Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

Category: family

  • The Post I Didn’t Want to Write

    When last we spoke I said, “Tomorrow I’ll try to explain what is prompting me to share this now.”  That was more than two weeks ago, and clearly I failed to explain on “tomorrow”, but I did try.

    I tried, and tried, and kept on failing.

    Yes, I have also been busy, but let’s be honest, I have some major avoidance issues.  I really didn’t want to write this, because I don’t want it to be true.  Strangely, no matter how long I procrastinate, and no matter how well I avoid, and no matter how little I speak of it, it is still true.

    Every day I wake up, and it is still true.

    Even now, I am sitting here staring at the computer screen and I don’t know whether or not today is the day I keep writing.  I don’t know if today is the day I share what is going on in my life.

    It isn’t even really what is going on in MY life, but like most humans I am selfish and I see the universe in terms of how it impacts me.  There are several people who are impacted far more by this, but it is my impact crater that I keep picking at like a festering wound.

    My father has been really… sick?  Is that what we call it?  I don’t know.  Injured?  My father can’t walk right now.  He is mostly stuck in bed, and he gets muscles cramps that sometimes have him crying out it pain.  Sound familiar?  Well, if you read my last post it does, and it is causing me some really severe stress and flashbacks, which is just annoying self-indulgent bullshit because he is the one with the big problem right now.

    My dad was the center of my universe when I was little.  Then I got older and realized he was a fucking idiot, and then I got older still, and realized he’d gotten a lot smarter as I matured.  I hope some day my daughter thinks I am smart again.  I don’t think he was a great dad. I think he was too lenient and too easily manipulated by people he loved, namely me, but he was pretty good.  I think he is a very good man.  He is more tolerant and more forgiving than I am.  He is extremely smart and has a quirky sense of humor that was the source of plenty of embarrassment when I was a teenager.

    He never for a minute believed I was inherently less intelligent, capable, or valuable because I was a girl.  His belief was strong enough that I was baffled when I started school and discovered that other people thought differently.  His belief was strong enough that I assumed he was correct and those people were missing out.  He bought me my first computer (and more after that), and taught me how to program in BASIC.  He gave me my first text adventure game.  He taught me how to drive. He taught me that I couldn’t catch AIDS by hugging his cousin Tommy.  He taught me how to mess with a new device and figure out how to use it.  He taught me how to RTFM, and then how to trust my instincts in the many cases where the manual was written by drunk orangutans.  If I’ve ever helped you to troubleshoot any kind of problem, then my father has touched your life.

    I’ve spent months crying daily, multiple times a day.  I’m exhausted.  There is so little that I can do to help, and that is frustrating.  I hate not being able to DO much of use.  I also feel guilty, of course, because I think that if I had been there at the beginning, I might have been able to be an advocate in a way nobody else could.  I wasn’t.  I may never get over that, but I need to stop dwelling on that, because that certainly isn’t useful either.

    What I can do right now is swallow my pride and discomfort and ask people for donations.  He is at the point where he needs to be able to do some of what he knows is right, whether the insurance company is on his side or not, and that takes money that we don’t have right now.  I hate that I don’t have it to give him..

    So, that’s what I am doing.   I have put up a page on YouCaring.  I’m asking for help, because I can’t do it alone, and because I won’t let him do it alone.

    Please read the details and consider donating if you can afford to, or sharing the link with others if you cannot. I really appreciate it.  If you’d like to send a check so that no money is taken out in fees, contact me for an address (it will be mine since he can’t just run to a bank right now, but I can take care of depositing it for him).

    DavidRamstad640

    https://www.youcaring.com/DavidRamstad

    I guess today is the day.

  • Desert Mirage

    I am currently in Las Vegas, because I am an idiot, or a masochist, or both.  There is just no good reason for a person with Summer SAD to “vacation” in Las Vegas in June, but that’s what I did.

    My husband had to come here for business, and because he is always extremely busy with his start-up, I decided to come on out with him. He’d be too busy working to spend time with me, but the drive to Vegas and back would give me more time to hang out and talk to him than I get in the average week, so it seemed well worth it.

    Until it was 106 fucking degrees in the fucking shade and the fucking hotel room won’t cool the fuck off.

    I used to spend parts of my summers in Vegas. My grandparents lived here when I was a child. Mornings would start early to get some good play time in before it got too hot.  My grandfather would walk me to the local playground so I could play for a little while before the metal slide got literally too hot to use safely. Then we might walk over to 7 Eleven for a Slurpee. If I didn’t get a Slurpee, there would probably be coins left on the ledge outside the house for me to get something from an ice cream truck later in the day. They sold the house when I was 8 years old and left Vegas for a cheaper town in the middle of nowhere Nevada to retire. I drove by the house yesterday. My grandmother would be horrified to see the condition that the current owners have it in. The huge sagebrush field that I explored is now completely littered with 2 story suburban cookie cutter tract homes. Overall, it felt surreal to be there. I had planned to call my father while parked out front, but decided I didn’t really like it there, so I meandered on my way.

    I stopped at a store to look for a new purse (my current one is falling apart) but had no luck with that either. Upon exit of the store into the overbearing heat, I headed back to the car when I sign across the parking lot caught my eye.

    Rita’s Ice Custard Happiness

    Ooh, ice custard. Do I want that?
    Of course you want that. It’s happiness.
    Well, yeah, but should I have it?
    What “should”? It’s happiness. Go get some happiness.
    It probably isn’t any good. It’s probably too expensive.
    It’s Happiness, it says so right in the name, plus The Beatles say Rita is lovely.
    I don’t think it is the same Rita.
    Whatever, come on, people are always accusing you of being too negative. Go get some happiness. Be a person that deserves happiness.
    Fuck you.
    HAPPINESS
    Serious, fuck you. Alright, fine, I’ll go get some fucking happiness.

    So I drag my heat exhausted ass across the hot black top toward Rita’s Ice Custard Happiness. So. Hot. I have to walk around the building when I get there, the sign was on the back of this little section of strip mall that is floating out on the street side of the parking lot. I pass the Subway that is next door, and get to the front of Rita’s Ice Custard Happiness and am greeted by a “Coming Soon” sign.

  • Indy

    Indy and the Kid and London

    16.5 years ago we brought home a puppy from the German Shepherd Rescue. She was my husband’s first dog ever. We got her before our daughter could walk, and she helped to raise our daughter. Indy was a very sweet and a little neurotic. She was family, and we loved her very much.

    This week we had to say goodbye to her. She was damn old for a dog of her size, and she lived a very good life, but I still am very sad. Our daughter, who doesn’t remember a day without her, until now, is totally devastated.

    Indy and the Kid

    The house feels so different without her. I miss her. She was such a good dog.

    Hearth

    I’m so fucking busy this week, I don’t even feel like I have enough time to grieve. It’s just a tight ball of pain and loss and sadness sitting like a rock in my gut, and I just need to keep on keeping on.

    Really, it isn’t even about the time to grieve, it is about having the space to grieve. It is about having the space to just be left the fuck alone, collapsed on the floor sobbing and snotting until I am a desiccated lump. Maybe next week.

  • When It Rains

    Today I took Indy and Watson to go visit a friend. The friend has a big interesting yard with lots of things to smell, and since Indy spent time there before she developed CCD, she still recognizes it and gets a lot of stimulation out of being there, without any anxiety from being someplace unfamiliar. It is a nice safe dog park experience for her, where we don’t run the risk of running into a dog who might knock her over.

    She even has a boyfriend next door. There is this sweet looking husky mix who lives next door, and they interact through the chain link fence, and he likes her and whines for her attention and she plays flirty little games with him, as if she is young again.

    Today Watson wandered over the the chain link fence to meet the strange dog. He made friendly puppy body poses, but the other dog was suspicious of Watson. The other dog felt a bit territorial. So, he hiked up his leg and peed on the chain link fence. Except, you know, chain link fences are more air than substance, so mostly he peed on Watson.

    “Eew, no. Watson, don’t just stand there. Stop peeing on my dog. Come on.”

    Watson sniffs the chain link fence, and takes a step back, so the dog circles and lifts his leg and pees on the fence, and Watson, again.

    “Nooooooo. Don’t pee again! Watson…”

    Unluckily for me, dogs don’t mind being peed on as much as I might hope they would, so Watson had a great day, despite, or perhaps even partially because, he was peed on three times.

    The afternoon was spent with dogs running and playing and sniffing and exploring, and finally I made my way home, to walk right into an educational clusterfuck.

    See, one of the things about the online charter school is that they help educate students by locking the students out of their curriculum whenever the student does something it deems a lockout offense. For instance, if they fail a quiz, they are unable to move forward until they’ve spoken to a teacher and figured out what the problem is. In theory, this sounds kind of reasonable, but since the teachers often take a long time to respond, it really slows things down.

    On Wednesday evening the kid spectacularly failed a chemistry quiz from the future. She finished her lesson, and the online program served up a quiz for a completely different lesson, that she had not yet been exposed to, so she didn’t know any of the answers. She guessed her way to a 42%. She couldn’t NOT take the quiz, because once you start the quiz, you have to finish it and submit it, or you automatically fail it anyway.

    She immediately sent an email to her mentor teacher and her in person science teacher, because she already knows that they respond more rapidly than the online teachers do. She sent screen shots proving that she had not been given the correct quiz (in case it was a one time glitch), but of course, nobody replied until Thursday morning. The local teacher reported the problem to the online school, looked at the content of the lesson, and gave her a quiz that actually quizzed her on her current lesson material. She got a 100%. He then submitted the corrected grade to the online people.

    By this morning, the online school still had not unlocked her chemistry class, so she still couldn’t do her chemistry work. At that point the local teacher stepped in an unlocked it for her, even though that is not the “procedure”. She was left unable to work on her class for more than 24 hours.

    When I arrived home today, she had been locked out of ALL of her classes. Her teacher sent her an email telling her she would be locked out because she hadn’t turned in a form (where we initial a calendar saying what days she was doing schoolwork, even though the online program actually keeps track of all logins and the amount of time spent), but she had turned in the form on Monday. She was working on schoolwork, so she didn’t get the email until a half hour later, at 4PM, and by then nobody would reply to her phone calls or reply to her emails. This leaves her unable to do any schoolwork for the entire weekend. She started the school year late, so she is “behind” on schoolwork. Meaning, she is doing more than the required standard student minimum each week, but she is not currently at the point she should have been at had she started on day one and been completing the minimum each week. She is on track to complete everything by the end of the semester. Each day she is locked out makes a big difference, because then she has less days to cram this extra work in to. Plus, she has a friend coming in from out of town on Monday, whom she hasn’t seen in more than two years. Without being able to work this weekend, she basically cannot spend time with her friend on Monday.

    It sucks.

    That is what I walked into the door to discover, as I directed her to try emailing different people, and I emailed and tried to call people, and basically just frantically tried to get her back into her school program before the day was totally gone and there was no chance.

    We had no luck, and finally she sat dejectedly down next to Watson for comfort. She snuggled her puppy and told him how frustrated she was. Then she said, “You always come back from his house smelling so doggy.”

    “Oh,” I said, “he got peed on.”

    “What?”

    “Yeah. Three times.”

    “You couldn’t have told me that before I hugged him?!”

    “I was distracted by all your school stuff.”

  • Finally Friday

    It’s been a tough week in the dog world. Not my own dogs, they are fine.

    In the rescue world, things have been a bit rough. It is difficult. It is worth it, but difficult. I try to focus on the worth it part, but some days are harder than others.

    What else is up? It has been warm, and almost all the snow is gone. The backyard is a complete and total swamp. I don’t want Indy and Watson to run around back there, because that is a disaster.

    Indy got her bloodwork results back. She is in really good shape for her age. Good enough that she was cleared for dental surgery. So, that is where she is today. I am nervous about it, not so much because I fear something will happen during surgery (although, of course I will be anxiously awaiting the call that says all is well). I am mostly nervous about starting some kind of chain reaction.

    I give Watson things that are meant to be chews that last a while, and he quickly consumes them. Back to the chew shopping. Apparently, I have another power chewer. I’m not surprised in the overall scheme of things, but I am a bit surprised to have this issue at 12 weeks with the items I’ve been offering him.

    This weeks puppy class was again good, but Watson got less play time in because the other pups there were so small, and he was a bit of a bull in a china shop. Still a great learning experience for him, but it burned less physical energy. Luckily, I have a play date scheduled for Saturday with some big dogs.

    My mother is back for another visit, to help me with some things and mostly to help me with Watson while I get stuff checked off my To Do list. The timing for adopting a puppy was less than excellent, so part of how we came to the conclusion we could manage it anyway, came from her willingness to come back to help. Watson clearly recognized her when she walked it the door. It was so adorable. He likes people in general and is always excited to see new people, but he was just beside himself with sheer wiggly waggy puppy happiness to see the woman who bottle fed him so many meals. We didn’t know whether he would recognize her, but he did.

    I might have created a twitter account for Watson. Great. I’m becoming one of THOSE people.

  • Happy Tails

    Our Fosters from Ms Tori on Vimeo.

  • Eleven

    Apparently I could only make it to number 11 before having a failed foster.

    Welcome to the family, baby boy.

    I think we’ll be calling him Watson.

  • Sitting and Thinking

    So, yesterday I teased that I had other news that was too big to just tack on the bottom of that post.

    It wasn’t really a sweeps week “to be continued” type of tease. I just have all this shit on my mind, but my mind hasn’t finished chewing on it yet. I know some of what it means, but I don’t know all of what it means.

    So, here you get a little glimpse into my life, mid thought process.

    I am typing this while sitting at the dining room table. At my feet, Indy is asleep. This is usual. She is asleep at my feet a large portion of the time that I am on my computer.

    Far less usual, and quite unexpectedly, there is a puppy asleep at my feet too.

    Webster.

    Webster is back. For reasons which are totally understandable, and I agree with and support, but are not my reasons to tell. The family who had hoped to adopt Webster, has decided it isn’t what is best for him. He was with them for a week and they all had a wonderful time, but they came to a very difficult decision. They are doing what they think is best for the dog, which I totally respect.

    He left on a Sunday, and came back on the following Sunday. They were willing to foster him, but I wanted him back. I put this much in. I’d like to see it through to all three orphans finding their forever homes.

    It is time to figure out what “I might have wanted to keep him” means, now that it is an option.

    I am certain there are other families out there who would love him just as much as we do. I am certain there are no other families out there who would love him more. I knew both of those things about Bear too. There is more to it than that, as I so difficultly had to stand by when letting Bear leave. I must ask myself, “Is there somebody that is better for him due to practical life circumstances?” and “How exactly does he impact the lives of the pets we are already committed to?” Most of all, I need to make sure that I don’t let the pangs of regret I feel for “having” to let Bear go, allow me to lie to myself about these answers. It would be easy to trick myself, just so that I can avoid a difficult goodbye.

    That is where I am at today, with a puppy curled up at my feet, right next to Indy.

  • Friday, December 4th, 2009

    Almost every night of my life I go to bed with a plan as to what I will be doing the next day. Almost every single day, something goes awry.

    Thursday, December 3rd, I went to bed, and my Friday looked like this:

    • get up
    • have breakfast
    • go to hand therapy
    • get out of hand therapy and go to the vet to pick up medicine
    • get gas
    • go home to have lunch
    • go to see Little Women (The Musical)
    • go home to drop the kid off
    • run to Costco
    • take kid to the show she is assistant stage managing for
    • go home and get more work done
    • pick kid up from the show
    • eat dinner
    • go home

     

    On Friday I got up and I had breakfast and went to hand therapy. Hey, so far, so good.

    I sat and waited and waited. Hand therapy has never started late before, but I used the time to contact the person who had my play tickets. I had forgotten to get them from her when I saw her on Saturday, so the new plan had been she would hand them off to somebody else who was going to the play. I wanted to find out who had the tickets.

    She still had the tickets.

    Hand therapy finally started, late, and of course, ended late. Instead of heading to the vet, I needed to go pick up the tickets. At breakfast the kid had suggested we could go out for lunch, but on the way back from getting the tickets (ticket holder and I don’t live near each other) I called and told the kid to just eat. We were going to be very tight getting to the play.

    Got home and looked up the address from the place the play was held, because the tickets just said the name of the theater, assuming I’d know. I got the address and went out to the car. The nav system was unfamiliar with the address. It knew the street, but the construction was too new to have the address listed. That got me close. We sorted out the rest and pulled into the parking lot 5 minutes before the show was scheduled to start.

    Little Women happened. It ran A LOT longer than I was expecting. We rushed home so she could get ready to leave for the show. I wanted her to go with me to gas, Costco, and the vet because I didn’t think I’d have time to come back for her and still get her downtown for her show.

    I went upstairs to use the computer for a few minutes while she gathered her snack and stuff for the show. I was sitting at my computer when I heard crashing and thudding. I yelled out to her… got up and started moving, and yelled out again.

    In response, I hear, “It hurts.”

    Fuck. So, I’m moving faster, but not sure where she is. It sounded like something tumbling down the stairs. She wasn’t at the bottom of the first set of stairs. “Where are you?” I yell, as I am about to open the basement door to look, but she made a groaning noise from the kitchen so I went in there, to find her sprawled on the floor, kind of sitting, with her legs akimbo and tangled in the barstools. “What did you do?”

    “I fell, and my hand is stuck.”

    “What?”

    “I tried to stop myself from falling, and I can’t get my hand out.”

    I got closer to her and moved the barstools out of the way. Her legs were REALLY tangled up in them. Then I took a look to see what she was talking about. Her right arm was up and twisted around and her hand was palm flat against the fridge with the hand through the refrigerator handle. Her fingers were through the freezer handle (side by side).

    “You have to get up, you can’t move your arm from that position. You’ll have to lift with your body.”

    “I can’t. I’m stuck. It hurts.”

    “What hurts? Your elbow?” (things are twisted around really awkwardly)

    “No. My hand.”

    I try to lift her off the floor by her armpits to give her a better angle on moving her hand. She shrieks at me. I let go. I move a barstool and tell her to use it to lift herself up. She tries but collapses in pain.

    I look at her hand again. It seems… fine really, just in the door handle. It went in there. Take it out.

    I tell her I’ll try to move it. I touch it. She shrieks. I try to slide it. She shrieks. I poke at her shoulder and elbow again and ask where it hurts, and again she tells me her hand. I get some ice out of the in door dispenser and put it in a baggy to put on her arm.

    “Look, you’ve got to get your hand out before it swells up and really gets stuck.”

    “Believe me. I’d LOVE to,” she snarls.

    I begin looking at the door handle to figure out how to remove it.

    Now I may as well take a minute to point out something you might already know. I’m not soft and cuddly. It isn’t that I am bad in a crisis. I’m just not very comforting. This makes me bad for some people. I like information. Then I want more information. Then I want a plan of action. Then I want action. I’d like all this extremely rapidly. I’m not warm and nurturing, and I don’t do “everything will be just fine” unless I have some kind of proof that things are going to be fine.

    My kid tends to get a little anxiety filled in a crisis, and with the anxiety comes a lack of clear communication. I want a description of the pain so I can try to figure out what is happening. She just keeps letting me know there is pain. We’ve been having this same thing happen since she was little.

    It isn’t that I am completely lacking in maternal instincts, but… it is kind of overrun by my instinct to, “leave the squawking one before the noise and weakness and fear draws predators to the rest of the pack”.

    So, because I cannot get a good assessment of pain out of her, I try threatening her. “Do I need to call 911?” One of the things I passed onto my daughter through a lovely combination of nature and nurture is a complete dislike for strange people invading our home, and any medical person ever touching us, ever, but especially when they are unknown, and we are in pain and feeling vulnerable.

    “Well I can’t stay like this!” she snaps.

    Oh. Interesting. She is open to the concept of needing to call 911. That has NEVER been her response.

    I decide it is time to call her father. He’s nicer in situations like these and has more of a calming effect. I do this while digging out the refrigerator manual in hopes of finding some instructions on how to remove the door handle, but my initial examination of the handle has not left me feeling hopeful.

    Him: Hello?
    Me: I think you need to come home. I’ve got a bit of a problem here, and I actually think I’m going to have to call 911.
    Him: What?
    Me: It’s fine, but Z fell and is in pain and she’s kind of stuck… you should just come home.
    Him: Okay. But, what’s going on?
    Me: I don’t know! She fell and she got her hand (I start laughing) stuck in the refrigerator door (I say, laughing all the way HOHOHO).
    Kid/Regan MacNeil (and yes, I think her head might have spun around) screams: Yeah it sounds fucking funny, but it fucking hurts!
    Him (who cannot actually hear WHAT she is screaming): Stop saying 911, you are freaking her out.
    Me: Just come home.

    I look through the manual, but it has no instructions for the door handle. I continue to encourage her to keep trying to get out. This continues to annoy the shit out of her. I tell her I that I didn’t bring any of my saws from California, so I think I’ll need to call 911 so they can saw it off. “But, I still need my hand,” she informs me. I try to reassure my suffering from shock child that the saw would be for the handle, and not her arm, and I laugh at her a bit more. She tells me she needs to call her stage manager, because she won’t be able to do the sound board like this.

    I again try to ascertain what type of pain she is feeling, is it deep bone pain, or surface pain. She tells me she can’t feel her hand at all anymore.

    Well, fuck.

    I explain to her that I think it is time to call 911, and she doesn’t argue in the slightest. I pick up my phone to call, but there is an incoming call.

    Me: Hello? Where are you?
    Him: I’m on my way. WHERE is she again?
    Me: In the kitchen.
    Him: I don’t understand. What’s going on?
    Me: Look, you are just going to have to see it. I need to call 911 now. Are you almost here?
    Him: Are you sure?
    Me: I’ll see you in a few minutes.

    I call 911, and start my call with “This is going to sound really strange, but…” and proceed to explain that my daughter is stuck in the refrigerator door handle. Blah blah blah. Help. She tells me she is sending the police and paramedics and that they will get her out.

    I look through the manual again. Troubleshooting does not cover this issue. At all. Fuckers.

    Her father arrives home, gives me a WTF look, and I wave him toward the kitchen. I hear him trying to convince her to, you know, just take her hand out. More anger and pain and frustration (and possibly pea soup) spurt out of her. He laughs at her less than I do, because he is much nicer.

    I go out to look for the cavalry. The first to arrive is a police officer. He tells me to give him a couple of screwdrivers, and he’ll get her out. He asks how she is doing. I tell him she is freaking out. He tells me to take care of her, and he’ll take care of the handle. I don’t bother to explain to him that it would actually be more efficient to switch roles. I give him the requested screwdrivers and go out to meet the pulling up EMTs.

    The police officer is totally unable to get her out.

    The EMTs (3 of them) come in and check her shoulder and elbow and then poke at her fingers a bit. They slather lubricant all over the bits of her hand they can reach, the door, and the handle. Then one guy tries to brace the door and pull on the handle, to flex it and give her a bit more space. He slips and just opens the door a bit instead. More screaming. Later she told me it took everything she had not to kick him. He got the door shut again, pushed his fist against it with more force, and pulled on the handle again. Another guy grabbed her arm and hand and forced it up, and she was free. There was a valley in the back of her hand, near her thumb. At the deepest part it was about 1/2 inch in.

    They tested everything and determined that it wasn’t broken, and we all chatted as the officer worked on the police report. They’d never seen anything quite like it before. They admitted to being very curious when the call description came up on their screen (maybe that’s why they sent 4 guys?). One lamented not getting a photo of it with his cell phone before they got her unstuck. Uh huh. Internet, anyone?

    Anyhow, soon the emergency services crew were gone, and the family tried to salvage what we could out of our day.

    By Monday we did end up needing to take her in to have her hand checked because she was complaining so much of cold intolerance, and her hand was often physically colder than the other one. The doctor ordered x-rays which verified the previous determination that nothing was broken. She said the cold intolerance was due to crushed nerves and capillaries. Supposedly she should be in good shape in about two months.

    So, yeah, neither one of us have proper use of our right hands.

    Give me a fucking break.

    I had to invite strangers into my house.

    To rescue my teenager from the fridge.

    Seriously.

    This is my life.

     

    ETA: I did get the handle off later. It would not have helped. Actually, it just would have injured her more.

  • Happy Father’s Day

    My father taught me a lot of things over the years.

    The thing that has stood out the most though, was simple.

    “Back up as far as you need to, or at least as far as you can, to start with.”

    It makes good sense. Driving in reverse is more difficult than driving forward. Your body position is less comfortable. You sight lines aren’t as clear. The best way to spend as little time doing that as possible, is to get it right the first time.

    Why does this stand out the most? I guess that makes sense too. I back up pretty much every time that I drive. It also occurs to me every time I am in a parking lot watching somebody back up two feet, pull forward a little, back up two more feet. They are hesitant and want to back up as little as possible to get on their way, and in doing it in this fashion they just lengthen the amount of time they are in the way and more likely to encounter, or cause, a problem.

    A while back I mentioned it to him. That out of all his advice, and all his teachings, this is the one that I firmly attribute to him and has stuck with me all these years.

    He laughed, and at first I thought maybe I had insulted him a little. Surely he had shared more important things with me in our time together.

    He said, “Well, that’s really interesting, because I’ve often thought it was the most useful thing your grandfather said to me.”

    And so it goes.

    I love you, Dad.