Now I don't know about you, but when I see a sign like this one, I want to go there. Maybe not to eat. Maybe just because I feel like there is something I need to know like, why they used the abbreviation; WPG instead of spelling it out fully when there was so much empty space on the sign. And I don't know about you, but I just love a good cheese dog. Mmmmm.....mmmmm...mmmm

~ AP

A year ago…..

It’s August 29, 2009 and Winnipeg is a memory about two hours behind us. I’m heading back to BC again, but this time my son is with me. He’s coming home.

We don’t stop at the border, he just waves goodbye to the Manitoba sign in the rearview mirror with a smile on his face. It’s not Dylan on the stereo, it’s…fuck I don’t know. The boy controls the music, I just listen and enjoy. He mentions bands and singers, the majority of which I do not know. But the nice things is, he has a great sense for it. A good ear for music. I don’t enjoy every song, just every second of the journey.

He took the opportunity to return home and live with me. It doesn’t mean one down and one to go. It means good for him and good for me. It means I will miss my daughter all the more as his being with me reminds me of who is not there too.

It was a great trip and went by way too fast. So did the year.

Now. Today.

August 27, 2010 and I fly home alone after dropping off my daughter in Winnipeg, again. I said before that it never seems to get any easier and it doesn’t. Good. Feelings help you remember. Feelings make you realize how important these things are. But feelings do not make up for the lost time, the days, hours, minutes and seconds that will never ever be yours with your child. Time stolen by circumstance of one’s own making.

But no regrets, they only make you crazy. Find the balance and live the moments you do have with purpose and intensity and pack the days with as many smiles as you can handle.

Damn but I miss my little girl…..

She loves to shop. And she’s good at it. An eye for style. A sense of fashion. But she’s quickly becoming a young lady and not the little girl with the purple bike and training wheels, tassels flapping in the breeze. Now she drives a car on the beach and flies over the sand on a moped. Now she can tear through a Sephora in ten minutes flat, blast through a BeBe, angle through an Aritzia, haul goods from Hollister and still have time to enjoy the over hyped, over scented, overly loud yet delightfully pretentious environs of a nearby Abercrombie & Fitch. And yet, she still catches moon snails by the score, walks on the beach or riding up the space needle with her dad. She’s growing up before my eyes or away from them, but she will always be my little girl. But I miss her so and I’m half way home and the tears are coming and there’s really nothing more for a dad to do but look forward to the next time. It won’t come soon enough….

~ AP

I’m not sure what a ‘minnow shot’ is, but I have couple of distasteful notions. And would you really want to buy something from the Big Dick’s Halfway Inn Gift Shop? Again, postulation on the notion prevents me from discussing it on a website that is not age controlled or at least coming with a warning to sensitive people who would find open forums on the plusses and minuses of KY jelly offensive. Oops! Did I cross a line?!?!

By the way, the place is for real, the phone number works and it's in the Ozarks.

Still, when all is said and done, I tip my hat to the guy who had the guts to make that billboard. Live long and prosper my friend, may your rooms be full and your gift shop busy.

~ AP

And I love Dirty Harry. Who doesn’t right? The guns, the girls, the guns, the guns. Great movies.

So naturally I got to thinking; “How do you make them even better?” The answer, as you can see, is obvious. Dirty Harry Potter.

The best of both worlds together in one. He saved the Wizard world, and now he’s acting as a one man Ministry of .44 Magnum Magic, cleaning up crime wherever he goes. I can practically hear the great lines now;

“Does your muggle ass feel lucky, punk?” or “I don't need magic now
Dudley, so go ahead, make my day.” Or maybe even, BANG!! “See Ron, I told you this thing would work on a goblin.”

Or maybe spin it the other way and re-edit the final movie while they still have time so they can have Harry, I mean,Dirty Harry facing down Voldemort and some Death Eaters and after a brief but furious magic fight at the Leaky Cauldron we’ll find Voldemort standing there, looking down at his dropped wand, dead death eaters all around and looking up at Harry, wand at the ready pointing right at Voldemort’s head and he says, “So, Voldepunk, you’ve got to be wondering, did he do six unforgivable curses, or just five? As you know all too well, this is a Phoenix Feather Core wand, the most powerful wand in the world. A quick spell from this wand can blow your head clean off. So you’ve got to ask yourself Voldepunk, before you go for your wand, do you feel lucky today?”

See, stuff like that.... that’s how you make good movies better.

~ AP

~ AP

**Sorry about that. It was like a feral worm in my brain for the last few days and I had to shake it out. So now it can be your worm. To the Coffeemate tune of course**

He was sooooo right. But maybe the next verse should have been;

But there’s some stories you don’t wanna hear,
some stories that make you drink that extra beer,
get stupid and go to jail for a year,
behind the bars of another story

This picture could be one of those stories......

~ AP

“By using a fine coating of volcanic ash and then subjecting it to vigorous rubbing actions, we are able to duplicate the most difficult of conditions for paint to endure,” says Borje Svvendelborrggen, head of product development. He adds, “If the paint sealant can hold up to this testing, we are optimistic that we can adapt it for trucks and even marine use."

Putting a new product on the market can be tricky given the hard global economy and the costs that are inherent in development, but as Borje is quick to point out, “We came up with a method that is saving us money. Never have we had such enthusiastic response from our staff, many of whom have even offered to work for free to help us in this critical stage of development.”

According to unnamed sources, Volvo is even developing a kit that would allow consumers to purchase the sealant for application at home, without having to bring the car into a dealership for the full treatment.

~ AP

I'll be glad when next week comes.

It shouldn't make a difference but it does.

I blame the school system.  Really.  We train our children from an early age to take a holiday, mental as much as anything for two months and a bit and so they switch off whatever small assemblage of cells they use as brain matter and go into a sort of mental hibernation.  The only good thing about it is that we also train them to switch back on in early September. Same with employees. Don’t even try to train them in the summer. The best you can hope for is that they don’t make things worse.

I think we should just ban summer holidays, make the teachers earn their pay or give good experience to substitutes and student teachers.  Really.  Then maybe our kids will slowly become able to compete with their Asian brethren who we are so quick to make fun of as they run circles around us in math and science competitions. They do so because they work harder.  They aren't smarter, they fucking work harder and study harder and their parents haven't forgotten the value of a good beating when they fuck up their school.

Man, that felt good to say.

Our kids are just as smart, but they're twice as lazy.

Spare the rod and spoil the child.  Well, I'd say taser, but some liberal violence hater might take offense.

~ AP

I made it.

~ AP

In the case of one’s children it seems to mean that they have changed or grown up or.... something. Is it because they don’t feel ‘cool’ or is it something worse to a parent, perhaps an act that says, “I don’t need that sort of comfort anymore.” Read, “I don’t need you.” Of course it’s not that bad. But when you’ve been cheated of time with them, it sure seems that way.

This, for me, has been the highest cost of separation and divorce.

Several years ago I vowed to keep track of, to know when my son last held my hand. (I first wrote about this in November of 2006) I can’t honestly remember when I last held my own father’s hand. I know I’ll probably hold it when he needs me. I will be there for him when he does, but I don’t know when I last held his hand. And so reluctantly, I have finally resigned myself to writing this note, this, cyber age post accepting the notion that my son has stopped holding my hand unless he surprises me at some point to come.

Maybe it’s been denial. Maybe it’s been hope. Maybe I’m just a foolish old man who can’t accept reality.... till now. So here goes. The last five.

I was visiting Winnipeg prior to my son’s 14th birthday. It was Saturday, November 3, 2007, and we were shopping and walking through St. Vital Center Mall. Nothing in particular happening, just a dad and his son walking. He just reached out and grabbed my hand for a bit. About 20 steps or so and then as I noticed more people around us, he casually let his hand slip out. Blame it on the cool factor I guess. Good excuse to soft punch his shoulder and drag him into a music store instead of trying to hold on.

The next time was March 31, 2008 going towards a Red Robin restaurant in Langley. We were visiting his cousins and having a great day and now, heading out to dinner with the gang he grabbed my hand, not to pull me, but grabbed my hand for a short while as we walked towards the door. I wish I’d walked slower.

Thursday April 3rd in another mall, Mayfair in Victoria. Out for some shorts or T-shirts at American Eagle. Just another wonderful moment with no excuses, holding my son’s hand for less than a minute. Still, special all the same this thing called touch. Anybody else in the world could have held his hand at that moment in time and it would not have meant the same thing. Would not have felt the same. To me it still meant that I have a little boy.

The next day, the day before having to fly back to Winnipeg where he has been made to live these last few years, we were having a nice walk back from the grocery store along Mill Bay Road. This was the last time we really held hands and walked as only a parent and child can walk. We did not walk fast. It was just us on the road in the sunshine. We didn’t even talk much. We just walked, knowing the next day would mean another plane to take him far away again. He grew up here. His heart is here. And his hand was in mine and I hope it was giving him what he needed. His hand certainly did for me.

The next day, at the Airport in Victoria about ten minutes before the flight, he reached out again. This was the last time he did so, the last time he held my hand. The last time I gave my little boy comfort by the touch of a hand. I know he didn’t want to go. He knew it, but there wasn’t anything else to do. We didn’t talk for those few minutes. We just sat and waited until the flight was called. And then he was up and waving goodbye along with his sister and they walked across the tarmac to the stairs and up into the plane and as he did so I swear I felt the warmth of his touch fade away a little slower than expected. Somehow I knew.

I’ve been waiting all this time, as said in the beginning of this note, pretending it wasn’t time yet to write it. I sincerely hope that something other than disease or old age will give him cause to hold my hand again. Time alone will tell. But for the record, the last time that I held my son’s hand was April 5, 2008 at about 8:30 in the morning.

The last time I had to dry my eyes because of it was right now.

Tomorrow is Father’s Day. They grow up fast don’t they?

~ AP

Quality time. Intense time.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a way of justifying the selfish end of a relationship. It’s just a pleasant surprise when it happens and you find that things can be alright, even better than just alright. Sure you heard from others how wonderful things can really be, but how can you believe it? Then it happens and you are left breathless.

Reminds me of a story I once heard from a cowboy of all people. Seems this cowboy was from down around Arizona. Never travelled out of the locale. And why would he? Beautiful sunsets. The red rocks of Sedona. The Grand Canyon. What could be more spectacular he was heard to say.

“The Northern Lights,” came a reply from a visitor one day. “They’re not just under the sky,” he said, “They’re the whole sky and beyond. And they’re not just one shape or one color, it’s like God is painting the sky while you watch.”

Sounded amazing to the cowboy. I hope I may see that one day he thought. And one day he did.
Far from home and alone with a vision of staggering beauty he looked up at the lights in the sky and everything he had heard or thought they could be, they were ten times better. More than that as if it were possible. They even had streaks of pinks and purple and they seemed to move with a wind he could not see or feel.
But still he felt something inside he could not explain because being there as he was, he felt the lights were there just for him. He smiled so hard his face hurt at the vision and he knew that even though he may be far away, the lights would be with him always.

He knew he had to go back home and leaving wasn’t easy, but he took comfort in knowing he might see his northern lights again one day and so off he went enjoying the intensity that comes from moments like that. Moments that make every second count for a thousand.

So it’s been with my kids. I guess it’s worked out to seeing them one day in ten, these past 5 years. But I’ll see them again in about a week and then they’re out for a summer of fun a month later.

Is one day in ten enough? No. How could it be? But when you get so very much more than you expected out of each and every second, it sure helps. Life can be great if you let it be.

~ AP

I looked up and saw a new and rather bright star in the sky. I know that my Grandmother popped up there about 20 minutes after I last wrote and I guess St. Peter was waiting like I asked.

So thanks for being there for her and keep her comfy on a nice soft cloud till I get there too.

And Mr. God.... she's real patient. Really. True story. So don't go rushing now because I have some time banked up to spend with my kids. So I'll see ya when I see ya and till then, good luck, 'cause it's real crazy down here these days and though I can't speak for everybody else, I can speak for me and mine and we'll keep it calm in our little corner of the world so you can worry about them that needs it.

See ya later Mr. God. Keep it real and give my Granny a hug for me. She deserves it.

~ AP

You may not remember me as I don’t tend to call very often and I’m not sure if I still have your number, but on the chance that it still works, I wanted to give you a ‘head’s up’ because there’s a new angel gonna be coming your way soon.

Her name is Marie and she’s my grandmother and right now she’s getting ready to come and stay with you. Being that you’re you I know I don’t have to tell you all about the kind, gentle soul she is, but I wanted you to tell St. Peter to stay ready and keep that gate open because you don’t want to keep this one waiting. She’s one of your best down here Mr. God, but she won’t be here much longer.

So thanks in advance and give my regards to your kid, he did good for us and we all appreciate that.

~ AP

Q: ‘Will you be at your appointment scheduled on...’

A: It is my heartfelt and sincere intention to be there on time and in person save for the proviso that allows for any unforeseen acts of God such as and including but not limited to:  earthquake, fire, pestilence, lightning strikes, bubonic plague, locusts, rivers running with blood, alligators up to my ass, an offer of a week with Chrissie Hynde at a beach resort in St. Kitt's, tsunami's, tornados, hurricanes and tropospheric ice storms that freeze anything and everything they touch with the exception of my mother in law who is far colder already, the rise of the insect world and the resulting onslaught of the six legged biomass, hail, lava, landslides, forest fires, general flooding, comet strikes, asteroid strikes, meteor strikes, general strikes and those teeny tiny lady bugs that don't seem very significant until 700,000 of the little buggers decide to use your head as a rest stop on their way to the distant hills of lady bug land.

Put me down as "yes."

~ AP

CKNW Breaking News...

Vancouver Police have arrested and then released a couple who tried to sell a 7-day-old baby for 10-thousand dollars in Craigslist.

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