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I’m sure my daughter can deal for a pony at the crossroads…
My daughter’s only two-and-a-half years old, but she’s shown a surprising appreciation for the blues. We noticed it for the first time about a year ago when we went into Sticky Fingers, a BBQ...
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White purr!
We had a stray cat show up recently. A very sweet little white kitty that took up with us almost immediately. Most strays that show up in our yard usually don’t stay very long. But our cats didn’t...
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An Imagined Dialogue #1
For some reason, I have imaginary conversations with my children. Some of these are the kinds of things you naturally think about way in advance, when you’re deluding yourself that you’re going to...
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Seems like a lot to go through to finally be called a “dangerous man”
When I told my general practitioner I wanted a vasectomy, he referred me to a urologist he knew. “A good man, a gentle man,” he said. And he assured me that, if my insurance didn’t cover this...
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The boy’s nine-month checkup
My son just had his nine-month check-up. He’s been a hoss since the day he got here, sitting somewhere above the 99th percentile in height since he was born. I admit to taking a perverse sort of pride...
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Advice to My Replacements, Episode 1: Negativity
Kids, From time to time I’m going to go into beard-scratching mode and try to lay some wisdom down on y’all. I don’t claim to be particularly wise. But I’ve been around for about forty years now, and...
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They won’t be able to lift the polearms until they’re older, so those are OK...
Unlike most mothers and fathers in America, the missus and I looked at our baby daughter and said, “She’ll be crawling soon. We’ll need to store the swords higher.” Yes, swords. My wife is quite the...
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Brushing off the cobwebs
Wow, 2010 was the last post. It seems like yesterday, like so many other things involving kids. The kid count’s still at two — and staying there — and they’re turning into quite the fun pair of...
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Got those multi-generational isolationist blues
“Mama said a lot of things and ‘be thankful’ was the one she never minded saying twice. Thanks to her I can think clear enough to be thankful that she died before tonight.” – The Drive-By Truckers,...
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This is not the Darth Vader you’re looking for…
My son has lived and breathed Star Wars for months now, ever since he first encountered the Lego Star Wars game for the Wii. He’d never seen the movies. (A situation we’ve since rectified by letting...
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You raise your head and years have passed…
Seriously. It’s like walking into a fairy mound. You think five minutes have passed, but outside it’s been five years. My wife came up to me the other day, as she will, and said that I should get back...
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“There’s a cough in the water and it’s running into town…”
My dad had been feeling poorly for a while, so he finally went to the urgent care clinic in town. They told him he had pneumonia and sent him to the emergency room for admission into the hospital....
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“Just cause I don’t run my mouth don’t mean I got nothing to say”
“I, too, know the love of a taciturn man.” — Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, probably echoing my wife’s thoughts most of the time. We’re about two weeks into my dad’s chemo/radiation regimen and...
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Dancing Days Are Here Again
Time was, I would have scoffed at the idea of a Father/Daughter dance. Then, of course, I had a daughter, and when your normally stoic daughter acts excited about the Father Daughter dance, you put on...
View Article“Thank you for being kind to me.”
“I hope you live long enough to forget half the stuff that they taught you And when it’s all said and done I hope you got your own set of rules to hang on to.” — Alejandro Escovedo, “Down In the...
View ArticleWhat it was was football…
(with title apologies to Andy Griffith) Well, we’re done with my son’s first football season, and his outlook changed pretty significantly by the time all was said and done. Where he once said his...
View ArticleQuarantine Check-in
As I write this, we’ve effectively been in quarantine for, what, how many months now? I don’t even know. Five months? Six? It seems impossible, but it just might be right. We started off in a pretty...
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