RaisingDad

I've been sitting here for over an hour watching cartoons. Let me tell you, spending my day watching cartoons is not what I envisioned I'd be doing when I retired.      My grandson likes cartoons the way my father likes his baseball games, and, having said that, let me tell you, my father is especially happy that the Mets are in and the Cubs are out, despite what Back To The Future predicted. Let this be a lesson for you. If you base your reality on a movie's fantasy, you're going to be disappointed.      When my father watches his games, we give him the peace and quiet he wants. He can hear me when I'm upstairs whispering sweet nothings in my wife's ear, but he can't hear the TV blasting in front of him from a distance of less than ten feet.      Go figure.      With my Dad, it's a one way street. We watch what he watches, or we can go watch something e...

Take one step forward and two back.      Isn't that the real world?      To make a very long story short--just because I like you--a water pipe in our house developed a pin-sized hole and it semi-flooded two of our bedrooms and two of our bathrooms. In math terms it would look like this: one house - two bedrooms - two bathrooms = I'm screwed. And not in the fun way. The water must have been spraying behind the wall for weeks, because the damage, while hidden for the most part, was extensive.      When I first noticed the water damage, I turned to my wife and asked, "What's my father been up to?" But, as it turned out, it wasn't my father after all. Just a faulty pipe. I felt bad. My wife made me feel worse.      We had a plumber fix the leak. He charged us extra because my Dad tried to help. Then the restoration team showed up to det...

I've said it before, and I don't mind saying it again:      My wife's a saint.      So when she runs into the kitchen worried about my father, I have to listen, even though I'm in the middle of reading the Sports Section of our city's fine newspaper and drinking a nice hot cup of gourmet coffee, my only indulgence.      "Your dad," she says, breathlessly.      "What about my dad?" I ask, when she doesn't go past her initial proclamation.      I can see that she's having a problem putting it into words. Thinking about it, I come to realize that it's a little later than my father's usual early-to-bed-early-to-rise time. Thinking about it some more, I begin to get a little worried myself.      "Is he... uh... alive?" I ask her. They weren't words I wanted to say, but they were words that had to be said.      "Yes," sh...