Hay - Over here ! e-dis-o-dar

Just trying to get Ekaterina Gerasimova's attention.

The three year old recomends...

Son and I listen to tunes in the car for the half hr trip from work / day care to home.
I load up the iPod with the recommendations iTunes suggests but he vetoes the songs after listening to the intros and a few seconds of the first verse or so.
The conversation goes something like this:
Son: "put the music on...put the music on...put the music on" X 50.
Dad: ShitAlrightSettelDownImDriving
Son: "put the music on...put the music on...put the music on" X 50.
Dad: puts the music on
Dad: "New songs or ones you like already?"
Son: "New ones."

- songs play -

Son: "No."
- next song -
Son: "No."
- next song -
Son: "No."
- next song -
Son: "No."
- next song -
Son: "More"
- song finishes -
Son: "Again please."
- song repeats -
Son: "Again please."
- song repeats this time he's humming the tune and asks about the words -
Son: "Again please."
- song repeats this time he's singing along complete with bopping head and facial expressions like he's squeezing lemons with his eyes when he hits the high notes -
Son: "No more. Next song please."
etc.

Based on these trips I now bring you three songs he recommends over the last week:

- Sequel out me some skinny love
- Howl out at the moon with furr
- then hit me with that magic beam Sandman

I just burried my dad

Well - crematorium service ...
I have never cried so much...

To everyone who came - thank you so very much. Dads old friends, new friends, my mates, family, the ski club crowd, all of you, thank you so very much - it meant so much to me to to have you there to help say goodbye.

Odd time to meet my sisters husbands Italian mother for the first time.... Italians seem pretty comfortable with that sort of thing.


I had to do a speech:
Thoughts on dad

I've agonized about this speech for years. And I still don't really know what to say.
There is a well worn path of children burring their parents. But it doesn't make it any easier to accept his death.


Dad never did anything by halves. He quietly ( and often not so quietly ) set about achieving the goals he set himself in life.
By any measure his youth was an adventure. I loved the stories he would tell me of his childhood and as a young man:
- He told me, still with the excitement of that little boy written all over his face, of digging for buried treasure in the back yard of the house and finding a small cash of rusty old guns - treasure for a little boy.
- Of sneaking away as a child and hanging around the neighborhood army barracks in Naremburn where he was sort of a mascot, and the cook would pick him up and put him in the big dirty pot where he would scoop and eat the custard from the walls, and his mum could never figure out why he was still growing but never ate any dinner.
- His toe partially severed by a quarry train where he used to play
- He still, right now has a bullet in lodged his neck, apparently too dangerously situated to be removed, from when he was shot in the back at Artomon oval when wagging school with his mates one day.
- He's also got a bunch of holes drilled in his scull to relieve the pressure on his brain from a surfing injury.

Thankfully he mellowed with marriage and fatherhood but he still had that same drive.
Holidays were awesome, we would go everywhere. How many kids can say that there dad built them a ski lodge?
We'd go camping at the beach, we traveled all around Australia, How many times? two or three trips right around, up and down, through the center and everywhere else.

Childhood with mum and dad was fantastic.
He was always very involved in what we were doing. When we took up competitive swimming he did whatever the study was and became an official time keeper.
He loved soccer. As soon as I was old enough he had me playing for Hornsby RSL. And of course he helped coach. When I played for Kissing Point - he was the coach. When I played for St Leo's - he we the coach. And again he did whatever study was required and qualified as a FIFA coach and as a Soccer Ref.

In a big and busy life He really put in a lot of effort to make sure we kids had the best opportunities.

I asked him a few weeks ago "when was the best time" expecting him to talk more about his mates - the self proclaimed Randy Rovers, Uni, or Nurraburra but he said the best time was "the time with you kids - the family years - with mum and you kids"

He loved being a dad.

I treasure the years we had with him.

Thank you dad for the all the guidance and chats over the years.

I can't believe that I can never pick up the phone and chat to you again.

good by mate - I will miss you terribly

he was my dad

Sad

I don't have a dad any more.
I'm gutted.