This Rare Disease Day and My Daughter

The doctor, to my surprise, almost immediately said we could reduce my daughter’s med doses in the morning and the evening.

“She looks great,” she said Monday.

These words periodically come from the lips of L’il Diva’s specialist, but almost always with a condition or clarification later.

This time would be no different.

Teenager

Note: I wrote this last year when the girl turned 13 but I never hit publish. I don’t remember why. This week, she turned 14.

This dreaded day has come, Li’l Diva.

I’m not kidding myself. It’s the first of many scary moments in my future.

Your first date. Your first heartbreak.

Your first solo outing with the car. Your first prom.

Leaving for college. Moving out.

Marriage. Children of your own.

What happened to all the time in the world we had?

She is Love: My Musical Oasis for Valentine’s Day

My talent knows many bounds, never more so when it comes to music. That’s why the idea of giving My Love a song as a Valentine’s Day present is so daunting.

Then I stumbled upon “She is Love” by Oasis.

The tune, written and sung by Noel Gallagher during a break from bashing brother Liam about the head, popped up on my iTunes radio the other day and refused to leave my brain. In a good way.

So I did some Googling.

Rejected Candy Hearts (#rejectedcandyhearts)

The annual Twitterfest of devising sayings no one would put on those chalky Necco candy hearts is always one of my favorites. (This year it is at #rejectedcandyhearts.)

To me, it’s a challenge to be funny in as few words as possible because, face it, no matter how hilarious a candy heart saying “Your real mother was a Vegas stripper named Juggs Aplentee” would be, that wouldn’t really fit on a heart. Even if you wrote on the edges.

So here are some that I came up with:

Ralph Kiner Never Met My Dog

Ralph Kiner never met the dog I named after him. It probably wasn’t a loss for either of them but it saddens me.

Twice in my life, I crossed paths with the baseball Hall of Famer, who died yesterday at the age of 91.

Philip Seymour Hoffman – R.I.P.

Philip Seymour Hoffman didn’t write this scene in the movie Almost Famous but this blog may never have been without him saying the words he spoke just to me:

If only Philip Seymour Hoffman, as brilliant of an actor and man as he was, had heeded the advice of Frances McDormand’s character in the same movie:

Good night forever, sad man who played Lester Bangs. Don’t let those swill merchants rewrite you.

(GIF source: http://fockingchick.tumblr.com/.../im-always-home-im-uncool)