For My Jodie:

This message is exclusive and un-funny to everyone but rizzo41:

Malibu -

I am currently cooking. You need to come over and have some of my Mac and Cheese. You are a sexy. Don't jib-a-jab. Drink your milk and wear lots of sweaters. That's an awfully big moustache, Mr. Poopy Pants. Do you want some carrot cake? (Cake. Cake.) Get off me! Will you shut up? We're doing our best. That's my dawg! The Prince is giving a bawl! Hee haw hee haw hee haw.

- Paddle

And now, a serious question

(One I'll likely expound on later.)

What do you do with the boy parts of yourself if the woman you love only likes girls?

On fathers

When I was a little boy, my father had a scrapbook of my baseball accomplishments. Every game, every blurb, was carefully snipped out of the newspaper and placed into a photo album.

He attended every game. He calculated my batting average, and then spread it all over the place. "My daughter bats .830" or whatever. All the time. He argued with umpires. I remember when my coach told him truthfully that the reason I wasn't moved up to the higher league was because I was a girl - he was livid, furious, rigid.

We played catch in the backyard or the driveway every night. Every night. He threw hard, and wild, and he never let my age be an excuse. Or my girlhood. He encouraged me to dive for the ball, to jump, to throw as far as I possibly could. Every night.

With all of these wonderful memories, it was awfully confusing when he would hit me, or say the horrible things he said with regularity. What was worse, though, was when I was required to say the horrible things myself. They seemed much more believable coming out of my very own little mouth.

Maybe that's why I can't take compliments. Maybe that's why positive attention makes me nervous. I need to work on that.