to eldest daughter, h. remember the time we were in the store and saw the matching socks and bought them because they were so odd and decided to change our plans, and instead wore them to the giant multi-plex theater, and bought a massive tub of popcorn and keg o’ soda and raisinets and paid for the first movie, but snuck into the others and spent the day there, laughing and watching and feeling like happy criminals? just wondered.
middle daughter h, brought grandbabies j and b to ann arbor to visit me (peaches), for the day.
and what an adventure it turned out to be.
we began the day with a bit of chocolate for breakfast at our favorite local bakery.
we stopped by for a book reading and a bit of play at our favorite book shop.
after a pizza and pop lunch we strolled right onto the edge of our town’s annual hashbash,
where we met a blue and purple dog and lots of friendly hippies of all ages.
and chased giant magic bubbles all over the diag.
and we saw a drone overhead and it looked like a scary flying spider.
and two of us ran into each other.
and one of us threw up after all the junk food and excitement.
and we went to the park and got wet and sandy.
and then some of us were really, really tired.
but not peaches.
and we were all still smiling.
it was a day.
—-
My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty.
She’s ninety-seven now, and we don’t know where the hell she is. ~ Ellen DeGeneres
aussie baby m by the sea
—
author unknown
i traveled back from visiting my family in australia with this little gem in my bag. it was a super cool dino, who screamed like a banshee for 20 seconds when you squeezed its belly, and it was going to be a amazing and easy gift for baby j back in the states, when his birthday rolled around in 6 months.
once on the trip, a unexpected logistical issue arose. periodically, and without any pattern or warning, i would hear it shriek in my carry- on bag. and, periodically, i would explain to those around me, and in customs and security, that it was simply a harmless toy, gone a bit bad. it was important that it made it home, as it was a gift for my grand baby j, one he simply could not live without.
through some miracle of human kindness, it was allowed to travel all the way with me, and once home, i happily put it into my ‘box of upcoming and unusual gifts that people in my life cannot live without.’ every so often, i would hear it’s happy shriek, a bit muffled and coming from the box. i could not wait for the big day!
finally, j’s birthday was on the horizon and i took it out to wrap. i thought again about how he would be so happy to get this gift and annoy the whole family with it for hours on end. that is when i squeezed it myself,and noticed that things had clearly changed. now when i squeezed it, it would not make any noise at all and then when it finally did, it simply would not stop the shrieking for a long, long time!
i called my family in australia, and my daughter suggested that it may have a battery inside that needed changing. who knew? she actually was right, and i wrestled a battery out of it, unwinding the screw that was the size of a fairy hat, and found a replacement after a visit to numerous stores. at last, it had stopped screaming.
i took it to school to have my teaching partner do the required surgery to replace its life force, as she is much more tech-savvy than i, and thought the problem would soon be solved. the good news, is that it now had a fresh source of power, the bad – it refused to stop shrieking again, as soon as she put the battery in. she quickly removed it once more, and i decided to present it with its guts torn out, thinking i would replace its insides on-site, for dramatic effect. and i couldn’t leave the battery around, as he was little and might swallow it, so it had to be an all or nothing choice. this was turning out to be quite an amazing and easy gift!
i arrived at his house, and told the family the backstory and proceeded to insert the battery once more. of course, it began shrieking again immediately and baby j loved it! and the rest of the family hated it and asked me/begged me to remove the battery immediately! i took it back out and we found the above unusual note on the neck tag of the dino/banshee. and it kind of made sense.
we also discovered the reason that it may not have worked exactly right.
apparently the toymakers had imprinted it, but forgotten to actually add this button to the toy.
so, we decided to ignore the warning note and took things into our own hands. the outdoor fire pit was too snowy to work.
we took it back indoors, but we decided we would probably be killed by the fumes, if we followed through with its execution by fire.
so we threw the battery away, deep in the trash.
and dino joined the others who found themselves in the pile of extinct toys.
it was a long journey, but somehow we managed to all have a lot of fun with it.
and that was the gift.
—
The greatest of all gifts is the power to estimate things at their true worth
François De La Rochefoucauld
aussie grandbabies m and f live in what is clearly a two-spiderman household
Sometimes being a brother is even better than being a superhero. ~Marc Brown
No moon in Southern Australia gives a great view of the Milky Way.
dedicated to you, my aussie family, so far away. and sharing the same sky.
—
photo credit: the intelligent optimist
baby j – i knew i had seen this guy somewhere before –
i’m officially on spring break for 16 days and i get to play with the babies today while mom and dad run
the st. pat’s day race.
when we get together, we have energy to burn and we’ll be running our own race,
at least a marathon, all inside the house, i’m quite sure of it.
we’ve got mischief to make.
run, family, run.
Aye, I’m tellin’ ye, happiness is one of the few things in this world that doubles every time you share it with someone else.
on the autumn beach on the shores of lake michigan,
with babies j and b
as the sleeping bear dunes take in the view with us
“There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million.” Walt Streightiff
where one ends and the other begins.
babies b and j form a bridge
Love is the bridge between two hearts. – Swedish Proverb
today is my father’s birthday and he’s gone now, but never forgotten.and whenever i see the show, ‘mad men’, i think of him. the look, the feel, the era – that was our life growing up. we lived in the twirly, swirling world of advertising.
my dad, in the left forefront, in a very important lunch meeting
we had cocktail parties at our suburban detroit house, hosting automotive clients and friends and all sorts of interesting characters. there were martinis and dresses and canapés and jazz and laughs long into the night. i once saw him put on a horrible wig and wear it like nothing was unusual, just to get a reaction. we would sneak down in our pajamas and sit on the stairs, just to be a part of all the hullabaloo.
on regular nights, we were always pitching ideas to him around the dinner table and suggesting musical lyrics, tag lines, and concepts for commercials. we never realized he was a media guy in the business, and that all of our creative gestures did not have any impact, other than making him laugh.
he was a tall, blonde, happy guy, who married my mother, a tiny, dark strong italian, and he was no match for her really. i remember him working a lot, traveling, and he could not fix a thing around the house or cook an egg or plant a tree, but he could tell a story, and he could talk anyone into buying anything, and he was very good at what he did everyday in the office – a man absolutely born to the job.
my parents
on saturdays, i watched every western and wwll movie with him, just so we could hang out together on the couch. and he would tell me made-up stories about the old stars. to this day, i remember the music from ‘the dirty dozen,’ and i can name every cowboy ever on television. he took my sisters and i on ‘one-on-one daddy/daughter dates’, where we got to choose what we did, and i frequently picked sharing a milkshake, his favorite, and going to a funny movie with him, just to hear him laugh.
he had the same name as a local television host, a former hollywood bit-player, who hosted a popular movie show. and even though they looked nothing like each other, we always had good tables when going out to dinner, for when he made reservations, restaurants frequently thought he was the same guy, and he never told them any different. he cheerfully signed autographs all the time for people when they discovered his name, and they somehow imagined him to be the same person.
when i was little, he showed me his ‘official man from u.n.c.l.e. identification card,’ and told me it was top secret, that he was really a spy, and not to tell anyone. it made sense to me as he had to travel a lot, and i figured advertising was the perfect cover. i always loved, spies, and mysteries and crime stories, and i was so excited that i immediately told everyone i came in contact with, and swore them to secrecy too. when i was much older, and i brought it up, he said that one of his clients, chevrolet, had sponsored the show, and they had given him the i.d. card as a fun promotional gift. and i loved him for letting me imagine.
dad on the right involved in some schmoozing and story-telling
interesting that i ended up in the same business, through a very circuitous route, many years later. guess it was in my blood, though i was on the creative and promotions side of the ad world, where i had to tell stories and get people to buy my product – not cars, but instead, movies and plays and parades and circuses – pure entertainment. experiences where they could suspend reality for a bit and just let their imaginations roam free.
and when he offered me media suggestions, they did not have any impact, other than making me laugh. happy birthday dad, and thanks for all of the memories, both the ones that were real and the ones you created for me.
—
Don Draper: Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing is OK. You are OK. – (Season 1, Episode 1 – Mad Men)
I didn't have my glasses on.... 