The Dirt on My Green Thumb

Tags

flower beds, flowers, gardening, hydrangea, lemon tree, palm tree, tomatoes, watering

When I arrived home from the hospital after giving birth to my first child, I was greeted by a slew of new house plants sent by well-wishing friends.  While I loved the plants for their color and life, I was overwhelmed by the obligation to keep them alive.  I could remember to feed the baby…wasn’t that enough? The thought of more than Aaron depending solely on me for survival almost sent me into a panic attack.  I still maintain that giving a new mother one more thing to feed and care for is borderline sadistic.  Balloons are equally cheery, require no water, and no one is appalled when they wilt after three days.  Just sayin’…

My grandmother would water my plants for me each week when she came to stay with us, and would frequently ask if I had thought to water them while she was gone.  I would stammer my response and duck my head.  For Christmas that year she gave me a silk African violet plant.  Silk…because, in her words, that was the only kind that stood a chance at my house.

When Victoria was born, Aunt Maxine gave me a beautiful pink hydrangea.  Now, I’m a Louisiana girl who regularly subscribes to Southern Living magazine and would love nothing more than to duplicate the “fresh-cut hydrangea bouquet” look for my dining room table.  I love hydrangeas like no other flower.  But here I was, a new mom again, and the hydrangea sat in a pot in the front flower bed for more than a few months.  The tiny pink petals faded to cream, and then to gray (ugh!) and I feared that Aunt Maxine would see what a terrible plant mom I was after I had sworn to help it thrive in honor of both her and my daughter.  As Aunt Maxine struggled with cancer I could have kicked myself for not keeping that plant alive.  After she passed away, I believed she would know my shameful secret .  I whispered an “I’m sorry” into the heavens and vowed to someday have a pink hydrangea in my yard dedicated to her memory.  This week I bought and planted two pink hydrangeas: one for Aunt Maxine and one for Victoria.

In the Spring of 2011 I dragged my Mom shopping with me at local nurseries where I bought about $400 worth of beautiful plants for my newly re-designed flower beds.  Gardenias, hydrangea, hostas, ligustrum, begonias, an angel trumpet, azaleas and canas, not to mention geraniums, gerbera daisies and lilies.  As [my] luck would have it, 2011 was the year that we had a drought combined with 110-degree days.  I remembered to water some of my plants, but truth be told, it was a pain to go outside and move the sprinkler around.  Plus, I would often forget to turn off the water.  Having the sprinkler run all night long does horrendous things to one’s water bill, and I eventually stopped turning it on altogether.  I lost all but four of the twenty or so plants that I had purchased.  As the year drew to a close and Dom and I were deciding to build a new house I insisted that whatever we did, I had to have a sprinkler system.  With a timer.

I did manage, for two years or so, to host a vegetable and herb garden in my backyard.  It actually thrived — except for my tomatoes, whose 14 plants yielded only about 14 tomatoes all season.  I don’t know where I went wrong there, but I know it wasn’t entirely a reflection of my ability since everything else seemed to grow with gusto.

My Lemon Tree

I genuinely love plants now, and Spring lights a fire inside me like nothing else.  I spent Easter weekend getting dirty in my new flower beds.  I brought a few plants from the old house when we moved: the Angel Trumpet, various herbs and my lemon tree.  But heirloom plants are the best, in my opinion.  So far I have a yaupon holly and Indian hawthorn from my mother; cannas, lillies and irises from Dom’s Aunt Pam (the irises came from Dom’s Grandma Zern – many thanks to Uncle Harold for digging them up and loading them into my van!); daylily bulbs from my mother-in-law; pineapple guava plants, a peach tree and two fig trees from one of my Dad’s co-workers; and boxwoods and a tulip tree from Dom’s Aunt Bobbie.  (Aunt Bobbie supplied us with lots of great plants at the old house at a time when I was finally taking an interest in my landscaping.)  And the pièce de résistance, my palm tree: 12 feet tall and gorgeous, my builder hooked me up with this one in January.  I only had to pay for the landscaping crew to bring it to me and plant it wherever I pointed.  As my grandmother would say, “You can’t beat that with a stick!!”

The palm tree before any other plants…January 2013

Future plans include a vegetable garden in the new backyard, as well as a butterfly garden where I want to grow jasmine and honeysuckle and maybe some knock-out roses just outside of Victoria’s bedroom window.  And I’m also going to attempt to keep a terrarium in my large fish tank on the patio.  (Wish me luck!)  All in good time, I know.  To garden is to practice patience, and we all know I could use the practice.

Tonight

Tonight, just on the outskirts of the city limit sign, country music drifts my way from a neighbor’s pickup truck.  There is a crescent moon accompanied by a tiny star.  The breeze is gentle, the weather is clear, and I do not believe I have ever known a more perfect night.

Renegade Recipes

I’ve been considering moving my recipe site into this one for some time now.  The link in the menu bar will take you to the separate site, but I’m kinda sick of having three separate sites to maintain.  I remember when I had five domains, and was actually entertaining the idea of seven-plus.  I can only blame the recent packing, moving and unpacking for my new attitude of “less is more.”

That being said, this blog is about to absorb all my recipes.  So if you are an email subscriber, and you are suddenly flooded with emails of new posts from me (like 20 or so at a time) please know that I tried to prevent that!!  If things go the way I want them to, then you won’t really be aware of all the posts being imported.  And if you determine that you want recipes, the link will still be in the menu to sort the category.  After that, you’ll just see my random recipe posts as I create them, interspersed with life lessons and the crazy in my head. 

A few things you should know about my recipe categories:

“COOK IT HOW LONG???” recipes are those that simmer for an hour or more.  In other words, don’t plan to work all day and then come home to start this recipe for dinner.

“Time Hogs” don’t necessarily cook long, but the preparation is long and involved.  Save these recipes for the weekend when you’re not already stressed.

“THAT DOESN’T SUCK!!!!” recipes are those which have established themselves as worthy meals in our home, strictly according to Dom.  He is quite complimentary, but he is also a smarty-pants sometimes, and when he knows I’m hoping for a whopping compliment, he’ll often pacify me with an astonished “That doesn’t suck!!!”  It’s his way of saying, “Way to go, honey.  You rival Julia Child, Emeril AND Rachael Ray,” while still keeping me dangling on the hook.  What can I say?  It works.

Well, I’m off to stir things up in the WordPress dashboard now.  Wish me luck.  Oh, and Buon Appetito!!

The Most Fantabulous Shrimp-n-Grits

Tags

cream sauce, grits, recipe, shrimp

(Adapted from AllRecipes.com)

1 cup water

1 pinch salt

6 tablespoons grits

2 tablespoons olive oil (or better, vegetable broth.  I use mushroom broth – yum!)

2 tablespoons diced onion

2 tablespoons diced green bell pepper

20 medium shrimp, peeled and deveined

1/4 cup white wine

1 cup heavy whipping cream

2 fistfuls of fresh spinach

salt and ground black pepper to taste

Bring water and a pinch of salt to a boil in a saucepan and slowly mix in the grits, stirring constantly. Reduce heat to low and simmer grits until tender and smooth, about 20 minutes.  Recite lines from My Cousin Vinny, i.e.: “No self-respectin’ Southerner uses instant grits!” (For Pete’s sake, don’t tell anybody if you DO use instant grits!) Stir often. Set aside and keep warm.

Heat broth (of your choosing) in a large skillet over medium-high heat.  (Here’s the Purpose Driven Mom coming out in me:  you don’t want to sauté with olive oil because it cannot withstand high heat and will release harmful free radicals as it cooks.  Okay, rant over…)  As you’re sautéing, add a few more drops of broth as needed if you feel it’s evaporating out too fast.

Stir in onion and green bell pepper and cook until onion is translucent, about 4 minutes. Lightly stir the shrimp with the vegetables and broth until pink; remove shrimp from pan and set aside.

Pour white wine into the skillet and stir, dissolving any browned bits of food in the bottom of the skillet; slowly add the cream and stir gently.  Reduce heat to low and simmer until thickened, about 10 minutes. Season with salt and black pepper, then add fresh spinach and stir until it’s just a little wilted.

Gently combine the sauce with the grits and ladle onto plates.  Top with shrimp and serve.  Become somebody’s favorite chef ever.

The first time I made this, I didn’t have enough grits on hand and was afraid the meal would be lame.  So I made sweet biscuits and served the shrimp and grits over them.  Oh.  My. Goodness.

(If I can ever figure out why my biscuit recipe is so wonky – and fix it – I’ll share it with you.  Until then, I don’t want you to bake them up and be like, “Um, Lori?…what’s with this freaky biscuit batter??!!”  But they taste incredible, so I promise to share someday…)

I also use the same sauce with pasta (like this delicious organic spinach and cheese ravioli that I found at Target.)  It’s a win!

Blinded!

I knew when we moved in that we were going to need blinds in our windows.  Aaron’s room is on the front of the house, and I was surprised that he didn’t complain when he learned that he was going to be sleeping in there with no window coverings.  I didn’t know who to call for estimates and figured I’d probably be ordering wooden blinds online anyway.   Not having a clue what else might be important, my primary goal was to find blinds that would match the paint color of my window trim.  And so I Googled.

And Googled.

And Googled.

Then one Saturday after Mass we headed to our favorite pizza place for some fine dining and VOILA!!  Right there, across the street from our pizza parlor was a blind and drapery company.  Who knew???  (Just goes to show sometimes we only see what we’re looking for.)  I didn’t even bother calling anyone else.  Quite honestly, after living on this older end of town for the past 13 years, Dom and I are more than happy to patronize businesses who choose to stay over here rather than venture to the “newer” (and gawd-awful busier) side of Shreveport.  David Carroll’s Blinds and Draperies had us, quite literally, at hello.

I called them up and scheduled a visit for an estimate.  Mike, the store founder’s son, drove out to our house and measured all the windows, petted Mason and Mabel, and showed me four fans of color choices.  We went through the house holding the colors up in each window to make sure we got the closest match.  Turns out, it’s SPOT ON!!!

(Look, Mom! I even made my bed today!!)  And no, I haven’t decided what to put on the walls yet…

The blinds were installed in just under two hours.  We ended up only covering the windows across the front of the house, in the master bedroom, and in the upstairs bonus room… all for considerably less money than I was anticipating, which made me (in the words of Duck Dynasty) happy, happy, happy!

I omitted the option to put coverings on the living room windows, though I asked for a quote anyway.  I love the openness and light, and Mike agreed that it would be a shame to cover it up.  Maybe someday, but not yet…  We gotta leave one set of windows for Mabel’s nose prints!

Fenced and Free!

Tags

back yard, dogs, driveway, fence building, privacy fence, yard dogs

What began in September has finally, FINALLY been completed: the fence that surrounds our new backyard is finished, putting me and The Mabellini on Cloud Nine!!

So, yeah, it only took us five months to build our fence. (No, we don’t hire out. Har har.) Before the autumn weather kissed Daylight Savings Time goodbye, the only time we had to work on the fence was in the evenings after our real-job workdays. We started on the 150-foot stretch across the back of the property because that was the least obtrusive to the construction crews who were still building our house. And after several weeks of that leg, we finally got to come up the side of the yard to the driveway. But then that’s where we lagged. Dom’s one ER visit and my NINE trips to the eye doctor to resolve the hell that began as wood dust blowing into my eye pretty much brought us to a standstill.

After we moved in, we deliberated about where to connect the fence to the house, and how to shape it around the driveway (which has a lovely inwardly-rounded edge nearest the garage). Dom and I each had ideas of what we wanted, but those ideas didn’t always mesh together. Ultimately, the one thing we could agree on was that we just wanted it finished.

For the most part, building the fence was a family affair. My parents and Dom’s dad spent many weekend mornings working on the fence with us. I daresay we would still have only half of a fence if it weren’t for all of them. Dom and I tackled a small part of the fence alone one blistery cold morning. (I live in Louisiana, folks. “Blistery” is anything below 50 degrees with the wind blowing.) We happened to be working in the soggiest part of the yard that day. I think I lasted 45 minutes before I finally huffed that I was freaking COLD thankyouverymuch, that I had stepped in a mud puddle which soaked through my shoe and into my sock, and I was DONE!! We accomplished so much more when the weather was good and we had help.

Dom, Daddy, Pop and Mom in the home stretch!

As much of a pain as it might have been to plan and build the fence ourselves, the bigger pain was walking Mabel on a leash a thousand times a day, especially in the early morning or late evening when the temperature hovered well below what I consider comfortable. She tolerated the leash as well as could be expected, but she yearned to run free. Mason, on the other hand was never a flight risk. At age 13, the biggest problem for him is having the stamina to walk back to the house after wandering so far out into the yard. Both pups would benefit from a fenced backyard where we no longer had to be concerned for their safety.

“Which way is the door, man??”

As the last picket was being screwed into place, Victoria opened the back door to let Mabel out – without a leash for the first time in nearly two months. Mabel sprung out the door like a horse at the track. She raced as fast as she could back and forth across the yard, kicking up leaves as she dug in to change direction. I swear that dog was smiling the whole time.

Poca Voglia

Tags

home names, little wishes

I’ve always wanted to name my house – ever since the days of my childhood when I would watch Dallas and marvel at the majesty of Southfork.  Of course, I knew I would not likely have anything as vast as a Southfork of my own, but the thought of a place with a name – a distinct identity – was intriguing.

Our old house was warm and friendly, but never quite name-worthy.  The name would come some day when I fulfilled the dream of building my own house.

That day is now.

Any appropriate name would need to be Italian (duh), and so I spent weeks in my “spare” time google-translating phrases that were personal, yet meaningful.  Stately, yet modest.

Weeks, I tell ya.  Weeks.

(By the way, this is exactly why I don’t have a tattoo.  Such a permanent item would need to be, in my estimation, an all-encompassing graphic rendition of my personality, beliefs and ideals.  Its meaning and message would need to stand the test of time.  I mean, really…how would I ever decide on one?)

I also had standards for not only what the name would mean, but for how it sounded when spoken.  It couldn’t be cumbersome.  It needed to sound lyrical.  It needed to roll. Google Translate and that little Italian voice inside my phone had their work cut out for them.

I won’t bore you with all the details of the names I tried and cast aside.  In the end, one name won out because of its meaning and its melody.  Poca Voglia (pronounced POKE-a VOHL-e-yah) means “little wish.”   This house began as a little wish twenty years ago when Dom and I sat in the student center at our university and he drew me an abstract picture on a napkin of the home we would someday build together.It’s probably hard to see on this scanned and faded napkin, but that’s the house in the foreground with a pond in the back.  And a dog.  No house is a home without a dog. 

I am full of little wishes.  But I am also full of gratitude and contentment.  Poca Voglia.  Welcome home.

The Era of Cake

Tags

at-home business, baking, cake decorating, cakes, hard drive crash, icing, kitchen business, over-busy mom, photo loss

Once upon a time, in a land eight minutes to the northwest, when I was long on ibuprofen and short on sanity, I ran a tiny side business in my kitchen…making cakes.  Aaron was 2 years old and Vic was an infant when the madness began.  Mom and I set out to learn to decorate like pros, and the next thing we knew, we were churning out three to five custom cakes a week.  That doesn’t sound like much at all until you factor in a full-time day-job, two toddlers, and all the regular household chores of a bustling little family.  I look back on those days and I really don’t know how I did it all.  Actually, I acknowledge that I got by on very little sleep, which did none of us any favors. Cake decorating began after the kids went to bed, which meant I was up until at least midnight, and that’s IF there were no icing issues or mental meltdowns. (To clarify: add heaping mounds of sugar inhalation to perfectionism, a pot of coffee and self-induced OCD and see what you get!)  It was a bit of a rough spot, looking back.  But there was fun, too.  And the smiles on my customers’ faces made the aching wrists and sugar-splattered kitchen all worth it.

In 2006 my hard drive crashed and I learned a tough lesson about backing up my files.  Not only did I lose six years of pictures of my children, but insult was added to injury when I realized all my cake photos were gone too.  At that point I had four years of cakes invested in my archives.  Fortunately, I also had some of the photos stored on my website, although they were sized rather small in order to not consume so much space.  I recently opened the vault of past files and uncovered some cake photos that I felt deserved a place of honor for the dream that they once were, calories and all.  Indulge me a memory-lane trip, if you will, down Bella Dolci Boulevard…

(Yes, sadly, these are full-size pics, folks.  See my disappointment in losing the hard drive? )

This first picture below was made to celebrate a lady’s 80th birthday.  Birthdays were my favorite occasions to make cake.  The recipient is always so grateful.   

The cake that started it all:  Aaron’s 2nd birthday cake.

And, coincidentally, his third.    To Infinity and Beyond, right?!

And his fourth, ala Nemo:

Victoria’s birthday cakes were equally fun.  (Castle at the beginning is hers too.) Who doesn’t love Tink??

And then there were the senior birthday cakes…

Buttercream cakes weren’t the only ones that stole the show.  Cream Cheese Poundcakes rocked the stage, too!!   And no one could resist the temptation of chocolate ganache!  Wedding cakes, though incredibly stressful, were always worth it in the end.   

Wedding Cake and Roses

Grooms’ cakes were much less stressful than bridal cakes.  Just sayin’…     

And then there were the special occasion cakes.  Baby showers, baptisms, holidays… And Veterans’ Day.  Possibly my favorite cake ever…

   The lattice work became my signature, as almost every sheet cake I made bore its mark.

I had fun with the Fire Department’s cake:

This ducky cake always makes me think of Joey from Friends.  “How you doin’??”

The most disappointing losses of the hard drive cake pictures were the Roly Poly Olie cake made for a friend’s child and the Robots cake that I made for Aaron’s 5th birthday, complete with cake cogs and icing nuts and bolts. I dare say William Joyce would have been proud.

In 2006, after just four years of baking and mixing and piping icing, I hung up my apron in favor of devoting more time to being Mom.  My customers understood and were genuinely sweet in wishing that I would fire up the ovens again.  As it looks now, it just wasn’t meant to be.  But it was one incredible ride.

Duck

Tags

1993, high school band, memories of friends, suicide, Super Bowl

This post lived in “the vault” for probably a decade.  As I reflected on today’s date, I edited the last paragraph and decided to finally share it.

I was a band geek.  I have to admit that I loved it.  Being a part of the band was like belonging to a high school fraternity.  We hazed each other, we were initiated into the fold, and we were family.  Years later I would laugh until I hurt when the movie American Pie coined a geek’s phrase, “This one time, at band camp…”  I have band camp stories, (clean stories, mind you…)  but I dare not share them after that movie came out!

The summer before my junior year I had the privilege of meeting and growing to love a crowd of rowdy freshmen boys, all ready for high school, toting their instruments to – yes – band camp.  There was Keith with his blond hair and freckles whose feistiness overshadowed his size, and Taco, a fun-loving guy whose name was actually Jeff…Taco fit better, and so it stuck.  Larry sort of hung back a little, but he was friendly and liked to joke around.  Chris was tall and dark-haired and seemed to have girls swooning over him at random.  David was new to our area, and despite having just moved here from Los Angeles, fit in with the guys quite nicely.  And Aaron…sweet Aaron, who was pixie-ish with dark hair and a sheepish smile.  Stacey and I nicknamed him “A.O.” for Awesome One.  AO in turn nicknamed me and Stacey each “Gorgeous.”  If we were having a rotten day, AO could make us feel better with one greeting.

And then there was Duck.  Jonathan Wayne Duck.  (I howled when he told me his name was Jon Wayne.  I got The Look and the retort, “I fail to see what is so dang funny.”)  Everyone called him Jon, but Pretty in Pink was one of my favorite movies, so I instantly took to calling him “Duck.”  Duck stole my heart in the way only a good buddy can.  We would talk every day at school and then we’d be on the phone in the evening together.  There was never anything romantic between us…I just really liked being in his company.  He was a great jokester. He could take a joke, too.  If my parents answered the phone when he called, they would quack to let me know it was him.  I’d pick up the line to hear Duck sarcastically saying, “Uhhh, yeahh, Lori, your folks are quite the comedians tonight.”  And then he would launch into a National Geographic lecture on the sensitive egos of water fowl.

Larry and Duck and I would often find each other during the school day to chat.  And at the end of every school day, Duck would walk me to my car. For two years we followed the same routine.  We would meet in the band room, chat about our day, and walk outside where mom would be waiting to pick me up, or as was the case during my senior year, where my own car would be waiting for me.

We were closest in my junior year, and I feel in retrospect that I took his friendship for granted during my senior year. I had such “huge” things to think about…Prom, Homecoming, Graduation.  We still chatted on the phone in the evenings, and he was always a source of comic relief at football games and band competitions. As a majorette, I wore the equivalent to a swimsuit at all band performances.  And with a football team in the playoffs, those last games of the season were pretty cold.  Duck would find his way to me before halftime, change his voice to that of a “roving reporter” and make comments like, “Um, you know, Lori, if you would wear more clothes to these winter events, you wouldn’t be freezing your ass off!”  Sometimes he’d sneak up on me with questions like, “Does your mother know you’re dressed like that?!”  He would always make me laugh.  I smile every time I think about those sideline conversations.

Duck hated to be in pictures.  I have only two pictures of him: one of him and Larry together, and one of Duck at my surprise 18^th birthday party.  He was always so casual about everything, but could not stand to be in front of the camera.  I feel the same way, so I really shouldn’t complain.  But I wish I had more photos of him.

Larry and Duck, 1989

I graduated and went on to college, though not too far.  Stacey and Jill and I ventured just across the river for higher education.  I kept in touch with Duck still, and a couple of times I stopped by the high school to visit with him.  I do remember Duck coming to my mom’s house one day and visiting with me for a good part of the afternoon.  I told him what all was going on in college, and I remember him saying he didn’t know where he was going to enroll.

I probably didn’t talk with Duck much during his senior year or after he graduated.  I thought about him a lot, but I didn’t take the time to call him up and see how everything was going.  By then, I was full-swing into Dominic and, honestly, I didn’t make time for much of anything else.  Dominic was going to be at the fraternity house for the ‘93 Super Bowl, and by God, I was going to be there too.  If I remember correctly, I dragged Stacey with me, neither of us interested in the least in football.  But we watched the game for the commercials while Dom played cards most of the night.  It was the first year of a streak where the Cowboys had finally made it to the Super Bowl.  They actually won, a feat few thought possible after their many losing seasons.

I remember that Dom’s fraternity brothers had borrowed and set up a big screen TV for the event, and I know we were at the house on Robinson.  But other details of the early evening are sketchy in my mind.  What I do remember vividly is that I was house-sitting for Mr. Wilson while he was out of town that weekend of January 31.  I had finally arrived at his house, exhausted, and was taking my makeup off when the phone rang.  It was Stacey and she said she had some bad news.  I immediately thought something had happened to Dominic and, cursing myself for not sticking around to drive him home, demanded she tell me that he was okay.  She said Dom was fine, but that Duck had shot himself that evening.  Her words stunned me and I lost my breath.  As Stacey relayed the few details she knew, I stumbled to the foot of the bed and sat down on the floor and cried.  I kept asking if she was sure.  Was he okay?  Could it be a mistake?  How does news like that make it across the river and into my world within a matter of hours???  It had to be a cruel joke.  But Stacey would never joke like that.  This was all wrong.

I knew I had to call Larry.  He seemed to be my closest link to Duck, and I doubted he knew yet.  It was well after midnight when I woke up Larry’s uncle, who asked me if I knew what time it was.  I sobbed that yes, I knew it was late, but I really had to talk to him.  Somehow, Larry was immediately on the phone and told his uncle that he would take the call.  I don’t even know how I told him the news.  I was in shock, and Larry and I stayed on the phone for the better part of an hour consoling each other and praying that it was all a mistake.

Duck had left us for reasons I still can’t comprehend.  At his graveside I saw many of the faces that I loved, shielded by dark sunglasses.  I knew nothing would ever be the same.  One song from that era seemed to bond itself to the moment, and from then on I could never listen to Garth Brooks’ The Dance without thinking of Duck and the boys in the band.  He probably had no idea that his friendship was one of my most treasured gifts. Or that his memory would fill me with sadness for a number of years before my thoughts of him, finally peaceful again, found joy and gratitude for who he was while I knew him.

It’s been twenty years today since Duck chose to go where we could not follow, but I can’t relive a single high school memory without thinking of him, simultaneously saying a prayer for him and thanking him for the dance.

The Vaulted Files: Lessons from Daddy

Note:  I have a habit of writing miles and miles of blog posts that never get published.  And then every time I upgrade my computer (or run a two-year backup, or change which hard drive is my primary storage) one of my most offensive habits is dumping the entire contents of “My Documents” into a date-labeled folder to be stored on a backup drive until I can find time to organize it – time which never seems to come.  Until now…

I spent most of Sunday morning cleaning out those old electronic folders and stumbled upon what I call “the vault” – the folders where my writings (the good and the bad) have ended up.  I had fun browsing through the old memories (some as ancient as 2006) and gagged a little over the idiocy of some posts that weren’t worth writing, much less keeping for years on end.  At any rate, several potential posts rose to the top.  Those that offered the slightest hint of inspiration were moved to the newest hard drive where I will dust them off one by one and make them presentable. 

My most favorite memory of my dad is an odd one…I was 15 years old and had disobeyed him and gotten caught red-handed.  We stood in the kitchen and discussed why the rule was as it was, why I had disobeyed, and what my punishment was to be.  It was an excruciating conversation, because more than anything I hated to disappoint people.  I was ashamed of myself, both for breaking a rule and for getting caught.  Wounded pride is more effective than a wounded butt.  My daddy was my hero, and my hero told me something that blew my mind. In the middle of deciding the punishment, my dad said to me, “I don’t really know what to do either.  I have never been the father of a 15-year old girl before.”   I couldn’t argue that point, but I pondered it for years.  For as long as I had known him, he had the answer to everything.  He knew everything.  He was the fixer of broken things.  How could he say to me that he didn’t know what to do?!!!  Most people would consider an admission such as this to be a sign of weakness.  But it took incredible strength to say this to me, and I knew it immediately.  I had grown up watching him assist stranded people, call attention to a clerk giving him too much change, and help absolutely anyone who asked.  He minces no words, plays no political games, and bends the rules for no one.  His saying that one sentence to me on that Sunday night in our kitchen reinforced everything I knew about him and everything I would come to think of him in the future.  For so very long in my mind he was Superman.  But he showed me in that one instant that he was not Superman, wasn’t perfect, didn’t always have the answers.  And that was okay, because it meant that as I became an adult, I didn’t always have to have the answers either.  That night, Daddy and I decided together what my punishment would be.  It was an easy sentence, but had more lesson in it than anything I had experienced to that point, or since.  He showed me that more important than having the answer is understanding each other, and finding the answer together.