My five year old granddaughter has become a social butterfly.

Last Saturday, she had two birthday parties to attend.

That's two birthday parties.

In one day.

Daaayaam!

What is more, the first one was at our local science museum. I checked their website. It costs $120 to schedule a birthday party there. This included getting to check out the animatronic dinosaur exhibit and even get to work the controls for a T Rex and then a really cool laser light show in the planetarium.

Frankly, I'm jealous.

There wasn't even kindergarten back in 1954 in rural Illinois when I was her age, much less anyone throwing such cool birthday parties for 5 year olds.

However, it's OK. I get to experience it through her excited telling of how much fun it was. That's part of the joy of being a modern grandfather, even though I have to witness that Zara is, more and more, becoming her own person, not just grandpa's little girl. Someone who is learning to be and talk one way at school with her peers and another with me or her mother or grandmother.

Case in point: a month ago, I picked her up after kindergarten. As we waited, stopped in traffic, she is telling me of her day. I am only half listening, keeping an eye out for traffic and such when I hear her tell me about some boy she knows, "...and he just had the crap scared out of him."

What?

I turn to the back seat, give her my very stern teacher look and say "What did you say?!?"

She blinks and says, "Sorry. He was very, very scared."

So she knows.

My little, darling granddaughter not only has it down that there is one way one talks with your classmates and another when you are with adults, but that she slipped up and has to do damage control. I thought it was going to be a few years later.

*sigh*

My son, my eldest child.

He just turned 26 last week.

For his birthday, I took him out to dinner at his favorite steak house. It was a bit pricey, but worth it.

I enjoy sitting with him and talking as one adult to another. Granted, there is still a bit of the parent/child under tone to it, but not as much as ten or even five years ago.

He's now in his own apartment and close to three years into his career as tech support for a major cable internet provider. And making more $$ than I do. I think that is just great.

This is a kid, OK, a young man, with Asperger's Syndrome. It took us years to get the right diagnosis for this. He will never be a social butterfly or your standard "hale fellow, well met," but he is a good man, one you can trust and who knows his job very well. He will do what he thinks is the right thing and not be too terribly concerned with what others think of that.

I guess his mother and I did something right.

Here he is at 18. I need to get him to sit down for an update photo:

So, now we share time and talk. Two adults.

I just hope he is as proud of me as I am of him...

So her grandmother, my ex, sent me this today.

I need to go get some more Kleenex...

As some of you know, Marc, Kate, Zara and I were in Rockford for my mom's 80th birthday a weekend ago.

We left to return to Iowa on Sunday afternoon, 6/13.

We were westbound on I-80, just into Iowa, when threse two young guys in a convertible passed us. Actually, cut in front of us. I was going just over 70 and they whip around us, trying to pass us in the inside lane and a semi in the outside lane.

However, there was a semi six car lengths ahead of us, and they got nowhere. They started tailgating the semi ahead of us. They were acting all hinky and I was sure they were going to try to pass the semi on the left shoulder.

Well, the semi finally moved to the outside lane and these guys took off, at about 85 mph. I'm keeeping an eye on them and the driver of this convertible (top down) starts checking his hair in the rear view mirror and then leaning his head out to check his hair in the side view mirror. He's weaving in and out of traffic, tailgating cars, weaving back and forth over the centerline.

So, we decide when we catch up, not speeding, but as he is bound to get caught behind a semi again, we'll get his plate number and try to find a cop. Soon enough, they go off on an exit. We follow, and find them at a gas station next to a McDonald's. The driver is having real trouble standing and getting the hose disengaged from the pump. We get a license#, good look at the guys and turn around, looking for a cop.

On the other side of I-80, we find a restaurant with 4 highway patrol cars parked out front. I go in, find them and say, "Officers, I hate to interrupt your dinner, but..." and give them an account of all this and the plate #. I tell them that if these guys aren't drunk, they are just too crazy to be out on the highway. One looks up, sighs and say, "Yeah, how long ago?", obviously implying that these guys are long gone and that he cannot do anything about it. I tell him just now and the guys are pumping gas into the car as we speak. He gets up and goes out to the parking lot w. me, points to the station and asks if that is where they are at.

As I tell him yes, Kate jumps out of the van and yells, "There they go!" pointing to the on ramp, where the two guys are now rocketing onto the highway. I confirm that is the car. The trooper jumps into his car and burns rubber out of the lot in persuit.

We got back on the road and five miles later, came upon the car, stopped with the patrol car behind it. The driver was in the patrol car. Zara was cheering, "THEY'RE GONNA GO TO JAIL!!!" Marc snaped a photo out the window with his new digital camera. He downloaded it onto his computer when we got home and blew it up. the passenger is seen leaning forward in the car, looking for something on the floor or such, looking very concerned. We are hoping there was "contraband."

The photo blow-up of the passenger is below for your viewing pleasure.

Some years ago, I was talking with my mother when she was visiting for a birthday, mine or my kids', I can't recall.

As usual, things turned to my dad.

Mom met him while working for an attorney. She was a legal secretary for a good part of her working life. She was working for one of the pre-eminent attorneys in Rockford, IL at the time. One day, my dad came in, interviewing for a job as an investigator for this attorney. She looked up as he walked in. Almost fifty years after that, she told me, "I thought he was the handsomest man I had ever seen." She paused, now a widow of twenty some years, and softly added, "And I still do."

It was all I could do to keep my composure.

What can you say to that?

They, of course, began to date shortly after that. He proposed on Christmas Day, 1947. With a heavy heart, she turned him down, saying she couldn't marry him as she had to take care of her parents, then in their sixties. With no hesitation, he replied, "Then they can come live with us."

My parents were married on Valentines Day, 1948. My maternal grandparents lived with them, and then, us kids, too, until their deaths. I grew up in a three generational household, thinking it was the most natural thing in the world. Perhaps it was growing up with a continuing history that made me what I am today.

That's my mom.

Amy Viola.

She hates her middle name, BTW. Her cousin, the only daughter of her mother's only sister, is Amy Ellen. They grew up being called Amy Vi and Amy El. I think my mom wanted to be just Amy.

In just under a week, Mom turns 80. My son and daughter and granddaughter and I are driving in together to Rockford, IL next weekend to be there for the big party. We will be joined by my sister, my brother and his wife and a whole crapload of cousins and friends. I can hardly wait.

Mom was born in 1924 in Dixon, IL. She graduated from the same high school as Ronald Reagan. There is a photo in her senior yearbook from high school of him visiting and signing autographs.

Her first job out of high school was working as a secretary in a nearby munitions plant during WWII. The office was on the "weak side" of the plant, meaning that if there was an accident, that was the side that would blow out, away from the town. Her mother assembled artillery shells in the same plant and her father swept up and recycled the spilled gunpowder.

As a kid, I once happened across one of Mom's scrapbooks from the time. It turns out that the plant had a judo class for employees. In the scrapbook, there are a series of photos showing my mom, all 5'4", 95 lbs, of her, flipping men twice her size over her shoulder. Now, I had learned early on not to piss off my mom, but seeing that....

Anyway, Mom is turning 80. She went through the Depression, WWII, almost 26 years of marriage, raised three kids whom she managed to get through college, the sudden death of her husband, the love of her life (more on that later), breaking a leg 10 years ago, being diagnosed with lupus five years ago, yet still being busier in "retirement" than when she was working. She is also a long time member of a hiking club. Three years ago, she went to Alaska with my brother and his family and went kayaking (also met dottie Curius), four years ago, went to the Bahamas with my brother's family and climbed a waterfall. Is it any wonder I have a feeling she is going to live forever?

Anyway, June 11, this great lady is going to be 80. I just hope I am even half as active and interesting when I get to be that age.

Did I say my father could do almost anything he set his mind to?

Let me illustrate.

In 1959, my father decided to forsake Illinois for Florida.

The first thing he did was check out moving van costs. He found them to be waaay too high. He, he decided, could do better.

Always having a fascination with military surplus, his first idea was to buy a surplus army DKW,or "duck". This was basically an amphibious truck. His idea was to load us and all our worldly goods onto this thing, drive it to the Mississippi River and then sail it down to the Gulf of Mexico and then across to Florida. My mother put a stop to that--"Are you crazy?!? We'll all drown!"

Plan B. He went into Aurora, IL and bought an old city bus. he drove it home, unbolted all of the seats but one and the driver's seat and stacked them in the rear, took off the doors and loaded all our furniture into it, put the doors back on and off we went, from northern Illinois to west central Florida, pre-interstate highway system. My brother and I rode with him in the bus with our dog. Mom, our sister and my maternal grandparents followed in the Pontiac.

Just before we got to our final destination in Sarasota, FL, one of the drive pins in the transmission sheared off. When we finally got to our new home, after the bus was unloaded, he pulled out the engine and the transmission, took the trany down to have a new drive pin welded on, put it all back in and sold the bus to the owner of an orange grove to move migrant workers around.

What kid wouldn't be in awe of a guy like that? Suffice it to say I had an interesting childhood....