Just so we are all clear about what I am capable of!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

“The Winter Stalker” By Stephen Reedy & Alex Pardee from ZerofriendsFilms on Vimeo.

Anyone?

Anyone?

Buhler?

Buhler?

Ok, guess not.  Well, then fine.  Have it for free.  But no more bitching about the quality of service on the lido deck then.  And we are moving to well drinks in all the bars now.  All the fine liquor will be in the captain’s quarters from now on…come to think of it, it always has been.  Move along -nothing to see here.

Alright, you know something mush have happened to drag my sorry butt back to the keyboard.  So let me get to it.  Once a month, I have to be in K-town now to do some work.  It’s a good situation, but it does take me away from Ferf and the Muppet for short stints and that part can be trying.  The Muppet has been surprisingly nonplussed about it.  Ferf has been fairly good about it.  I have been accepting all forms of sympathy however and milking it for all it is worth - but that’s just how I roll.  With the advent of such wonderful technology like Skype and internet phones I can all but touch my family while I am gone.  If I could actually touch my family, or at least Ferf, while I was gone then I am pretty sure that this would quickly become a little too personal a post for most of you to read.  That or I would make it a members only site and start making some real money…but I digress.

SO one morning, I got a phone call from Ferf.  This is not that unusual, but normally we do our calls in the later afternoon or right before the Muppet goes to bed so we can stick with the whole bedtime ritual and routine.  But this day I got a call fairly early in the morning.  So I answered it (cause that is the normally accepted response to a ringing phone.  In fact, it has become almost Pavlovian these days, which you would think would mean that I should be able to get my dog to answer the phone, but the best I can do is get him to run to the phone and slobber…).  Anyways, I picked up the phone and seeing it was a call from m ever-lovin’ wifey, answered it.  (cause with caller ID that whole Pavlovian response things is less relevant.  In fact, you shouldn’t even bother trying to get your dog to answer the phone.  If you could get him to read the screen and tell you who was calling however, that would be a neat trick and could probably score you an appearance on David Letterman’s Stupid Pet Tricks.   Unless he was busy destroying his show by sleeping with people who work for him.  Maybe he might want to sleep with your dog…you know what.  Let’s put this whole dog, phone, David Letterman affair behind us shall we.  It leads to dark, awkward places.)

So, lets go back to the beginning.  The phone rang, I saw it was Ferf and I answered it.  See, that wasn’t so hard was it. There is absolutely no reason to go delving into things like dead Russian psychologists and whether or not David Letterman has a predilection towards bestiality.  Why do you people do this!?

SO I answer the phone with out a single thought outside of answering the phone…and Ferf tells me that the Muppet doesn’t think she should go to school that day.  Now, understand that this is a HUGE thing.  The Muppet likes school.  In fact, the Muppet loves school.  She’s a role model for goodness sake!  She loves the kids, the teachers, the uniforms - she loves it all.  So her not wanting to go is well, huge.  So she gets on the phone with me.  And I ask her how she’s doing the fine morning.  (Cause you don’t want to play into anything unwittingly.)  She tells me that she is not doing well.  I can tell this is going to be a bit of a drawing out process.

Me:  Why are you not doing well?  Isn’t today a beautiful day?

Muppet: I don’t know if today is beautiful  I haven’t seen it yet.  And I probably shouldn’t see it.

<Now, to be fair, and in the interest of full disclosure, she did have a bit of a cough - and evidently a tickle in her throat judging by the horrid sound she was making that was more than clearing one’s throat, but less than anything else I could imagine.  I realized that at some point it would be my fatherly duty to teach my little princess how to “hock a loogie”.  I have come to understand that this is not a practice that girl daddies normally participate in.  One doesn’t see a lot of little girls all dressed up in frilly lacy pinky things spitting hocked up snot onto the sidewalk like they might see a teenage boy doing.  But even if one is reviled by the concept, one must admit that said teenage boy had to have been taught how to both hock and spit said loogie at some point - either through intentional tutelage or by personal practice from mimicry.  However it happened, there was a definite exchange of knowledge, and as I am less inclined to allow others to teach my daughter things “on the playground” I figured that it probably fell to me to cover that particular portion of the life curriculum - mostly because I know for a fact that her mother doesn’t have the knowledge to share with her.  I know this because her mother once asked me to teach her how to do it.  We were already engaged, so I guess the gloves we off and she figured I had made enough of a commitment that she did not have to fret over whether or not I would call her the next day if she asked me how one does it.  Being the good and kind fiancee I was, I acquiesced to her query.  We were sitting in Queeny Park in Vancouver - overlooking the entirety of the place, which by the way, is gorgeous. That fact plays little part in the story, but it does help with setting and sometimes context matters.  It was late morning, so we had the place pretty much to ourselves.  We were sitting on a park bench that was placed with a perfect view of the city, but probably not with loogie hocking practice in mind, but hey, you cannot anticipate everything.  So Ferf got the hocking part pretty quickly.  (She does have a younger brother and I know for a fact that ScottyBear can bring up quite a loogie, so I assume that she learned the internal portion of the project from mimicking him.)  Evidently, though, she never had really “gotten” the concept behind spitting.  So there was a gap in her learning that she desired to close.  I showed her a couple of times with what were, I must admit at the risk of sounding prideful, beautifully arching blobs of the perfect mixture of saliva and mucus that flew no less than 7-8 feet before impaling themselves on the blades of grass on the lawn before us.  I talked at length at the importance of rolling the tongue, the science of creating an airtight seal with your lips until the last moment to achieve maximum velocity, and the art of the perfect trajectory.  In fact, it might have been one of my finest off-the-cuff lesson plans.  When she finally worked up the courage (and the loogie) to try, she was giddy with anticipation.  We were sitting side by side and both looking forward in order that we might together view her first successful attempt so we could do an after action review of her performance.  I counted it off for her….three…..two….one….GO!

The sound that emanated from her cheeks, as well as the flakes of spittle on the side of my face gave me instant informational feedback that she had indeed not made an airtight seal like we had spoken of.  It was then that I felt the delicate pressure on the top my shoe.  That perfect amount of pressure that only comes from a dainty loogie being deposited by gravity onto the top of your foot.  I looked at her briefly before looking down to survey the carnage that was my Nike Air.  I knew two things instantly.  One, the girl before me who would become my ever-lovin’ wife, was not going to “get it” when it came to this activity.  And two, she was getting a cold.  But I digress…>

So the Muppet had a tickle in her throat that she was unsure how to scratch, but the noises she made suggested that she was not going to scratch that itch before she made anyone around her with a half decent sense of auditory awareness really uncomfortable.  Also, she had a bit of a dry cough.  Not quite Swine Flu, but evidently annoying enough to her to be worthy of a “I can’t go to school today” intervention.

Me: Muppet, what’s the problem?  Are you sick?

Muppet: Oh yes daddy.  I am SO sick.

Me: How sick are you?

Muppet: Too sick to go to school!

Me: How sick is that?

Muppet:  Well daddy, I have a cough.  I couldn’t sleep last night because of the cough.

Me: Baby girl, Daddy went to school lots after not sleeping all night.  You can do it.

Muppet:  Daddy…<sniffing like tears were beginning to well up in her puppy dog eyes> you don’t understand.

Me: What don’t I understand baby girl?

Muppet: I am exhausted and catastrophied!!!

Me:

Muppet:  Daddy, did you hear me!?

Me: Ummmm, yeah.  I got you there chief.  Exhausted and catastrophied.  That sounds bad.

Muppet: Oh it is bad Daddy.  So very bad.

So Ferf let her stay home from school.  The cough was not very nice and the sounds she was making would have been distracting even to the most dedicated kindergarten student.  And through it all, I got a new vocabulary word.  One that I am certain we have all felt at one time or another.  Catastrophied.   Yep, we’ve all been there baby girl…we’ve all been there.

Truth be told (and every now and again it is here on the Maru) I really enjoy the entire verbal process.  It’s her inviting me into her world.  I know that she might not be so eager to do so later in life, so I relish it now.  Today I got some serious scuttlebutt on the goings on in the kindergarten class.  There is all kinds of stuff going on there.  The Terry Fox run is tomorrow and the kids are raising money for the Terry Fox Foundation.  The Muppet decided that she wanted to raise money for Terry Fox like she did last year.  She told the kids this.  They were not as impressed as she thought they should be - mostly because they are all doing the same thing.  SO, being the Muppet, she felt it necessary to remind them that she raised more money than them last year and would do so again this year.

Heh.  Funny, cause last year I was working in an office and I could let her go from cubical to cubical soliciting people who would feel occupationally obligated to help her out.  This year, I work from home…

But this would not be something that held her back.  She told me that we could make calls and get people to give on the internet.  Seriously, my child is 5 and has a pretty good understanding of the vehicles best suited for fundraising.  I told her that we would make some calls, but she had to do the entire solicitation.  SO she had to be prepared to ask people to sponsor her, and then be ready to tell them what she was doing and WHY she was doing it.  She seemed to get the picture, so I called a buddy and asked him if she could solicit him for a fundraiser.  I explained in great length that he was welcome to say yes or no because the lesson was learning how to ask and how to be grateful no matter the response.

So after the quick run down, I handed the phone to the Muppet.  She said hello and then immediately asked if he would like to support her cause.  (I winced a bit because first rule of making an ask is to spend some time establishing rapport with the donor…seriously, everyone knows this and the kid blew right by it.)  I could hear his side of the conversation and it went like this:

The Muppet: “Hello.  Would you like to support my cause?

Her mark: “Well, what’s your cause?”

The Muppet: “We are raising money for Terry Fox.”

Her mark: “How are you doing that?”

The Muppet: “I am calling people and asking them if they want to support my cause.”

Her mark: “How much are you trying to raise?”

The Muppet: “I am letting people decide how much they want to give.”

Her mark: “What does the money go to?”

The Muppet: “The money goes to help little kids in the hospital who have cancer in their bodies, so they don’t have to die like Terry Fox did.”

Her mark: ” <blink> <blink> “uh, okay…how much do you want?”

The Muppet: “However much you want to give so the kids don’t die.”

Her mark: “How’s $50?”

The Muppet: <pulls the phone away from her ear> “Daddy, he’s giving fifty bucks!!”  <puts phone back to ear> “Thank you…daddy will get your money.”

Seriously, this happened over and over for about an hour (though the $50 was the high water mark in single gift size).  She told the same story time after time.  I asked Ferf if she had coached her on wording, and she assured me that she had not, and that the Muppet had come up with that all on her own.

So she’s running in the Terry Fox run.  I am pretty sure she will be the highest fund raiser in the class again.  But, if you want to give, you can.  Click this link to the Terry Fox National School Run.   Where it asks for a participant code, type: APSEQT That’s the Muppet’s page.  Donate however much you want so the kids don’t die.  The Muppet and Terry Fox will both be grateful.

But to get back to the original point of this story - drama in the classroom.

Where were we????  Oh yes, we were on the way home from Kindergarten and the Muppet is sharing her day with me.  She sat next to Emma at lunch because her favorite friend was absent.  But that’s okay.  Her favorite friend was probably sick…or on vacation.  And Emma is nice to sit next to because she chews with her mouth closed.  And she doesn’t spit when she talks.  Both of which are social skills that are evidently not universally practiced in her class.  Then, with absolutely no segue, she mentions that Nate doesn’t like it when everyone in the class looks at him when he gets in trouble.  I mentioned casually that maybe he should stop getting into trouble if the looks of others bother him so much.  The Muppet seemed to be underwhelmed with my suggestion and gave me a look that I AM CERTAIN she learned from her mother who gives me the same look when she is underwhelmed with suggestions I make.  She paused dramatically to give the look and continued on with her story about Nate and his distaste for groups of people looking at him when he gets in trouble.  Wanting to be an active listener, I asked what kind of things he did to get in trouble and thereby garner the looks.  The Muppet told me that he is usually just silly or does inappropriate things.

Now, to be fair, the Muppet has a vocabulary that is kind of outside the norm for 5 year olds (at least this is what I have been told by others.  Personally, I think she has an appropriate vocabulary for a 5 year old, but then she is the only 5 year old I have ever had and thus she is judged against herself in my world - thereby ensuring that she is constantly normal).  So when she says that someone does something “inappropriate” I (a) know that she is aware of the meaning of the word and (b) ask a follow up question that you would expect me to: “What kind of inappropriate things does he do?”

Again, I am honestly expecting her to reply with something fairly benign like “forgets to wash his hands before eating” or “cuts in line at the water fountain.”  Inappropriate to be sure, but hardly earth shattering.  So, when I asked the question it was almost a throw away line.  I am driving, she is in the back seat and I simply want her to know that I am listening and engaged with her.  So you can understand that I almost drove off the road when she said, “Like when he’s inappropriate with others in the cloak room.”

<blink>

<blink>

<blink>

<remember to breathe>

<stop the trembling in your hands>

<release the death grip on the steering wheel>

<calm your voice before you speak and sound relaxed>

“What do you mean baby girl?  What kind of inappropriate things does he do with others in the cloak room?”

<blink>

<blink>

<blink>

<check the clock>

<what’s taking so long to answer?>

<don’t sound pushy>

<don’t panic>

“ahem…Muppet?  Did you hear my question?”

“What daddy?”

“I said, ‘What kind of inappropriate things does he do with others in the cloak room?’”

“oh…he talks.  You aren’t supposed to talk in the cloak room - it’s inappropriate.  He does, and so he gets in trouble, and then everyone looks at him.  He doesn’t like that.”

<as feeling returns to my extremities and thoughts of justifiable homicide recede from my consciousness and my heart rate returns to normal>

“yes…I can see that.  Wanna listen to the radio for a bit?”

Seriously, we’re like 3 weeks in…I don’t know if my heart can make it through a whole year of this kindergarten drama…And poor Nate has no idea how close to death he came today - somebody was gonna get hurt real bad!

note to self - teach the Muppet another word for “inappropriate”…one that doesn’t illicit such strong emotional responses from little girl’s fathers.

Anyways, this summer was back to nature here on the Maru.  We, as a family, spent a good deal of time outside and got back to the whole natural eating thing we had slipped away from for a bit.  To that end - we did some serious canning and freezing. So if Y2K ever shows up again, I suppose we’ll be ready.  But don’t you come knocking on my door simply because you didn’t prepare like I did.  I don’t have enough for everyone - but my neighbor down the street does still have a chemical toilet left over from 1999, and he’d prolly let you use that if you came by and needed it.

So, one of the things that Ferf wanted to do this summer was to get some fruit - lots of fruit.  She wanted blueberries, a whole lot of blueberries.  The upside of living where we do in Canada is that fruit grows here like mushrooms in sheeit.  It is everywhere and it is wonderfully sweet and juicy and yummy.  For those of you who were not blessed with knowing me as a young child (and believe me that would truly have been a blessing to you) you would not know how strange it is for me to have written a sentence like that last one - no, not the you would have been blessed to know me as a kid one…the one before that about fruit and it being described with terms like yummy goodness.  As a child I was NOT a fruit fan.  I would eat apples (red delicious only) and occasionally grapes (especially green seedless ones frozen in the freezer).  That was about it.  I simply did not like the flavor or the texture of such things.  I figured that if eating a piece of fruit caused the freaking fall of man, then I was better served to stay away from such things.  Imagine how much better off we’d all be if Adam hadn’t liked fruit.

Genesis 3

The Fall of Man

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ”

“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her.

But Adam was not a fan of fruit and said to his wife, “No thank you.”  His wife said to Him, “But I have taken of it and eaten and did not die.”  Adam cocked his head to the side and said to her, “Look woman, this has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of eating a piece of freaking fruit.  You wanna listen to a dang snake, you go right ahead.  But I don’t like fruit all that much, so back up off me woman.”

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and she hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.  But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”

He answered, “I’m over here, watching my wife try to hide from you in a berry patch.  I told her the thorns would hurt, but she dove right in.  It’s crazy!  She said she had to hide cause she’s nekkid”

And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she ate some.”

Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Then Adam said, “honestly, I don’t know what’s gotten into this one Lord.  She’s hanging out with snakes, eating bad fruit.  The whole thing is sketchy to me.”

And the Lord, wiped serpents, Eve and fruit off the face of his creation and replaced them with dogs that could speak, beer and women that were totally hot and utterly compliant.”

But that is not how it went down, and here we are today.  But that is not really the point of this post, I was simply letting you know that I used to loathe fruit and now, I really like it.   No, the point of this post is the berry picking portion of the story, which I haven’t even been able to get to yet, cause that saucy tart Eve screwed stuff up so long ago.  We’re still paying the price for her…<sigh>

Anyway, back to the story…let’s see, fruit, yummy goodness, oh yes, I remember!  Ferf wanted fruit.  We have an abundance of “you pick it” fruit farms around us here in the valley.  She thought we might go pick some fruit.  Blueberries to be exact - cause it was blueberry season and she wanted like A LOT of them.  I am into this a bit, but still leery that I will be doing the majority of the picking because the Muppet will enjoy it for about 10 mins before she gets utterly bored and Ferf has the broken foot…SO, I ask the ever-lovin’ wifey how many berries she is thinking about obtaining.  She tells me, “no more than a hundred pounds.”  Oh, good.  Nice to have an upper limit.  100 FREAKING POUNDS OF FRUIT!?  Are you kidding me??  And you want to PICK IT?  BY HAND???  “Well,” she tells me, “it would be cheaper.”

Admittedly, that does tend to get me attention.  “How much cheaper?” I ask.  “I can call and ask,” she replies.  (don’t you love the witty banter we have in our home.  We’re like the Gilmore Girls, only we’re not named Gilmore, and we’re not mother and daughter, and we’re not both female, and..you know what - turns out we’re nothing like the Gilmore Girls…just ignore that whole train of thought.)  SO she calls.  Turns out that to have them picked is $0.10/pound more than you picking them.  Hmmm…so if we got 100 pounds, that would be a $10 difference in total price…It would probably take me 2 days to pick that many berries doing 8 hour days, so my time would in fact be worth…<add the two, sum up, carry the naught, divide by the sum of the parts> $0.62/hour.

So we called and ordered 100 pounds of already picked berries.  WooHoo!!  The next day I got to the berry farm to pick up said berries.  I go to the counter and give them my name and they go to get the berries.  As I am standing there, I figure I’d give something a shot…So I ask the girl, “Since I am buying so much at once - I assume I get a bluk discount, right?”  She looks a little bewilderd, but says, ” I can give you $0.10 off per pound.”

That would be excellent!!!

I love berries!!!

So Ferf broke her foot this weekend.  Yep.  Broke her right foot - and know I don’t mean she broke it off in my arse.  I mean she broke a bone in it.  Fracture of the fifth proximal metatarsal.

So now she has a big black air cast boot on her foot.  Very sexy.  She wears it well - makes it look good.

But how did she break it you ask.  I’m glad you asked.  She tripped over thin air whilst walking across the bedroom floor.  She swears that she tripped over my house shoes, but I think that’s bunk.  My house shoes are not something easily tripped over.  They are size 12 after all.  How on earth does someone overlook a freaking foot-yacht parked in the middle of the floor?  If it were me, I would rather have people believe that I tripped over thin air.  But she stands by her story…well, sits by it really. She doesn’t stand so much right now.  heehee.

She did it right as I was leaving for the weekend.  Friday morning and it is literally 10 minutes before my ride was coming and she takes the dive upstairs and I run up to find her doing a full frontal face plant on our bedroom floor - her head landed 4 inches from the door jam.  The good news is that she didn’t brain herself as well.  But we got her up and down stairs and her foot elevated and iced.  It was already swelling by that time and she couldn’t put weight on it.  So she asked me if I could go to the store and get her some crutches before I left.  Dutifully I checked on line and made some calls to drug stores and such.   No luck.  No crutches to be had.  I had the dubious honor of letting her know that there would be no crutch based assistance coming.  I offered to cancel my trip, but she wanted me to go.  When my ride showed up I took my bags out to his car and when he opened his trunk, there was a set of crutches.  I asked him if he were planning to get injured to which he responded that they were a set he used after ankle surgery and he was taking them to the Salvation Army.  I laughed and took them into the house for Ferf.  She used them all weekend and waited until Monday to even go see a doctor.    Ahh my wifey.  She’s a keeper!

Evidently the Muppet was quite the trooper this weekend.  She took care of everything that Ferf needed.  She carried food and dishes to Ferf, she brought her drinks and kept the house “tidy”.  She did her chores and never once complained.  She was awesome.  In fact, she tried to do everything.  She tried to not only bring Ferf a bottle of extra strength Advil liquid gels, she tried to open them and give her some of them.  Unfortunately she was foiled by the child proof lid.

She tried and tried to get the bottle open, but to no avail.  Frustrated she handed the bottle to Ferf and told her that she could not get it open.  Ferf smiled and told her that it had a safety feature - a child proof lid.  The Muppet thought about that for a moment and said “it’s child proof?”

Ferf said, “yes honey…it’s child proof.”  Again, the Muppet thought about that and finally said with a deeply sincere look on her face,

“But HOW does it know that I am a child???”

Later I told the Muppet that it is magic, like a thermos.  It keeps hot things hot and cold things cold, but nobody knows how it can tell the difference.

…

…

…

For those who pay homage to the great god google I give you this piece of intelligentsia:

An anniversary (from the Latin anniversarius, from the words for year and to turn, meaning (re)turning yearly; known in English since c. 1230) is a day that commemorates and/or celebrates a past event that occurred on the same day of the year as the initial event. For example, the first event is the initial occurrence or, if planned, the inaugural of the event. One year later would be the first anniversary of that event.

But this day is actually none of the above, but it does commemorate a past event - 12 years ago today my father died much too young.  He was 57 years old.  He never saw me marry Ferf.  He never saw me move to Nepal.  He never saw me get dual citizenship.  He never got to talk to me about my travels all over Africa and south-east Asia.  He never heard me speak exotic languages poorly.  He never saw the birth of the Muppet - nor any of the followig growth she has done in the almost 5 years since.  He never drank really good scotch with me and talked about my life and my goals and dreams.  He never saw me get my CFRE designation or the years of work that went into earning it.  He never celebrated my first 7 figure gift that I brought into an organization.  He never saw the first house I bought…or the second one for that matter.  He never saw me screw up so badly and then pull life out of the ditch (with the help of more friends than I could ever create nicknames for).

Bottom line…he missed a lot.  And the list grows every day.  I think that is one of the hardest things to get over.  He should be 69,  about to turn 70 this year.  That’s young…young enough to still be alive that’s for darn sure.

He died of cancer over a decade ago.  Sometimes I think I am still pissed at him for having the audacity to die.  Yes, that is incredibly self-absorbed to the point of bordering on narcissim…I’m comfortable with that.  At least I’m self aware.  SO many people miss the boat on that one.  But not me.  I got that going for me.  Which is nice.

It is an amzing thing that our subconscious can remember the anniversary of the deaths of loved ones even we don’t consciously think about it.  I had a list of things to do today that I didn’t really get through.  I just wasn’t feeling it, you know?  I couldn’t get in te groove.  I felt blaise and weird and out of sorts.  I wasn’t depressed but I was far from perky.  Then I looked at the calendar and it occurred to me that this was the day that my father had died on.  That gives me a complete pass on all things emotional I think.  It’s like playing the orphan card (which Ferf and Merf do WAY better than I because they have lost both parents at much younger ages than I lost the one, so in the scheme of things they totally win on this).  If I kinds sulk around on the 19th of May and just don’t get a lot done (or at least as much as you or anyone else thinks I should) then I get to play the “my dad died on this day in 1997″ card and you have to back off.  It’s like a rule.  No, more like a law.  A universal law that must be obeyed.

I am lucky in the one respect that my wife and her family totally get what I am going through.  Marvin married a girl and BOTH her parents are still alive!  It’s like she’s rubbing it in.  She can sympathize, but I get the full on empathy.  It’s a totally different ballgame.

So here’s the deal.  All of you out there with fathers that are still alive.  Right now, go….wait!!!  WHAT ARE YOU DOING??   Okay.  OKay, not RIGHT NOW…let me finish first.   Go get a pen and paper, or open your Outlook (or whatever email client you have chosen or opted to accept like mindless sheep because it came installed on your Bill Gates controlled PC - those of you who use Eudora or Thunderbird, you get a pass from that last rant.  If you own a Mac, then you get a cookie) and wrote them a letter RIGHT NOW telling them how much you love them and that you appreciate everything they do/have done for you - especially the being alive part, that is more important than you realize, trust me on this one.  It doesn’t have to be long, though seriously, if you are balking at this because of the necessary length of said letter, than you do not understand the point behind this and I am going to have to ask you to go stand in the hall for 20 minutes or until you realize what a selfish punk you are - whichever comes first.

Then, call them too.  Becaus hearing their voice is something you should do as often as you can.  Just because you can.  Besides, Fathers Day is coming up.   Get a jump on the crowd.

Go…

Go on,

DO IT.

I am going to call them and ask if you did or not.  I swear.  GO!

I personally have nothing against pregnant women.  In fact, I am personally responsible for making my wife into one of them - and for continually trying to do so again.

But still…this was funny.