dad

W Sisters Short on My Haircut

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The other day I got a haircut. For me that’s a pretty rudimentary thing to do. I get one every couple of weeks. The girls like to rub the back of my semi-shaved head. They think the short hairs feel good on their hands.

This haircut however T for some reason was patting my head. Then she started measuring how much hair I had with her finger. She proceeded to tell me that I had a lot of hair. The funny thing is I don’t. I keep it pretty short. Compared to her I have almost no hair. She then said she wanted to see me with more hair. I told her I was not going to grow my hair out.

I did let it grow a little in High School. Never liked it. I then told her that my dad, her puppy used to have a really long/big hair. She didn’t really believe me so I offered to show her and A picture.

When I shoulder the picture she said something like “Oh my gosh”. Then she asked if that was taken long ago. I said it what is however I remember his hair that long.

It reminded me of a funny story my sister told me. A few years ago my mum was wondering out loud to that strange man was standing next to her in a picture. My sister said that dad. I can only assume he had a huge head of hair at a time

My Dad’s Stories and His Idea Of Urgent

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At the time of me sitting down to write this post it’s been about seven months since my dad passed away. Just dictating that sentence got me choked up for second. I finally feel comfortable enough to start writing a few little stories I’ve been wanting to tell about my dad. I jotted down a bunch of ideas in January and I hope to remember more of them. Some stand on my mind more than others. Here goes.

My dad was a physicians assistant. Since I was pretty little he had worked in an emergency room. He loved the excitement of a good trauma. From every indication he was really good at it also. Being trained in medicine and working in an emergency room you tend to gauge or triage things differently than someone who probably doesn’t save lives for a living.

When someone would ask him to do something, usually my mom and claim that it was urgent to him. His response would be something like how badly are you bleeding? If the answer was not a lot or not at all then he would reply that is not urgent.

So basically to him unless you’re bleeding it’s not urgent. To take it a step further he said on several occasions that you’re not really bleeding unless blood shooting across the room and splattering on a wall somewhere. He was basically describing an aortic bleed.

That was my dad. He was pretty black-and-white on those kind of things. Of course I knew exactly where I stood when you needed him to make an urgent priority call.

What I Did Last Night

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To remember my dad last night I found a bottle of Godiva Liquor and M and I had a glass of it while watching an old MASH episode.

My dad was the person who turned me onto the chocolate liquor and he loved MASH so I thought that was appropriate.

I Miss You Dad…

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Today is my dads birthday. He would be 75 today. I am assuming this day will get easier over time, however it’s not today. I miss you dad. I will randomly think of you most days.  I have to try not to cry.

I am grateful my kids think of you and talk about you.  They know when they bring you up, that I will cry.  They ask if I will and I of course say yes.  I hope they remember you as much as they do now in a few years!  They say they dream about you.  That makes me smile and cry at the same time.

You are still loved and missed very much.

The Story Of My Returned Motivation To Write

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I am not so sure who “they” are however “they” say to start at the beginning. For this post thinking about where that beginning is has been murky. When I moved to London I had over a dozen different drafts of things I wanted to write about. I still have most of those drafts and would love to write about those topics. The realities of the move were I had little time to write when we first arrived. In early January when we arrived that was not a problem since I had a backlog of 4 to 6 weeks of written material to use on my posting schedule.  I just depended on how many posts I wanted to schedule per week. At one point I had 3 posts scheduled a week and I was able to streach things out by going down to two.

Then everything changed in mid-January. I  got the call that my dad was dying.  It wasn’t a surprise.  It was unexpectedly so soon.  He had been sick for a while.  The whole situation unfolded much more suddenly than I had thought. By the time I went back to New York and returned back to London I was focused more on getting back into my routine dealing with our shipping container that writing.

At some point I want to write a lot more about my dad’s death however not ready to do that yet.  In any event I still had all these ideas about writing, I just didn’t want to. Over the past few months I posted quick blurbs that I’ve thought about however nothing substantial. This also translated into not really journaling much privately either.  That was something I really enjoyed doing.  I ended up simply logging where I had gone with hopes of going back and writing some blurbs later.

Besides the lack of motivation, it was very challenging to find time. On one hand it is easy to say I was busy.  I have read enough to know that busy is a terrible excuse.  If something was important to me I would simply find time. The reality of the situation was I was depressed about my dad and tired from trying to adopt a new routine.  All I wanted to do at the end of a day when the girls were in sleep was to relax. In recent weeks my wife and I have both felt much more at ease that we are finally settled in. That has helped in getting me to journal more in recent weeks.

Now I feel like I am in the right place to start branching out into blog posts. That brings me to this post. I didn’t need to write all that, however as with much of my writing it felt therapeutic to write it.  And that is why I am writing about this topic as my first full post in a while.

The W Sisters and The Story of Assorted Stories From The Last Week In August

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Now that I am trying to make a conscious effort to write some stories about the girls I’ve been trying to remember to take quick voice notes so I can remember details in order to jog my memory later. I’m not in a call that a success yet since I only did it two days this week. The result of that effort however is this post combining a few small events from Monday and Tuesday, August 29 and 30th.

Before I get into the kids antics at home I can’t help but throw in something from an email exchange with M’s sister-in-law from earlier this week. We spent the last weekend in August at M’s sister-in-law’s house in Pennsylvania. After we left she emailed asking if we  had seen a magnet of hers that the girls were playing with. I haven’t but I really didn’t go through their luggage. I was gonna check with M however she hasn’t been feeling well. Before I was able to do that however I got another email from her saying never mind she found the magnet. It turns out the girls hid one magnet on top of another one. It looks like she was outwitted by one or both of the girls since tt took her a little while to figure that out.
One Tuesday (30-Aug) night after I got home and we had some playtime before bed the girls were playing with their dock McStuffin’s  doctor toys. T insisted on me putting the pager on her. I then tried to explain to her what a pager was and how people use them especially doctors before there were cell phones. I’m not rly sure if it was the fact that T’s four and a million is 2 1/2 or that not having a cell phone was foreign to them however I got blank stares when I was explaining  how page works.
I find it funny that T almost always notices when I get a haircut.  The night before I got a haircut and when I came home she immediately noticed that I got one. T likes to rub the back of my head since it’s been cleanly shaved and the hairs very short. The day I got my haircut T pretend wanted to cut my hair. I commented that I just had my hair cut and I questioned whether or not she thought Leon my hair cutter had done a good job I thought he did a great job.
The next night as we were playing with the Doc McStuffin’s medical set T insisted on cutting my hair again. This time she commented that “ the man did a bad job”. I’m going to have to remember to tell Leon he’s got a critic.
At the same time I was getting my hair cut A was cutting my nails. She likes to do that. That consists of taking the place that tweezers and snapping at my fingernails. As she is getting stronger it really does hurt sometimes when she does it but I find it so funny that she keeps trying to do it. After hurting my hands with her nail cutting I did get a checkup. I showed her where to use the stethoscope to listen to my heart.
Since I had bug bites from being out at M’s sister-in-law’s over the weekend I bought some aloe ointment to stop the itching. After my medical checkup by the girls two days in a row they got a cup and proceeded to put ointment on my skin to help my itching so I didn’t itch at bedtime.
After all this I am gaining confidence that I will be well taken care of when I get old.  Fingers crossed!

Fathers Day Weekend Sick at My Sisters

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This weekend for Fathers day we went to my sister’s to spend time with her family and my parents for Fathers day.  On mothers day we spent the day with MC’s mom on MC’s first mothers day and we did the same with my family for my first Fathers day.  We drove out to Carries on Saturday morning so we could spend the day and then we stayed over so we didn’t have to drive the entire trip both ways in a day.  We also left my dad’s car there since he is staying at my sisters while my mom is away in china.  We ended up driving back with my mom.

Unfortunately I got a migraine shortly after we got there in the early afternoon Saturday.  Even with the heavy duty drugs I really didn’t kick it Saturday.  I woke up still not feeling great Sunday.  Michael had to help me out a bit.  I was glad he was there.  It is very rare for me to get a migraine two days in a row.  I wasn’t happy that i missed a lot of the time hanging out with my family.  Teagan had a great time playing with her cousin’s.  Thankfully i wasn’t lying down the entire time.  I did get to play with the kids a bit on both days but for large chunks of both days i was out of commission.  I was glad it wasn’t worse than it turned out to be.  MC was fantastic picking up the slack when I couldn’t help with Teagan, and my mom and sister were also great.  I am always grateful for my family but on days like that especially so.

My Dad’s 70th Birthday

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Today was my dad’s 70th birthday.  My sister and her family and MC, Teagan and I were supposed to meet up with my parents for dinner near my parents house.  As I was going to catch the train and meet up with MC she called that Teagan apparently had a fever.  I knew she spit up earlier but didn’t think anything of it.  Turned out she did it 2 more times.  MC had to go home and I went to dinner by myself.

The dinner was good.  We went to an italian place near my parents that my dad likes.  it was good to see Carrie, Michael and the kids as well.  My dad liked his present.  My sister and I got him an autographed football that had the autographs of 3 Giants players on it.  He is hard to shop for so I am glad we found something he liked.

After dinner I got a ride home from Michael.  By the time i got home Teagan was sleeping, but she got up briefly later on and we gave her more meds.  Hoping she feels better tomorrow.

My Parents Are Becoming So Tech Savy It Scares Me Sometimes

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We live in a very technical world now a days so I don’t know why it surprises me that my parents are slowly embracing modern tools. I am less surprised by my dad than my mom but it sometimes still takes getting used to.

My dad at least has a long history of having useful gadgets. He was the first person I remember to have a PDA. It was an old Sharp Wizard that I eventually inherited. I get my love of gadgets from him, but I think I take it to a whole new level. Of course there is alot cooler stuff out now.

My mom on the other hand is not tech savvy at all. I still get calls from my mom for help doing basic stuff on my dad’s GPS. Of course my sister who once programed for a living also calls me just as frequently about similar issues so I shouldn’t judge.

What is funny recently is that my dad had been dead against a smart phone for ages. At one point I got him a Treo 300 that he used for a year or so, but didn’t like the small keyboard. He ended up going back to a regular phone and an old style Palm handheld. He has had a palm handheld (minus the time with the Treo when it was Handspring) since they first came out in 1996. Recently, well actually over the past few years he has been asking about an all in one phone/PDA. The problem is he doesn’t like the little keyboards. Because of that he hasn’t switched his setup, but has really wanted to ditch his phone, PDA, and pager (yeah he still has one) for one device. His work was going to give him a Blackberry a while ago but he turned it down because again he didn’t want a keyboard. I showed him the iphone when I got it and we decided it wasn’t for him since he would have a problem with the lack of feedback on the virtual keyboard. Recently he has been wanting a new phone again, so he went to the Verizon Store (his carrier). I was surpassed when he came back and said he wanted a Blackberry Storm. He liked the feedback of the virtual keyboard, and the phone did everything else he needed. He even wanted to get the data plan to get work email. He spent about an hour with sales guy and ended up buying one. I now need to go over and migrate his palm data to the Blackberry. In some ways I am not surprised he got that phone and in others I am a bit surprised he has a phone as advanced (arguably) as the one I have!

My mom also surprised me with technology when she started asking me about the Amazon Kindle. Apparently Operah had a special about it and she was interested. My sisters mother in law gave my sister a Kindle and my sister lent it to my mom for a cruise she went on a few months ago. She really liked it since she didn’t have to pack a bunch of books. She took a while to get over some issues with it but apparently got the hang of it. For a while I was pondering upgrading to the Kindle 2 and she asked if she could have my old one if I did. At first I wasn’t going to upgrade. For me the price of the Kindle 2 was too much to be worth the upgrade from the first version. My mom’s birthday is coming up and I couldn’t figure out what to get her (and I still owe her a mothers day gift) so I asked if she wanted my Kindle for her birthday gift? She said yes, so I ordered a Kindle 2 for myself. The new one would be a waste for her, so I don’t feel so bad giving her the generation 1 version. I am excited for the new Kindle and hopeful my mom doesn’t run into any problems using the Kindle the next time she uses it.

In a later post I might write about part two of this post, about my progress at weaning both my mom and dad off AOL. They still use it for email. I setup a mail domain on Google Apps and created accounts for both of them. I just need to show them how to use the Gmail web interface and get them to tell people the new addresses.

Need To Know

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My dad always taught me information is on a “need to know’ basis.  I think he did that so he didn’t have to tell my mom all non-essential things.  It wasn’t that he was keeping things from her, but just omitting information until she needed to know.  This worked and backfired on him all the time.  Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on how you look at it) that mentality has rubbed off on me.  For personal or professional reasons I have had to selectively give out information. My friends call it being a security minded individual. I guess that is true.