My oldest daughter and I have a different history. I met her when she was around 18 months old. I was a big Dungeons and Dragons player when I first met my future wife and her daughter. This charming little 18 month old helped me roll the dice so necessary in the game. I sat on the floor behind a ‘fortress’ of a coffee table with my books, and bags of dice. She sat with me, playing with whatever toys she had, and rolling the (according to her) color balls. Didn’t matter to her that they were pyramids, cubes and other solid shapes. She really made an impression on all the gaming folks. Somehow this got in her blood, because now she is in her own gaming group. They are good gamers, and they even allow the “Old Man” to pop in from time to time.

Now, because of the wishes of my late wife, my eldest did not know that I was not her bio dad until after my wife’s death. We were going to answer her, if and when she ever questioned her heredity. Things came up, when I thought that it was time to tell her. I’m not sure if my wife would have agreed, but I didn’t have her to ask. Apparently, I was as good a father to her as I was to her sisters. She thought I was kidding. Seeing that I’m a big prankster on the 1st of April, I guess I can understand where this comes from. She was a bit (maybe an understatement!!) shocked. I recall her wondering if this changed anything. My response to her was simple, “Our relationship will only change if you want it too, I’ve always known. I will treat you the same as always. I was the lucky one, when I got married, I not only added a wife, but a daughter at the same time. It wasn’t hard to love these two precious people.”

Now my eldest didn’t always follow the rules of the house. Her life was spent trying to push the limits. Not that she was ever a bad kid, but she did seem to want to push her parents as far as she could. I always thought she did this because she was super intelligent. I know she kept her mother and me on our toes.

Again I will say, I really don’t have a favorite daughter. They all stand out in many ways. I love them all dearly, but the eldest does hold a special place, she is the one I chose to make mine.

My second daughter is the one most like me. She wanted to do the things I did, and wanted a working tool set when she was younger. Somewhere between then and now, she grew up and became a young woman, wife and mother. She just had a birthday. She lives many states away. I couldn’t be with her.

I called her “my little girl” from the moment she was born. While her sisters wanted Mom, she wanted me. I was the one to put her to sleep when she was a cranky baby. I looked after her early cuts and bruises. I carried her on many outings. Her sisters think that she is my favorite child. In that they are mistaken. I really don’t have favorites (surprise girls!!). They are all very near and dear to me for reasons as unique as they are. The thing is, K will always be Daddy’s Little Girl, no matter how old she gets.

I hope she had a happy one.

I was planning on writing something about each daughter some time around a birthday. That would take until December to finally get to the last one. I think I’ll just pick a random daughter tomorrow and write again…. And then around each birthday, I can write something different. Maybe this can give them more insight as to how their old man thinks… If they read this at all

You know, it’s not easy to be the best at something…  Anything.  Sure, you can be good — even great.  But to be the best it means there is nobody better.  You are IT.  The one, the only one.  The best.

I am good at a few things…  Computers, ummm…  Well, computers.  I am pretty good with computers.  I can probably think of one or two other things I am good at if I try.  But the best?  Nope.  I am “the best” at nothing.  But as amazing as it may seem, I do know a few people who truely are the best at what they do — and it amazes me every day.

First is my wife Lisa.  She is the BEST wife (for me) possible.  Sure, I would be happy with a good wife.  I would be thrilled to have a great wife.  But how the heck did I land THE BEST wife?  It’s true.  There is no one in this world that would be a better wife for me than her.

She understands me; which is hard to do.  She loves me unconditionally; equally hard.  And she always complements my life.  She is the best!  And if you read her blog you will see she is pretty talented at writing too!

Then there is my daughter Disney.  SHE is the best baby anyone could hope for!  She is always smiling, she is super snuggly, she listens well, she is concerned about others, and ooooohhhh soooooo cute!  She is the best.  There couldn’t be a better baby in my life!

Of course there is Samantha.  She drives me crazy!  She is so unique and has such a strong will and strong spirit that she always keeps me on my toes.  Her energy and her unique qualities are just magical to me.  She is just the best.  She is the best at being the excitement this family needs on a daily basis.  There is no other person in our family so uniquely special.  She is just wonderful in such a unique (hair-going-gray-fast) kind of way.

There is also our oldest, Taylor.  She can always put other’s feelings first.  I remember when she was 5 and at the annual easter egg hunt.  Her and another girl were staring down a big chocolate egg and were off to the races.  Taylor got there first and got the egg…  And then promptly handed it to the other girl.  She likes making others feel good, and in our family, she is the best!  She is the best at being sweet and taking care of her sisters!

I have some friends who are the best too.  In fact, my friend Derek is the best at being loyal.  I know many loyal people.  But Derek’s loyality has spanned much time and much trial.  He is simply the best at being loyal (to me).  The guy can also sing like WOW and can sometimes make me look like a computer novice!

My friend John is always able to give quality input to any situation.  He is the best at it…  John has such a vast knowledge of…  Well, everything.  Whenever I need to know anything about anything, I ask John.  You should too.  Because John is the best at this.  There is nobody I know better.  Not to mention that he is a friggin genuis and darn good actor!

Then there is Jamy, another blogger here.  The guy is just plain nice.  All the time, and to everybody.  Yes, he has the art of being a nice guy down perfect.  He is the best at being nice.  Sounds weird to be the best at being nice, but if you meet Jamy you will know what I mean.  But for a nice guy he plays a great bad-guy on stage and is one of the most talented character actors I’ve had the privilage of working with!

I just think all the time about how lucky I am to have such an amazing wonderful family and such great friends. 

This is a toast to you guys, you are all the best!!

Especially Lisa 🙂  Seriously, she is the BEST!!!

When do friends become family? When do family members become friends? I’ve heard many times that you choose your friends, but are born into your family. Is there ever a time you choose your family as your friends? Do you ‘adopt’ friends as family?

All deep questions, to which I have very few answers. I know how I feel about some family, and some friends. But that can’t be the same for everyone, can it?

I was born into a large family. When I came into this world, I had 1 brother and 3 sisters. A younger sister came along just a few months later (22.5 or so). I liked to think I could be friends with all of them. At times I was, at other times we were just siblings. I married into a family and got 2 more brothers, and 1 more sister. Yes, this is the way I thought of them. Time and distance prevented a normal ‘friendship’ but I felt it could be that way if distance wasn’t an issue. My sisters married and I got more brothers. My brother married and I had another sister. Marriages came and went, so did some of the new siblings.

Now I have four daughters. Two of them have husbands, so I now have sons. I don’t know how they think of me, I tend not to pry, but it doesn’t really matter. As long as they treat my daughters well, they will continue to be sons to me. It will be this way for all my girls and their spouses. I don’t buy the in-law route. You’re either family or not. And I’m beginning to think my family are also my friends. Different from my chosen friends, but to me they are friends on some level. This allows me to give that quality of concern that should be expected of family.

Now for friends I choose. Yes, some of them are very much like family. The brothers/sisters/cousins/strange-aunt or uncle 😉 that I found instead of being born into the family. Friends are the family I choose.

And when the weather turns cold (figuratively or realistically), it is good to have friends and family, or both.

One of my daughters lives in Florida with her husband and kids. This weekend, on Mother’s Day, some wildfires started in their part of the state. By Monday, their town was hit with fires. Sections of I-95 were closed due to heavy smoke. Monday night I was on-line looking for maps of the exact locations of said fires, and seeing if any area near them was being evacuated.

There are many things a parent worries about when it comes to his/her children. When they are younger it is how much they get to eat, how much they sleep, why they are crying, what hurts, why does it hurt, are they sick, ect. When they get older there are different things to worry about. School, sports, friends, drugs, ect. When they move out, most of the time you can put worry behind you. Until of course something big happens where they live.

Accidents in the area they live in, with cars that look similar to what they drive are seen on the news. Fires in their apartment complex. And then any other acts of nature, in this case droughts and wildfires.

For the better part of the day, I was more than a bit concerned about my ‘little girl’ and her family. I finally got another phone call saying that all the fires are contained. A relief was felt.

The other part of this, is that I am an ONLY parent. I emphasized the ‘only’ for a reason. On this earth, there is no other parent than me. This is a huge responsibility. I don’t have an Ex who can share some of the burden (I burden I gladly took by the way). No one to share ideas with. No one to complain about the kids too. I tend to internalize all of this, for better or worse. I know my girls can see it most of the time, but I’m not sure about the rest of the world. Even as the children grow older, and need a parent less and less, the worries still come. There are times when I wish I wasn’t on my own in this. Fires scant miles from where one of your children is, is exactly one of those times

I had a wonderful Mother’s Day weekend.  We decided to celebrate Saturday in order to avoid the crowds at all the restaurants and other establishments; also it worked out well because my kids often need all of Sunday as a rest day to recooperate from the previous week and the weekend before returning to school on Monday.  So, I slept in Saturday until I was awakened by the idyllic crow of a rooster…  wait a minute… we do live in a rural area, but that was no rooster – it was a screaming parrot and it wasn’t the least bit idyllic, just horribly annoying and not a fun way to get woken up.  But, it was nearing 10 am, and I figured I had left poor dad with the kids long enough.

I was making myself some oatmeal for breakfast when I was greeted in the kitchen by cute little girl #1.  “Happy Mother’s Day Mom!”, she said, and gave me a stuffed animal she had found in her room.  I find the re-gifting really cute; it’s her way of sharing what she has and also displays her thoughtfulness in wanting to get me something but being too little to go out shopping on her own.  She also gave me the most adorable essay she wrote in school – I will share, though it’s much cuter to see it in 8-year-old handwriting:

Happy Mother’s Day!  I love my mommy for many different reasons.  One reason is that sometimes she gives me what I want at the store.  Another reason is that she helps me do stuff around the house like make soft crunchy cookies.  The last reason is she lets me have fun a lot like at the park!  I think that my mommy is triffic, wonder ful, and vary funny.  by Taylor

Daughter #2 was next, and she handed me a singing gorilla from her room.  “Happy Val-tine’s Day, Mom!”, she said, hugging my leg.  She is almost 4 and apparently forgot the name of the day, only remembering that she was supposed to give me something and be well-behaved, but that’s all that mattered to me!  Don’t be fooled, however…  they are not perfect angels ALL of the time – my kids’ Mother’s Day sweetness was promptly followed by a HUGE knock-down, drag-out, screaming at the top of their lungs fight…  The first of many throughout the weekend.  We still had a great time though – my husband always does a great job of keeping his cool which is more than I can say for myself…  but there was something going on with my oldest this weekend, and it showed!

Next, we decided to go to a neighboring city to go swimming in a hotel – my husband can get GREAT hotel rates online for most places, and the overnight getaway was exciting for the kids and around the same price as driving somewhere far away (insert gas price gripe here) and spending $ for other entertainment.  Besides, being in the water felt WONDERFUL for my aching pregnant body…  I would love to have access to a pool during a whole pregnancy sometime; it’s amazing how the sensations of all the aches, pains, and extra weight just melt away when under the water.  The kids had a great time, and we all got some exercise also, plus when we got home on Sunday, they all took at least a 2 hour nap – can’t put a price on that!  My husband of course, catered to their needs all day too, so really I got a whole Mother’s Day weekend out of it – 2 days when I was supposed to get 1!  I only hope I feel up to it enough to give my husband as great a Father’s Day as I got a Mother’s Day.  But since I’ll be even more pregnant by then, we might have to reschedule…  ever heard of Father’s Day in August?  😉 

Quite a few years ago my wife gave a speech about being hard of hearing. I found her hand written speech today. I wasn’t looking for it, but I was cleaning out a drawer looking for an old “Windows” disk. For those who know me and my safe places, it is amazing that I found the disk.

Anyway, today I held in my hands something my wife wrote. That is a very strange feeling. In reading her words, I can hear her voice, I can see her smile at certain parts of the speech. I can even see parts of this speech where I’m quite certain her anger/disappointment would show through. I never saw her give this speech, but I did today.

From her speech these words I remember because they were said more than once.

[ Quote from SJO]

… Over the years I have become quite adept at conversation by reading lips and body language, anticipating what will be said, filling in blank spaces in a sentence with the correct word or phrase based on subject matter, number of syllables in the words, and placement in the sentence.

Certainly, I am wrong frequently. This causes embarrassment and confusion, but the alternative is silence – no conversing because of fearing embarrassment. I don’t enjoy embarrassing myself, but I am not afraid of embarrassment — it does no permanent damage. …

That last sentence, if my girls would have learned only one thing from their mother, this would be right at the top of the list. We don’t enjoy embarrassing ourselves in any aspect of our lives, but as my dear wife said “it does no permanent damage.

To SJO 1962-2003. A life not long enough, but lived fully.

One of the things I remember from my childhood, is reading the comic strips of Charles M. Shultz. The Peanuts strip. I read them in the paper, I read them in book form. At one point I even had a Snoopy dressed in a space suit. To this day I will occasionally pick up and re-read one of the books I have, or put in a video of one of the seasonal specials. My wife and I had both liked the Peanuts Characters. And now, I assume my children like them too.

Today with family I saw a theater production of “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown”. This is the second time I saw this show. The first was over 25 years ago when I was in College. My roommate played the part of Snoopy. Seeing this show with my youngest daughter, my dear wife’s parents and sister, and a young niece was a trip to the past for me.

For those of you who don’t know the show, it is a full musical filled interspersed with “panels” almost straight from the funny pages. Of the show I saw 25 years ago, the only thing I could remember was the “Suppertime” song that Snoopy sang. My roommate was blessed with a very fine singing voice, and wonderful acting ability. He was one human who could make you believe he was a dog. Not just any dog, but the one and only WWI flying Ace beagle. The Snoopy of today’s show at the point of “Suppertime” had me re-living that one short segment of my life. Good memories.

As good as the show was, the best part was seeing and being with family. My In-laws are some of the best people I know. Not always perfect, but who is? For my children reading this, of course I know who is perfect. That was a rhetorical question. Back to the family… In the years after my wife’s death, I have come to appreciate the good relationship that I developed with them over the years. So many times people treat there spouses family as outsiders. I tried to treat my wife’s family as my own, and I hope they treat me the same. When I got married so many years ago, my wife and I decided that we would accept both families as our own. That didn’t mean there was always smooth sailing. There were many “disagreements” between various members, but I bicker with my natural family, why should the same go on with the in-law side. The point here is that even today, four years after the death of a wife, daughter, sister, and aunt they are still my family, and that my friends is something to be happy about.

As a father, I’ve had many thoughts on my family and my responsibility to them. To me that thought is mind numbing. For the first 20 years of my being a parent, I had help. My girls had, in my opinion, the best mother on the planet. She gave everything to those girls. The last four years it has been just me. The youngest was 13, and the oldest 23 when their mother died. The oldest had been out of the house since she graduated High School. There was really no more parenting that needed to be done there. She was on her own. The next was a senior in High school and I had a sophomore and a 7th grader. These three still needed their mother, and I could not be her.

I struggle through with their help. Their mother did a good job at raising them, I just had to keep things flowing. Lucky me. The first year I had trouble keeping me flowing. The four of us at home kind of flowed with the stream for a while. Not our best moments by any standards, but we got through.

There were 2 high school graduations, 2 weddings, multiple boy friends in the past 4 years. I probably wasn’t the best at handling all that. But again we made it through. I should emphasize that WE made it through.

Video tapes of my daughters in plays were put into a safe place. Birth Certificates were put in a safe place. Those safe places were lost. I found tv remotes in the freezer. Bought more cabbage when I couldn’t find the head I just bought. Found the first head months (weeks maybe) later. By then it was a wonderful science experiment. There were a number of those experiments. But as a family WE made it through.

We all got together last January. My daughters, the extended families, grandkids and all went to the Zoo, went shopping, and just hung out. We made it through.

In the future, no matter how far apart we are, I know I can rely on my girls. We will make it through.

And that means that April Fool’s Day is tomorrow…

I’ve always like this day, since I have a very gullible daughter. My tricks on her are infamous in family discussions. I’m searching my devious little brain right now trying to come up with another trick or more that I can pull on anyone of my daughters.

I also have to think of a prank or two to pull on people at work.. Can’t be too bad, or I’ll get in trouble.

Anyone know of any good gags, pranks, tricks?

I’ll post if I am able to pull anything off tomorrow. Be on your guard if I know you… You will never know if a prank is in your future..