good condition…”

Update from the bad parent

We have a friend of ours, who happens to be the District Attorney in our county. Not just any DA, but The Man, the Big Kahuna, the dude responsible for putting people behind bars for a long, long, time. He’s really good at it, at least that’s what the statistics say, and a various bunch of nefarious defense attorneys in town.

That being said, I’ve come to believe that he may not actually know the law all that well. See, he continues to tell me that New York State still prohibits me from visiting harm upon my children, regardless of the provocation. He says that under the law there is not exemption for fathers living with “crazy teen-aged bitches”, that’s it’s just a phase, and they’ll grow out of it.

Of course, his daughters are just perfect little angels, so what does he know. He is like so many people around me, all of their kids are perfect, get excellent grades, gifted athletically, knee deep in charity work, loved by millions, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. At times it seems that I’m the only person around that has normal kids that are driving me nuts, or I’m the only one that’s talking about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids. At least, I think that is the emotion that I’m feeling in between the times where I want to choke them. I think it is love, but, you know, it could also just be the absence of hunger, so I’m not really sure.

Originally, I typed a lot more to this post, but, in the end, who really cares. Let’s just say that I wish that they would hurry up and legalize pot, because I really, really need a joint right about now…

The only person I trust in Washington, DC

Is Jack Bauer.

And apparently, when he's done kicking ass there, he's high-tailing it out of town to NYC, because he's come to the understanding that, as much as he'd want to, he can't kill everyone in Washington.

I'd trust Chuck Norris there as well, but Chuck has enough sense to never, ever set foot in Washington.