Family Weekend

'Still settling back into life here after a few days with family.  Dad's birthday and the annual family reunion fell on the same day this year, and his two sisters also spent the night at the house Sunday and were able to stay through lunch Monday, making this visit home especially memorable.  Dad cooked their grandmother's risotto--his best batch of it yet, we all agreed--and his just-picked tomatoes and cucumbers made a perfect side-salad.  'A special meal and sweet way for the siblings' visit to end.  Mom, Dad, and I opted for the Olympics over seemingly-ceaseless election-related-news-coverage in the evenings, I finished reading Judy Blume's latest book Monday night and began Bill Bryson's take on Australia in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, and too soon--

--I was back at the bus station, greeting its resident cat and waiting to board to come back here. 

Assuming Aunt Laurie's health remains good, I will be looking out the bus windows at Pennsylvania countryside again next week already for a visit with her and the rest of my family. 

This summer has been miserably hot and humid, but it's one that has found me both getting somewhere with my running finally and reuniting with family, so those are two Summer 2016 things that I will remember fondly. 

Dad Begins Buctober

Dad is on the mend from both Shingles and a cold, but he, like so many baseball fans across our home state, will be cheering on his team tonight during its first playoff game since 1992.  I've been home twice in the past five weeks, and both visits have been full of Pirates games on TV and talk of "Dad's" Buccos.  A lifelong fan, Dad is known for saying at the start of every season, "THIS will be their year!"--and then, after each of the Bucs' recent twenty consecutive losing seasons, "We'll get 'em next year!"  Finally, this really does seem to be their year, commemorated in Dad's birthday card above in August,  :) and I've been so happy that Dad's gotten to experience their comeback. 

He'll still be thrilled with their performance even if their season doesn't go any further than tonight's playoff game, Dad told me over the weekend.  The bandwagon fans will fall away, he said, but the true fans know what an accomplishment it is that the team has achieved all that it already has this year.  But you can bet Dad'll be yelling at the TV tonight back home, cheering each run and chewing out the umps over any bad calls. 

The mania is sweeping the city.  Local restaurants' windows sport the Pirates' ship, flag, and battle cry. (If you don't already have a favorite team to root for tonight, this video is played toward the end of Pirates games and may sway you toward Dad's buccaneers.)  :)

The Pirate Parrot--with whom I want to have my picture taken at a game someday, although Mike scoffs and says "That's for little kids!"--is seemingly everywhere--

--included in the toys my nephew carries around with him. 

And even Pirates beer has appeared, this bottle on a side shelf of my parents' fridge.   Dad likes baseball because it's a game of strategy--like a chess match--he explained a few weeks ago.  People think football or basketball are the real strategy sports, he said, but Dad thinks baseball is more than any other sport.  I like it when people can articulate what they like or appreciate about something, especially when it teaches me something, so I found that  interesting. 

This is Dad in 1984 with my younger brother.  Now my younger brother is expecting his first baby next month.  Time flies.  Dad's team, however, has remained the same.  Here's hoping they win it tonight--for him, even if he'll be happy either way.  ♥  Hoist the colors!

Dad and the Val-Mark Corporation

I don't think my dad has ever received a store-bought card from me.  Starting when I was a kid, I've always drawn his card--he's the only one in the family who gets these goofy things--and the tradition continued yesterday with the mailing of his 2013 Father's Day card and care package.  Each year's Father's Day and birthday cartoon reflects some current in-joke or happening between us.  This year's was a depiction of him proudly standing beside the mantel he built for me and Mike.  He is, of course, clad in a Pirates baseball t-shirt and denim cut-off shorts.  (This is what he's almost always wearing in my drawings.  It's part of the tradition.) 

Another--and more integral-part of the hand-drawn card tradition is my tagline on the back:  "Val-Mark:  ♥  When you care enough to make the very best."  I considered that pretty clever when I thought of it as a kid.  Now, it's just tradition, and tradition must be upheld!  Dad knows it will always be there on the back of all of his cards from me. 

This year's card was nestled in a shoe box between a letter and some recent photos, a couple wrapped gifts, and a bunch of edibles.  An Almond Joy or Mounds bar appears somewhere in all his birthday and holiday gifts from me.  Once when I was staying with my grandparents for a few days in the summer, the day my parents were to pick me up happened to be my dad's birthday, and my grandmother asked me as we were out shopping the day before what I'd like to get my dad for his gift.  She just smiled as I went to a checkout line to grab a candy bar, and I overheard her telling my dad the next day, "I asked Val what she wanted to get you for your birthday, and she said she always gives you one of those?"  She sounded bemused, but I wasn't embarassed as I listened-in because Dad's response was something along the lines of a kindly laughing "Well, yes, it's tradition."  ♥ 

Dad's Beagle-and-heart-covered shoe box is winging its way toward him as I type this and should reach him tomorrow.  And until his August birthday rolls around, the Val-Mark greeting card industry has again closed up shop.  ♥