In 1994 I came to California with a duffle bag and a dog.  I had $22 in my pocket because my Grandpa couldn’t let me get on a jet to a faraway land with only $2 to my name.  I am pretty sure that $20 was all he had at the time.

Yoda was still a young whipper snapper with a whole lotta spunk.

Unfortunately I don’t have many pics from his early years.

It would be another 4 years before we would meet his paparazzi.

In fact, all the pics on this post were shot by The Hub.

Except for the out-of-focus and slightly crooked ones.

Those are mine.

Yoda and I were great pals.

When I wasn’t at work, the two of us were hanging out doing everything together.

We were a pack.  Sometimes I was the pack leader and sometimes he was the leader of our pack.

OK, most of the time he was the pack leader…he just let me feel in-charge now and then.

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Happy Father’s Day to all the Dads out there.  I love having this opportunity to write about the first man I ever loved.

Daddy

He’s gone now, which is still hard for me to believe.  Lots of times I have a question that I think only he can answer.  And for a split second I almost reach for the phone.

Daddy’s spirit still lives on in how I view the world and how I interact with those around me.

He was the first man I ever trusted.

About To Walk Down The Isle

Daddy’s humility helped me to understand what is really important in life.

Daddy’s courage fueled me with tenacity.  His confidence in me as a little girl was just what I needed.  Under his watchful eye, I explored the world more freely because he was there.

When I met the man I would eventually marry, I felt an immediate connection to him after learning he had a passion for cars and loved to drive them fast.  Somewhere in my subconscience, I was looking for things he had in common with my Daddy.

As a kid, we spent a lot of our weekends at race tracks or impromptu races with other “fast cars” on country back roads.

My brothers and I stood for millions of hours huddled around hot rods with the hoods raised discussing the finer points of carburetors, the love hate relationship with fuel injectors, small blocks vs. big blocks and high-performance transmissions.

Let’s not forget shiny valve covers.

The shinier the better.

When I was a little girl, my goal in life was to rebuild a carburetor faster than a boy blind-folded.  Just like Daisy did in one episode of Dukes of Hazzard.

via Google Images

Yes, these are all influences from the first man I ever loved.

There’s only one person I know who perfected the freezing time for soda to achieve just the right icy consistency to have small flakes of ice without loosing the bubbles while taking care not to burst the bottle.

Yes, only my Daddy, with his eye for precision could pull off such a maneuver.  And he did it well.

Every detail was important.

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Today was a normal day. Went to the market for dinner ingredients. Couldn’t find curry leaves for my recipe. I became delusional and figured we could go back out for them after the young’uns had naps.

I’ll skip to the punchline.  That didn’t happen.

But it was definitely a night to remember.

Do you ever wonder what times in your life will be at the forefront of your memory when many years have passed and the day-to-day routines blend and fade?

Tonight was one of those nights.  A night that started like a lot of the others. We’re headed to a restaurant for dinner because my original dinner plans were sabotaged didn’t work out.

But little did I know a magical evening was in store.

You know the kind.

When nothing goes according to plan and then you realize that the spontaneous activity was way better than anything that could have ever been planned.

The weather was near perfect.

I’m not asking for sympathy here, people, but to put it in context, this is what we were dealing with just 2 weeks ago.

Girl In Gown In The Rain

In California, this is not supposed to happen in JUNE.

Yes, that is my young’un walking in the pouring rain in her nightgown.

It was 55 degrees.

In June.

Did I mention it was June?

At least one of my young’uns accepted the offer for an umbrella.

Rain

What do you do on a rainy day or sunny day or hot day or cold day or?… [Read more...]