Last Week's Adventures

Okay, I dug out the notes I made on my trip to visit my daughter the week of her Sweet Sixteen birthday, and here we go...


Thursday, September 7, 2006

After my baby went to sleep I packed up and headed out. I stopped by Walmart to pick up some bottled water -- I drink A LOT of water, so I wanted to be prepared for the usually-10-hour trip -- a box of Jack Sparrow Os (because when I travel I never know when I'm gonna be hungry and broke, so I find it useful to have SOME form of backup sustinance) a box of Chai Tea essence (which I drink without adding milk or cream, cause I like me some bitter/sweet caffiene) and a couple of Red Bulls.

I believe I finally hit the road around midnight, but my memory's a bit fuzzy now.

On the road I listened to John Glover reading FROM THE DUST RETURNED by Ray Bradbury. Like THE OCTOBER COUNTRY and THE HALLOWEEN TREE, this book shows just how well brabury's poetry of description can actually relate the FEELING I get around Halloween time. (Which, for me and Brian, starts in early September for some reason... there's just a certain quality to the breezes that come in early September that seem to whisk us back to the first days of a school season and sweaty plastic/rubber monster masks, lol.)

I'll sometimes complain about bradbury's writing because of the poetic nature of the prose (for whatever reason, poetry just doesn't do it for me, except in song lyrics) but I will always conceed that it is exactly this quality of his writing that so thoroughly communicates the feeling of Halloween in the above mentioned titles.

FROM THE DUST RETURNED wasn't a disappointment! I'd hate to be the poor bastard commissioned to adapt it into a screenplay, lol, but as a novel, it's really cool! It is somehow DEFINITIVELY Halloween-y.


Friday, September 8, 2006

I didn't make as many stops on the trip up as I usually do -- mainly because it was still dark outside for most of the trip and there was nothing except truck stops open. But as the sun peak over the horizon -- turning black sky to dark blue, then to violet -- I finally had to pull into a Truck Stop/Burger King in Snyder or Post or someplace and crash-out in the parking lot. I intended to sleep for 20 or 30 minutes, and woke up some 2 hours later, lol.

I finally got to Levelland around 9:00 or 10:00 am, and then crashed on Tisha's bed.

After I woke up -- MANY hours later -- I got a text telling me she had already been waiting in the chyropractor's office for an hour now. Poor thing! All her years of sports (she's not even 16 at the time I'm talking about, mind you) have messed up her body a little bit. She not even doing the gymnastics thing anymore, but she still has to see the chyropractor regularly.

Don't get me wrong, you'd never know it to watch her! You'd assume you were watching a regular, energetic teen bounce around everywhere she goes, with more energy than the sun!

Anyway, after she finally got home from the chyropracter's office we picked up 2 of her friends: Kayci and Brittany. I immediately liked these girls. Kayci is quiet and polite, but funny! Brittany is like this traveling party somehow, lol! She's full of stories about all the things that she does and all the things that happen to her. Also, apparently she's one of those girls that people like to make up stories about, too, lol! At one point, at the football game we all went to, Tisha asked me "You mind if we stand here instead of sitting in the bleachers? Everyone up there hates Brittany." Which is funny, because like Tisha, you just can't imagine anyone NOT loving this girl... but then, I'm not a teenager anymore, either, lol.

OMG! I had FORGOTTEN about teen drama!

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So, when I go to Levelland and Lubbock I always HAVE TO eat at Taco Villa at least once!!! Those are just THE BEST beef & cheese burritos EVER! (Kelly, Tommy and Brian say that Taco Bueno, in L. A. is just as good, but I don't see it.) Knowing this, Tisha suggested we 4 stop at Taco Villa for dinner before continuing to Idalou where her high school was playing an away game tonight.

I got to listen to the girls talk as we ate and started getting a rough idea of what they were like and their relationship with Tisha. Whenever I go visit Tish it's like I'm walking into a long-running TV show mid-season, so I always spend some time observing the regular characters and catching up on the ongoing plotlines.

[A break in the narrative: If you read the previous blog entry, Wendy's webcam is still on, and she just rolled over in her sleep, lol. She rolled back over and opened her eyes. I blew her a kiss and waved and she smiled at me. Now she's going back to sleep, heheh. Life is SO GREAT!]

So anyway, after Taco Villa we proceeded to Idalou for the big Friday night game. This Friday Night Lights territory here. High school football in West Texas! This is the reason the book was written -- and then the movie was made, and now the TV show is airing -- in the first place!

I had only been to a few games in high school because I am a Creative and not a Jock, and not particularly social outside my fairly wide circle of very close friends. Tisha, however, is a Jock and an athelete and VERY social, lol! She's at a different school than she grew up in, a larger school, and yet she still seems to know at least half the people there!

I followed the game for the first half, but then the second half was spent following the girls as they wandered around and talked to boys and commented on football players' butts.

I also got to see that broody boys seem to draw high school girls just as much nowadays as they did 20 years ago, lol.

After the game we all went to Starbuck's in Lubbock. I got off a few pictures before an employee informed me that it is corporate policy that people are not allowed to take pictures inside Starbuck's. So...

Public Service Announcement: DO NOT attempt to take pics inside Starbuck's.

There's my Good Deed for the week. :)

After we dropped the girls off, Tisha didn't like the idea of mee sleeping in jean shorts, so she loaned me a pair of her shiny, shiny black sports shorts to wear. (They were also stretchy, stretchy so I could actually fit into them!) But then she needed to run to Walmart for some emergency supplies (the nature of which I am disinclined to share with you) and at the store I found some PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN PAJAMA PANTS!!! So I bought those, and now I have Pirate Pants to sleep in!

Yay!

And I was able to give Tisha back her shiny, shiny black shorts!

Tisha disappeared into her room and I sacked out on a hideaway couch-bed just before 2:00 am.


Saturday, September 9, 2006

I was batted awake by Tisha. "Wake up! We have to be there in 15 minutes."

Unfortunately, this is not uncommon among my adventures in her world.

She had a Track Meet in Morton, Texas, and she had to be at the school, on the bus at 6:23 am.

I can be ready in five minutes flat. But I PREFER at least half an hour to shower and dress and maybe even eat something. Tisha sometimes doesn't take this into consideration, lol.

So I slapped on some clothes and my floppy blue Brush Hat that I wear when I can't be bothered to mess with my hair. (Sometimes I wear it to keep the sun out of my eyes or to keep my head warm or for the normal reasons one wears a hat. But I'll level with ya, usually it's because I can't be bothered to make mty hair look human, lol.)

I get her to the school and on the bus just in time, then follow the bus to Morton.

I see the bus unload and everyone walk to this huge field and I dutifully follow, lugging my trusty Homestarrunner satchel, a couple of bottles of water, my ZVue and the camera. Tisha is way ahead of me, talking with friends.

The group keeps walking.

My cell phone doesn't work out here, so I can't call or text Tisha to ask what's up, so I just keep walking along. But I suddenly get this vague nagging feeling, like maybe this is one of those that I'm doing something I'm not necessarily supposed to be doing. (This happens sometimes, when I'm out of my element.) there are some non-Track & Field people walking in the group as well, but I don't see a lot of adults in the group. And the ones I do see look like they might be coaches or something.

Finally, that self-conscious feeling grows stronger and Tisha has fallen back so that she's within shouting range, so call her name.

"Tisha, I'm not taking part in a Track & Field event, am I," I joke.

"We're walking the course," she replies, not joking.

THEN she fills me in. It;s 8:30 am now, she doesn't run until 10:30 am. I'm welcome to wait in the car if I want to until then.

Tisha will never, I suspect, be a professional tour guide.

An hour or so later I'm in the front seat, having drifted off listeing to some X MINUS ONE episodes on the ZVue, and Tisha sneaks up to the car and pounds on the passenger-side window, waking me into a vituporous pout. More fun than that, she's laughing her head off, as is her friend who is standing next to her. The episode is this one where this rich guy is press-ganged into 15-year service aboard a space ship bound for Saturn on the eve of his wedding, so it's kind of a creepy story that I've dozed off to, and then this sound like a boulder bounding off the widnshield startles me awake.

I'll be honest, I'm a baby from time to time. I was awakened in a state of panic this mornign and we didn't have time to eat or even get coffee (luckily I still had some distilled Chai Tea to tide me over on the drive to Morton) and I was rather out of my element here, and Tisha had completely failed to fill me in on the protocol, so when she made my heart skip a beat from a semi-conscious state, I was a bit of a dick.

But it didn't seem to faze her too much.

She ran at 10:30, but she had to stop before the race was finished. It was a cross-country race, and her chyro had suggested she not run this weekend, but the previous night she felt like she could and wanted to try, so she talked to her mom and her coach and set it up. I got a couple of cool pics of her running before she had to be escorted back to her team's camp, crying from the pain. Her lower back is messed-up, so running can be quite excrutiating sometimes.

She stretched out and popped vertibrae back into place and was feeling fine before too long, though.

That night was her Sweet 16 "get-together". Just her and a few friends... Mostly boys. Very energetic boys, lol. The testosterone was as thick as the fog on Baker Street in those Sherlock Holmes stories, lol.

They mostly played pool and talked and stuff while Connie (Tisha's adopted mother and my ex-mother-in-law) and I watched the movies she had rented for the evening. I got happily lost in THE SENTINEL, UNITED 93 and FRIENDS WITH MONEY.

Now, Wendy is ALWAYS in my thoughts, but at the end of FRIENDS WITH MONEY there's this scene, and she does this little head-sway (like she's listening to music you can't hear) that SO reminded me of my Gnomey Munts Munts!!! And the scene really seemed to somehow express what I love so much about oru relationship!!!

I was overcome with a fresh appreciation for my Wendy Lady, as well as stabbed by a sharp pang of missing her.

[Non-narrative Update: She finally logged out of IM so I can't watch her sleep any more. :( But at least I know she's probably sleeping more comfortably without a laptop in her bed, lol.]

I found out later, after everyone had gone home, about some of the teen angst that always finds its way into such gatherings. I was suddenly SO thankful that I made it through that era of my life. (And -- again -- even MORE thankful for Wendy and what she and I have!) I usually don't look back at my high school days and pine for what was, but if I ever did I think I'd snap out of it at the first memory of the uncontrolable passion and seemingly un-guidable and intense emotions they have to deal with. I mean, I experience intense emotions often, but I've also gained the tools to manipulate and maneuver through those emotions that they are only just now learning.

Any adult that doesn't have sympathy and empathy for the plight of being a teenager is living in denial, his/her own trauma-riddled past blissfully repressed and probably reconfigured into a set of nice, dabilitating neurosis.


Sunday, September 9, 2006

I wasn't awakened this morning!!!

When I did wake up, Tisha and Connie were watching the tail-end of THE ISLAND. (Yay!) Tisha had gotten up to take some medicine, and was going to go back to bed, but THE ISLAND was on and she got sucked into that.

Did I mention that 'm sleeping on a hideaway couch/bed? Well, it's in the living room.

Luckily, when I'm alseep I'm asleep. So people watching TV on one of the HUGEST screns you've ever seen outside a movie theater, in surround sound, isn't going to stir me until my body is done resting.

And there are just few better ways to wake up than to (what I consider to be) a cool movie, surounded by people I love!!!

So Sunday started off really well!

Adfter THE ISLAND was BATMAN BEGINS!!! We three watched that. That's one of the movies I sincerely consider to be a PERFECT movie!!!

So by the time Tisha and I decided to get dressed and begin our day, I was in a fantastic mood!

On the agenda for today was the mall and a couple of movies. Tisha wanted to see STEP UP and so I voted for PULSE as the second feature. (A nice balance, I think: Dance-y Chick Flick and Supernatural Horror.)

But then Tisha decided she wanted to get home and to bed early because she started Driver's Ed before school tomorrow. So my movie got the boot.

On our way into Lubbock we stopped and ate at Fazoli's which is really good food if you don't have time/money for a real Italian restaurant! It's a few notches above fast-food, though a couple below actual restaurant food. (How spoiled am I by our Family Dinners every Sunday now that I can descern a difference, lol!)

Tisha needed to stop by Brittany's for some "supplies", and then Brittany ended up going with us.

At the mall, I insisted on stopping by a dvd store, because was jonesing for some horror. I knew that STAY ALIVE is coming out sometime in early-ish Sept -- and I used to have a crush on ONE TREE HILL's Sophia Bush, plus I ADORE horror videogames! and I missed the flick when it was in the theaters (cinemas) -- so I thought maybe possibly I could buy it and get my horror fix back at the house. The girls directed me to FYE, and the clerk said it was out, but that they didn't have any copies.

:(

After the mall was the movie -- not bad at all, really -- and after that we were all feeling squirrely and wanted some shaved ice at Bahama Buck's (where Tisha and I went after I inappropriately took her to see AMERICAN PIE 2, lol, thinking it would be more like the first flick: less sex and more humor and heart) but they were closed. So Brittany directed us to a place called Stone Cold Ice Creamery, and it turned out to be very much like Amy's Ice cream in Austin!!!

Very groovy vibe, any flavor you want with anything mixed in that you want, cones and cone-lined bowls available!!!

I got a cone/bowl covered in chocolate with sprinkles, and filled it with Coffee and Cotton Candy flavored ice cream (the Cotton Candy ice cream was BLUE... So... You know, HAD to) with Heath bar chopped up in it. Tisha flat-out refused to put that stuff in her mouth, but Brittany said it was good. (She may have been humoring the old guy though, lol.) I LOVED it! The Cotton Candy wasn't really necessary, but IT WAS BLUE!

On our way to drop Brittany off, I experienced a definitive moment... This is what it's like to drive 2 teenage girls around town: The stereo is blasting hip-hop music while 2 completely seperate conversations are going on simultaneously right beside and behind you, and you are involved in neither of them because the conversations are being conucted via cell phone, lol!

Friday, after I woke up from my post-travel nap, I paid my phone bill and set up my account so that I can make and receive International calls. The opperator told me there would be a 3-5 day wait while a security check was done on me. In this post 9/11 age, I guess that only makes sense. One way to prevent terrorist attacks is to not allow them to make calls outside the States if they're already here.

But listening to the girls talk to their boyfriends (or whomever) made me want to har my Gnomey's voice. So I tried to call. But my International service was still disabled. :( (Dammit, W, I was born and raised in Texas... I'm good people! I just wanna talk to my hot Britsh girlfriend! I swear!)

After we dropped of Brittany and returned to Levelland Tisha indulged me in my quest to find STAY ALIVE. I tried Movie Gallery (their dvd rental store) but they were closed, and Wlamart, but the flick was simply NOT to be had today. :(


Monday, September 11, 2006

TISHA'S SWEET 16!!!

I woke up and took Tisha to school DURING A DOWNPOUR!!! It was BEAUTIFUL!!! Austin isn't having the kind of weather the rest of the country is... It's hot and dry here. August had THE HOTTEST weather since 1922!

So to be here in Levelland and running around in a torrential downpour simply HEAVEN for me!!!

Between dropping Tisha off and meeting her for lunch, I tried to get some work done on the screenplay. I got 4 3x5 cards done, which was amazingly unsatisfying.

For lunch Tisha and I went to a place called Robertos! Now, the best fast-food beef & cheese burritos extant are at Taco Villa. But the best "authentic" beef & cheese burritos I remember from my youth were at a place in Odessa called Geribaldi's, across the highway from the Permian Playhouse, where I spent the better part of 9 years. (The Playhouse, not Geribaldi's... I didn't get to eat there very often, unfortunately.) Roberto's in Levelland has beef & cheese burritos that taste EXACTLY the way I remember Geribaldi's burritos tasting in the '80s!!!

A true culinary TREAT!

After lunch I went back to Walmart and discovered that STAY ALIVE isn't due to be released until the 19th, so I bought a plastic pouch thingy for my loose 3x5 cards instead.

I CALLED WENDY!!! My International service works now and I got to call Wendy!!! I missed her on the first couple of tries, but I finally got to talk to her on my 3rd try!!!

I MISSED HER VOICE SO MUCH!!! She is just SO LOVELY!!! We told each other that we love each other & we miss each other a few times and giggled a few times... It was WONDERFUL!!! lol

Oh, and before picking Tisha up from school I got to watch an episode of KIM POSSIBLE! That was WAY cool! I haven't gotten to see that show in a while.

Picking Tisha up, I gave her friends Kayci and Lance a lift home before taking Tisha to her chyro appointment (which was surprisingly quick!).

It was Lance's birthday, too! He's Tisha's exact age. And he's good people. Saturday, after the track meet, I met Tisha and a few of her friends at Dairy Queen for Blizzards. (I got a Dude, also; my first meal of the day, Saturday.) Lance and a girl named Danika (Tisha's friend at the track meet who got to see my pout and shout when Tisha frightened me awake, lol) were among the crowd, and they both impressed me as very cool people!

After school Tisha was WIPED-OUT. She crashed on the couch whiole Dale (Tisha's adopted father and my ex-father-in-law -- no, we're NOT the stuff of an episode of SPRINGER! It's just kinda complicated is all) watched OCEAN'S TWELVE. (Not the all-time calssic that OCEAN'S ELEVEN is, but still good entertainment. Plus... Eddie Izzard is in it!!!) Poor Tish kept getting woken up by her cell phone, her friends constantly calling her. (ALL of them, apparently.) And in the middle of all the cell phone calls, she was awakened by a gorgeous bouquet of flowers for her birthday. She woke up, answered the door to accept the flowers, then laid back down on the couch and was asleep again, immediately.

After OCEANS TWELVE Dale turned me onto a show called MONSTER JAM! It's a monster truck competition, and the drives are really skilled, and the trucks themselves look like they were grown from Hot Wheels! They're like adult-sized toys! I became enthralled, lol!

For Tisha's birthday we all went to eat at a place called Tokyo Sothing-Or-Other. It's one of those Japanese restaurants with the samurai chefs that cook your meal as you watch, and the FIRST time I've ever eaten at a place like that! It was VERY cool, and the food was DELICIOUS!!!


Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Woke up a little after 10:30 am, and Tisha was already at school. Very nice. :)

Met Tisha at Burger King where she was having lunch with some of her Youth Group from church. It was very cool. Among them was her friend Marissa, whom I met in San Antonio several months back. (She credited me with saving them from boredom there, but I believe she's giving me too much credit, lol.)

That was at 12:30 pm. While I was waiting for 12:30 to roll around, I pawed through the $5-previously-viewed-dvd bin at Movie Gallery and found a present for Brian: 3 of the 4 discs of season One of THE A-TEAM!!! I had to call him up to tell him he had a surprise coming when I got home!

That night I watched TV with Connie and Dale.

I never just sit around and watch TV. Brian and I don't have cable -- and don't particularly want it. If we could get Cartoon Network, some science channels and some movie channels it would be worth the money, but TimeWarner Cable isn't set up that way. You pay $100 for A LOT of crap, or simply do without. (Our TV isn't equipped with rabbit-ear antenaes, so we don't even get local channels.) For our money, we choose to do without. We have cable modem service and A LOT of dvds instead!

The only time I watch TV is at work, and I'm not watching it then. I'm monitoring it. Totally different activity. I am aware of what's on, but paying attention to a couple dozen other deatils while it airs, including what's on next and what's gonna be on after that.

So spending Tuesday night watching TV was kind of a novel experience for me.

I got to see the last 20 minutes of HOUSE, which was really good! I see what all the hype is about. Then we watched an episode of STANDOFF, which is really good storytelling AND it has the guy from OFFICE SPACE and gena Torres from FIREFLY and ANGEL! So YAY there!!! Then NCIS which started off as a decent show and ended up being a great show. then I got to see an episode of EURIKA! (Matt Frewer, shouldn't do accents... He has such a naturally distinctive way of speaking! It would be like trying to watch Christopher Walken try to play an Aussie, lol.)


Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Watched the last of THE FOG (the remake), THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY and THE PACIFIER with Dale. That was fun. (Dale and Connie are nurses, so they'll work for, like, 100 days straight and get a week off, lol.)

I also got sucked into one of out old-school political debates. He's a die-hard conservative and I believe politics is the devil's playground, a means to keep us so riled up over what's going on materially that we're distracted from spirituality. But I tend to lean liberal politically, and so he enjoys "schooling" me about the Liberal Conspiracy to overthrow Conservativism -- the one-day saviour of civilization if all us bleeding-heart human rights yahhos would just step out of Bush's and Rumsfeld's way and let the hardliners tell us how our lives SHOULD BE lived.

I hate those conversations. For a full day I dodged Dale's little digs at what he percieves as the Liberal Conspiracy, but I opened my mouth and allowed myself to get sucked into another friggin' debate.

And the thing that's so frustrating is that Limbaugh teaches people how to frame an arguement so that any facts that contradict the Conservative opinion are simply swept out of the arguement and the debate is refocused onto a subject that the Conservative knows mre about than the Liberal. The agrue emtns tend to range far and wide, and no topic can be discected for too long, lest Conservative momentum be lost.

It's just like debates about religion. If you start to make a point about how we can't know if life begins at conception, the arguement suddenly becomes about prayer in schools.

Blah.

Not fun.

BUT I GOT TO TALK TO WENDY ON THE PHONE AGAIN!!!

It wasn't until after I picked Tisha up from school and we were on our way to Lubbock so she and some friends go do Putt Putt golf to celebrate even more Virgo birthdays, so the call wasn't nearly long enough, but it sure did make my day!!!

My god I love her so much!!! She told me about how her brother fried her computer with his drink this morning. :( So it may be a while after I get home before we can chat via webcam. But I HAVE TO hear her voice on a regular basis, so the phone bill will be WELL worth it!

In Lubbock Tish and I picked up Brittany again, then we met up with Leonel and Kayci at Starbuck's for a quick caffiene fix before hitting the mall. I got a Venti Earl grey, which I spilled in the floorboard on the way to the mall.

At the mall I tried to call Wendy again, but I couldn't get ahold of her. :( I just really wanted to hear her voice some more.

Today was Brittany's and Leonel's birthday.

When we got to Putt Putt Brittany and I were famished and Leonel and Kayci weren't there yet, so the 3 of us chipped in and got a pizza, and the girls took my quarters to play videogames while we waited.

The young 'uns played arcade games and did the batting cage before doing unlimited go-karts, Leonel hung back from the go-karts, and we watched the girls and talked videogames and horror movies. We also stumbled onto a conversation about assumptions adults tend to make about teens. I jokingly accused a stretch hummer limo of being full of people doing drugs, then explained that as the oldest fart around I felt it was my obligation to accuse any teenagers in sight of doing drugs. And that turned into an interesting conversation about the labels and stereotypes teens get slapped across them without provocation.

I got to share with him a story I had heard Tisha telling for the past couple of days that he actually hadn't heard yet, though it happened at his school:

A kid goes into class before school to make up a test. The teacher starts weezing, then collapses from an asthma attack. The teacher isn't breathing. The kid drops down and begins administering CPR. More teachers see this and drag the kid away, one actually starts takes the kid aside and starts tearing into him about how he has no right to be pestering a man in medical distress. The kid pulls out his wallet and shows the teacher his certification to perform live-saving maneuvers, certifications that the kid had to get for the Lifeguard job her worked over the summer. The kid goes on to cite the actual EXPERIENCE that he has performing these manuevers (experience which the irrate teacher DOES NOT have).

It's a good story. Dramatic, with a twist ending and a social point to be made.

Even better because it's true.

I mean yeah, I wasn't there and didn't witness it first hand, so I can't be sure of all the facts or how it unfolded. But I heard Tisha tell it several times... The same way every time. No imbelishments.

Anyway, my last night in Levelland allowed me to spend time with 2 of Tisha's good friends that I liked hanging around, and get to know another good friend of hers, who I now very much enjoy hanging around!

The Kayci and Tisha had to be home at 10:00 pm so we left around 8:30 pm. Everyone wanted to ride in Leonel's truck -- instead of the Old Guy's car? What's up with THAT? lol -- and as I was getting into my car I heard a female voice say "Don't call shotgun" and then Brittany's voice ring out "Shotgun!" and then Tisha sang out "I got bitch!" I joked that that was one of my proudest monets as a father, and Leonel joked that that must be exacty the type of think I want to hear.

I followed them to Stone Cold Ice Creamery, because if Brittany wasn't getting cake on her birthday, she at least wanted ice cream... Even if she had to buy it herself, lol. (I'm telling you, next to Tish, she may be the coolest young chick I know, lol!) While Tisha and Leonel and I waited outside Tish asked what I meant about being proud to hear my daughter call bitch, and started to explain what the term meant, in relation to seating possitions. (If you don't know, it's the position in the front between the driver and the passenger, lol.) I explained that I knew what the term meant, I was just shocked and amused to discover that Tisha knew... And to hear her call it out! I mean, I've heard Tommy and Brian and Kelly and Chuck joke about who gets the bitch possition when we're piling into a car, but to hear Tish refer to it... HYSTERICAL! :D

Tisha asked if Wendy ever called me back or texted me. I said she hadn't, and Tish quickly did the math... It was 3:00 am in England. (And this impressed the hell out of me! I think I meantioned ONCE that Britain is 6 hours ahead of us, and on this, my last night in Levelland, Tisha remembered and quickly calculated it!!!) Then Tish asked Leonel if I had told him about Wendy, and I hadn't, so she quickly filled him in... British, met her in an online game, we chat via webcam and text and talk on the phone, she'll be coming in february, wich will be her 21st birthday...

Leonel's hand shoots up and he quickly says "I need a high five!"

I laugh and blush and high-five him, then laugh and blush some more.

The one aspect of mine and Wendy's relationship that I feared my gross my daughter and my ex-wife and all my female friends out is, naturally, the MOST IMPRESSIVE aspect to Tisha's 16-year-old male friends!

It was a fun visit.

Possibly the most fun visit to date!!!

I LOVE who Tish is becoming! I mean, she's always been exceptionally easy to be proud of! Great athlete, great socially, intelligent, funny, great grades, loving! She's always been a great person!!! But now that I'm getting a glimpse into what type of adult she's going to become, I am SO INSPIRED and excited (and relieved, lol)! Hanging with her this year isn't like hanging with a kid, it's like hangin' with a peer!

On the way to Lubbock I overheard her talking to an ex who is now a friend, and who is apparently toying with the idea of them getting back together. Hearing Tisha explain to him that she will always have a place for him in her life, and maybe one day that place will be romantic, but she's not emotionally ready to go back down that path with him, and right now she feels she needs some time away from a relationship to heal from a breakup that she now sees she may not have fully dealt with before...

The chick is DEEP!

She's so much more emotionally mature and in-tune than I was -- than ANYONE I KNOW was -- at her age! And she has GREAT friends that all seem to be right where she is emotionally! (Teen-angst drama early in the week notwithstanding... I was a dramaqueen when I was in high school, but I didn't have the enlightenment that these kids seem to have! Or the support of peers with more mature sensibilities!)

Tisha's a bright young woman, and I am SO THANKFUL that I got this past week to catch a glimpse of how truly amzing she really is!

Anyway, lol... "Is Daddy pwoud of his widdle girl? He IS?!! WHATa SURPWISE!"

But I mean it, she's got A LOT going for her, and it was a joy to get to spend that time with her!!!

Thanks, Tish!! And Kayci and Brittany and Leonel and Lance and and Marissa and Danika!!!

I'll have pics up sometime in the near future! I swear, lol! :D