Sunday, June 19, 2022

Happy Father’s Day to everyone who is a Father.

I think it is inappropriate to discuss, in any detail, how I assess the kind of Father I was and continue to be. I can say that I think I am a better Father now then when our children were growing up. I worked most of the time. Often, I thought my name was “Daddy Bye-Bye”. When asked where I was going, my standard reply was, “To make money to buy Popsicles for Poochie”.

So far as my relationship with my own father was concerned, it is even more complicated. Explaining and trying to understand the dynamics could be an entire year of a good psychiatric residency and even then, I am not sure that would cover it.

Everything was resolved before he died, but it was not easy. Once again, Barbara played a huge role in getting all the loose ends tied up.

It does not help to look back at either my Father’s relationship with me or my relationship with my children. That is history. It cannot be rewritten. It is what it is. I hope that before I die, whatever issues my children have with me are resolved, but only time will tell. I love them and they love me. My final words on this subject, at least on this post, is that right or wrong, good or bad, I made the best decisions I was capable of making at the time I made them.

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Marlins lost again and again, by one run.

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Improved my number of steps to 4145 yesterday. Also started to lift some light weights to build back my upper body strength. Doctor told me that at my age, for every week I was flat on my back, it will take two weeks to recover my strength and stamina.

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When I called to get the Blue Book value on my car, I was asked if my gas tank was full or empty.

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I think Barbara literally worked 20 hours preparing for having guests today some of whom will take for granted all the effort it takes. Barbara has always done what she thought was the right thing. Sometimes she was right, sometimes not. I also think that sometimes being right is overrated.

The joke is “I married Mrs Right. I did not know her first name was 'Always'”.

Anyway, I hope we have good weather. I have decided I am strong enough to do some bartending and intend to make Aperol Spritzes, the favorite drink in Italy and something I do very well, even with my limited skill set outside my office.

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Many of you, as I do, regularly read the daily newsletter by Heather Cox Richardson. Her column dated June 18, 2022 contains one of the scariest things I have ever read. If I were wearing boots, instead of lying in bed from early Sunday morning, I would be shaking in them.

Quoting from Richardson -- and sit down if you are standing! Delegates to a convention of the Texas Republican Party today approved platform planks:

• rejecting “the certified results of the 2020 Presidential election, and holding that acting President ……………Biden was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States;

• requiring students to “learn about the dignity of the pre born human” including that life begins at fertilization;

• treating homosexuality as an “abnormal lifestyle choice”;

• locking the number of Supreme Court Justices at 9;

• getting rid of the constitutional power to levy income taxes;

• abolishing the Federal Reserve;

• rejecting the Equal Rights Amendment;

• returning Christianity to schools and government;

• ending all Gun safety measures;

• abolishing the Department of Education; arming teachers ;

• requiring colleges to teach “free-market liberty principles;

• defending capital punishment;

• dictating the ways in which the events at the Alamo are remembered;

• protecting Confederate. Monuments;

• ending gay marriage;

• withdrawing from the United Nations and the World Health Organization; and

• calling for a vote “for the people of Texas to determine whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation”

I have three things to say. First, can we abolish the income tax retroactively? Two, yes to Texas leaving the United States, and three, holy shit!

I do not know if the vote was unanimous nor have I found any debate on these issues. Finally, I saw nothing about actually burning our Constitution.

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How can I possibly have anything more to say?

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Go Ukraine.