Okay wait, that’s kind of misleading too because Malia and Jaida will sleep in our bed as well.  And both too often and way too often, I end up sleeping at the foot of the bed.

No, not on the bed— at the foot of the bed...on the floor. I have a light blue comforter that goes under me and a sheet that I use to cover myself. The good news is that I have 2 maybe 3 pillows that I get to use. The bad news is, I sleep on the floor. Yes, even on Valentine’s Day.
But that’s a whole other story.

Right now I am beat, pooped, exhausted and have decided to not ignore these signs.  I am fumbling my way into our room and am relieved to find that there is room on my side of the bed. Tammy is fast asleep on her side, Sophie is in the middle and actually more towards Tammy’s side. So yeah, there is plenty of room for me to crash.

I lay down, instantly falling from reality and very soon I’m going to be in a REM-like sleep. I am bordering between LaLa land and out-like- a-light, at a place where I think that my thoughts are making sense but if I were to analyze them I could see a muddled mess of broken, scattered thoughts making no more sense than a Fellini Film. But I am exhausted; there is no analyzing anything. I have drifted beyond the point of no return.

I am on my side and close to the edge of the bed and facing halfway between Sophie on the bed and the ceiling. My back is slightly turned from my side of the bed. My right arm is tucked under Sophie’s pillow. As I am recalling last night, at this point am out but not quite dreaming.

Somewhere, in my semi-consciousness I feel the presence of someone or something. The sensation of this “presence” is followed by a sudden deep chill. But I am just so flipping tired that I simply pull the covers over my shoulders and ignore it.

Or try to.

But then it -- the presence-- decides it wants to sit or kneel on the bed next to me. Okay, now I am a little concerned.  I opened my eyes but I see nothing over my left shoulder. Still, I could feel the weight of it behind me as this...ghost... places itself on our bed. There is something there.

What the heck!

I feel my side of the bed lower with the weight of this apparition. I don’t stop to think that a paranormal presence probably carries no measurable weight to speak of. Remember, I am still half asleep. 

Out of the corner of my eye I still see nothing. But more weight is being placed on the bed right next to me. I feel it! My body is starting to roll towards it.

I look again. Nothing.

Wait. What the?

I see...something... I think.

This time I see what looks like a huge transparent, rectangular sponge. Its surface resembles a liquidly soap bubble but it definitely had some human like structure. It reminded me of the translucent creature in the movie Predator but without any definitive features. Just a blob. It was just a like a rectangular blob with its knees on my bed. Interrupting some damn good sleep.

Thinking I had no choice but to act quickly and then make enough noise so that Tammy could both witness this unbelievable event and at the same time grab Sophie and make a quick get-a-away.  

Who ya gonna call? Nobody. I got this!

I reached around and grabbed the ghost by what I would presume to be its shoulders and pulled it down between me and Sophie. It fought back and I tightened my grip.

“I got the ghost! I got the ghost! Do you see it?” I remember yelling out.

I had Casper in a death grip! I pulled it close to me against my upper body and it covered my face. Tammy later explained it like this after the poltergeist had left, “All I heard was you mumbling something in your sleep. Like you were talking with something in your mouth. I couldn’t understand what you were saying,”

“Honey, I was trying to tell you that I had the ghost... I got the ghost...and asking you if you could see the ghost.” I tried to explained. “I got the ghost. I got the ghost. Can you see the ghost? Can you see the ghost?” My eyes wide open, pleading, begging her to be on the same page.

“I’m sorry, I had no idea what you were saying.” She really did seem apologetic, but she also sounded like she wanted to laugh. To keep from doing so, she reasoned, “Maybe when you grabbed the ghost and pulled it down towards you, it was against your mouth and that’s why I couldn’t understand you.”

I had pulled the ghost close to me to where it was practically on top of me. That made sense to me.

“I probably was mumbling!" I agreed.  "The ghost was against my face."
Tammy was nodding in agreement. That scenario would explain why she was not able to understand me.

"But did you see anything?” I asked.

Tammy snorted her answer, “No.”

I couldn’t believe it. There’s no way I was dreaming the whole thing. No way!

“Didn’t you see how I was holding my left arm up in the air like this?” I tried to convince her, get her to acknowledge that there had been a ghost. “I had ...”

Tammy was shaking her head before I even finished my last sentence, “uh, No.”

“Honey, I had my arm up like this,” I showed her how I had my arm positioned in the air with the ghost in a death grip.

“Your arm was down by your side,” Tammy said as she begun to fluff her pillow, seemingly unimpressed.   

“I was saying, ‘do you see the ghost? Do you see the ghost?’” I said thinking how her attention, like the ghost, was slipping away. 

“Sorry honey. You were mumbling and you had your eyes closed.”

Tammy lays her head back down again. Apparently sleep sounds better than my ghost story. I guess I should have told her the ghost looked like Patrick Swayze.

She is facing away from me and Sophie. I am up on my elbows looking around the room. Within minutes I could hear her even breathing; a sign my wife has fallen back asleep.

I lay there quietly going over the events in my head, looking around the room. My mind is still racing. How can she sleep? I can’t believe I held a ghost in my arms. I had the thing too. Is there really such thing as a Ghostbuster’s trap? I ain’t ‘fraid of no ghost. What if it was Patrick Swayze?
Oh Gawd. Okay, I got to try to get some sleep.

My eyes weren’t having any of that though, they were stuck wide open.

I laid down but was not going back to sleep. From time to time I would scan the room for movement or anything out of the ordinary.

I decided there was too much crap in our room. Our dresser looks like there’s a body resting on it. The pig head shaped humidifier that emits air out of its sharp ears doesn’t help. It looks scary in the dark.

Over there in the corner sits a miniature person sitting rolled up in a fetal position where a bag of our clothes sat earlier. 

The room is quiet. I am glad Sophie slept through the entire ordeal. My wife continues to breathe evenly, quietly. She startles me when she speaks up without turning around.

“Honey,” she says to me in a voice half asleep, “next time you see a ghost, don’t grab it.”

Okay, I am thinking. Thanks a lot.  When I pause to think about it, that actually makes sense. I make a mental note to never do that again. Do not grab ghost. It could be dangerous.

But what do I do, I wonder.

As if she heard my thoughts, Tammy says, “Next time, just ask it what it wants.”

The Owner of the House
We’re blessed that whenever our house gets too quiet for having three school aged girls living in it we can rest assured--not always but for the most part-- that it’s not because they are up to something. 
No, in our home when something is going on we hear it long before we see it. Malia, Jaida, and Sophie can get as rambunctious as...well...boys. In our house we know loud equals bad; quiet equals good.
Still, when things get too quiet and I haven’t seen them for a while my daddy radar clicks on. I put the duster down, take my apron off, and go investigate. 
I’ll sneak around a corner a la Inspector Clouseau expecting to catch them in the act some elementary mischievousness.
But no.
To our surprise I find them reading sight words with Sophie, engaged in some type of creativity, applying nail polish, playing with their dolls, or in Sophie case, with her fire truck. 
For the most part. 
This morning, while Tammy was at the gym and I was straightening up the living room, things got somewhat quiet. 
Too quiet.
Malia and Jaida are at their dad’s house, but usually I can hear Sophie singing, blowing through her 99 Cent Store recorder, clawing at the strings of her ukulele, or talking to herself or to her stuffed animals.
Too quiet. And it dawns on me that I hadn’t seen her in a while. 
I went looking for her at the back of the house. 
Nothing.
Then come back to the kitchen and living room area and realize that she has to be in the toy room.
She must be playing, I thought.
“Beautiful?”
“What dad?”
I pick up my orange synthetic-feather duster. Yes, it’s mine.
Okay. I’m satisfied. She’s in the toy room. All is good. 
“I’m picking up all this big mess,” she yells out from the toy room.
Mess?
I drop my orange duster.
She must have seen the look on concern on my face when I walked into the tot room because she says, “Don’t worry dad. I got this.”
I just love her outlook, her use of idioms, and how nothing is a big deal to her. 
Still, I ask what happened.
“dad, don’t worry.”
“What are you picking up there?”
“Beads,” she says, “and I could use some help.”
I watch her for a little while. Her little fingers picking up different colored heart and star-shaped beads. 
“I’m cleaning the living room beautiful and I could use some help too. I got a good idea. Whoever finishes first can help the other person.” 
She looks up and smiles at me and nods approvingly.
“We’ll see who finishes first,” she says. 
Now it’s a game to her. She picks up her pace and I run back to the living room.

A few minutes later as I am vacuuming the living room I see Sophie at the entrance with an ice cream-eating grin on her face. 
She is mouthing something indecipherable.
I turn the vacuum off.
“What beautiful?”
Still smiling she says, “I own you.”
She has no idea how right she is.

Sophie just came into the dining room/office area and stood across the table from me.
“Dad, I’m gonna play on the iPad.”
I watched her struggle, yet determined to pull out the chair from under the table. As she climbed up onto the table chair, I had an overwhelming desire to hold her. 
“Okay, but first...” I placed my arms out, she knows what that means. “We haven’t hugged enough this morning.”
Sophie hesitated as she looked from the iPad sitting in front of her to me and then back down at the iPad again. She depressed the on button on the iPad.
“Dad, yes we have. We hugged a lot.”
Okay, this isn’t true I thought. Is she really choosing the iPad over her daddy?
“Remember?” she asks.
Umm, no I don’t Sophie, I thought. But okay. If she wants to play on the iPad that bad...
Oh wait...
We did snuggle quite a bit in bed this morning. Sophie is super affectionate and wakes up happy; always greeting the day with enthusiasm. It was nice holding her.
Sophie’s little fingers are swiping away on the screen.
“You’re right beautiful. We did snuggle for a while this morning.”
“Daddy, I was trying to tell you that,” she says without looking up from her iPad.
I watch her for a while. Was there a little bit of attitude in her response?
Eventually, she will look back up from her iPad. 
Sophie, like all of our girls, knows how to work me. They pout, bat their eyelashes. No, you don’t get it, they literally bat their eyelashes! Turn their head to the side. You get the picture.
Yes, I play dumb sometimes and even give in occasionally, but I am onto all this. 
And right now I still want a hug. Two can play this game.
I place my lower lip out just a little bit more and turn my head to the side, and yes, I start batting my eyelashes. 
Sophie fingers continue to swipe wildly across the iPad screen, more concerned at the moment with racking up points in her electronic game than in the real world.
Eventually, I resort to clearing my throat. 
“Ahem”
Nothing.
Then again. 
“Ahem...Arharraahemm hem Ah harummph..ahem ah har...”
I felt I may have over did it a tad. Sophie was either going to come give me a hug or perform the Heimlich maneuver on me.
She did neither but Sophie did glance up for a split second. Here it comes...I was feeling a little touch of self-satisfaction when she said,
“Dad, get over it already.”

Right now, I am curled up in the fetal position on my bed holding my SpongeBob pillow.

 

I was cleaning up in the kitchen putting stuff away when Sophie walked in, put her empty pudding cup in the trash, and sat down on the floor holding her belly. 
“What’s the matter beautiful? Does your tummy hurt? You eat too much?”
“No, I just want to sit here,” she explained.
Earlier Tammy was in the living room studying with her friends, Sophie and I were in the bedroom watching videos of Megan and Christian when they were younger. Right now Sophie reminded me, as she often does, of Megan. 
I started thinking about Megan. About how her smile and loving nature re-appeared after her little sisters were showering her with love and affection.  About how we had all great time after that. 
Then her entire attitude toward us changed as the time when her mother was to pick her up grew nearer. 
I was deep in thought, in my head. 
Sophie was sitting with her legs crossed looking up at me and out of the blue said, “Daddy, God is here.”
Now THAT snapped me back into the present. Her huge smile and big brown eyes going from me to my side, and then back to me. I assumed He was standing next to me.
“That’s great sweetheart! Where is He?” Even though I had an idea, I wanted to hear her say where.
“He’s right next to you.” All my worries immediately went away.
I placed my arm around Him towards where she had pointed that He was standing. “Am I holding Him right now?”
“Yep.”  She said with a huge smile still on her face.
God and I walked arm in arm into the hallway to place something in the garage. 
While I was in the garage, I remembered that I needed to tighten the cupboard door. We keep a screw driver hanging just inside the garage. 
I let go of Him to grab the screwdriver. 
On my way back into the kitchen my thoughts again went to Megan. Things had been going great this weekend.  How could they not be? We are all about family when we are together. 
It was evident that she missed us as much as we missed her. 
Just moments after I texted Christy that I wouldn’t meet her halfway on Sunday, and that we should stick to the court order, she calls Megan a couple of times.  Moments later, when I spoke with Megan it was just like Saturday morning all over again.  Her smile was gone. 
A little while later Megan had texted her mom to “make sure you be here no later than 6 pm.” 
Christy responded, “LOL! Okay.” I am sure she was proud of her handy work—her daughter couldn’t wait to get away from her loser father. 
I was upset. It was bothering me that Christy acts like this ordeal is funny and refuses to see that alienating me doesn’t make her a better mother.  It simply hurts Megan, in ways that she will be dealing with for years. 
I see Sophie still sitting on the floor as I walked back into the kitchen Sophie looked up at me and said, “He says everything’s going to be okay.” 
“Who does?” 
“God said everything’s going to be okay.”
“Thank you beautiful.” 
My girls save my life daily.
 

My wife, Tammy, drives 2 hours with me every weekend to pick up my (our) daughter Megan. Then on Saturday after gymnastics we drive the 2 hours back home.  
For 5 years plus she drove with me two hours there and then two hours back AND THEN we would drive two hours to bring her back to her mother’s house on Sunday and then 2 more hours to drive back home. ALWAYS insisting on coming along. It’s our family time together she would say. And that is so true; some of our most memorable moments have been on our long drives and road trips. 
Tammy has NEVER even hinted at not wanting to do the drive. On that rare occasion (once a year) that she cannot go because she is in charge of Math Field day, she is torn and apologetic for having to miss our drive. 
Even when she was months pregnant with Sophie, she would adjust the front passenger seat as far back as it would go, climb in, and say, “let’s go get our baby.” 
And then there was the time when Megan needed a ride to her gymnastics meet and I couldn’t make it. Tammy had been 8 months pregnant and she drove  2 hours to pick up Megan from her mother’s home and drove to Megan’s gymnastics meet in Hesperia a mere half hour away. After staying to watch the entire meet, Tammy drove Megan (and Megan’s friend Cori who came along for the ride) back to her mother’s house. She hugged our daughter goodbye and congratulated her on a wonderful meet. Then Tammy drove the 2 hours back home. 

There isn’t anything else I can say about my beautiful wife that this event doesn’t already say.
I am a lucky guy. My blessings are immense and innumerable. 

MmwhS.

I believe that most of you know that I am a proud dad. How could I not be?

But, I also happen to be a very proud husband. 

Today was, Sophie-Daddy day and I had some errands to run which included meeting with a couple of people at the School District office.

“Can I bring my daughter with me?” I asked over the phone, just to be sure.

“Of course, your girls are wonderful,” The lady on the other end of line had recognized that I was Tammy’s husband by my last name. She knew Tammy, Malia, Jaida, and had met Sophie when she was still in a carrier.

I pulled into the parking lot in front of the district office and Sophie yelled out from the back seat that she remembered this place.

“I got a treat here last time,” Sophie said excitedly. It was close to, if not over, a year ago. I am always amazed at the little things that she remembers. But of course a treat would have been big deal to a 3 year old.

Once inside, we sat waiting for my first meeting, when a lady came out and asked Sophie why she looked so familiar. I helped Sophie out and told the lady that we were there a few months ago. Then I mentioned who my wife was and she lit up, came in close to shake my hand, looking at me as if I was married to a celebrity. I half expected her to say, ‘So you’re Mr. Tammy?’

“Oh my gosh, tell your sisters, Malia and Jaida, I said hi,” she said to Sophie.  I was impressed that she knew their names.

“Your wife is wonderful,” she said to me without going into specifics or giving an example. She didn’t have to. I know she is. She asked me if she could give Sophie a treat. Sophie looked up at me with a huge smile stretched out over her face. The look on her face said, told ya’.

~ ~ ~

Our next meeting was in another part of the district office. The gentleman I was there to see was getting ready for an appointment. The lady who greeted me asked if there was anything that she could help me with. I explained the nature of my business and that my wife had said to talk with Mr. _____ in that office. When I mentioned Tammy Barrow she immediately recognized it as well.

“Oh hi, you’re Mr. Barrow. Your wife is amazing.” I never get tired of hearing this.

She went on and on about how incredible a job Tammy had been doing with running Math Field Day. She went on about how it is one event that she isn’t concerned about because Tammy runs it impeccably and it is always a great success.

She talked about how amazing Tammy is as a teacher. How she will be forever grateful for Tammy helping her daughter out with some math tutoring while she was in high school.

“She was so good with my daughter,” she shared, “Tammy is wonderful.”

At this point I remembered that I had met her before. Just outside the district office a couple of years ago. I remember her sharing this same story and at the time being equally proud that it was my wife she was talking about. 

She asked if Sophie was in pre-school. I explained that she had taken a day off for our special day.

“I bet she is as smart as her older sisters.”

I told her about Malia making Student Council President and how all of our girls blow us away daily with their intelligence, wit, compassion, and their sense of humor.

Then she said this, “I heard you are a wonderful dad.”

I appreciate hearing that, but lately it has been bitter-sweet to me.

“Tammy is lucky to have you.” She added.

I thanked her and shared how lucky our girls and I are to have Tammy. I gave her an update on how Tammy is working on her second Master’s, this one in administration and how she is even more actively involved in school sight counseling and district meetings.  

But, to me more important than anything else, is how she still makes the time to be a wonderful wife to me and an amazing mother to our girls.  

If she would have called me Mr. Tammy, I wouldn’t have minded.

So yeah, I am a very proud husband. How could I not be?

Malia, Jaida, and Sophie continue to light up our home. I am sitting in the living room and all I here are those three playing "pretend" school...Malia is usually the teacher-big surprise- Jaida plays the part of the disruptive, argumentative student to a T, and Sophie seems to believe she is in a real class. She tries hard to do well on whatever subject is being taught. 

At the time of this writing I am not quite sure what picture I am going to place on the left. Choosing a paragraph with a picture was just an option and it seemed like a good idea at the time. This is our first post and the idea is to have all our family members post whatever is on their minds from time to time. Best laid plans, right? Girls at at their dads. Megan is at her moms. Its just me and Sophie, and mom. But Tammy is taking two classes this summer (her second Masters)so she is buried in homework and assignments. I am here online trying to do the blogging and build a website, so its pretty much just Sophie. 
Actually, Tammy is taking a break and working on our cover to our Empower Me Young journal. 
We have decided to break our next journal down into 2 separate journals. Volumes I and II. We had way too much content and our journals for early elementary school children was reaching the epic size of Tolstoy's War and Peace or 3 Twilight novels. The second Young journal, Vol. II will be geared towards making friends and dealing with bullying- 
Funny how there is so much to write about but I am at a lost for words. Its like, where do I start. So let me start with this. I'll get back to you later.