Father's Day

On the night before Father's Day, Sparkle Girl and Doobins presented me with a Father's Day menu.

Not one but two special meals. For breakfast, French toast and coffee with cinnamon in it and, for supper, spaghetti, salad and garlic bread.

I had gotten up at 5 to take His Dogness out. Sometimes that is the end of my sleep for the day. This time, though, I was able to go back to sleep, and, when I woke up again at 7:45, Sparkle Girl and Doobins were already hard at work in the kitchen making French toast.

Both had on aprons. Mr. Doobins faded before all the French toast was done but Sparkle Girl stuck with it.

I tried to joke with her but she was very serious about getting each piece just so.

They even had powedered sugar to sprinkle on it.

Before we ate, they had me open my presents. They had gone to one of those "decorate your own pottery" places. Doobins had painted a plate and Sparkle Girl had painted a mug.

Garnet washed them off, and we sat down to eat.

Afterward, Sparkle Girl took the menu and checked off the boxes next to French toast and cinnamon coffee.

The Broken Counter

Garnet and I were at the gym.

I had just finished doing leg presses. All the machines there have electronic devices designed to count reps, but the device on this one wasn't working.

Garnet had come up to tell me that she was headed over to the elliptical machines, when a man, with a smile on his face, came up and started talking to us.

He appeared to have had a stroke, and, at first, neither of us could figure out what he was trying to say. Eventually, I gathered enough to guess that he was trying to tell us that the counting device on the machine was broken.

He was delighted that the message had gotten through. He said a couple of more things. We said a couple more things, and he went on his way.

Later, Garnet and I talked about how much courage it must take to walk up to strangers and try to engage them knowing how difficult communication is going to be.

After his stroke (or whatever it was that happened), he could have closed down. Instead, he has chosen to be vulnerable - the price of continuing to participate in the world.