Sum Of All Fears, Tomboy Edition

It was 13 years ago yesterday that my comeuppance began.

I have always been a very strong-willed, downright stubborn person. Once I settled on a position, any position, then blasting me out of it makes Iwo Jima look like a Luis Palau convention.

I was that way even when I was a little kid. And I remember my mother, bless her heart, yelling at me in frustration when I was eight years old, "Just you wait! Someday, I hope you get a kid just like yourself".

After two days of brutally hard labor, ending in a forceps delivery that foreshadowed years of early-morning get-ready-for-school ordeals, my daughter "Bun" was born, proving my mother right.

And it was right about then that I - the guy that my graduating class voted "least likely to be allowed to have children", began to really understand what happiness really was.

My daughter is the proverbial immovable object, stubborn as the cast of Braveheart, caught right at the age where arrogant punky disaffection collides with PUPPIES PUPPIES PUPPIES, irritated with childhood but clinging to it still.

Which means that room isn't getting any cleaner anytime soon.

Happy birthday (yesterday), D!