I was doing some work on my blog last Sunday and found a new template that I loved.
It’s the one you’re looking at right now.
It’s called ‘Absynthe’.
I wanted to make sure everything worked and entered some text in the ‘search box’ in the upper right hand corner of the site.
As I scrolled through the search results, I came across a post called ‘Empty House’.
Hmmm, I thought, and I clicked on it.
I wrote this post in late August of 2008 before Jenna went off to college.
I always wax philosophical whenever a daughter leaves the homestead.
Although I can’t for the life of me remember writing it
(1200+ posts will do that to you, I guess)
I read it with the eyes of a new reader, a wonderful and incredibly insightful moment for me.
As I read the post, I felt warm tears forming.
Since the death of my father, life looks a bit different to me these days.
I read my own words and got blown away.
I felt weird.
I’m not supposed to be that jazzed by something I wrote, am I?
Yet, I was.
I am not blowing my own horn here just saying that the craft of writing is a magical thing.
Sometimes it gives you back something totally unexpected.
Very unexpected.
Check out ‘Empty House’.
After checking Google, it looks like I did write this.
And I did check Google, several times.

********************************************

If these old walls could speak,
I wonder just what they’d be saying
the comings and goings of life; the hellos, the goodbyes
tears of the restless nights, memories of suppers shared, stories told

time shuffles his feet like that of an old man
that just can’t help but grow older,
he’s now quiet as a mouse
listening to the days gone by in this almost empty house

Sunny days and skies of blue, little girls saying, “I love you”
echoes from a heart that breaks
Simply because it knows,
that nothing can ever stay the same,
life is ever changing and the tiny souls once held in gentle hands,
aren’t meant to be held forever
But it’s so damn hard to understand and accept ‘temporary’
Take them to the edge and tell them to “fly”;
towards all that makes their hearts happy,
all their souls desire,
every dream they could ever hope to find
just fly . . .

We’ll watch you walk away embracing this wonderful thing called life
but inside we’re still calling out your name
Although you can’t hear it, we want it that way
maybe we just needed to tell you

in everything you do, know that this almost empty house will always wait for you
Doesn’t matter how long or how far away you’ve been, it remembers,
like we remember . . .
that whenever you’re here, you are truly home.

~Dad

A special Valentines wish for my wife, Pamela and three incredible daughters.
I will never be at a loss to find love in my life on this one day of the year.
You are my life, my loves, precious lights in the deepest of darkness, the sweetest inspiration.
Put on your headphones.
The orchestra is phenomenal.
I love you all dearly.
Happy Valentines Day.
Be mine.

It was 20 years ago tonight that my wife elbowed me at 1:30 in the morning saying,
“My water just broke. Get some sleep.”
Get some sleep?
Yeah, right.
I called Pamela’s mom and told her to come over immediately (to watch a sleeping 3 year-old Sarah)
and it wasn’t soon after that we were changed and in my silver Datsun 210 on the way to the hospital.
It was cold as hell and my brakes were grinding to the metal.
Pamela thought we would never make it to Hannemann Hospital.
We did.
At 8:11AM (2.7.90) Pamela gave birth to our second daughter, Jenna.
Tomorrow afternoon we will have a house full of family and Jenna’s college friends
and more Chinese food than you can shake a stick at.
We will also be watching some Supernatural episodes (Jenna’s favorites, methinks)
We will basically have our own ‘Supernatural Bowl’.
Could be much better than the actual Super Bowl itself.  (no Dean)
Happy birthday, Jen.
Mom and I love you and your sisters more than you will ever know.
Have a ‘supernatural’ day, okay?
Here’s a Supernatural gag reel that you may not have seen.
See you tomorrow afternoon, kiddo.

• Crappy ringtones are unacceptable. Upload a favorite song for free at Mobile17.com
  My current ringtone is the first 40 seconds of ‘We won’t get fooled again’ by The Who.
  ‘Panama’ by Van Halen let’s me know when Pamela is calling.
  Cool.
• Even a 50 year-old guy can learn to use Word (T9) to text on a cell phone.
  Drives them crazy that I can text almost as fast as them now.
• What life used to be like when I was 20 and how much fun I had.
• To never give up. Ever.
  (who’s teaching who here?)
• What phrases like ‘cover flow’ and ‘shake to shuffle’ mean. (Ipod terms)
• How to upload a Wordle to my cell phone. (Pam and I have Zero for Zooz on our cells) (Zooz Wordle)
• My day off is not for me to rest. It’s the day I cook one of them a favorite meal, ultimately receiving a load of laundry that needs to be done . . .  ahem, Sarah . . .
• Silence is a legitimate answer (as is yup, nope, uh-huh and dunno)
• Time is like a river . . .  to the sea
• Life is not always fair.
• College girlfriends can be incredibly vicious. And really nice. (all in the same day)
• That I am truly blessed to have 3 (and 4) such incredible women in my life.
• watch out guys, these girls are tigers.

She is the light of my life, my best friend in the whole, wide world and the mother
of 3 incredible daughters.
She is the heart of our home and the glue that makes everything stick.
I can’t imagine my life without her (the same goes for our daughters, for that matter)
She forever goes above and beyond the call of duty regarding our girls and that’s just one of the
thousands of reasons she’s so damn incredible.
When she reads this she will deny it 100%.
Yes, folks, she is humble as well.
I am fortunate enough in this life to be married to my best friend.
Happy Mother’s Day, Pamela.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for every single thing you do for me and the girls.
I love you like crazy, green eyes.
As do our girls . . .

A Happy Mother’s Day to all!

ps.
Mom, I miss you as I do every year since you’ve been gone.
Last Wednesday afternoon’s visit was my present.
Hope you liked the flowers . . .

love,
Michael

pps. Pamela is Mother of the Year!

Happy Belated Birthday, Sas
love you,
Dad

Sometimes, the problems you must face
are more than you wish to cope with,
and tomorrow doesn’t seem to offer any solutions.

You may ask yourself, “Why me?”
but the answer is sometimes unclear.
You may even tend to feel that life hasn’t been just or fair
to burden you with such obstacles.

The roads any of us choose to follow are never free
of bumps or curves,
but eventually the turns lead to a smoother path ahead.

Believe in yourself and your dreams.
You will soon realize that the future holds many promises
for you.
Remember . . .  difficult times don’t last forever.

~Geri Danks

{dedicated to my three girls}

Pamela and I were outside raking the endless falling leaves the other day,
actually it was on our anniversary.
I know, romantic, huh?
It’s a mundane chore such as this that allows the grey matter to play around a bit,
reminisce about autumns past, maybe even give the constantly buzzing hemispheres in my cranium a bit of a vacation from the vagaries of the daily rat race.
I began thinking about my life as being partitioned into ‘seasons’,
and that from where I stand I am currently in the midst of my own personal autumn.
It’s a time of great change, a biological necessity and ever so slight rewinding of the clockwork that makes me tick.
I accept the fact that my life has experienced changes from as far back as my days of ‘spring’.
I do find it sad though that my endless summer has come and gone taking with it certain elements of youth, the embers of the burning innocence that once defined my life reshaping my thoughts on a daily basis.
This is my autumn, I think,
when my eyes focus on an enormous pile of leaves that need to be raked onto the tarp and dragged behind the shed (where all the bad leaves go).
I stare at the pile of vibrant colours,
the burnt yellows and searing reds, like a fire in front of me.
Things change and life continues to change me.
Caught inside the moment, in my mind I see three little girls going down the slide headfirst into a pile of leaves that I’ve left just for them, Pamela running into the house for the camera, never one to miss an opportunity for a silly photo.
I see myself raking, smiling, listening to those echoes of laughter and the beautiful sounds of a fall
that was so damn very long ago.
It’s no surprise that I miss it, almost as much as I miss the old me that was raking those very leaves.
I shake myself out of this melancholy daydream and notice
that the sky above me is a putty grey replacing the daydream skies of an innocent blue from a thousand moments ago.
As I drag another tarp full leaves to the opposite end of the yard,
I smile, because off in the distance I can hear the sound of a rusty swing
going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth . . .
And as the leaves continue to fall, I continue to rake

Heart my coconut
Aerodynamic brilliance
Forever full moon

My daughter Sarah came by the house a week or so ago and decided to
lounge around on the couch and do some work for school.
Methinks she needed a break from the campus crowd.
At one point she got up to go into the bathroom and I heard her start laughing.
Holding my precious bottle of Headlube, she looked at me and said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“What?” I said.

“Headlube? Come on, Dad. It comes in a friggin’ water bottle for God’s sake!” (she’s still laughing)

“So what,” I said, “It’s usually 8 bucks and I got it for 2.50. It’s just moisturizer and besides it’s my head.”

“See you got the ‘matte’ finish. Nice.” she said.

Yeah, I’m all about the silky smooth but understated cueball noggin’ I guess.
Headlube.
Hmmm . . .
Can’t wait to see how long it will take for the comments to plummet this post to rock bottom.
Yeah, I got it coming with a product that sports that kind of name.
As it says on the bottle, “It’s your head. Buy this lube.”
So, I did and I might add that some days my glabrescent dome is a blessed work of art.
IMHO . . .
:mrgreen:

It was August of 2005 when I wrote this post.
Since then my life has flown by me at a rate faster than a hummingbird’s wings in flight.
Labor Day weekend I’ll be moving in not one, but two daughters into college.
This will be Sarah’s senior year while Jenna will be a freshman.
Both of them are excited for a variety of reasons, though there’s a slight bit of trepidation on Jenna’s part, with butterflies of the unknown creating havoc on her nerves.

Sarah has been there, done that, and bought the t-shirt (and the socks, and the sweatpants, and the coffee mugs, and the baseball hats).
It’s a year she’s worked incredibly hard to get to and it’s one that will undoubtedly be emotional when it comes to an end. Pamela and I consider most of her friends extended family.
For Jenna, this is new territory. I can tell she’s excited though as she watches her pile of stuff growing in the living room next to Bob.
My life is once again undergoing a significant change as the “soundtrack” of our house changes.
There’s nothing I’m trying to figure out here and no tears to wipe (yet) but I wanted to put a timestamp on this time in my life.
Even if I could slow it down, I probably wouldn’t.
That would be like locking the door on two precious lives thirsting for self-discovery, knowledge and ultimately their independent happiness.
I could never do that.
Maybe I just wanted to write how much I already miss the both of them.
The kitchen door just won’t be opening and closing as much.
Laundry will be lighter.
Dirty water bottles in the sink will be virtually non-existent.
The two thousand pairs of sneakers and sandals that now litter the first floor will be rendered invisible.
I want to think that life will get simpler but it won’t.
And that’s okay because I know in my heart that they’ll be okay.
And I’ll use the bathroom whenever I want to.
Maybe.
Anyway you look at it, I’m going to miss them.
As I always do.
I figure it won’t be long until I write a post that starts,
“It was August of 2008 when I wrote this . . . ”
In the meantime, life will go on,
and our old backdoor will remain forever open . . .