Hooray for Dads!

I have the best dad in the world. Really.

This is the man who has always, from the time I can remember, shown me love, respect and affection. I never felt like just a little kid with him; I was special. He's special too.

Dad may not realize it, but he is the bar I try to reach in my own parenthood. It's not a bar-on-a-pedestal bar. It's a real-life attainable bar. I'm not there yet, but my role model is still around (thank the heavens, the stars and your favorite diety).

Husband is a good dad too. I got lucky with my dad, I chose well with the heathens'.

For all dads everywhere: Happy Father's Day. For my dad and my girlys' dad: I love you.

Inanities

This afternoon at work, I was treated to a treatise on the evils of carbs when I offered some leftover spaghetti to our COO. For heaven's sake, I was just being nice. A simple "No, thank you." would have sufficed.

A few hours later, I was on the phone with a young woman who's last name is Cartier. "Famous name." I quipped.

Dummy. Like she's never heard that before.

So what is it about people that we feel it necessary to point out the obvious or get on our soapboxes in the name of ordinary conversation? Why do we have to say anything at all?

Someone asks me for a light and chummily insists "Us outlaws have to stick together."

I'm an outlaw? I paid a shitload of taxes for this pack of cigarettes.

A non-smoker sees me smoking and cheerily insists "That stuff will give you cancer."

Gee, do you think that's what the Surgeon General meant in that warning on the box?

When the heathens were babies I actually had a lady confide that she'd been through fertility treatments 5 times and was never "lucky" enough to have twins. Do I really care if a total stranger conceived via test tube?

Golly I only got to have sex.

I'm guilty too. I see a co-worker in a sweater and ask if she's cold. My cube mate curls into herself and squiches her eyes and I ask if she's got a headache. Someone sneezes; I offer a home remedy for the common cold.

Why? I'm tired of it. I realize that, in this day and age, truly original thought is a myth. Still, do we have to suffer inanity of "stranger speak" just because the speaker and the listener are both human?

I am trying to redeem myself. Just last week, in a parking lot somewhere east of Kansas City, I was standing by my running car which contained my fighting children and smoking a cigarette. An inane (and well-meaning, I'm sure) stranger chidingly insisted "Did you know that's bad for you?"

My reply: Did you know that nicotine withdrawal increases irritability and aggression?

It's a shame he had pressing business inside, I would have loved to debate the point with him.

Mini-vacation

The heathens and I are in the thriving metropolis of Manhattan, KS. It's actually a very lovely town. Home to the K State Wildcats. They also have a very cool "insect zoo." They call themselves the "Little Apple" and are proud of it. Very nice people too.

So, how did this transpire? My sister. She lives in Colorado. We live in Missouri. Kansas is in between. (Really, check a map sometime. That flat, treeless space dotted with cows between Kansas City, MO and Denver, CO is mostly Kansas.) Since the heathens and I didn't have time to drive to Colorado for a week this year and she didn't have time to drive to us for a week this year, we settled on 48 hours (minus drive time) in the middle.

The girlys have thoroughly enjoyed the hotel pool. (And the bugs, Bug was WAY into the bugs.) Sister and I have thoroughly enjoyed the time to talk face-to-face.

She's trying to teach me to have emotions (or at least admit to them), I'm trying to teach her to suppress (rather than analyze) hers. It's a lose-lose situation but we're close. We are amazingly alike, except for that one small matter. And the fact that she's 6 feet tall. But we can't all be tall, can we?