The Champion of my heart: Baylee "Crazy Legs" Parks

     Let me introduce you to my 12 yr old Daughter, Her name is Baylee.

I call her Crazy Legs, because she was diagnosed with cancer Aug 27, 2008, and after having reversible nerve damage, caused by one of the Chemo treatments, and living in a wheelchair for most of a year, she was able to boot strap it back up to being able to run again, play like a beautiful girl like her should play, and ride her bike.

Baylee, is my hero. She is the champion of my heart. The reason I wake up every day and keep trying to live a better life, aside from my 2 boys, (which I will introduce to you later on). My heart is full tonight, and as I look out my 11 floor window, which faces Primary Children's Hospital, I have a heart full to the brim with gratitude for her life. M y dear, sweet Baylee Bug, has been to hell. By sweetie baby-girl, brought back heaven to us.

She was born Baylee Bassett Parks, in the early morning of July 29th. Shellie was in labor for just over 6 hours, and Baylee was already out into the world, before the doctor and nurses were even ready for her to be. The middle child of a 3 child family, Baylee was, and is treasured by her parents, but especially Shellie, as she was the only girl to come into our family.

Baylee, from the very beginning of her life, was a special child. Very bright and very beautiful, always smiling, rarely unhappy, she carries the same attitude she had as an infant into her upcoming adolescence. Just look at that little bird mouth! She is our song bird for sure. She always had this thing she did when she was young, and we fed her, to open her mouth just like a little bird. She has always made peculiar noises when she eats something that she really likes. Yumm sounds. She will eat a whole order of Mc Donald's fries that way, making ummm noises, as she chews, she's so cute in that way.

She's always been our little jungle child, just a "crazy baby". She used to say that too, "I'm a crazy baby" which used to keep her mother and me in stitches. At a very young age she was a lover of animals and all things small and delicate. She always seemed to have rocks, sand, and other minerals in her mouth, from time to time. She has always liked to collect rocks of all shapes, and sizes. She also, as a small child, was very into mud, and playdoh. She was a natural swimmer, and now she enjoys swimming every summer with her mother, and brother Alden, who is her best friend. She drank a bottle until she was about 3 as, I recall.

As Baylee grew, so did her beautiful, blond hair. So did her curiosity of the world and everything good in it. Baylee, no matter how unapproachable I had become, from whatever else it was I happened to be fixating on, at the time, was never afraid to draw near to me, hoping to always get my love, and attention. She has always been Daddy's girl, always trying to make me laugh, is one of her favorite pastimes. She constantly craves my attention, and although I feel most of the time, unworthy of a love, from such a special girl, nowadays, I cherish every moment, every phone call, every text message, and every instant that I am given, with her.

Very early, she has become an excellent artist. Give her something to write with, and something to draw on, and she will show you a child's imagination, and a world of beauty, unfold, on a plain white piece of paper. She finds magic in the smallest things. She shows us beauty every day that, without her pointing it out to us, would overlook it, unnoticed, through grown up eyes.

Baylee has always been able to make good friends in her life. With her mother's help, she knows what the definition of true friends really are, as well. Anyone who is considered a friend by Baylee, is truly a lucky, blessed person.

On my 40th Birthday, our entire world changed, as Baylee struggled with re-occurring health problems, was diagnosed with Medulloblastoma, a kind of brain cancer.
Baylee, and her mother, faced this head on. Baylee, through all of her treatments, never complained, never felt sorry for herself, never asked the questions that parents fear their children are going to ask them; "Mommy, Daddy, why is this happening to me?" Shellie spent countless, lonely hours at the hospital, right by her side, never sleeping, barely eating, and aching every second of every day for a sign of recovery, a manifestation of hope, some sort of buffer that would alleviate a moments pain, which Baylee experienced, intensely, every hour, of every day, of her radiation and chemo treatments. Baylee was so brave. When she saw that her gorgeous hair was coming out, she decided it would be best if mommy shaved her head, so that she didn't wake up every morning with tufts of tresses on her pillow, and in her fingers. Baylee likes to roll around a lot when she sleeps. She is a thrasher, sleeper.

Baylee had a pic line in her arm, which had to be treated, sanitized, and re-wrapped every day. She currently has a shunt, which drains the fluid from her brain, into her abdomen, underneath the skin on her scalp. She has had countless needles poked around in her, endless lumbar punctures, to test for new cancer cells in her spinal fluid, and in her entire ordeal, has stopped breathing at least twice. BayleeBaylee would not be here today, I am certain.

In October of 2009, The Make A Wish foundation granted Baylee's wish, and flew her and her entire family to Orlando, Florida. We stayed there for a week. It was amazing. Baylee got to be treated like a celebrity, was able to see Disney World, Universal Studios Orlando, and Sea World, not to mention the Give Kids The World village, which housed, fed, and funned 200+ families every day through their fabulous staff, most of whom were volunteering their time, and love, to kids like our precious Baylee on a weekly basis. It was a year ago, and it was an experience that brought all of the kids even closer together.

As you can see from the first photo I inset at the top, Baylee has grown up more, and has come a long way. She has grown into a beautiful princess. Her journey through hell, seems a distant nightmare compared to her life today. Although her mother and father are separated at this time, we each love her and the boys more every day, and our pride for their accomplishments, grows along with them. My situation, as of now, is a bittersweet thing. Being under the same roof as my children, would be something that would bring me to my knees with joy, but I also know that it may not be possible, and I must accept that as a reality. What I also know is this; Baylee, you are The Champion Of My Heart, and I thank God every day that your cancer is staying in remission. I know that there is a road ahead for us that is littered with "what ifs" and statistics, but you have the power, within yourself, to beat all of the odds, and show your true champions heart to the word, for a long, long, healthy, time.

Your Daddy loves you, my sweet angel. I'll go to bed tonight thinking of your smile, hearing your belly laugh, and dreaming of you playing in the land of kitties, who come looking for girls pure of heart, and full of love and wonder. Good Night crazy legs. Sweet dreams. I think you are the most beautiful girl I have the privilege of knowing.

Just Be A Bitch....(so you're saying there's a chance?)

I think from what I've gathered on the whole separation thing that Men handle things like this in several ways. I've talked to so many people about this, and it seems to me there are several ways to deal with the hole in the middle of your chest that incarnates as a result of such a great loss. I'd like to share some of these, to start...

These things are all related to men, and their desire not to feel the pain and anguish anymore.

1. Men will drown their pain in as much alcohol as they can get their hands on. Some, that I have seen, and heard of, will never come back from this decision, deciding instead to become alcoholics, making their situation worse.

2. Men may turn to drugs. Drugs that are the mind and soul numbing kind. They want to take the pain away. Once the drugs are no longer in their system, they want to get more so that their pain is gone again. It keeps going this way, until they are dead or in rehab.

3. Men will seek out, and find broken women, and then they will sleep with them out of vengeance. They figure their future ex-wives are doing the same thing. Those future ex-wives who were caught cheating to begin with, thus the separation, a man will justify this action, or series of actions even more so. Those who are simply trying to get over her, will find themselves in dire need of more, but will eventually get tired of it. They will just build up a hatred and lack of respect for all females.



4. Men will simply go out a lot. They will go and get the attention they are missing by collecting phone numbers they will never call, interact with females who really don't care about knowing his name, or what he is going through. Men will go pretend to have fun, be a fun person, be a wealthy person, and act like they generally don't give a damn, when inside all their are is desperate.

Sometimes, men will combine a few if not all four of these ways to handle their pain and anguish.

Me, you ask? Well, 1 and 2 were not an option for me. Been there, done that. I was involved in the music industry for years, and 1 and 2 never had good outcomes. 3, well 3 at first glance doesn't seem all that bad. But the damage that is done to your vitality and your spirit, knocks huge holes inside, which can, in my opinion, never fully be recovered in this lifetime without the atonement of Christ.

So, my dealing, in the beginning, came from a variation of number 4.

For a while, I was going to clubs, bars Wednesday thru Sunday. Mainly Thursday thru Saturday. I love to sing. I love Karaoke a lot. It's what I have used to build confidence again. To build that "I don't give a damn" attitude that all women, for some strange reason, seem to capture the fascination of most womenfolk. I'd go to....

Bar Named Sue on Thursdays,

     Cheers To You on Fridays,

                                                                                                                      
                                                          Piper Down on Sundays.

  

                                                                              

Leaving Saturdays open for cocktail parties, or dancing somewhere fun. Some guys call that "cougar hunting"

Anyhow, I was going on this way for a few months. Singing. Socializing. Pretending for a few hours that there was nothing wrong with me. (By the way guys, we don't fool anybody, especially the women. They can see right through this ruse, because your scent permeates the room, of Au De Desperate) I'd sing my four songs, gather my numbers, and names, and still go home alone with the hole in my chest.

After cutting this circus down to 2 nights, I began to simply sing, and people watch. I started observing how this whole shark tank full of men and women swim, and how they interact together, and if any of it was relevant to a meaningful, potentially single life. One night in particular, made me come up with this blog title: Just Be A Bitch.

I was with my good friend Lexi at Bar Named Sue. Lexi had never come to see me perform, and she really wanted to get out, as she had been putting all of her energy into cutting hair and making men and women beautiful, haha. I usually start out with something really fun, for my first song. Something like Backstreet Boys - I Want It That Way is usually good, because it's disarming to see some manly-man looking guy up there committing to a song like that all the way. This makes the average female think the man in question, has balls of steel, or is gay. Either way, they are intrigued.

I came back to sit across from Lexi, and 4 girls made their way to our table to tell me what a great job I did. We began to all talk, and be social. My first impression of club girls for the most part is never a good one. I guess sometimes, I kinda hate on women in my heart, because most women remind me, in some way, of my wife. I guess what I am saying is, most beautiful, gaspingly attractive women I see, evoke memories of my wife, haha. The difference with these 4 being, that they were just girls, "cubs" or "coug's in training" as they are more commonly referred to.

Well after about 3 minutes of shallow bantering with the 4, I soon turned my attention back to my beer, and my Lexi, who was entertaining herself by talking to the 4 as well. I then witnessed 2 boys (also known as tool sheds) entering the picture with these 4 cubs. They began in with something about what one of the girls was wearing, (always a great, original entrance to conversation, with the coug in training, especially if you are complimenting them on how fantastic their ass looks in their True Religions) then they went for the kill, going right into what funny guys they can be. Sexual innuendo's spilling forth off of their silver plated tongues like the muffin topped figures, spilling over the girls overpriced denim. After about 5 minutes of this, I could tell that at least 3 of the four girls, although they continued to laugh, and humor the 2 boys, were totally over it, and un-impressed, by the whole thing.



Just then, one of the girls, the one who was the most engaging of the 4, was approached by what seemed to be her Affliction Shirt wearing male friend. She turned her back to the other 2 tool rentals, looked in Affliction guys direction, and mouthed the words "save us" to him. It was, at this point, that I felt the urge to intervene, and train the young "cubs" about a practice at bars, clubs that people like my friends who are girls have excelled at....

I walked up to the group and said, "Would you mind, if I gave you the best advice you will ever get from a man, regarding being saved?" They were like, "sure!" I said, "Just be a bitch!"

Girls, just be a bitch. If there are tool shed dude's trying to talk their way into a steamy interlude, with imaginations of getting you into their sweet Mitsubishi Eclipse, and on the road to their totally awesome condo in the Ave's, and you have no interest in carrying on a conversation with said tools for the next 30 minutes to an hour; Just be a bitch. And I mean, BE A BITCH. Simply ignoring a tool belt boy wont do. You have to look them right in the face, right into their eyes, and you have to say, with all of the tenor you can muster, "GO AWAY, I'M NOT INTERESTED."

Seriously. When I said just be a bitch to the girls in question, they were concerned about the guys considering it a challenge, and trying even harder to get them into their canary yellow Toyota Celica's for a night of steaminess, and a great breakfast in the morning. The reason they were still unsettled by what they felt my definition of "being a bitch" meant was simple; they don't know how to do it yet.

You have to take the average male and hit them right between the eyes with a sledge hammer. Testosterone is a hell of a chemical. Guys have that, "So you are saying there is a chance?" mentality. It's a fact! How many times have you given your phone number, hesitantly or otherwise, only to start getting texts every day from this guy, sometimes 2 or 3 or 10 times a day, which you diligently ignore? They don't take the hint. They are surely thinking there must be some reason you are not replying, other than you feeling that the guy is a total contraption cluster, and that he will be smart enough to take a hint after a week of this. GUYS: Side note to this banter, a good rule of thumb: If they don't reply after 3 attempts, you should DELETE THE FRIGGING NUMBER, AND MOVE ON!!! Seriously dude's, c'mon, stop being pathetic.

So anyway, that's all I have to say about that, to the cougar, the coug's in training, or the simply beautiful women out there in all shapes and sizes alike.....please, for the love of everything holy. Save yourselves all misery and pain in the ass-ed-ness there is and Just Be A Bitch. It's quite liberating, you'll see!

The End!

What Women want....

Men I wish I had somebody like me to slap me in the face. Somebody who could have shaken some sense into me about life, and love. Sometimes I feel like Red, in Shawshank Redemption, at his last interview with the parole board before he was released, when he expresses his feelings about if he could go back to that young kid he was, when he committed murder. Here is some dialogue, from this interview...

"Not a day goes by I don't feel regret, and not because I'm in here or because you think I should. I look back on myself the way I was...stupid kid who did that terrible crime...wish I could talk sense to him. Tell him how things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone, this old man is all that's left, and I have to live with that."
(Shawshank Redemption)

When we first meet a woman we are attracted to, we become students of their every move. We, as men, become wrapped up in what we have in common with them, what they love, what they hate, what turns them on, what turns them off. We go down that checklist we have in our minds, about what we want to know about them, (Just like that page in our fathers Play Boy Magazine next to the picture of that Playmate of The Month, that we never paid attention to, growing up, because nobody really "reads" anything in that magazine when they are a pubescent). We study everything about them, looking for those chinks in the walls they have built up inside themselves emotionally, through years of mental abuse from the men in their lives. And when a woman says they will never fall in love again, with another person, watch out! Men, consider that the greatest conquest, and challenge of all!

Yes men, we get into that mind set of vanquishing those barriers, and ballasts, a woman has set up with the mortar of disgust, and disappointment around the chambers of their bruised, and battered heart. Some of us will do this by acting like we just don't care. We'll act like we could care less if they love us or not, and we do it well. Some of us can't help but be more sensitive about our approach to this. We strive to break their bulkhead by being sentient man. However we, as men, inch towards our conquest of their heart the end goal is the same; to become one with them, to get inside them, physically, and mentally.

Now, when this magical spell we cast bares it's fruit, and we have perforated those barriers, and penetrated deep into the soft tissue of a woman's crux, and there is that sweet surrender, we feel an elation, and a victory, of sorts. We, as men, can then begin to enjoy what it is that every woman is all about, the very essence of their life force, and what they were built, bred, and put on this planet for; to love and to nurture mankind, and there is no other feeling like it in the world. To be truly loved and cared for by a woman, is to be in The Elysian Fields.

So what happens after that? You get married maybe. You have kids. You go to work, and she goes to work. In this day and age, you both focus on your careers, but she also focuses on the finances, the kids, the house, the condition of the yard, keeping your home in order, etc. What do we do, the typical male? We go to work. We come home, and the last thing we want to do is "talk" to anybody. Maybe we have a den or a basement we steal away to, where we can log onto X-Box Live, and play HALO 3 with our on-line buddy in Australia we wanted to be friends with because of his superior Warthog driving skills. Maybe we Get on line right away and check our emails. Maybe we just go smoke a bowl, and take a nap, until our kid comes downstairs and tells us that dinner is ready.

Sad, but true.

Men, here is my advice to you about what women want. This is me grabbing you men, by the throat, by the shoulders, and giving you shaken baby syndrome. It is pretty simple, and even if you have a "tiny little brain" like I have, you should be able to wrap your gray matter around this concept. What a woman wants, is your time. She shows you this all of the time, but what men do, is we get into this mind set, that all women want to do is control us, and take things away from us, like our time, like our sovereignty, and our love for World of Warcraft, or playing Magic with our nerdy D&D chums, or our dreams of being a professional golfer, or pool player. They are the ones who are preventing us from winning the World Series of Poker, right? Don't be a fool!

When she comes to you and stands there, with her arms folded, don't treat her like a vulture that is circling its prey, she wants something; acknowledge her. She wants some of your time. She remembers how much you claimed to be into her in the beginning. She surrendered to the idea, that she was the only one you cared about, thought about, dreamed about, and hungered for in the beginning of your pursuit to subjugate her inner being, remember? She does. You branded her resolve to yield. Greet her with a smile, with kindness. Look into her eyes, with interest, not like she just farted out loud in the middle of your business meeting. Be the loving man you tricked her into believing you really were, when you were trying so desperately to enter her soma.

When that goddess among women, materializes into your space, Stop what you are doing. Turn off your computer. Log off of the X-Box. Put down your model airplane. Kick your friends out of the house. Turn your phone off. Put your clubs down. Quit putting with your new putter. Stop blogging. Log off EverQuest. Turn off the Tevo'd episode of Grey's Anatomy. Quit smoking pot. Pour out the bottle of scotch. Keep the beer in the fridge, unless you offer her one, and give her the time she is asking you for, so desperately. And sometimes, make love to her like a cop, not a lawyer.

Women don't like to ask. You, as men, should already know. And although that is an entirely different subject altogether, the whole "mind reading" thing, it is still up to us to figure these things out, just like we tried to do, when they, that unstoppable force, met us, an immovable object, and we both collided.
Women don't like to feel desperate. They don't like to feel like they have done something wrong. After all, isn't that what their mother's job was when they were being domesticated? Our purpose, as men, should be to be impeccable with our word, never take anything personally, refrain from assuming, and doing the best we can every day to pay attention to the signs she gives us, in how she wants to feel loved, and appreciated by the man she raised the white flag to, all of those years ago.

I may be a total sap to you right now. You may think this is the most ridiculous thing you have ever perused through in your life, this pathetic bantering of a heartbroken middle aged man. I really don't give a damn. I'm just saying, you would be foolish not to at least learn from a fool. You may think that passing up on a few of these opportunities, your woman is opening up to you, and leave it alone once in a while. Think of it like this. That failure to act may be only as thin as say, a poker chip. Now every time you fail to meet your partners basic needs of time, and attention, is another chip stacked on top of the other. Times that by 20 years in a relationship; how tall can your stack of chips be, before they fall over, and you yell "Jenga!" Picking up the pieces sucks.

My "tiny little brain" hurts, and so does my heart. Men, read, remember, and honor your partners. Add years to your life.