My Father

I was in a crowded room weeding through people looking for my Prince Charming I was to meet. Before I passed a man in a dark suit, about 5'10" w/a build on the medium/slim side, I noticed he had put his hands behind his back for me to grab them. When I did he turned around to face me and to my surprise it was MY DAD!!!!:-) Oh my god I was so happy to see him that I'd forgotten about Prince Charming. I grabbed my father and hugged him only to feel the wool fabric of his suit under my chin and his warm cheek on my cheek. I cried and cried and just held him tight. Before I could speak he whispered into my ear that what he and my mother had was something very special and ETERNAL. I asked, "Dad, what are you doing?, Where are you now?" He didn't answer me but rather held me tight w/both arms and whispered in my ear Sretan Rodjendan Sine Moj (Happy Birthday). Then I woke up. It was right before dawn.

Tomorrow will be 8 yrs to the day that my dad left us. Not a day goes by that I don't think about him. Of course my regrets are that I didn't hug him more than I did and give him kisses each time I passed him:-) I was very close w/my father and would visit him and my mother every weekend. As soon as my son was able to spend the night at baba and deda's house, he did. I'd drop him off on Friday and pick him up on Sunday, which is also when I would visit w/my folks. We spoke on the phone a few times a day.

My father died suddenly November 5, 2002. By the time I arrived to the hospital the ambulance had whisked him away. When I called they told me to come in. I was four months pregnant. I drove to the hospital to be greeted by some admin who wanted me to fill out a stack of forms and have a seat. Really bitch? You must be joking. I ignored the forms she was handing me and demanded I see my father. The doctor called me into a private room and told me that my dad did not make it. I was in a complete state of shock and will never forget the rainy day w/leaves half off the old trees that line Sunnyside Street.

I took care of all of the arrangements. I was still in a state of shock. Even after the service I was in a state of shock. And 8 years later I still can't believe it. I had a few 'dreams' a couple of weeks after my dad died. They were always me visiting some huge expansive grassy knoll someplace near an ocean. My father was always there waiting for me. I'd always hug him and cry and he would just smile and hold me. The 5th dream I had also took place on the grassy knoll but this time he told me he had to go. I asked him where, why???? Then he gave me a stern look and said, 'you of all people know I can't answer that.' I have not dreamed of him since until this morning. This morning when he hugged me, gave me the message for my mom and wished me a happy birthday.

Daddy my little daddy, I know you are always around. My dad's death has made me believe in something but I've stopped trying to figure out what it is. Don't be afraid to show love, because true LOVE is ETERNAL:-) xoxoxox D

R E A D I N G : - )

Bookstores, scholastic book club, libraries, etc...and I'm still unhappy w/my children's reading material. Harry Potter even bores me and there are only so many things you can do with boogers. Yes my children constantly have books in hands however "I" have learned so much about sharks and whales. I'm totally bored with Junie B and her silly antics and I think my 7 year old daughter is also. The Grossology 'collection' is well, gross. And we all know the powers of Batman, Spiderman, The Hulk as well as Barbie and the Twelve Dancing Princesses.

So off to the the Unabridged bookstore we go just to weave between isles of nude art books placed very close to the children's section (hmmm?), before we exit with Diary of a Wimpy Kid. BTW, we went to that particular bookstore because it is directly across the street from their school. Today I had a ...hmmm...what should I call it? An elightening moment, which might come across as somewhat silly: I thought, why don't I go through my personal library and see what might be in there that might intrigue, inspire and not to mention motivate us to read more and spend more time together. BOY!!! was I glad I thought of that dusty bookcase. As I pushed aside The Spiral Dance, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, Nitzsche, Derrida, Shakespeare and the rest of the heavies, I found the most wonderful books..

The hunt for the 'right' books triggered a memory of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which I then found online. I think that is the book we will begin tonight emmulating a night in the old Hollywood movies when there was no television and everyone sat around a room taking turns reading a story. That will become our new ritual. Viewing myelf as a somewhat progressive individual and parent, I can imagine someone thinking, 'oh, poor kids.' LOL Of course there is always that possibility but in this case I'll choose to believe that the positive will outweigh any negative, which I can't imagine existing at all.

Let me tell you what I 'found' right behind me: Short Story Masterpieces from Faulkner, Elizabeth Parson, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway just to name a few. The Tao Of Pooh will be an amazing book to read together. Stephen King's Pet Sematary (perfect since Halloween is around the corner). Emmanuel's Book and my ALL TIME FAVORITE Autobiography of a Yogi by Parmahansa Yogananda:-) I'm going to take some time today to refresh my memory on the genre here in order to make sure the content is suitable. However, whatever these classics contain must be better than iCarly or Spongebob OR Big Time Rush...ugh:-)

Last night we tried our first night of literature and started with Greek Mythology. Can anyone say B O R I N G?:-) I wanted nothing to do with it and neither did they; I acted interested but they're no dummies. So tonight will be fun and I look forward to it. We will light the scented candles, put pillows on the office floor and see what happens.

Please don't misunderstand, my children always have the option to read their fun kid books on dinosaurs, etc... I just thought it might not only be fun but also a good idea to expose them to what great books are out there that they are certainly missing in school. Maybe they will get something special out of it. I know I will; the two of them close to me sharing 'quality' time together:-)

Here is an excerpt of tonight's read:


I can see by my watch, without taking my hand from the left grip of the
cycle, that it is eight-thirty in the morning. The wind, even at sixty miles
an hour, is warm and humid. When it's this hot and muggy at eightthirty,
I'm wondering what it's going to be like in the afternoon.

In the wind are pungent odors from the marshes by the road. We are in an area of the Central Plains filled with thousands of duck hunting sloughs,
heading northwest from Minneapolis toward the Dakotas. This highway is
an old concrete two-laner that hasn't had much traffic since a four-laner

went in parallel to it several years ago. When we pass a marsh the air
suddenly becomes cooler. Then, when we are past, it suddenly warms up again.

I'm happy to be riding back into this country. It is a kind of nowhere,
famous for nothing at all and has an appeal because of just that. Tensions
disappear along old roads like this. We bump along the beat-up concrete
between the cattails and stretches of meadow and then more cattails and
marsh grass. Here and there is a stretch of open water and if you look
closely you can see wild ducks at the edge of the cattails. And turtles. --
There's a red-winged blackbird.

I whack Chris's knee and point to it.

``What!'' he hollers.

``Blackbird!''

He says something I don't hear.``What?'' I holler back.

He grabs the back of my helmet and hollers up, ``I've seen lots of those,
Dad!''

``Oh!'' I holler back. Then I nod. At age eleven you don't get very impressed
with red-winged blackbirds.

(Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Rober M. Pirsig)

The Beginning:-)

Hello and thanks for reading my FIRST BLOG ENTRY lol:-) First and foremost excuse my often used smileys :-) at the end of [many] sentences. It seems that my sincere honesty, which most always comes from a pleasant disposition, has been misconstrued during most of my existence. I add the smileys so the reader will know I'm not ranting or raving. Once you've read one rant, you'll know:-)

I've started this blog for many reasons. The first reason is that the title of the the blog is actually what the title of my book will be (once it gets published...hopefully in my lifetime). I have a somewhat diverse background which you can read about on my Facebook (where else) info page www.facebook.com/dankababy which I will expand here. Of course we all hope our blogs will be discovered in a similar fashion the way Julie's did in the movie Julie and Julia but if it does not, it still might make a difference someplace somehow.

"I was born a poor black child." LOL, just kidding...that is a line from the 1979 movie The Jerk which seems to be timeless (and maybe not so PC today even though, I think, the entire Politically Correct movement is a bit of a farce). Seriously though, I was born in the former Yugoslavia which during Tito was a form of Utopia for it's residents. Yes, yes, I'm sure some militant fool will read this and disagree but he/she can start his/her own blog. Being an only child and having two loving parents, I had the opportunity to live in two countries (in essence) while growing up. I went to school here in the States and spent my summers in Europe. I was also taught Serbian by my father after school so I am fluent in both languages. Through the years many things have happened where friends and acquaintances have told me I should most definitely document my life. I'd like to think that my book is a 21st century version of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which left a great impact on me as did Ann Rice's Interview w/the Vampire and Dostoyevsky's The Possessed. I was baptised by a priest who later tried to make a political statement and was arrested when trying to hijack a plane and crash it into the Communist Central Committee Building in Belgrade (this was back in 1978 waaaay before 911). Later in college I became friends with his son, George, also an only child, who was an amazing person. I met him while his father was in prison, we became great friends and that's when I REALLY started getting into philosophy (Philo=love Sophia=wisdom). George and Sonja were two of my best friends. At 23 Sonya died of walking pneumonia. A year later, George died in a car crash. That is when my search began. I started reading anything and everything I could on philosophy, religion, metaphysics, politics, etc... Please don't misunderstand me here; I'm just a regular person who is proactive. My teachers and friends told me I should get a law degree but try to make it as an actress as well. Yes, I've always had a level head on my shoulders but am a creative soul as well.

The death of my two friends and my reading compelled me to search out people from all walks of life and backgrounds. For some strange reason, everything that has happened has made me not quite fit into the norm and anyone who knows me will vouch for that. I always dated artists, musicians and my favorite, bad boys especially the Serbian and Russian kind. No wonder I'm a single mom lol. In this blog I hope to touch on things that have impacted me -seriously whether the crazy party nights on the isles of Greece, my travels alone through Europe at all hours of the night and day on planes, trains and automobiles (hitchhiking) or the sudden death of my father, the birth of my second child 6 months after that, the birth of my first child, divorce, pain, laughter, anger, sex, drugs, rock 'n roll, illness, suffering through a war and watching my loved ones die or disappear, etc... And all of this w/some philosophy spun through almost every word especially the notion of Nietzsche's Ubermensch who is constantly trying to overcome him/herself and not anyone else. Actually, I think it was Plato (Socrates) who actually coined that thought but Nietzsche seemed to make it popular.

I was raised Eastern Christian Orthodox (NO not Greek or Russian Orthodox but SERBIAN orthodox, which is the same thing just a different language). I went to church every Sunday with my aunt Boja who brought us to the states after she was released from Auschwitz Concentration Camp during/after WWII. She's the one who introduced us to the notorious priest lol. But all of my reading and research has made me more of a spiritual person and all encompassing regarding religion until it becomes obvious that it's political propoganda. In that respect, I like to consider myself more of a Buddhist than anything else. And yes, I too believe that life is suffering however there are so many great moments in life that, being an optimist, way outweigh the negative. Maybe the Yin and Yang truly exist and maybe that is the way the universe works however all "I" know is that the balance is definitely there. That being written, positive things better start coming my way soon because it would appear they are long overdue-that was supposed to be funny:-) We live in a society where things seem to be run by greed and monetary gain, so that's what I was referring to when I wrote that sentence. I'm thankful for my healthy, happy and loving children as well as my mother and my uncle. I have a few good friends for whom I'm thankful as well but that's about as far as it goes. OH, and let's not forget my pet, the first dog I've ever had, VEGAS who is 13.5 yrs old and going to the vet today to have some strange alien growth checked out. Keep your fingers crossed; I'm so freaked out! I love my little buddy so much. My X husband used to call him 1st Runner Up because Vegas follows me around EVERYWHERE LOL!!!! Hey, I guess that means I was the winner of the beauty contest lol. Oh well....:-)

I'll end this first entry here because I have to get my hair done, get to the vet and then out to celebrate a friend's birthday. Can you believe she wants to go out to dinner in BERWYN?!?! She teases me and asks me if I go through withdrawals when leaving the city limits:-) But seriously, why would we eat in Berwyn of all places? And no, she doesn't live in Berwyn:-) K, gotta run. Wish my doggie Vegas luck that it's only a skin tag and not something cancerous. Love to all esp my mom, (dad) and my kiddies. Kiss:-)