Tag Archive: birthday

May 01

Happy Birthday Baby

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Life

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May 1, 2013

 

It seems that the months from April through August are the birthday months around here, and today (May 1) is my husband’s birthday.

Jack turns 52 today. I can say that because guys don’t care about people knowing how old they are, right?

Anyway…

Jack is about ten years older than me, but that’s no real surprise. I’ve always had a thing for older men. He’s in great shape, though, having no problems keeping up with me and our three kids.

Well, except for what he calls “Melodee’s Thirty-Second Law”. In some cases, he comes in at under thirty seconds, but that’s another—adult only—blog.

I do sometimes wonder why he puts up with me, though. I know I’m not easy to deal with from time to time. I can be moody, demanding, spoiled, and—in general—an absolute bitch every now and then. But Jack takes it all in stride. He lets me fuss and get it out of my system, and then he’ll do something so sweet that I start to cry and thank him for not tossing me out on my ass. He just hugs me and says, “Everything is all right, baby.”

And he’s always right. A lot of that is because Jack does what is needed to make things all right, usually without me even knowing he’s doing it.

I do sometimes feel sorry for him, though. JJ is only five, so for all practical purposes, Jack is the only male in a house full of females. On top of dealing with me, there is Amanda and Debbie…

Amanda will be 13 in June. She already acts like she’s about 23. The hormones are playing ping-pong with her brain on a daily basis now, and things are only going to get worse over the next few years. Jack claims that Amanda is just a younger version of me and marvels at the fact that she and I share no genetic information. The fact is that Amanda and I have been together (first as Aunt Melodee) since she was about 2. Yeah…nurture does play as big a part as nature. One thing is for certain, though…Amanda is the reason for the saying that guns don’t kill people—fathers with good looking daughters kill people.

Debbie will turn 11 in August, but I think there’s actually a 40-year-old trapped inside that body. She wants to be a doctor and is into biology. No, not in the same way that Amanda is into biology…Debbie likes the theoretical side of how the body works while Amanda wants to explore the practical side of male/female biology. Anyway…Debbie doesn’t share all of the traits that Amanda I do, but that girl is a shopping machine. All right…Amanda and I are into shoes, purses, and bling. Debbie is a clothes freak.

The bottom line is that Jack is outnumbered. If we had a smaller house, he would have to pee outside because he would never get into the bathroom. In fact, when we had our new house built, Jack has his own bathroom that no one else uses. Not sure I would want to in any event. He gave up going shopping with us and he learned that fussing about how much we spent is a waste of breath. These days, he spends a lot of time in the garage working on his projects.

As far as I have ever known, Jack has only one hobby…he likes old cars, especially the “muscle cars” from the 1960s and 1970s. He has one that is his particular favorite, and all I know about it is that it’s a 1972 Dodge Challenger with a motor from something like a fighter aircraft in it. It is fully restored and is a bright orange with white strips and a white convertible top. And it goes really fast.

It was with this car that I once made a serious mistake that damaged my ego…he had just painted it and was putting on the chrome trim and I went down to the garage to, um, “help” him. He was ignoring me (at least I thought he was) while trying to get everything just perfect on the car’s trim. I saw one his car magazines on the workbench, and decided the cover model had a good idea. So I stripped off my clothes and lay across the hood of the car, striking my best sexy pose. I called his name to get his attention (he was still ignoring me) and he looked up. I put on my best come hither look. He sighed and said, “Careful, baby…you’ll scratch the paint.”

I guess I should have been mad, but all I could do was stare at him as he went back to aligning the trim. I got dressed and went back to the house.

No…he didn’t get lucky that night.

But other than when he’s working on his cars, Jack is always attentive. I know it took him some time to get used to me and my lack of inhibitions, but he had time to do that before we became a couple.

You see, Jack worked for me for a number of years before we got together. Back then, I traveled a lot, and Jack’s job was to provide security. The short version is that he was my bodyguard. We were together all of the time, and he got to see all of my habits, good and bad. But somehow he still fell in love with me.

I never said he was very bright.

Like I said, I’ve known Amanda since she was about 2, and I met Debbie when she was only a week old. Jack and the girls spent a lot of time with me after he and his ex divorced and the girls called me “Aunt Melodee” during that time. When Jack and I finally figured out that we were in love, the girls already had that settled. I adopted both of them.

Now, along with JJ, the five of us are together.

And it’s going to stay that way for a very long time.

Happy birthday, Jack.

I love you.

Your Baby

 

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Apr 26

How Time Flies

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Life

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April 26, 2013

 

Wow…yeah, that’s about all I have to say. The old adage about time flying when you’re having fun really is true.

Today (April 26, 2013), my little boy turns five. It seems like just yesterday when he was born.

I never, even in my wildest dreams, thought I would be a mother, and yet here I am with two adopted daughters (Amanda who will officially be a teenager in June and Debbie who turns eleven in August) and our birthday boy JJ. Now I can’t even imagine life without them.

Anyway…

In some ways, JJ was a bit of a surprise. Jack had a vasectomy done about six years before we were married, and it was a good one…his ex-wife hadn’t gotten pregnant again. When he and I got together, we discussed it and decided that we wanted to have a child, so we looked into a reversal of his sterilization. The doctors were not very optimistic, but we found one of the best surgeons in the US and went ahead with the procedure.

After the surgery, Jack’s sperm counts were low, but the doctor just shrugged. He said that the true test would be if I got pregnant or not. Yeah, the real world outcomes beat the lab test every time.

And sure enough, after some “practice”, I was pregnant. And no, neither one of us complained about the number of times we had to try.

Thankfully, the pregnancy was uneventful. Well, unless you count my mood swings and the time I bounced an ashtray off Jack’s forehead. No big deal…only four stitches.

But there was one thing that really worried me…

I have been deaf since birth, and no actual cause has ever been identified. Odds are, it is due to something genetic, but something odd in my fetal development time comes in a close second. The fact is that I was scared to death that our baby would be born deaf.

I tried to hide my fears, but Jack picked up on them. He’s always been able to do that, and I really don’t mind him reading my thoughts. He did and said all of the right things, too…told me that everything was just fine, pointed out that even if the baby was deaf, I turned out all right. More or less. He suggested that we talk with the doctors.

And so we did. We explained our concerns to the medical team, and the doctor sat for a long time just staring at us. He then asked a very simple question…”What will you do if we learn that the baby is indeed going to be born deaf?” What indeed. The doctor then said that we would have two choices: Abort the pregnancy or do nothing.

There was no way I would abort that little person growing inside of me. Ever. None of the details mattered other than we were talking about our baby. So the only option was to do nothing.

The doctor smiled and advised us to not worry about things. So we did.

Looking back, the entire nine months was actually pretty routine. Well, other than that scar Jack still carries. Even the delivery went smooth. Oh, and Jack ignored me when I screamed that he was never going to have sex again.

Before I knew it, the doctor put this little baby boy in my arms, and despite all the red, wrinkled skin and the few little wisps of wet, thin hair, he was the most gorgeous thing I have ever seen. When the nurse came to get JJ to get him cleaned up and do all of the things they needed to do, I thought that even though I was tired and sore I could take her ass out. Jack convinced me to let her take care of the baby for a few minutes.

When the nurse brought JJ back, that was when I saw something else that made me go all gooey on the inside…she handed the baby to Jack.

You have to see Jack to appreciate him. He’s 6′ 11″ and weighs about 235 pounds. Buying his suits off-the-rack just doesn’t happen and it’s a good thing that he was in the Navy because his shoes look like small boats. He prides himself on not showing emotion, at least not very often. No matter the situation, Jack is always calm, cool, and collected.

He sat beside me holding our son, and he looked up at me. Jack smiled from ear to ear, and there were tears flowing down his cheeks. He leaned over and kissed me and said, “Thank you, baby.”

Damn it…now I’ve got myself crying again!

One of the first things the doctors checked was JJ’s hearing. He can hear normally, and for that I’m also thankful, though I would love him just the same no matter what.

The last five years have been fun as JJ has grown, and I suspect the next ten or fifteen years will be even better. For all I can tell, JJ is just a smaller (slightly…he’s a big boy!) version of his father. Even now, the testosterone levels get pretty high.

Sometimes, Jack will ask JJ to do something, and a standoff begins. Yeah, JJ will defy his dad. Interestingly enough, if one of his sisters or me asks him to do the same thing, JJ will fall all over himself to make it happen. Go figure.

But, as I said, JJ is just like his father. Jack isn’t afraid to stand up to any man. Hell, I’ve seen him come close to fighting a waiter over a glass of water. But for me and the girls, he’s a pushover. Trust me…Amanda is every bit as good as I am when it comes to getting Jack to do something.

I can see JJ growing up to be just like his dad, and that’s a good thing. A very good thing. Some day, he’s going to make some girl very happy and very lucky…just like I am with his father.

But for today, we’re going to have the traditional party and games and presents.

If I have learned nothing else in the five years since JJ was born it is that I need to cherish and enjoy this time. Before I know it, he’ll be all grown up and starting a new life with his own family. Another woman will be holding him when he falls and skins his knee.

But he will always be my little boy.

I love you, JJ.

Mommy

 

 

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Aug 13

Happy Birthday, Debbie

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Life

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August 13, 2012

I’m not sure if I’m being remiss or just cautious, but…

I post quite often about my husband Jack (@JackDouglas61 on Twitter). I do a lot of posting about our oldest daughter, Amanda (@AmandaJDouglas on Twitter), and I also post more than a small amount about our youngest, son JJ (Jack, Jr.)

But it seems that I rarely post much about our middle child, Debbie. Sorry, she’s not on Twitter or FaceBook or anything else…more on that in a minute.

It would be easy to chalk this omission up to the middle child syndrome. You know…the oldest gets attention by virtue of being the oldest and the youngest gets attention for being the baby while the kid in the middle more or less is forgotten. Sorry, but that is simply not the case.

 


Debbie is—by any fair standard—a genius.

Jack did time in the Navy as a SEAL. He was also a US Marshall and Secret Service agent. He did some side work for the FBI. In a nutshell, Jack is no dummy.

I’m pretty damned smart, too. I have more advanced degrees than I can remember, and pretty much any subject comes fairly easy for me. Well, except that whole time zone thing. Anyway, I’m not a dummy, either.

Amanda is at least as smart as I am. She may be brighter than me, but even she and her dad admit it’s a close thing. But the point is that she’s not stupid.

JJ is just a little boy of just more than 4 now. He speaks, reads, and writes in five languages plus he’s as good at sign as I am. Clearly JJ is in the high end of the bell curve.

And then there is Debbie…

Today (August 13) is Debbie’s tenth birthday. She’s not like other ten-year-old girls I have seen, known, or even read about. Debbie wants to be a medical doctor, maybe a neurologist or neurosurgeon. She has wanted this for the last three years, and her position is unwavering. She always has a medical book in her hands when she’s not in her “lab” dissecting something or another. She talks about medical matters that have words I can barely pronounce and have no chance of spelling. And she understands biological systems better than our various family doctors.

In other words, Debbie makes me, her dad, her sister, and her brother look like low-grade morons.

And she thinks that all of this “nonsense” about Twitter, FaceBook, ad infinitum is just exactly that…nonsense.

Debbie also has no room in her life for “wasting time” in front of a video game or even TV unless it’s a show about medical matters or related sciences. She does kind of like Myth Busters, but she rips them apart for using (and I quote) “…an unacceptable human analog like Buster. He in no way is representative of how the human body would react in such situations…”

Yeah…she really does talk like that.

I made the mistake of going to her “lab” once. One time was enough. She had some kind of monkey on the slab. Its skin was in a jar next to it, some of the muscles were missing…I think…and its brain was on the table next to the rest of the poor creature. Debbie was poking and prodding at the brain, taking samples and mounting them on slides and studying them under the microscope.

And she’s had other things in there, too. Oh, of course she progressed through the mandatory frogs, pigs, cats, dogs, and all of that. Some of the stuff I have no clue what they were in life. As far as I know, she’s cut up a chupacabra or two in there. Maybe even a yeti for all of me.

And that brings us to one reason why I don’t write about Debbie too much…

I figure it’s only a matter of time before she needs a human subject, and I’m pretty handy if nothing else. I doubt she needs much of an excuse.

But in all seriousness, Debbie is a wonderful girl. Very much the antithesis of her sister, Debbie is on the shy and quiet side, preferring to sit back and listen to others, only getting into the conversation when addressed. She does like to go shopping with Amanda and me, but her tastes in fashion are far more conservative than ours.

She likes to play bridge and chess, too. At bridge, she is a formidable opponent and a cherished partner. In chess, she can beat her dad in typically 14 moves, and she can usually take me out in less than 20. Amanda rarely lasts more than 10. I gave Debbie an old 3×3 Rubik’s Cube once after I jumbled it pretty good. She stared at it for maybe 20 seconds, started twisting, and set it on the table solved in about 50 seconds total. My personal best is just under 2 minutes. She had never seen one before. She does the NY Times crossword puzzle in ink…in about 15 minutes.

What I’m trying to get at here is that Debbie is smart…REALLY smart. She’s much smarter than me, her dad, and her siblings put together. Truth be told, she could easily be considered frighteningly smart.

And she has almost no sense of humor.

Some of you may have seen Amanda and me on Twitter poking fun at each other. We tease back and forth, we call each other names, and all the rest. Jack says that we often act more like sisters than mother and daughter. Amanda and I do this because we know we won’t hurt each others feelings or make the other mad.

As I said, Debbie is much more of an introvert. She would be offended or hurt by teasing like that. And then there is the simple fact that Debbie is a private person, and I respect that.

I love Debbie with all of my heart, and I would never do anything to disrespect her.

So, Debbie will continue to be in the background of my public life, and that’s OK with me…

In private, she will always be my Baby Girl.

Happy Birthday, Baby. I love you!

 

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Apr 29

Catching Up…

Categories:

Life, Melodee's Books

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April 29, 2012

Sadly, I’ve been remiss in posting to my blog for the last couple of weeks. I have a ton of excuses, but very few reasons…

As many of you know, we recently completed a rather large move. Even small moves are a pain in the ass, but try it to another continent. Things on that front have quieted down a bit, though it will pick up again soon with the completion of some construction and arrival of more of our stuff. What fun that will be!

Add to this the similar relocation of the entire business. Yeah, it gets out of hand VERY quickly!

Through all of that, I also had no time for my real job: Writing. This added up to the need to focus on a number of projects that had taken back-burner status until people started to scream, so I had to jump on those and get the work done. I was literally locked in my office for days at a time.

There are two big things I want to pass along to you…one is technically past and the other happens in only a couple of days.

The first is that my son JJ (Jack, Jr.) turned four on the 26th. He looks more and more like his dad every day, and that’s a good thing. I admit that I’m biased, but Jack is drop-dead gorgeous, and JJ is following suit. On the other hand, JJ is also developing a lot of the extreme alpha male attitude of his dad. I’m OK with that because along with the attitude is an intense respect for the female of the species. JJ treats his sisters and me with care and has never been disrespectful to us. I suspect that as he gets older, he will also take on a role of protecting his sisters. It looks like JJ will also be as big as his dad (6’9″ and 265 pounds), so God help the boy who mistreats his sisters. Jack, however, is not so good with having another alpha male in the house. JJ will sometimes be a bit defiant when his dad asks him to do something. So far, JJ has always backed down and done as he was told, but the smell of testosterone sometimes gets pretty strong. Funny part is that if I (or his sisters) ask JJ to do the exact same thing, he is happy to comply.

In any event, Happy Birthday, JJ.

Next, Jack’s birthday is this coming Tuesday (May 1st). Since it’s not supposed to bother men, I’ll tell you that Jack will be 51. But he’s not getting older, he’s getting better. While 51 is not “old”, Jack is in great shape. Habits he learned from his military service (Jack was a SEAL) and in law enforcement (FBI, US Marshalls, and the Secret Service) have stayed with him. He walks several miles a day, works out in the gym with weights and various machines, and plays with the kids in active sports several times a week. He watches his diet and, like me, drinks very little. He quit smoking when I was pregnant with JJ. In short, Jack takes care of himself. He does that not only for his own benefit, but because he knows that the kids and I all need and want him around for a long time.

Happy Birthday, my love.

As for what’s next, that’s complicated…

I want to get back into the swing of things and focus on some of my erotica romance work. I have not less than five books at various stages of completion that I need to finish and get off to the publishers. I wish I could give you a timeline, but I have no clue. There are other things in the writing arena that are also demanding my time.

And I promise to post here more frequently. Really…I do!

Keep Loving!

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