June 5th

~My Mother's Kitchen Window~

I know, I know. I have been a terrible blogger and not been keeping up with posts and comments on YOUR blogs. I have been visiting you, really I have. It makes my day so happy just to pop in and see what all of you are up to! I promise to get back to leaving comments tomorrow! Quickly, I want to wish Sheila's (in Canada) handsome husband a very happy birthday! He really needs no gift...he already has a beautiful daughter (waving at Blue Spa Girl) and a gorgeous, ever so special, wife. He is a blessed man! I seem to have elected myself the official blogger birthday/anniversary wishes lady haven't I? If I miss/or have missed anyone, please know that it is not intentional!

Okay, take a big breath. This is gonna be a long post! I humbly apologize!

It has been a busy, full 2 weeks here. I had forgotten to mention last weekend that we had a wonderful lunch with our blogging friend Terri and her husband Rick. As always, it was delightful to be with them...Terri even played checkers with Grace while we waited on our food. Now how dear is that! Love them! This past weekend was spent visiting friends, lunching out and at the movies. We were invited to a cook out at our friends TY & J. They are really special people and mean the world to us. They are a wonderful family and live in the warmest, loveliest home. T is a busy lady but has several creative hobbies including antique doll restoration! She showed us some recent projects and wow. Amazing work. Their 2 dogs are the sweetest boys...just snuggle babies. Grace was so afraid of dogs when she first arrived from China and one of theirs is a BIG guy. But you should see her with them now. TY & J celebrated their 23rd anniversary the day earlier. Super couple! Great friends. Saturday evening we meet up with Mom and our buddy T to watch "Marco Polo" on the Hallmark Channel. T teaches reading, social studies and history and always has a huge segment devoted to MP every year. She was hoping that this TV film would prove to be something she could show her students. Beautiful scenery and yes, I am a history geek. My Mother was an education/history major and studying all things historical was just always part of my upbringing. So, the movie was enjoyable, easy to watch and for Grace to understand. Oh yeah, it also had this actor named Brian Dennehy in it. Don't know if you have ever heard of him or not. But hey, you know? As much as I love, adore and idolize Mr. D., wasn't there an Asian actor who could have played the part of Kublai Khan? See? I am not so brain frozen with lust that I can't make this call about one of his parts! Parts, as in *MOVIE* roles...not HIS parts. HIS parts are just fine. I am guessing. Hmmm....but I seriously digress.... I could not help but think back to an overly made up John Wayne playing Genghis Khan in the 1956 film, "The Conqueror" Oh well, what do *I* know. Sunday was such a nice day...a sunny morning with cooler temperatures than we had been experiencing. After church we, Grace, Mom, Bill and I (Dan was visiting his girlfriend) met T at a favorite restaurant and after lunch T, Mom and I went to see "Waitress".

Keri Russell, plays Jenna, who works in a small-town Southern pie diner that's just far enough off the main drag to seem like the last coffee shop on Earth. Jenna has her work family — her sister waitresses, plus the grouch of a cook — and she follows her bliss by creating new pies, each inspired by a different incident (''I Hate My Husband Pie,'' and so on). We see her glorious concoctions assembled in sped-up overhead shots, each recipe more luscious than the last. It turns out that the pies are a good deal sweeter than Jenna's life.

Married to an angry, jealous control freak (Jeremy Sisto), Jenna has just learned that she's pregnant, and she's miserable about it. Things start to look up when Jenna meets her new ob-gyn, Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion), whose good looks and quirkiness mark him as a white knight of graciousness even though he's married too.

Waitress is a small romantic charmer that never loses its sense of discovery. Written and directed by Adrienne Shelly, the New York actress and filmmaker who was tragically killed last year (she appears, along with Cheryl Hines, as one of Jenna's waitress pals), the movie is always high-spirited, but it's also wistful, sexy, and melancholy.

In other words, we all liked it! I have long been a fan of "Indie" films. This was a little gem.

Today is June the 5th. It would have been my Father's 83rd birthday. We had dinner with my Mom tonight. She fixed her delicious vegetable soup and had watermelon, strawberries and cantaloupe. Oh how good. I am including a picture of this clock as I think about my Dad. This clock hung in one of the fire houses Dad was stationed. My dad was a Dayton Ohio fire fighter for 25 years. I practically grew up in a fire house sliding down that steel pole. And no wise guy questions asking if I could do that now! Hmpf. This clock hung on the same wall for years and years and when the station house was to be demolished, Dad removed it. No one else seemed to want it but my Dad did. It is a treasure to us. My Dad was my first hero. He was handsome, strong, brave and I thought he could do anything. He was truly a "Daddy" in every sense of the word. He still is a hero to me. There are people living today that would not be here if not for my Dad. And no, you silly things. I don't mean me! I mean the people (and their children/grandchildren) he rescued both in the Pacific and as a fire fighter. He was born In Tennessee and left home to join the Navy during WW II. He served in the Pacific as a medical corpsman and experienced things that he would never discuss with his children. He did, however, love to regale us with funny stories about those days. There are always funny stories even in the midst of war. After the war, he became a long distance truck driver and loved seeing the US from the cab of his beloved vehicle. But soon he moved North with an old buddy and began a new life in Ohio. On his days off from the fire department, Dad always had a second job. He was a delivery driver for Rikes, a local department store, and Carolyn's Flower Shoppe. It was while working there that he met my mother who worked at Carolyn's during her Summers off from teaching school. I doubt that any girl ever had a Dad more loving or attentive. I was his partner and little buddy. I went every where my Dad went. I could do no wrong in his eyes. Someone once asked me why it was that I had been such a *good girl* while growing up. I truly do believe that it was because I would never have been able to live with myself if I saw pain, that *I* had caused, in my Dad's eyes. He was so proud of his children. He was a great husband and father. He was not perfect. He was terribly old fashioned and never fully believed that women should work in certain fields. Fire fighting was right at the top of that list. I was a child of the 60s and 70s and, being a know it all High School Senior, loved to argue with him about women's rights and their ability to do anything they set their minds to. I well remember one such tiny tiff. Dad and I had squabbled (albeit, in a friendly manner), at dinner, over they city's decision to allow a woman to undergo fire department training. Of course, he was a firm "No way" vote and I was a steadfast "Heck yes". After a bit of back and forth discussion, I asked him, "What if it was YOUR daughter who wished to go into fire training after high school? I still smile when I remember how he sat back in his chair, tapped out his cigarette, folded his arms across his chest, looked up, and said with a grin, "You would make the damned finest fire fighter this city has ever seen." You see? He might not have agreed that women should be in that job but he would have defended his daughter's right to be one. He was that supportive of his only girl. He adored Bill and cherished his Grandson Daniel. We lost him 6 years ago July. I miss him every day.

~My Father in his Fire Department uniform...circa 1969~