RedHead Confetti

Today my dearest friend celebrates his birthday. He'd be mortified if I made a big deal out of it, so I won't go on overly long. Matt and I met while playing City of Heroes, a now, soon-to-be-defunct, holy crap it's closing!, MMORPG. We hit it off pretty famously, and have been quite close ever since. I joke he's my other, other half, because he's more like half of myself, or my twin, than just my friend; and I really do like it that way. [Besides, who wouldn't want to be part of a three-halfed person, sounds kinda cool, doesn't it? That's 150% of a person, instead of the standard 100%.] Matt is a relatively quite, hermit-like gentleman, and so we don't have to talk/chat every day to keep close. I like that, because I tend to be like that, myself. He is rather introverted, and not flashy at all. You'd probably miss him in a crowd, because he doesn't draw attention to himself-- aside from his awesomely loud shirts! This hu...

Today is my beloved Husband's birthday. I made a "Bumpy cake" for him, and will be making ravioli caprese later. But right now, I want to talk about this man, that I married. This one shouldn't get me into too much trouble! He's probably going to be red as a beet if/when he sees this; he's kinda self-effacing, after all. Now, don't get me wrong, he knows he's a good person, and he can get just as arrogant as anyone else-- humanity does often equal arrogance after all. But for the most part, my husband is the kind of man who doesn't consider himself to be all that important. He just is himself, and "what's so great about that?" Isn't that how we're supposed to be? I think so, and that streak of humility drew me to him. Finding someone so smart and yet so lacking in self-importance was refreshing-- it still is! My husband is smart, too. His intelligence is so sexy to me! When he's excited his eyes (normally a g...

Happy Birthday United States Of America! Today is the birthday of the United States. We're 236... and not looking too good, if I'm honest. I'm going to be hopeful, though, that this is merely another growing pain in the scheme of our growth into adulthood. I'm sharing the Declaration of Independence, and tomorrow I'll post my "Declaration in today's English" a tongue-in-cheek revisiting of the Declaration that I "translated" for fun.   Be safe, partying this week, especially as it's so hot and the weather is dangerous. Stay cool, drink lots of water and be careful of fires-- we don't want more wildfires like the ones ravaging the US West. The link below is pretty cool, if you're a political science junkie like me, and also includes the Constitution.  Declaration of Independence: In Congress, July 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America When in the Course of human events, it becom...

Just a note of congratulations to my dear friends Chris and Niki. They welcomed a gorgeous little girl, Sadie, into their family early this morning, making their daughter, Moira a proud, big sister. Mummy and baby are doing great! Daddy is so proud he's glowing, and I'm thrilled to heaven for them all! I love you guys! I know I'm not alone in hoping for the best and brightest future for little Miss Sadie, and for blessings and love for the entire family.

Today my oldest son turns 15! He was born 12 weeks early; yes, three months! He weighed 3 pounds, 4 ounces, and was 15 inches/40cm long. The doctors and I were never able to work out why he was so early; he just decided that he was ready! I wasn't ready. Not ready at all! He was med-evaced to Lackland Air Base; they had the best neonatal ICU in the area at the Wilford Hall Medical Ctr. It was terrible, being two hours away from him; I didn't have a car, so I was busy pulling together another way to get down there. [I'll talk about the trip down there another time. It's not relevant to my celebration of Bird's birthday.] The doctors put my poor little Bird through so many tests. Vision, hearing, GI tract; cognitive [yeah, it's pretty rudimentary at that age, but it was something with eye movements]. He was fed with a tube for four weeks, and we taught him how to suckle. That was wild! But now, looking at him, you'd never know he was in hospital for ...

Today is my Dad's birthday; he is 55 years old. He is my hero, my Superman, if you will. Always has been. I admire the hell out of my Dad. I always have. He has earned my respect a million times over, and if I'm half the man he is, I'll be a damned good person. This blog is about my Dad, to give you a snapshot of him. I lost the other one I wrote, a few years ago. So I started this one from scratch. It will ramble, a bit. It's hard to discuss a person, we're not flat, or two-dimensional. Humans are weirdly 8 or 9 dimensional, and my Dad is no exception. My Dad doesn't spend much time on the internet. If he is online he's reading the news over on Yahoo! This is a boon for me, because that means I can be completely frank and he won't be embarrassed or uncomfortable about this blog. He is very humble, and people paying attention to him, being the centre of attention is something he's not happy with-- ever! Now, he's not bad with computers at a...

That's an unexpected alliteration, the title! Today my youngest son is eight years old. He was born almost exactly eight years ago, this moment, as I sit down to dash off this entry, as he made his way into the world at 8:42am, Central time. He was a smallish baby, from what I've been told, only 7 pounds, 4 ounces, but I thought he was a perfectly red-faced, wrinkled old-man of an infant! They all look like that, and all new-borns are so ugly they're cute. I don't care what anyone says, they don't get "new born" cute until they're about a week or two old, and stop being red all the time. I called him "Boogie" when he was small, because he spent more time squirming and wiggling. It reminded me of those old 1970's disco movies. He hates it when anyone calls him that, now. But for this blog, that's his name. I've tried not to name names. My son is a freckled, auburn haired, blue-eyed boy with glasses, and he looks an awful lo...