I have really got to put some things out of my mind before I go out of my mind. I'm one of those people who would like to believe that I can control anything and everything, simply by wishing it so. Too bad for me my magic wand is a fraud and my fairy godmother went on permanent vacation a long time ago. Reality can be so depressing ...

Tonight was family dinner night at Dad's house. Sometimes I think my Dad just invites us over so that he can have a captive audience to his stand up routine. I can say this however, there is absolutely no question on which side of the gene pool I got my horrible sense of humor from. And not only does the man tell jokes but he heckles us as well! Busting out the one liners on me like he was on fire, my stepmother finally retaliated in my defense, launching a crouton in my father's direction. Not to be outdone by a crouton he kept right on going without missing a beat, until she started eyeballing the silverware. Evidently he knew that look meant business. The twisted part was he actually retrieved the crouton from the floor and added it to his salad, using the old "5 second" rule standard. Stating as he did so that, "Small people in Italy are hungry." Whatever you say, Dad.

Things got a little too intense however after dinner. Dad had told Amy that she could have the spare daybed frame for Jordan's newly revamped room, on the condition that we help pull it down from the rafters in the garage. No problem, or so we thought. So there was our Poppa, climbing up the ladder and ignoring all the safety rules that are clearly written for all the world to see, when suddenly the ladder began to tip. It happened so fast that before you even realized he was falling, he had already fallen. I am absolutely useless in a crisis, but I did manage to grab the ladder before it could beam him in the head, while Amy threw herself between the hard cement floor and my father. Luckily, the only thing damaged was his pride. For the rest of the procedure, we kept him safely administrating from the floor.

Emma's evidently been at the catnip again, she's running around the house like a complete lunatic pouncing on everything in her path. I should have named her Fido.

** I wanted him to cherish and approve of me, not as he had when I was a child, but as the woman I was, who had her own mind and had made her own choices. ** ~ Adrienne Rich, "Split at the Root" (1986)