Daddys girl

Anyone who sits and talks to me is sure to get a rundown of my family. I am proud and I brag about it a lot.
I have been thinking about my Daughter lately. I don’t think she knows her name is just Hope. We all call her Hopie, most of the time. She tells me she is a baby princess. She misses daddy playing doll houses and having tea parties. I am blessed that she says that. It is a token of a small measure of success on my part. You see, while it my be surprising, playing doll house, or Tea party is not the first thing I think about when I think of a Saturday. However it makes her so happy that I enjoy doing it, I am blessed to see that I have made that right decision enough that she remembers that daddy does that with her.
We only have a limited amount of time with our children (a fact that deployed daddy’s know painfully well). I could be the scariest man, refuse to let her date, and clean my gun when the boy comes to pick her up. I could do all the clichés and still the boys will come. Ok I am ahead of myself. I have made a deal with my little girl I told her that daddy would give her money if she stayed with me forever. While she agreed I don’t think that negotiations with three year olds are really binding. So the point is one day she will leave me. I hope and pray that when that day comes I will have played as much doll house and drank as much tea as I could. Not only for my own reflection, but I want to set the bar very high for that boy.

Catching up now: I think that all the Stereotypical Scary dad things are men coming to grips with this pending separation. I fear that day, I really do but I am not a very tough guy, and I don’t have a lot of guns, I may not be able to scare away a boy without pushing her away too. So I have to set the bar as high as possible, so that when she chooses, she will choose well. I just hope I can get it right during the opportunity I have
I am convinced that this line of thinking is not as premature as it may seem, but essential. I can see down a path lit by history well enough.

By the way Ladies Call your Daddy’s they miss you.

Thoughts become Sermon

Poor imitations
Humans are imitators by nature. For better or worse we take one the characteristics of people we are around. If I point at someone I use my whole hand, vice just a finger, a trait I picked up from a guy named Kirk. If I can’t understand what you said I will ask “your what hurts?” a humorous response one of my chiefs used to say. Many more, many we will not write here because they are less than pretty, or PG. As I think about this it seems to me that all my habits ticks and personality are reflections of people I have been exposed in the past.
I have been aware of this for quite a long time, as it relates to the Navy. Long ago I was told that people who concentrate on not being like someone usually end up being just like them, Probably because they spend so much concentration on that person they end up imitating them. I have developed a theory about conscious imitation. I recognized that many of the people I was looking up to did not share my goals, and so I had to alter my way of looking at would be mentors. I now tell my subordinates that you can take something good from just about anyone, if you are looking, and you can pick up bad habits form the most squared away Sailor.
Applying this template of thoughts to a broader scene and I have some interesting hypothesis. First everyone has been in some way exposed to the source, God. This is why we all have a basic common instinct of morality, that spans all faiths, and cultures. This concurrent instinct that can hardly be fully explained by biological or anatomical rational.
Getting more and more like a sermon: What went wrong? For instance why would a teenage girl intentionally get pregnant, and say I just wanted someone to love me. The rest of the Rational minded people say “what were you thinking?” This makes more sense if you believe that God created humans from the beginning for his enjoyment, that we were designed to love and adore him. If you believe that we are infect created in his image. What if she is acting on some latent instinct picked up from the creator, from the beginning. Before I get tarred for sacrilege, understand that I am not employing that she has picked up a bad habit, from God. Instead I think she is confused and engaging in unintentional or incomplete imitation. I am not sure how broad this theory, and it is that a theory can be applied.
Full on sermon: Perhaps that is another way to look at discipleship is “intentional imitation”. Not just doing what he did. But striving for the why, the heart behind it. I will pick up more habits from those who I spend time with, it is my nature. The trick is to consciously imitate my mortal heroes not to judge them but to be aware of what I is I am picking up. And to consciously imitate the creator so we can get it as close to imitation this side of eternity.

Yes I am eating.

Warning

Rant ahead.

When we were kids we used to play telephone. You get in line and whisper "the cat is black", by the time it got to the other end it was "Scratch my back". During this game there was usually that one kid who would take it to the extrema making the out come completely off base.

Now that I am grown I see that we still play that game. That kids name is CNN. If you watch the Combat News Network you may have seen that Here in sunny Camp Bucca we are not getting any food. Now before I take that kids place let me be honest and say I have not seen the report. I have however seen the ripples it has caused.

Normally, I refrain from saying anything about day to day operations. I suppose, however, it being all over the airways I can do little more harm, by correcting it.
Here is what happened: The galley changed its hours to 24/7 so that everyone had a chance to go get a meal at any time. Therefore they decided it was not necessary to deliver food to the compound as often as members could go and get a meal on there off hours. While this was inconvenient and unpopular, and being addressed by proper channels. Now, Watching M*A*S*H is enough military experience to know that some times "Proper Channels" are a bit slow. So someone Whines to there family who calls, there Friend, who calls there second cousin twice removed, and he called this homeless guy named frank, Well frank knows someone at CNN, and/or a politician. The point is now our Boss (the American Public) is in an outcry. CNNs need for a story is just less than the politicians need for that "I support the troops" spin.
In the end My Dad asks me if I am getting enough to eat. Sad.
The real bummer is now there are more resources being directed to "fix" this Inflated political hot button. What do you think that does to "proper channels".