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I am trying to get better about writing and posting here consistently. To that end Here goes another subject I have been thinking about.

This morning I had the opportunity to talk with a young man who has done some work around our house. He commented on how much he likes our backyard and the decorating we have done there. I would like to take credit but I admit it is mostly my wife. I'm just the unskilled labor. Still I do get to enjoy it.

The conversation reminded me that I have had the blessing and privilege for almost 33 years of being married to a beautiful lady who has always made whatever place we lived in a home. A place where our children, and now grandchildren, have felt comfortable and secure, a place where family and friends have been welcome, a place where the worries of the world can be forgotten, or tackled, depending on the need.

One of our first places was a cottage in an affluent community. It was actually a duplex/studio. We lived in one side, a little kitchenette on the back wall, our small dining room table on another wall and our bed/couch on the front wall. We did have a separate bathroom and a hallway/closet between the main room and the bathroom, but it was less than 400 square feet. We lived there with our oldest daughter who turned one while we lived there. I don't remember ever feeling cramped, but it did feel like home.

From that studio we moved to another cottage, it sat behind another house on a busy street in the heart of Orange County California. It appealed to me because it had a separate bedroom for our daughter. My wife and I had our bed in the front room, although we rarely used the front door, it opened into the backyard of the front house. It had a large kitchen with room for our dining table, a hand-me-down a relative was going to throw out. The bathroom was different. When you went from the front room to the kitchen you walked through the bathroom, on the left was the toilet and sink, with a door, on the right was the shower with a curtain.

It seems like we had a lot of visitors in that cottage. We moved there for my job but my wife had relatives who lived close by also. For awhile we had relatives who would just hang out at our house, it was inviting, comfortable, a place people didn't seem to want to leave.

We have never lived in a large, fancy house. Our present house is the first we've ever owned. But each place we have lived in has felt like home.

We have often had people tell us that they like our home, inside and out. A few years ago one young lady, a friend of one of our children, told us she and her family had bought a home in a neighboring town. After we congratulated here she said, "now we just need you and your wife to come help us put our backyard together. I just love your house and backyard." I accepted the compliment then told her it is all my wife's doing, but she doesn't hire out, to her, my wife, our house and yard are still a work in progress.

This year it is my goal to get my wife to scale back on some of that work and sit back and enjoy the hard work she has put into making our house a home.

I realize this post may be seen as a little mushy. Next one I'll make a little more manly!

Grandchildren

Let me start by saying that I have four grandchildren, two girls and two boys raging in age from 22 months to 15 3/4 years. Yes, we must count the months and the quarters, they are important.

I am blessed to have my grandchildren all live within an hour of my home so I have the opportunity to see them quite often. Some more often than others, but I see all of them quite often. My oldest granddaughter reminds me that she lived with my wife and I the first two years of her life. She doesn't have actual memories of that, but she has seen pictures and is reminded of that by different family members. Some days she asks, "grandpa, when can I come back and live with you again?" My answer is always the same, "you can always come and visit but you live with mommy and daddy!"

My children often comment that grandchildren seem to "get away with" a lot of things children never "got away with". Maybe they're right.

Last weekend our 22 month old grandson came for the weekend without mom and dad. We played, we went for walks, we had a lot of fun. Meal time was, well, interesting. Most meals he sat at the table with my wife and ate really well, but, there were a few food items he didn't like. Instead of waving those food items away he would take them, chew them up into the tiniest diced pieces and then spit them out. One evening I was eating some sugar snap peas and handed him one, it fit in his little hand and he could feed himself while he walked around. He started in the kitchen and then moved into the family room. A few minutes later I went into the kitchen for something and found a little pile of shredded and diced green stuff on the floor, the sugar snap peas.

Now when my children small I would have yelled, maybe even swatted a child who spit out food on the floor. But, not my grandchildren. I looked at the pile of peas on the floor, shook my head and laughed as I cleaned it up, no harm no foul.

I know that my grandchildren aren't perfect, but according to my children they get away with murder at my house and when they are with me.

I disagree with my children, but I remind them it is not my job to raise and discipline their children. It is my job to have fun with them and love them. Parents have to parent. Grandparents get to have fun.

Let's talk about some fun. Last summer I got to go kayaking in the ocean with my granddaughters. We were near Santa Cruz in an area where the ocean is pretty calm, no surfing to speak of, so we were able to launch kayaks and paddle out from the shore. While kayaking we found ourselves in the middle of several sea lions, maybe 6 or 8. Pretty soon we were paddling back and forth, first we would follow the sea lions and then they would follow us. This went on for quite awhile and then they, the sea lions, got tired of us and left. After the sea lions left my youngest granddaughter went back to shore and just my oldest granddaughter and I remained on the water. We were just sitting there when I saw my youngest granddaughter motioning on shore. When I looked where she was pointing I smiled and yelled at my oldest granddaughter. Just a hundred feet from us were five dolphins swimming parallel to the shore coming up out of the water.

I started paddling on a path that I hoped would take me real close to the dolphins. When I looked back at the shore I saw my wife with her arms around my youngest granddaughter. I turned back and my oldest granddaughter and I raced out to meet the dolphins. For almost ten minutes we paddled towards them and then the dolphins turned to meet us. We got within 15 feet of them before they dived down and hurried past us.

When I returned to shore I was excited to talk with my wife about the dolphins and she was equally anxious to tell me about my youngest granddaughter. It seems that when the first dolphin surfaced all my granddaughter saw was the fin on the dolphin's back and thought it was a shark. That's why my wife was holding her, reassuring her that it was a dolphin, not a shark, and her sister and I were alright.

I have seen all the bumper stickers, "Grandchildren, God's gift for not killing your own children"; "If I had known grandchildren were so much fun I would have had them first!" and they go on and on. They may sound like cliches but for me they are true.

Thinking of grandchildren leads naturally into thoughts of grandparents. Maybe next time.

Friday the 13th

Happy Friday the 13th. It should be a happy day, I was born on a Friday the 13th, but today is not my birthday.

I don't personally put a lot of store in the superstition of Friday the 13th, although that may change today. Shortly after I woke up I checked my emails, something I do most mornings. I had two of interest. The first was from my oldest daughter, the subject line was something about, having a job for me. It seemed a little strange as my daughter has gone back to college, but I opened the email to find my daughter's account had been hacked and I just opened an email that probably had a virus. Nothing bad has happened yet but I'm being cautious.

The second email was of greater concern initially. I work with quite a few attorneys, some I work with almost daily others I work with very rarely, like once every six months. Anyway the second was form one of those attorneys that I work for rarely. I had seen Joe about two weeks ago while walking through a courthouse and we said hi. I hopes this email actually did have some work. It didn't. Joe's email said he had read an obituary in a neighboring community's newspaper in the name of David J. Sullivan. He was writing to let me now that he was glad to see that it wasn't my obituary.

I called my wife a little while ago to tell her about Joe's email and the obituary. She asked if I had read the obituary. I haven't, there is something about seeing my name in an obituary is unsettling and I don't want to do it.

Quite a good start to a Friday the 13th. If I was a superstitious person I would go back to bed until tomorrow and hope that Saturday the 14th is a better day.

Mondays

Well, I just spent a half hour composing a post about this past Monday but when I went to spell check and edit it disappeared. I guess that tells you what my Monday was like? Maybe I'll try again later, but I know I won't try this Friday the 13th!

observations

It has been interesting over the years as I have grown older and as a natural result my grandparents and other relatives have or are passing away. With each death I am reminded of man's basic selfish nature.

The first time I personally dealt with this was several years ago when a friend's grandfather died. I was in law school at the time and as a result I became the "expert" on legal matters among my friends and family members. Shortly after the funeral I ran into my friend's mother who asked me about contesting her father-in-law's will. My friend had said he thought his parents were getting some money from his grandfather's estate, but he didn't have details.

As I talked with Evelyn, my friend's mother, the details became clear. Whoever who was in charge of settling the estate had determined that there was $50,000 in cash to be evenly split and shared by my friend's father and his four siblings. Now that seems like quite a bit of money to me, $10,000. But to Evelyn it wasn't enough. She wanted to know if she could demand an accounting of the money because she was sure that money was missing, that her husband, and her, should be receiving more money.

It was more than a little surprising to hear this generous, compassionate woman insisting that she, through her husband, was entitled to more money. I guess it's just human nature.

In the end I was able to tell Evelyn that it was her husband's call, not hers. She seemed more than a little surprised to learn that she couldn't challenge the amount of money her husband was receiving. It was stille her husband's call, amd if he didn't want to challenge, or question, the amount of money he was receiving then it was over.

With that experience in mind for the last several years I have watched families argue, sometimes fight, over the simplest things. Even when there has been absolutely no money involved I have sen families fight over the most trivial items.

Most recently I watched another close friends' family members argue and hurt each other's feelings as they have gone through their mother's house following her death. I should say that those hurt feelings actually began long before their mother's death. Almost twenty years ago I heard that some of these people were already trying to stake out their territory and property in their mother's house. So the week before their mother died the infighting began in earnest. The first fight I heard about was over staying in the hospital or in home hospice care.

What was most interesting was that the one child, if you can call a seventy-four year old man a child, arguing for leaving his mother in the hospital until her death was the only one who actually lived the close to his mother. The other surviving children lived several hours away. As a result of a heated discussion it finally came out that the oldest son figured he would be expected to take care of his mother because he lived closest. It didn't seem to matter that this man has been retired for several years and moved to his present home fairly close to his mother after he retired.

I suppose the fear of having to care for an aged, failing relative is very real for some people.

The lesson I have learned from all of this is, people are essentially greedy and if you care what your relatives do after you die then leave specific instructions in the care of an uninterested party. Or, make sure everything is gone before you die. They may curse you for being a burden but they won't have things to fight over.