Day 2733 - Father's Day

Every Father's Day I see all these pictures on Facebook of people with their Dad. I can't recall any pictures of me and my Dad together. Even when I spent a lot of time with him toward the end of his life, we never took a picture together. To be fair, I can't recall any pictures of me and my Mom together either. I don't know what this means, but our family certainly didn't spend a lot of time recording family events.

Maybe this odd tradition continues. Janet and I have taken an enormous number of pictures of our dogs in every conceivable situation, but we have very few pictures of each other. I wouldn't read too much into this. Animals are just more fun to photograph.

I moved the pressure washer to another part of the house this afternoon and continued my quest to clean the exterior. There seems to be a fine line between removing spider webs and removing paint. The exterior paint is old and if I try too hard to remove a stubborn web, I can easily strip the paint away too. I'm going to have to go to a hardware store and see if there is some kind of spray I can apply to keep the spiders from returning. It would be a shame to have invested this much time cleaning the place, only to have all the spiders return in a few weeks.

I wish good house painters weren't so expensive. I've gotten bids several times and have always been appalled at the cost of professionally repainting the house. I repainted the interior myself about eight years ago and I think this might have been the origin of my shoulder problems. Painting the ceilings with a roller was a bitch. About halfway through the job, I discovered a power roller that made the job quicker, but holding a paint filled roller at the end of a long pole was still tiring. Maybe painting the exterior will be easier since there are no ceilings. The exterior walls are mostly brick, so a few wooden walls shouldn't be a huge problem. Oops. I forgot that the long back porch has a ceiling. That's were all the spiders congregate. This area needs some kind of special spider proof paint.

Janet took me out for a birthday dinner tonight, since she'll have to work late tomorrow. Sometimes my birthday falls on Father's Day and even when it doesn't, the two days are always close together. Mom used to say that I was her Father's Day gift to Dad. I think Dad would have preferred a new fishing rod or some wood carving tools. It was enjoyable to go out to dinner for a change. We haven't been out together since Dot got sick and couldn't be left alone. We didn't forget Dash though. We ate early, so there would still be time for an evening walk before it got dark.

The older I get, the less I look forward to birthdays. I'll be 69 tomorrow. Despite what some people say, 69 is not the new 49. The aches and pains are real. I feel old. I look old. I am old. My Mom didn't even live this long, so I really should look at each additional year as a gift. It would be beneficial to develop a positive attitude. Youth is very forgiving to negative people, but it's silly to be negative when you're old. You just don't have that many years left. I don't want to waste the time I've been allotted. There might not be a bucket list, but there is still a lot of stuff I'd like to do.

Rugby is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day