BFFs and Bunnies...

Zoey and Ferah...or perhaps it's Ferah and Zoey? Whatever it is, it's the cutest thing since the bobbed haircut was invented, or bunnies. It's perhaps the cutest thing since bunnies were invented.  Zoey and her new good friend Ferah are almost nauseatingly cute.  Both are audacious and outgoing, both energetic and well parented (thank you very much), and quite possibly the sweetest twosome I've seen in awhile, a potentially dangerous duo of irresistible bunny hugging awesomeness.




It's funny how much time you spend hoping that your child chooses fun, cool, kind, and confident friends, who have parents that are the same...a lot...and you cringe when they play with the loudest, rudest, jerkpot at the library, or the most inconsiderate, meanest kid on the play equipment, so you smile and sigh when they choose to hang out with cool kids...at least I do.  Ferah is sweet, and fun, and super  smart, and Zoey is understandably smitten with her.  Similarly her parents are awesome. Her Mom is a midwife and was in the delivery room on both occasions when the girls were born.  She's oh-so cool, and oh-so kind, and we're oh-so happy that these two sickeningly cute funsters have chosen one another to adore.  Oh it's definitive cute...like catalogue cute when these two girls get together.

You know what comes after enthusiastic bunny hugging?  Sleep overs!

Keeping The Lines of Communication Open...

Footsteps in the hallway, then a tiny voice...

"Excuse me," she said, "Daddy, I have to poop."

"Okay," I reassured her, "that's okay, you can go. Just turn the light on. Thanks for telling me."

"Sure," she said, shrugging, then added, "I'm going to leave the door open Dad, in case you want to talk to me."

"Sure," I said.

It's a Man Thing...

There's this "man" thing that I'm not so sure about.  You know the thing where there's about a half a dozen templates, well, really just four or five, I'm sure, and if you don't quite fit in one the odds are that you'll find yourself lumped into one.  Then, of course, it just might strike you that you don't really like being called "the strong silent type," or the "alpha male," or maybe even "that guy," and it just wears you out. Either that, or it deludes you for three decades until you don't quite know what, or who you are, and maybe you start to believe all of the bullshit. Then you've got a problem.

I don't care much for the uber-masculine, at least how society defines it, and I'm not such a big fan of the uber-sensitive, nor the extra-ambitious, or the typical, so-called definitive type.  None of those pants fit.  I don't have a garage to hide in, nor would I want to.  I don't need Sunday morning Rec hockey, or a volunteer fireman t-shirt.  I'm not much of a recreational drinker, and you can shove Movember up your arse. Not me.  I like sports, but I don't feel the need to re-live my youthful ignorance and enthusiasm about them.  I don't like strip bars, or Maxim Magazine.  I don't need to be "the man of the house" or one of those "wait 'til your father gets home" types.  I just want to love my wife and take care of my beautiful daughters and make very little fuss about the things that don't concern either.  I'd like to do what I want to do, and go where I want to go, and try the things that I want to try, and make friends with the people that I want to make friends with, and never once, not even for a second, feel as though whatever choice I am making reflects on my masculinity.  I have man parts, good enough.

It all strikes me so strange because as I was having a conversation about how stupid excited I was to have bought these new Levi's 501 Rigid Shrink-to-Fit jeans (not exactly what their name makes them sound like) that are turning out to be the greatest purchase of my life (in context), I experienced weird reactions...from "you're a guy, why do you give a sh!t," to "I don't give a sh!t. Did you see the Leafs game last night," and even "you actually go shopping with your wife?"  It was, I dunno, off-putting to say the least. I can't blame a person for not caring about something so arcane, but I wondered how much of it had to do with their own indifference as opposed to societal influence on what men do and talk about and enjoy.  I enjoyed working my two lower limbs into such fine denim, and the whole weird process of prepping said denim to do so (it's a small ordeal), and so I was going to tell people about how cool it was, and they are (the jeans), and maybe I might even mention that this was the way friggin' cowboys broke in their jeans...f#$%ing cowboys, goddamnit! Cowboys!  I was supposed to be enthused, unwritten masculine rules be damned.  This was some entertaining stuff.  The jeans actually stood up on their own in the corner...on their own, I said!  I'd buy that just to show people. Yet, the tale was met with strange reactions, mostly from other men.  The women were mostly chill, and some even wanted to feel the jeans, so I offered them a cuff, and the ones that wanted to cop a feel of the back pockets, well, I obliged them that too.  Friggin' cowboy pants folks...cowboy pants.  If enthusiasm about buying a product that's essentially been made the exact same way for approx.140 years is an affront to my masculinity, then how the f#$% are we defining masculinity these days?

I know plenty of garage rat Dads who are lucky their wives were there to raise their kids. They've never been to one parent-teacher night, never picked their child up or dropped their child off at school, not once in their entire miserable, Old Milwaukee loving life.  Oh, and those guys and their dirty white t-shirts, with the smokes stuffed carelessly down their collar so that they drift about the bottom of their tucked in awfulness, with the undone work boots and half built motorcycle in the yard, those guys have never once stolen their wives away on vacation, or kidnapped their daughter to go watch a game, or sat down to help with homework, or busted out the glue and glitter.  I don't want to be one of those guys.  There's also the hockey know-it-all who never leaves his recliner, or the coach who yells at ten year olds.  There's the beers with his buddies guy, and the gone fishing guy, the need a bigger boat guy, and the still telling stories from your days as a walk-on with a bad Canadian university football squad guy.  Of course, there's the let's get drunk and look at chicks guy, and the don't touch my tools guy, the never gone Christmas shopping in his life guy, and lastly the my wife dresses me guy.  I loathe them all.

You know what I want to be?  I wanna be the the ridiculously excited to buy a new pair of pants kind of guy, who just so happens to be the kick ass Dad type with a penchant for hugging and kissing his wife. I want to be that kind of guy.  Like I said, there's this "man" thing that I'm not too sure about, but I don't care all that much...a little...mostly I'm just really excited that those jeans stood up all by themselves.  That was pretty awesome.

She's a Bit of a Fan...

I'd like to say that it's because Michigan is an unbelievably fun basketball team to watch, but it's not that exactly.  She likes the cheerleaders and the dance team...she likes the crowd...she likes the pop, hot dogs and popcorn...She likes buying things in the M Den.  Mostly she just likes acting like a freak and that being 100% okay.





It's been a pretty special year so far, watching this basketball team turn into the best thing to happen in Crisler Arena in twenty years.  We used to be happy with NIT bids.  That seems crazy now.  This group of guys is something to watch, and fun, so much fun.  Alley-oops, 360s, steals, fast breaks, Mitch McGary garbage points, Stauskas long range bombs, and Trey and Glen, and Tim...just awesome.  Still, Zoey just likes the cheerleaders.





Like many parents we're hoping to plant some seeds, and nurture a love affair with these games.  We envision a time when we gather our season tickets back up, and the girls grow up here, watching this. It's important. To us now, but hopefully to them later.

Go Blue.

Maggie Rolls Over and The World As We Know It Ends...or Begins...Whatever

I'd give you a dollar and half if you could keep Maggie from rolling over, post-bath, when she's naked, laying on her crazy soft Ikea sheepskin rug. That's right, a whole dollar and a half. And if you could wipe the ridiculous smile off of her face when she's in the tub with her sister...another dollar and a half. That's three bucks people. Three dollars that could be working for you. Unfortunately, you couldn't do either, so I keep the three pesos and you feel shame.

Mags has entered a seemingly magic vortex of change and development lately in which everything from the obviously non-verbal (although she tries real hard) head and hand gestures, to the physical this and thats of rolling around and learning to hold her breath under water, have rendered her parents somewhat speechless. The truth is, you forget all that stuff from the first baby, and if you say that you don't, you're either a liar or the most anal, documenter and rememberer of arcane events and facts...arcane only because the kid's gonna make that simple roll over look stupid in another week when they finally prop themselves up on all fours. You won't remember nary a thing from your first child's development, and then you can complicate that further by coming to grips with the notion that they're different human beings altogether.

So as Maggie starts to eat gooey spoon fed pablum-esque, gruel-like awfulness, and sits up on her own for five minute stretches, and takes things from her sister, and watches Sesame Street, and comes as close to asking for something without words as you're gonna get, we are helpless to do nothing more than react with authenticity, because I couldn't tell you how we managed this event or that one with Zoey. As unsettling as that might sound, it's also pretty amazing in the sense that daughter #2 gets as close to an authentic experience as daughter #1. There are no moulds here...no forms to fit. Zoey was Zoey, and Maggie is Maggie, and we are but spectators...involved and uber-responsible spectators, you know, with the best seats in the place, but spectators nonetheless.

Neither girl should turn out the same. In fact, I'll be incredibly disappointed if the girls end up mirror images of one another emotionally, and intellectually. They're supposed to be different, very different. I hope that we raise them in a way where their foundations are the same but every bit of hardware above those sturdy stone bricks is unique and individual. If we're doing this thing right, I'd like to see them mistaken for friends, not sisters. Your own distinct personality, education, and shaping is quite possibly THE most important by-product of development. Everyone wants to be unique. Everyone wants their own experience and perspective. No one wants hand me down approaches to their own development. No one. It's one of the giant challenges and failures of the educations system. How do we teach to the individual, while serving the masses? Impossible? Maybe. Not in this house, not if we can help it.

Right, Left, Right...

Suddenly, out of the blue, Zoey is differentiating between like and love by assigning both to different sides of her brain. That's right...

Z: Mummy, I love things on this side of my brain, pointing (right), and just like things on this side (left).

M: (speechless)

So now that Zed's thinking in terms of left brain, right brain, I'm not really sure where we go from here? Quantum Physics?

Where does a four year old find the inspiration for left brain, right brain discussions? All she watches is Wild Kratts, My Little Pony, and Sesame Street ad nauseum, so where does an idea like that take root?

Four Girls...One Boy...and the Bowling World Turned Upside Down

Zoey went bowling for her birthday, and she brought four friends...the four kids that she either sees the most, or talks about the most. There's Blaire, one of my absolute favorites, who lives down the street and oozes embarrassing amounts of cuteness... and Ferah, who she goes to library school with, and whose Mom, Christine, was a student midwife, and maybe one of the first faces Zoey ever saw on the night that she was born. Ferah is equal to Zoey in precociousness and audacity, thank God, and they're BFFs because of it...and there's Jai, born Kiwi, but back in Canada now, with the cutest little accent you ever heard, and the most chill attitude of any kid ever...and lastly, Maive, the quietest/cutest little best behaved gymnastics friend on the planet...and turns out a wicked bowler.

They wore tie-dye...they bowled, they ran around and screamed and yelled, and danced, oh, there was plenty of dancing, and then ate hardly a thing before consuming half the bowling alley with their post-present-opening playing and re-visited, re-charged dancing. Everyone was so great. Zed has got herself some really good little friends so far, with very cool parents, and a post-toddler-esque overflow of manners and confidence and sweetness. She's a lucky little girl. Of course, we're awfully lucky too...would you look at those tie-dyes! Can five kids look any cuter, well, except Blaire, who is...I don't know what Blaire's doing...probably being upset still that the shoes look ugly, hardly fashionable at all, and that they speeled her name wrong on the scoreboard...Blaine. Whatever, Blaine was cute as hell.

Birthday Breakfast

Daddy: "Zoey, what do you want to do for your birthday?"

Zo: "I want to go to John's for breakfast."

Daddy: "You mean like every other weekend?"

Zo: "Yup."

Daddy: "Well, okay then."

She did have the entire wait staff sing happy birthday to her in an impromptu moment of restaurant love that neither Mom nor Dad roused up. She's a popular customer, waitress friends, tours of the kitchen, high fives, and now birthday celebrations...a single candle, and a chorus of happy birthday in front of a busy breakfast crowd...and, of course, a never ending smile. She's easy to please.

We don't do big birthday celebrations around here very well, but this one was just kinda perfect. Unplanned, enthusiastic, and genuine. She couldn't have been happier.

Happy Birthday Zoey Sakura

When I wake up my daughter will be four years old. Four years since that day when the midwives asked me if I cared to cut the umbilical cord and I said, "uhmm, no thanks," but did anyway. Four years since that first night at home and the 2am oh-my-God what did we think we were doing realization? Four mesmerizing years of becoming softer every day, of swelling with some indefinable love-pride combination, of becoming more of a man than I ever thought I could be, and all because of a small child. It's been four years of losing myself in someone else, and it's been so much more than my capacity for wonder and love and awe.

Happy Birthday Zed. Four years ago you breathed in a snowy evening for the first time ever, and in the process of finding your first breath you stole mine away.

We've dragged you to everything from Pacific islands to NCAA Tournament games, you called a single room in Waikiki home, an apartment in Brooklyn not much bigger by the same name, and you've logged about forty or so hours on planes. Not bad. You've made friends from Samoa to Manhattan, and kissed at least one boy that I know of, and you haven't even started school. You're a pretty special something, I know that.

As the clock flips past midnight it strikes me that I'll be loving you at least this much until I have no more breath left in me, on some distant snowy midnight when I leave this planet remembering the day that you came into it.

You know that place between sleep and awake, the place where you can still remember dreaming? That’s where I’ll always love you. That’s where I’ll be waiting.

What Fallopian Madness is This?

I believe my first words were, "what the #%€£!" June laughed. Zoey is always bringing home her art projects from school but never before have they looked so...I dunno...anatomical. Please, feel free to set me straight but I immediately saw a ninth grade sex education diagram, not an elephant. Is that something I should worry about, you know, seek professional help? It makes me feel like some old Arthur Miller type deviant when it really shouldn't, I mean, those are in fact very Fallopian-esque. Are they not?

I'm no physician like my friend Jeff, and I've never been very close to an elephant before, but...well, I'm sticking to my guns, there's some Fallopian madness going on here and it'll do me no good to try to further explain. I would however like to see tomorrow's art project.

Books and Peeing Dogs

Zoey likes books. Maggie will damn well like books. Books, you remember those. Those things that you picked up when you were a kid, you know, before video games stole everyone's hearts. Books. Simple, subversive in the most positive sense, quietly life altering. Books. Maybe less life altering when they're about dogs peeing on flowers, but mostly life altering.

There's This Story That I Have to Tell...

Nearly four years ago June and I, in a moment of sophomoric spontaneity, walked past a psychic's storefront on West 51st Street in Manhattan, and got out palms read. We could hardly walk past, and were giddy at the impromptu chance to look into out futures. It was eerily insightful, and what I felt at the time, half full of shit.

She told me that I should be writing more, that I should have never slowed down, should have never left California, should in fact be there still. I was alarmed, and hesitant. She laughed at me.

"You think you're changing lives right now, helping other people, but that's nothing compared to the lives that you could reach if you just wrote down what was in your head and heart, what you've seen and what you feel."

I never forgot it, every word of it, because it struck me so strange. It made sense. It scared me a little. I buried the woman's urgings down deep, and dismissed the idea. Then I watched "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" and now I understand what she meant.

What the f#$& have I been thinking? Doing? That film was the single best thing I have ever watched in my life. People have told me similar things as that woman did, in much less eery detail, of course. You people have said as much, over and over again, and I have ignored you. Perhaps even insulted you with my trepidation. I've just never before seen something so profound that I needed to find, again, whatever feeling it just inspired. Wow. Seriously, what the f#%& have I been doing?

The Law of The Jungle...

At first I thought reading "James and the Giant Peach" to Zoey was ambitious, but awesome. She hung on every word, and I could read chapter after chapter before she grew tired. Then we read "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and she was less enthused at first, then came around, and finally was indulgent of the effort. Of course "Peter Pan" was a home run, a Grand Slam of sorts, and stuck like no other pages have yet. Now "The Jungle Book" has found Zoey's attention, and I think will keep it. She likes Mowgli, and she loves Bagheera, and sometimes, I think, listens just so she can grit her teeth at Shere Kahn.

We read from chapter books each night, and some nights she's fast asleep after mere paragraphs, and then others she can hang on for a chapter or two. It's never very long, and she's eager to lay down, and to close her eyes, and start imagining. She often asks questions. She is certainly learning new words, and gaining a sense for plot and anticipating twists and turns. It's brilliant...maybe one of my most favorite parts of each day...on the very heels of watching these two little girls giggle and splash together in the tub. I don't know where the idea came from...I think with the intention of boring her to sleep...but she's latched onto it, and so have I.

I thought for certain that she'd shrug off "The Jungle Book," but no. She loves it. I wonder if we're building a lover of books, or at the very least a girl who can dream, and imagine, and think in bold and wondrous terms. I know we're building a habit I won't ever want to go away.

The Happiest Girl Alive...

We thought Zoey was a happy baby. She was, but not like Maggie. Maggie makes smiles look like the normal facial expression we are all born with...as if frowns cost money. She's a smile factory, and who knows where it comes from. Who ever really knows where a baby gets their demeanor...genetics, environment, parental or sibling influence, individual situations and responses or reactions...or mostly likely a combination of them all. However it all gets knitted together, this is one happy little girl.

Maggie's Mom does the most impressive job of taking care of everything from basic needs to planting the seeds of the more abstract and complex developmental needs...safety and comfort and reassurance...all of the things a Mom is supposed to manage with ease, but some don't. Many do, but it makes it no less impressive when June hits for average. If you were to apply Sabermetrics to motherhood June might be Billy Beane's #1 draft pick.

For some of you that wasn't such an obscure reference, for the others, well, I don't care.

Hockey Night in Striped Pajama Pants

We always said that we didn't want Zoey playing hockey. Of course, if it was something that she wanted to do, or asked to try, we'd oblige, but we weren't going to encourage it. Too expensive. Too tough to navigate early on as a girl (without spending random years with boys teams), and too intrusive into our lives. Then Hockey Night in Canada returns, and Zed's quick to grab her stick and ask for her Canucks jersey, and it's game on...in the living room.

It'd be ridiculously cute to watch her play organized hockey, but we just might be the worst Canadian parents ever because we're just not willing to commit to that. It's mostly about money and travel and time, but it's partly about the utter lack of opportunities for young girls just learning the game. We want her to be around other girls, making friends, having fun, traveling to games...not having to change in a separate dressing room because she's the only girl on her Tyke hockey team. That's not cool. It defeats the whole purpose of playing...it's about fun, and relationships, and confidence and about a dozen other things besides hockey.

So she got new skates, and we have a lot of fun when the games are on TV, but until she asks to play for real, to join an actual team...I guess it's meter sticks with Kraft dinner boxes taped to them, and living room shoot outs. I love the game, but not enough to force it on anyone.

Just the Facts...

...aaaand we have the first solo, unassisted roll over. January 19, 2013. No PEDs used, no lies, no Oprah interview. Just rolling over. That's it.

To The Boy Who Loves My Four Year Old Daughter...

There's a little boy in Zoey's pre-school class who pledged his undying love for her today. His Mom even told June that he goes home and tells them how much he loves Zoey. Yeah, well back off buddy. I'm the only rock star in this little groupie's life at the moment, and there's just not room for two of us. Wait 'til prom you little bastard. Even then, I'll be calling my friend Josh, who is one of Ontario's finest police officers, and doing a full background check of both you and your family. Seriously. I'm not scared of you.

What? I'm practicing.

Dear Cash...

Dear Cash...these are your f#$king parents. Seriously. Good luck.

The Saddest Thing I've Ever Heard...

“You know that place between sleep and awake, the place where you can still remember dreaming? That’s where I’ll always love you. That’s where I’ll be waiting.”

― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

It's the saddest thing I've ever read, the ending I mean. As I read to Zo... at first restless, and craning her head to hear, and then almost at once, asleep...I struggled to finish sentences. The overwhelming emotion of those last fifteen pages is astonishing...unexpected...overflowing with sadness. We grow up. It's the most heart-breaking thing we'll ever endure. Sitting there on the floor, my daughter sighing softly towards sleep, I read quietly and paused to swallow my emotions. In the room's half light, with a sleeping child who will never again be as she was today, it struck me just how tragic it all was. I don't remember a thing from my childhood, hardly an evening, and yet surely my Mother remembers everything...surely she clings to more than I could ever recall. It's sad. The saddest thought I've ever juggled. I finished reading, Zo having long since fallen asleep, and as I rose to leave, I paused. If I could freeze time in just that moment I would have. I remember a whispered prayer to the darkened sky when Zoey was first born. I told the stars that I'd happily sacrifice all of my left over lucky days if only she, my daughter, could have a lifetime of that same luck...that the universe could take my forevers as long as it gave them to her. I'm grown, and there's no sense wasting pixie dust on me, but she deserves buckets of the stuff. She deserves so much more than I fear I even have to give, but I'll try, and each night as I read to her in the dim light of her childhood I'll hesitate before turning down the light. It's right there on the edge of her bed, between sleeping and dreaming, that I'll always love her, but she'll grow up, and she'll forget, even as I'm still clinging to every memory, and like the end of Barries book, its the saddest thing I've ever heard.

Daddy Likes Sharks...

When we were in Hawaii I skipped an opportunity to go on a shark trip, to take a dive in a shark cage. What was I thinking? I can't believe that I shrugged that opportunity off. I love sharks. Oh, they freak me out, but that's kinda why I love them. So when we were at the Newport Aquarium, and they said that we could touch a shark...albeit, a little shark...I took it. Zo was a little irked that she couldn't reach the water, and I wasn't about to hang her over the tank, nor was she willing to drench herself leaning on the ledge. She quietly resigned herself to watching Dad touch sharks, and was quick to assert that I was "pretty brave," to stick my hands in there. Not so much, but it felt good to be a rock star in front of your daughter. Zo's never shirked away from any chance to touch any living thing, and it was quite the bummer for her to not be able to go to school and tell everyone that she touched a shark. She handled it like a champ, but you could tell that she was dying to do it. She's bold, and adventurous, and absolutely mesmerizing to watch in these settings. She's interested, and curious beyond belief, and hard to keep up with. We've gone and labeled 2013, zoo-thousand-and-thirteen, as we fully intend to crank off as many zoo's and aquariums as we can. Maybe we can find another chance to pet a shark? If Daddy and daughter ever get a chance to tackle that shark cage together someday, book it.

Nervously Uprooted Pre-OSU Live Links...

While waiting for the Michigan-Ohio State basketball game, and a nervous pile of excitement, I decided to funnel my attention to something other than a potential #1 ranking in the nation, or a devastating kick to the junk. Here goes... Okay, I knew he was a decent dude, and I liked him infinitely more after his SNL appearance, but I just never fell headfirst into a fandom with Peyton Manning...until I read this. Class...100% cool.

I agreed with about 87% of this.

Easily the best, and coolest trophy in sports, period.

Our friends, the Cowgerellis, need to own one of these. Elle would flip.

Big fan of Ikea...bigger fan of this.

Zoey WILL be getting this for her birthday.

Someday I'm gonna roll just like this.

Very cool neighborhood guide. If you hate LA, you obviously haven't been to some of these neighborhoods.

MUST see a basketball game here. MUST.

I know where I'll be on Saturday, February 9th, 2013.

Really want to read this.

I have no idea why this makes me smile, but I think I want one.

If I win the lottery, I move here.

Then I'd go back to school, and go here.

What are you doing with your life?

The Sound of Music...

It's so strange the different language that we all speak...the four of us. Maggie with smiles, and pterodactyl squeals and tears, with her cheeks as they squish upwards, crowding her eyes when she's happy. And Zoey, with a vocabulary well beyond what it should be, and a logic that anchors us to here and now, and the looks, oh the growing cache of looks that say a million things. Of course June, and her steady, sturdy, marathoner head and heart, and then me, all emotion, and fireburst ideas, and sprinting, all the time sprinting. But...and I know that I shouldn't start a sentence with "but" and I don't care...But somehow we all understand one another, with no need for translation, and no gap in comprehension...well, usually. In the end our languages all sound the same, and say the same things. Together we sound like Saturday morning coffee before the house wakes up, or rain on the roof. When we're together we sound like Van Morrison on the radio, and water on the hull. When we're together we sound like laughter and the crackle of a camp fire. We sound like the crack of a ball on a bat, and an amusement park roller coaster ride. Together we sound like a stadium when the lights go down and that first note reaches the rafters. When we're together it sounds remarkably like waves kissing the beach, and well, home. We sound like a family.

Jumping Because You Can...

June and Mags made a jumping festival out of Baachan's kitchen just the other day, and I think I'd have liked to see the look on Baachan's happy face watching granddaughter #2 doing exactly what #1 did three years earlier, right there in her kitchen. Happy, and growing, and bouncing, as three generations of girls laughed together. I'd have liked to see that.

The Capacity For Wonder...

She was SO excited to see the cheerleaders that she nearly exploded out of her seat at the idea of walking down the stadium aisle to meet them down by the court. By the time we got close she was trembling, and then as we got nearer still, teary. She was SO excited to meet them.

It was my first Daddy-Daughter moment where it struck me, "this is nothing like a little boy. I am surrounded with girls," and I love it. She was so in love with the notion of meeting those girls, all-in, and enraptured. When the tears finally came I was speechless. I didn't know what to say to comfort her. I didn't know how to react aside from encouraging her and understanding how big of a deal it is to get that close to something that impossibly awesome.

When the girls left the arena, and slipped back to their locker room to change, the basketball game long over, and us lingering on the court talking to friends and snapping a few pictures of Daddy's old, and most favorite of places, I caught her collecting things from the ground and putting them in her pocket. What? She was gathering up all of the tiny pieces of pom-pom that had fallen free from the cheerleaders pom-poms, and tucking them away to bring home. When I finally put her in the car, and she fell almost immediately to sleep for the hour and a half long drive home, I found countless scraps of pom-pom in her pockets, some even still in her grip.

Don't imagine that it's some little thing what these small eyes see, and don't be so ignorant as to not believe or understand that one regular person, some girl from Kenosha, or Grand Rapids, a student, tumbling and laughing and cheering through a silly Big Ten basketball game, can't, for a brief moment, be absolutely perfect...be everything that those little eyes can imagine they'd ever want to be. As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, "something commensurate with his (her) capacity for wonder."

It was a little girls bright and shiny world for a moment and I was a witness to something so sweet as to elude comprehension. What if I just witnessed the very beginnings of a dream? Yeah, humility defined. What a staggeringly beautiful moment. I've never said that about worming my way down to the basketball court at Crisler before. Brilliant, what little hearts and minds can accomplish in an evening. She took a simple thing, and turned it profound, even for me.

Kindness Before Breakfast...

In an effort to live more consciously I've decided to take every Saturday morning, before gymnastics, before my feet even hit the floor, and think about others...then take all that sickening thoughtfulness and write it down...here.

Why? Because it's good for me. Also, because no one ever says nice things about other people, at least no one ever hears other people say nice things about themselves, and it's so damn easy. So I've decided that all those mamby pamby feelings shouldn't be left unsaid...they should at least find some fresh air, so why not dump them all out right here?

Why not, indeed.

Here goes...

I bet every week I tell a kid about the two best men I know...about Andrew and Keith. It usually comes up when we're talking about friends, but I've been known to throw them down on the table in the middle of a conversation on boyfriends, on career and purpose, or when someone's really struggled with defining themselves...I pull the Coop and Keith card on a regular basis. This is what I say.

Everyone needs friends like Andrew and Keith...everyone. Not necessarily because they're really good at being friends, although they are...you know, that whole low maintenance, time can pass and they're still amazing, no pressure, easy to find, kind of way...but because they're the most genuine people I know...well, some of the most genuine people that I know. There are others...but I can't compliment the entire world on one Saturday can I? No. As far as guys go, and for some reason I feel awful making that kind of generalized broad swath of a statement but it's too often the truth, most men aren't that accessible, that sincere, that open and honest, or even close to that caring and considerate. So few are. Again, there are others, plenty of others, D-Funk, Birdie, Luke, Ian...a pile of others, but can I just swoon over these two dudes right now? Thanks.

Both have given their lives over to helping other people...Keith a nurse, and Coop a Behavioural Therapist working with autistic children...and both have found beautiful, wonderful women to compliment their already amazingness. They watch baseball and hockey, and drink beer, and say and do stupid things, and then on Monday they're back to being the saviour in some desperate family's day, and the opposing forces of regular and impressive are the most incredible combination I've ever known. They stumle on their own humility, and bask, completely unaware, in the brightness of their being, but not as some brilliant point of light on a dark background, but rather as just blue skies and sunshine in our everydays. Beautiful days aren't that uncommon, they happen all the time, but that's no reason to take them for granted. You know when you wake up into one that it's special...these guys are special.

I imagine their wives blown away by their luck. How attractive is a man that can manage what those two do? Very, I'd suspect. Bearded, inappropriately dressed, gently used up from a day of sweating and caring, and still, well beyond perfect because they're the kind of people that make you proud to know them. They'd do anything for me if I only just asked, and I the same, and if you don't have a Keith or a Coop in your life then it the lesser for it. They're how I measure men, and to be honest, not many others stand up. They humble me and I love them.

You are going to be told your whole life not to idealize people, that's it's unhealthy, or illusional, or some other such nonsense. I'm going to tell you that they're full of sh!t. Some people are every bit their billing, and without those idealistic thoughts, where do go for that kind of mere mortal inspiration that we so desperately need? Nowhere. That well is too often dry. Idealize those who deserve it.

There, that was easy.

So There's This Kid I Know...

Last night, January 10, 2013, saw the much anticipated birth of Cash Abbott Wellman...the guy who throws the best cottage parties, and makes you clean up after yourself if you puke on his parents camp blankets. You don't mind though, because it's Cash's parents place, and he's got pretty cool parents. He's the kind of kid that all the girls have a secret crush on. He's got more friends than his parents can ever remember, and they've all got nicknames, like Hamzie and Beaver, and so that's what Cash's parents call them too. He likes to go fishing with his Dad, and although he never says it out loud he just doesn't want to play 'ball if Mom's not there. He's still that way in high school, so she never misses a game.

Cash is the last guy awake at the party, and the first one awake and jumping in the lake. He listens to his coaches, and tries harder than everyone. He doesn't have a single ex-girlfriend that doesn't think he's not the closest thing to perfect they ever dated, and his buddies all go to him for advice. Cash is good at advice. He tells the truth, and there isn't a single thing he keeps from his Dad, not one. He marries a nice girl. He has the same best friend from the 1st grade until he's old and ancient. He helps his Dad roof the house...twice.

At night when Cash comes home he sits at the end of his parent's bed and tells them all about his night. There's beer on his breath but he got a ride home, made it back before curfew...always, and is excited to wake his parents up. He's smart, and kind, and just the right amount of adventurous. His favorite movie is "It's a Wonderful Life" because "that George Bailey is one helluva good dude." He never misses a Christmas at home. He never fails a class. He never goes to the Emergency Room.

He's respectful of everyone, and always works...always. Sometimes he has two and three jobs. He calls if he's going to be late, and he couldn't lie to his parents if his life depended on it. His life never depends on it. He hangs out with his parents his entire life. He likes them. Why wouldn't he? Everyone does. He gets in only one fight at school ever, and although he doesn't lose, he doesn't win either, but he knows he never wants to do it again. He can talk his way into and out of any situation, and he stands up for others. Every kid in his school likes him.

Cash can sing. He can sing his ass off, but never takes it for granted, or is eager to show it off. He won't ever get on a stage in his life, but he'll make more than one girl swoon at a campfire. Oh, he's good at a campfire. That's his strike zone.

Cash is his teachers favorite student...every year. In the seventh grade he saves all of his money to buy a canoe...and then again, five years later, to buy the crappiest pick-up truck on the planet, but man he loves that pick-up truck. He brings friends on family vacations and his parents are happy to have them. He doesn't have a single bad friend, not one. People will tell you later, when he's grown up and gone away to college, that if their kids were hanging out with Cash, they weren't worried.

He cares about people. He makes a difference, every day of his life, but especially when no one's watching. The funny thing is that people are always watching...because they can't take their eyes off of him. He's that amazing.

Congratulations Dustin and Kelly...how could he be anything but amazing?

Let's Just See What the Morning Brings...

She went to bed early...Zoey did. She wasn't listening very well (probably better than a billion kids) and was testing the waters of what was possible in terms of not paying any attention to Mom, so...off she went. Tears, begging, heart wrenching sadness, the whole painful shenanigans. You know what happened in the end? She fell asleep in a sobbing sort of fashion, and we missed the hell out of her. No bath, no playing, no story, nuthin'... Sometimes parenting sucks junk.

Top 15 Guys Alive...

If you ever met Izzy Paskowitz you'd immediately want new friends...like him. There are few people alive on the planet doing such a noble job of living up to his potential than Izzy. He's a San Clemente guy, our favorite kind, and a living breathing example of making a difference in the most simple of ways. That alone can be profound...and Surfers Healing is profound.

Check him out, and stop by OCD Collective and buy a tee. It helps the most brilliant of causes, and is very close to my heart. Having worked with children with autism at a very crucial and influential time in my life, and having a very best friend who has dedicated his brilliantly energetic life and focus to it, I have deep rooted feelings toward any endeavor that seeks to shed light on autism, or that might provide help, and offer relief to families. Izzy's program does all three...and he's a big fan of Canada.

Here's the link, check it out. Buy something.

Like I've been saying...San Clemente, CA...best place on the planet. Raises up dudes like this.

Hail To The Victors Valiant...and Dads Too

So, I kidnapped Zoey and stole her away to the Michigan - Nebraska basketball game and she was BEYOND excited...about five rungs above stoked. We ate hot dogs, and popcorn, and drank buckets of Coca-Cola. Zoey got her hands on about seventy-eight pom-poms, conned her Dad into buying her a plush wolverine, she summarily named Mitch, after Mitch McGary, whom she thought was pretty cool. She danced. She cheered. She tried to sing "Hail to the Victors" but she only knows about half of the words. She freaked out about the band. She got terribly emotional about meeting the cheerleaders. Terribly emotional. She thought the Maize Rage student section was awesome, and she couldn't keep herself from crawling all over her Dad's lap for two hours.

This is what a happy little girl looks like...



It is my full intention to brainwash my daughter into thinking that I'm the greatest human being on the face of the earth, and for her to love me until the day I die. I started by spending as much time with her as I could, then I took it up a notch by being as fun and creative as I could manage, and now I'm at the newest stage in which I buy her love, and take her awesome places so that her Dad is showcased in way cooler light. It's subversive, but I'm way past caring...it's shameless, I know, but worth it in the end. Did you see that face? This Dad has intentions of being a rock star for at least another two decades. If I can somehow arrange a face to face meeting with actual cheerleaders...we're talking rock star until the end of time.

This Fire...

I used to hoard music. I refused to share. Now I kinda scream it from the rooftops. A weird transition from selfish to giving, but who wants to complain? That's why I'm saying that if you're not listening to Australia's "Birds of Tokyo" it's very likely that you've had a head injury and you're going to have to wear a helmet everywhere you go for awhile, if you're not already.

Sometimes I struggle with just how much music is out there now that independent artists can punch out whatever kind of awesomeness they want, and then I find this kind of thing and remember that it's nothing less than brilliant that so many artists can punch out whatever kind of awesomeness they want.

Have a listen. Hope you like. G'night.

Sometimes a Sunset...

If your iTunes catalogue can't make you feel right, well, you're probably beyond help. Tonight I stumbled home with the first two days back at work full of the most heinous murder/rape imaginable, and the sudden death of a ten year old hanging in the air, and after a full few hours of collecting the pieces I was eager to be around the people that I cared about. Welcome back to the real world.

So, I grabbed some impromptu sleep, sketched with Zoey, bathed her, tinkered with our shadow machine to make sure that Peter and Big Ben looked just right, and then slipped off into the ether with Chapter 15 of Peter Pan. That was close to enough, but not quite. Matt Kearney and "Breathe In and Breathe Out"...that was enough.

How messed up is the planet? Well, very. I'd give you examples but this is a public forum and I could destroy someone's life with a sentence. Suffice it to say, it's frightening, but that shouldn't stop us from living. No, quite the opposite. It should spur us on towards really living, you know, doing it the right way...the best way that we know how. Now here's the thorn that's stuck in my paw today...

I know far too many people who are taking this life for granted...far too many people who should be doing something awesome, or at the very least fun, with their days, and who are not. I know far too many unhappy, unmotivated, excuse manufacturing, bundles of apathy and anxiety to comfort me that all of the awfulness can be combated with inspiration. Let me tell you something here if you haven't already figured it out, the fuel I burn, and burn with an embarrassing appetite, is inspiration. I need it. I have to find it. I have to create it. I have to buy it. I have to sell it. I have to hear it and talk it and see it. I have to fall asleep with it, and wake up to it, and I need...I desperately need...to see it in others. Sometimes I don't.

Then today strikes, and it hits me harder than you can imagine. We must...must...find a reason to wake up, to watch the sun rise, to fall in love, to learn, to go to work, to say kind things about one another, to be be stolen away by music, or poetry, or science, to believe in magic, to trust and try...we must...must...be inspired, or it's over. We lose.

I don't ever want to let anyone down in that regard. I want someone to always believe that I was the most inspired person they knew. I want to the one whose breath was so taken away so often that you wondered how it was that my lungs got any air, what with the all of the love and hope and happiness filling them.

We're the only mammals on the planet that watch sunsets. There's a reason.

You Can Fly...You Can Fly...You Can Fly

It's not the greatest photo, but you get the idea. All it took was cardboard, tape, and a light...perhaps a little creativity and wonder...just a a little. All I know is Zoey is in LOVE with it and to be honest, I am too.

And the Verdict Is...

And so Maggie looks like who? It's been a back and forth tug-o-war between warring factions since the day that she was born.

She looks exactly like Brian.

OMG, does she ever look like June.

Wow, her and Zo look nothing alike.

You can see a lot of Zoey when she was a baby in her face.

I want to make that noise that the teacher makes on the old Peanuts specials...you know, whenever Charlie Brown would raise his hand and ask a question...that one.

The truth is we won't have a clue who she looks like, if she even looks like either of us, until she's a bit older. It seems impossible now, and I don't see a damn thing. I only see another really cute kid, and I get all smitten regardless.



All I care about is that we look awfully good together, don't we? Well, that and the fact that we're all healthy etc...but mostly that we look great together. Call me shallow.

Pete vs. Peter...

Randomly...I mean, out of the blue...the notion struck me this evening...late this evening, to make some sort of Peter Pan shadow projector for Zo's room. What? Yeah, that's what I thought...what the hell are you thinkin'...but then it started to seem like a pretty simple idea...and then once I was convinced that we could slap it all together in less than an hour or so...done. Zoey had herself a Peter Pan shadow on her wall.



It was pretty simple...sketch out a Peter Pan silhouette on paper, cut it out, trace it on some thin cardboard...cut that out. Draw up a decent facsimile of Big Ben, cut that out...patch 'em together. Ready to project.

Get yourself a light, a box, and start fiddling with whatever set up works for you. Done. Coolest thing ever.



Of course, it's dark as a closet in Zoey's bedroom with the lights off, and even with the light from our amazing little pre-bed craftiness there wasn't enough to get a decent picture of the shadow on the wall but rest assured, it was amazing...more than amazing. Zo was a giddy disaster as she laid down to sleep, SO, SO, SO excited, enough to flip herself onto my lap and smack a giant kiss on my lips, and squeal, "Oh Daddy, I love it SO much!" Yeah she did, 'cause it was awesome.

I missed the end of the Seahawks game slapping this fabulous little Daddy-is-a-hero bit of craftiness together, and my guess is that I'm the only Dad in a decent sized radius tackling such shenanigans instead of watching the NFL Play-Offs, but to hell with the Seahawks, and to hell with other Dads. There's a little girl sleeping under Big Ben right now, smiling, and dreaming incredible dreams, I'm certain.

Pete Carroll vs. Peter Pan...Peter Pan wins every time.

Daydreams and Beach Scenes

In a perfect world we live on the beach, somewhere south of Los Angeles, and we have a brilliant life, one that's full of purpose and joy. We don't worry about a thing except sunscreen. But there's immigration to consider, and money, and there's also the notion that our lives our here. So maybe we can just scatter our days with as many daydreams and beach scenes as possible...every chance that we get, and we can make plans for bigger things, that with luck, we someday manage.

One week walking on warm sand, watching saltwater sunsets, and wearing board shorts more often than underwear isn't quite enough, but it's the most inspiring and relaxing intervention that we could muster in the middle of our chaotic lives. It was enough for now, and if that's all that we can manage, well, we'll take it.

One week with palm tree shadows and warm Gulf breezes was something to keep us daydreaming into March, and then that might be enough to get us through to the summer, and in the meantime we can dream and do, and make plans that make smiles. It'll have to be enough because in a perfect world, we'd snap photos like this every day.

It's good to be home, but it's better to call someplace drenched in sunshine and sand home, if only for a little while.

Sleeping to Dream...

“Around the brave Tiger Lily were a dozen of her stoutest warriors, and they suddenly saw the perfidious pirates bearing down upon them.” James Matthew Barrie - “Peter Pan" It's become my most favorite thing, perhaps only just barely ahead of drawing with her, or just a smidgen above practicing writing our numbers, as we did tonight on a giant leather recliner in a rented apartment, but reading to Zoey each and almost every night has become something that confronts my awful urges to do anything else. Sure, there are times when I linger in my place, and let June tackle the task of bathing her and setting her off to bed, and in those moments I tell myself that I must surely need the break, otherwise I would have jumped at the chore, but on most occasions it's an unexpected pleasure to simply tuck her in and read. We've graduated to chapter books at bedtime, of course, mixed in with the usual picture books that she so loves, but we have started reading novels and stories intended for a much older audience, if only to stir her imagination on one hand, and bore her to sleep on the other. On good nights she can hang on for entire chapters, on exhausted nights she is often snoring after three pages. We try to tell ourselves that it's a brilliant bedtime technique, which it so far seems to be, but we both know, in truth, that this is for Daddy...that her Dad loves these moments. He alters the tempo and tone, he attempts imitating voices and then hesitates before stepping headlong into those frightfully dramatic pauses that make any story an incredible story. He sometimes stops to explain, or changes the words so that she might better understand, but mostly he just reads what's written, and reads it excitedly, as he would want to hear it, surely as it was meant to be read aloud. Pirates require dastardly and ominous tones, while fairies demand a brightness that most men can barely imagine reaching deep down inside for, but still he manages both, and is in love with the idea of trying. He often reads long after she's fallen asleep, and laughs to himself when he trips on something worth the laughter. Perhaps it's the deep thickness of his voice, or the enthusiasm with which he extends himself, but Zoey falls asleep every time, quickly, and without incident. The words are like a magic potion that sets her to dreaming, and this makes him proud, and Mom curious. I think that perhaps it's both of these things, his voice and his enthusiasm, but with certainty it's the love. You can rest confidently knowing that his daughter drifts off to sleep not because of the tales or the tone, no, but because of the reassuring warmth of the love. Like Florida humidity, it soaks the air around her and she is ushered safely to that most vulnerable place, sleep. It sounds romantic, or perhaps dramatic, to say the very least, but it's neither. The truth is that millions of children have fallen asleep to these words, with these same dreams, and he has read to none of them. Twenty generations of boys and girls have drifted off to Neverland with those images that J.M. Barrie scribbled to a page. This is nothing new, nothing unique, but it is to him, and because of that he does it almost every night, and because of that it is this simple beautiful thing that he might someday miss the most. He reads words that she can't possibly understand, but knows that if she never hears them she can't possibly conceive of their existence, let alone begin to comprehend them. He uses the same logic with the kids that he works with every day, "if you don't dream it, it can't happen," and it is such a truth that you can set your watch by it. What is good enough to practice with her is good enough to practice with other people's most precious resources, so he practices the same philosophies at his daughters bedside as he does with his work's responsibilities. It doesn't exist until you make it exist, so he reads the big words, and only sometimes changes them. Words like perfidious he reads aloud, and then waits for her to ask him for the definition. He very often doesn't know, and so another life lesson is embraced. They look it up together, neither quite knowing what it means or what to expect, and they settle back into the story happy with the effort, and just one word smarter. So, like tonight, he lingers, this time to type on the floor beside her bed. He can hear her sleeping and knows that it was he who sent her there, and if there's one hiring he loves about this Dad business it's being the one that makes it okay to dream.

The Life of Maggie...

We were just talking about how often Maggie naps and it struck me how crazy it would be if adults needed as much sleep as infants. Imagine that job interview...

"How open is your schedule?"

"We'll," you'd say, "I really need to nap every two hours or so, you know, or I'm just not productive at all."

"Okay, thanks for coming by sir. We'll be in touch."

I have friends whom I'm certain have had that exact conversation.

Such a Good Idea...

This Bowl trip, because that's what it ended up being, was such a good idea...the exact right medicine for ailing perspectives...rejuvenating, relaxing, a timely reminder of what we should be working hard to do...it was beyond fabulous. The sun was exactly what we were in such desperate need of.  We felt terrible changing plans on friends from New York City to Ottawa, and felt even worse that we bungled the planning of all of this...we're usually quite sharp when it comes to such things...but in the end we lay in our rented bed, staring out at coastal fog lifting over the Gulf, with our daughter cooing  between us, and sighed with satisfaction. This was a good trip.


We're still not quite sure if we're Florida people or not...seems unlikely...but we're sunshine and ocean people, and perhaps in the future we can look past all of Florida's scrubby land, and scruffy people, and put our blinders on 'til we reach the beach. I said four days ago that I probably would never be back this way, but I was wrong...it won't be my priority but it might always be a drive down I-75 away, and that's good to know. As recently as yesterday I had said to June that I really only had three or for more reasons to come back to Florida...


- Spring Training
- Key West
- Miami
- another Bowl game


After thre days of near flawless weather, and the wide beaches from Clearwater on down through Indian Rocks and Treasure Island to St. Pete Beach, my perspective has changed. Gimme an easy time of it, and guaranteed good weather, throw some affordability in there, and I'd wrestle with my conscience and come back down. It's astonishing what just a few days of sun and sand can do for you.  I feel very close to rejuvenated.  Two weeks of this would have been brilliant.

Ten days ago Florida seemed like such a ridiculous idea, given that we were already booked into one of North America's oldest and most beautiful cities, and that we had friends waiting for our visit, but after building sand castles with an excited little girl in the cutest bikini ever, it doesn't seem all that ridiculous at all.  It seems quite genius, in fact.

How long 'til March Break?

That's The Way...

If you missed this on Boxing Day then watch it now, but be prepared to well up a little, and be reminded what music and memory and nostalgia can do for you...especially the most powerful kind.  Is there a single child between three decades who hasn't been remarkably influenced by Led Zeppelin? Perhaps, but none that I'd like to know.

To be a rock, but not to roll...

Unbelievable. 

Sleepless, coffeeless, Floriphilosophizing

The question is, get up and out of bed to clean up and sneak out for coffee before the troops rise, or don't? It's warm under these blankets, and I can hear the waves and the street coming alive...but the idea of coffee, and just the smallest, mildest mini-adventure of susssing out where to get said coffee on an unfamiliar street...well, that might be too much to ignore.

I've been up since five or so. Dunno what my problem is, although it doesn't feel like a problem. It feels more like...just kind of waking up. There are palm trees outside for #%?!s sake. Get out of bed and go look up at them. Sure it's barely 8am...and it looks chilly out there, but it's not snow and soon enough it will be. What are you waiting for? It's difficult to fight bliss, even in a muted Florida kind of manifestation...it's hard to buck easy banality.

What's kept me up all these early hours? The thought of not needing half of what I have...of needing more of this again...sleeping in far away places with the sounds of the people I love sighing and snoring peacefully nearby.  The idea of doing exactly what I want to be doing, and not fighting it.  The notion that I'm not yet who I want to be.  All of that stuff will keep a guy awake when he should be snoring alongside of everyone else.

Lofty thinking for a quiet vacation, but then that's what time away is supposed to do for you.  I can't even bring myself to post a New Years type diatribe on what's next, or what just was, because I'm too busy being very present in right now, and maybe that should be the modes opera do for the next 360 plus days...never mind the thinking, just focus on the living.

Okay, I gotta get up and get coffee while these three beautiful girls are still unafflicted by morning, but ask yourself this, as I go to splash some water on this sunburnt face of mine..are you everything that you want to be, doing what you want to do? If not, maybe get up and get some coffee...it's a start. Then get busy living because the alternative will kill you.

That's Why All The Fuss

As I type there are two girls sleeping, one in the bed, and one on the couch, and yet another one flipping through her camera with dozens of brilliant photos that this iPad leaves us no way of transferring from camera to computer, and I am beyond happy.  I spent the day missing them, watching Michigan lose a close Bowl game to a frustratingly annoying South Carolina, all the while pining for these three girls.  It was sickening...both the loss and the pining.

It's true what they say about love, you know...it's worth it. That's why all the fuss.

Tonight I bathed Zo, while June slept with Mags. I read to Zo while June did her best to transition Mags from her chest to the pathetic laundry basket that we are using as a crib. I brushed away Zed's hair from her face when she woke herself from coughing and while June slipped away to get her something for her throat. I missed them even as I was here amongst them, that's how strong that love business is.

I wish I had photos to post.  I wish I had more to say. I'm just half-blissful in my oh-so indulgent absence from home. Perhaps not so strangely, I've realized that I really never left home, no, it came with me, as it's becoming remarkably clear that it is exactly wherever these three girls are. In fact, if I walked away from everything that I knew back home and just started over with what I have here and now I'd be ridiculously okay with that. It wouldn't be much of an effort.  I suppose that's what we all should be shooting for, isn't it? It sounds simple, but it feels pretty incredible to actually come to the conclusion in real time, and not just theory.  I've never quite thought of it that way. What if I just had to walk away, what if I just had to start over with what I had with me right now...it's a remarkable realization...but a pretty comforting one. I'd miss you all very much...well, some of you...but I'd be just fine...more than fine. I'd be happy.

It's true what they say about love you know...