It's almost here again, Father's Day...

As Father's Day quickly approaches I have to wonder how many Father's Day stories are going to be circulating amongst the web?  How many are going to bring tears to my eyes?  And how many are going to set me off into fits of uncontrollable laughter?

On a personal note, Father's Day for me includes a bit of everything with 'what was he thinking?' thrown in to the mix.  There were many times in which my mother had to leave the same vicinity as him due to some task he was preparing to tackle or fix.  There were times when we all agreed he should not be allowed to say, "I can handle it" and then leave the room unsupervised!

I guess my funniest memory of my dad was back when I was about 22 years old.  My boyfriend and I had gone over to my parents house for dinner, nothing special, just getting together.

After arriving about a half hour early, the boyfriend, my mom and myself were in the garage having a smoke.  Dad comes walking out, gathers up a broom, a small garbage pail with it's lid, the pail doubled as a dog food holder when it wasn't empty, prior to him coming out to get the broom and pail, he had poured all the dog food into a large Tupperware container.  So now, with all his tools in hand, prior to him walking with them back into the house mother asks him, "What are you doing?".  His response of "there's a bee hive in the tree and I want to get it out before the kids come out this weekend", well that response set us into a panic mode at first and then we decided since he 'could handle it', we went out back with him to see what he was talking about and really to be witnesses for when we needed to call an ambulance!

First of all, the tree we thought the hive was in, was free of bee's.  It was a much larger, full of leaves and taller tree.  The bee hive in fact was not a bee hive, it was a hornets nest!  So now the boyfriend offers to help him, he promptly gets shot down and told to go stand over by the woman, he didn't want to be too close when he knocks the hive out of the tree and into the pail, angry bee's you know.....

And then crazy man comes walking out from the side of the house with one of his ladders, just long enough to reach the first fork in the tree!  The hive was much much higher than the ladder was long.  So after mother chimes in to inform him of the height difference, he pretty much told her to pipe down, but not in those exact words...

With ladder set up, he begins to climb up, broom and pail in one hand, holding onto the ladder with the other.  At this time the boyfriend is holding the hose prepared to soak him down if needed, mother and I are in the house, sliding glass door closed, but we are looking out.

According to the boyfriend, when he reached the top of the ladder, dad turned to him and said, "this is why I don't need a longer ladder because the broom is long enough to reach, where'd the girls go?".

So now reaching out from the ladder, he begins to swing the broom at the hive, bristle end up, basically causing a sort of wind effect, the hornets are flying around, nothing major.... and then he turned the broom around!

If I didn't witness it for myself, I would never had been able to believe what happened next!

After turning the broom around, holding the bristle end, the broom kind of flopped forward with the first swing, as he was bringing it back up he hit the hive and knocked it loose in his direction, it bounced off his chest and landed in the pail!  However, the lid was on the ground next to the pail and by this time, there were 3 of us in the house yelling at him to slide down the ladder and put the lid on!  He didn't have a chance to slide down voluntarily.  Those hornets shot straight out and up, dad basically slid and fell down the later almost instantaneously, it was like something you see on a cartoon!

Mom and I push the boyfriend back outside, he hoses down dad and in the process gets soaked himself as dad is running around trying to escape the hornets, the hose seemed to have taken on a life of its own.

I am happy to say that despite the stings, dad got the lid on while in the middle of running around the backyard, dad and the boyfriend were fine but our dinner plans had to be changed as we were going to barbecue but there were a lot of angry hornets hanging around that according to my dad were not normal hornets because he's removed hives before and they never hung around like these ones were....

Love you dad!  You have been our protector, security advisor, chauffeur, psychologist, counselor, healer of the cuts and scrapes, warden and our own personal clown!

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June 2nd, What A Day!

When you feel as though guilt should be a part of your life, pretty much for any incident in which you feel as though you did not do enough when you should have, the ability to overcome that feeling can be difficult at best.

I am learning, although on a day by day basis, I am learning to let that burden go away, I am learning to allow that burden to be placed back on the person that it truly belongs to.  I am learning that there are things in life that we are faced with that are truly beyond our control, regardless of how strongly we feel about them.

After spending the last month and a half holding in my true emotions, holding in the grief that I so carefully guard after the loss of 3 friends in such a short period of time, I found that I was compounding everything, trying to convince myself that in time, this too shall pass.... If there is anyone else out there who is under the same impression within their own life, please let me be the first one to tell you, to say with the utmost respect, it doesn't get any better if you try to shove it down to the bottom of your heart, layer by layer.  It doesn't, it just takes that much longer to resurface.

I met a man on an on-line dating site last week.  In truth, I found myself getting cabin fever and wanted to meet someone, man or woman, who would just like to get together on occasion, for a movie, game of pool, talk on the phone or even a walk around the block, I was looking for a companion without having to worry about undue stress that comes with dating.