Pappa Hardy's Musings on Life.

It was fun entertainment. Bonnie, Julie, Shirley and I went to the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City. We saw two plays, The Music Man and Noises Off. They were both fun to watch. I wish we had been able to stay a few more days, take in more plays, and travel around in Southern Utah. However, it was just a quick trip.

Plays are fun. Family is better. It was a lot of fun talking with each other. The campus of Southern Utah University was also beautiful and it was a terrific place to be able to visit and experience some “culture”.

One of the greatest challenges as a grandparent who loves his grandchildren is to get them to warm up to him and be willing to give him the time of day. We visited Gordon and Christie yesterday and when we did so, Claire was her usual reserved and shy self.

During the course of the afternoon, I managed to get her to do some playing with me. It was a wonderful challenge and she warmed up a lot. Of course, leave it to the grandchild whisperer (my wife) to get her to let her hold her and carry her around while the mother and father were in site. I guess I lack some grandfathering skills. At least she wasn’t hiding from me anymore.

Another funny thing was what my oldest grand daughter said to me. She said our house was smaller than theirs and that we didn’t have any food there so we should stay with them. She was so cute. I love the grandkids.

My wife can be so predictable. In our cruise stop at Ketchikan at the Rainforest Wilderness Sanctuary, the guide started the tour off by telling us what to do if we came across a black bear during the tour. Given the scarcity of wildlife we had seen up to that point, I am sure that Bonnie was thinking that nothing was really going to happen.

Imagine my wife’s reaction when within 5 minutes of starting our tour, that someone spotted a black bear through the underbrush. Sure enough, there was a black bear. I looked at my wife, to find that her eyes were wide open, her shoulders hunched up, and her body wanted to let out that scream that the guide had warned us not to make. She wanted to run that you could tell that it was tormenting her. To her credit, she did what instructed to do, and we had no problem with the bear, which was no further than 30 feet from us. There was black bear terror for her, but she handled it admirably.

One thing really scares my wife that is a reassuring sound to me. It is the sound of a jet engine as it starts to reflect a perceptible drop in power as it puts out less energy so a jet airliner can come in for a landing. My wife worries that we are going to crash. I know that the airliner makes the final approach by shutting down the power so that it can make an approach. I love the trip in a plane, but sometime I know we must return to earth and I plan on making those trips in safety.

We traveled recently for 12 hours, together in the car. One thing became clear and is a truism for the Mike Hardy Family. My wife is the family comedian. She had us rolling in the aisles. She is a very funny person, sometimes on purpose, but sometimes just because she has a great sense of humor and says funny things. I love and appreciate, most of the time, her sense of humor.

Why is it that babies almost universally say the word mama first? That word, as far as I know, appears in a lot of languages in that form. Possibly (I am really speaking out of school here) that is one of the easiest sounds to make for a newborn. As a male, I want to make sure that they say Daddy first. After all, fathers are the most important creatures on the planet. It is just that those sneaky women are with the babies for more of the day than us guys. That is the only real reason, right? Well, regardless, I recently was in a crowd of a lot of non-English foreign speakers and I heard a lot of “mamas” coming out of those child’s mouths, but not much else of their languages made sense to me.

I have to admit, the last few days I have not been sleeping too well. In March of 2005 I wrote a blog entry briefly outlining the fact that I was going to be going in for the first time for a medical procedure that would require that I be put under anesthetic for a significant period of time. At that time it was going to be 1 to 2 hours. I was afraid somewhat then. I must admit, I am afraid a lot more now.

A blog posting or two ago I indicated that I was going to have a procedure that would be tinkering with my heart. This procedure requires that I be out for 4-5 hours followed by a significant amount of time when I will be laying still while I am monitored for bleeding. This is significant stuff, and I am a tad bit more fearful of the unknown then I was then. While this procedure is normally 98 percent successful, there is still that chance that something not as good will happen.

I have a wonderful family. I know that I have a lot of support. That does make it easier for me to face these issues, but still, I am not sure that I am excited about the next two or three days of my life. Life is a series of new experiences and adventures. Some are fun, exciting, and bench marks that you excitedly talk about. This is not one that I am as excited about. I hate meeting these benchmarks in my life.

One of the basic differences between most men and most women is how we go about shopping. A woman, by her nature is a gatherer, checking, holding, looking, and then checking everything else in the mall. A man, like me, wants to go in and nail the kill. In the Las Vegas Outlet Malls, I sat on benches while my wife did the gathering simply because I couldn’t find the kill and kill it. I was bored, my wife was in her element. I think she loved the day, which was also her birthday. Me, well I tolerated it by sitting and thinking and taking notes.

While in Las Vegas, we were marketed on incessantly by people “wanting” to give us a better deal, that is a “complimentary deal” on show tickets. They have some great shows in Las Vegas. One we were interested in was Mama Mia, which is the music of ABBA and is supposed to be pretty good. Well, the people on the strip weren’t stopping everyone, but they were stopping us and asking us where we were from. Normally, I just tell people we aren’t interested.

Bonnie however stopped once and listened long enough for us to find out why us two, married older couple, without children but obviously middle class, were being marketed on. The casino we were walking through (New York, New York) allows them to get people to come in and see a new time share deal in Las Vegas called “The Tahitian” where we would have been pitched a deal about how great the time share was.

Given our past poor association and experiences with time share pitches, we immediately said,
“No, we aren’t interested”. We never stopped at any of those places again, which was difficult because they literally were throwing themselves in front of you to get your attention.

We spent today in Las Vegas and it was Bonnie’s Birthday. This was definitely a different way to spend her birthday than normally is the case. Normally, family would be gathered all around and we would be celebrating the holiday together. When Mel was alive, we inevitably spent the 4th at Mom and Dad Cox’s house, and Mel cooked his famous barbecued Chicken. He lovingly cooked it for her for hour after hour after hour. It was absolutely delicious.

Later, we just made sure that the birthday was celebrated with family around. Today, just Bonnie and I. Originally it was going to be the family in Las Vegas for the American Idol concert and Bonnie’s Birthday, but instead Bonnie and I spent it shopping, eating, and walking around in the heat in Las Vegas. We had fun anyway.