Sunday June 15th.

I just got this link from my friend Cris in Iowa City! My thoughts and hope go out to everyone who is working so hard for so many. We can all be so grateful for the limited loss of life. I know that is cliché to say that things can be replaced and I am sorry that I am saying it now, but we all need to be so thankful for the fact that so few have been lost in the tragedy!

Aerials of Iowa City and Coralville - 6/14/08 afternoon*

I got up this morning and I clicked my way through the news on my laptop and I turned on my TV to catch up on the sports news for the previous day. It was not until I clicked on to several of the BLOGS that I read everyday did I remember that today was Fathers Day.

To those of us that have lost our fathers it is a rather bittersweet day. I have the most wonderful remembrances of my father. These memories range from going to ballgames, vacations and fishing down in Florida, watching him try to fix the crap Maverick that he drove, to following him with my plastic lawn mower as he mowed our lawn. (I was 4 years old at the time, ok?) I would follow him around as he did all of the tasks that he did. He was and still is one of my hero’s! We did not always have the easiest of relationships as I grew up and hit those rebellious teenage and 20-something years but he always stood by my choices and along with my mom was my biggest cheerleader.

I had a really weird dream a few weeks before I went off to B&B that my mom and dad were both in. It was nonsensical and random in so many ways but as it wound down I found myself walking down a hallway with my dad and I just looked at him and told him how much I missed him. He looked me in the eyes and said that he missed me too. I cherish those moments when I can visit with him in my dreams; it is so real! I know to my core that it is so real!

So Happy Fathers Day Dad! I love you!

I also watched today’s Meet The Press this morning. It was a panel of friends and colleagues who remembered Tim Russert and his career. He is regarded by many as a man of honor and who approached his profession with that rare quality, ethics. I think that the most interesting segment came when several of his colleagues told stories of how he would invite them onto his show so they could express their opposing views to the ones that he had expressed. He seemed to be a believer in the voice of all being heard. I am not one to watch the news on the television and my experiences with Mr. Russert stem from seeing him and his white board on primary and elections nights. What stuck me most was how much he truly loved what he did and his excitement was contagious! His friends and close colleagues had nothing but the highest forms of praise for this man. To see Tom Brokaw tear-up is like watching Walter Cronkite’s emotional responses to the events that he covered. Tom is an icon and to see that type of response gives me pause.

I got a very sage outlook on life from a brand new 21-year old yesterday morning. I took a friend along to pick up my glasses so we could do a Trader Joe’s run afterwards. It was very fortuitous that she did come along, I have a prism in my lenses that takes some getting used to and my vision was rather funky right after I put them on. So being the SMRT gal that I can be, I let her drive. Now to say that she is a cautious and safe driver is the understatement of the millennium. We were driving along and a driver cuts us off and turns into a parking lot in a very dangerous manner. Now this is where I would have laid on the horn and said some very colorful statements to take out my frustration over really bad drivers. I asked how she could keep her hands off of the horn and not get irritated by that person’s stupidity. Her response was classic.

“I want my horn to really mean something, we all make bad choices when we drive, choices that can irritate other drivers, at those times the only thing I can say is.”
“That really did not work out the way that I had hoped it would, sorry!”

Thank you for the wisdom of youth and an intimate look at the patience that I have tried to master for a lifetime!