She's Thirteen Now.

Such a strange animal, indeed.

Then again, my wife says she's just like me, so does that make me a deviant curio as well?

Um, apparently yes, it does.

The thing is, being compared to a thirteen-year-old girl is a little strange when you happen to reside in the meat suit of a fifty-year-old dude. I'd like to think that any trace elements of testosterone still floundering through my varicose veins would nonetheless stand in profound contrast to the murky estrogen bloom staging in her pituitary region.

But, you know, I've been wrong before.

She turned thirteen today. Well, technically, she'll reach that age tonight around 11:46, the moment her slimy little body wriggled free and lay center stage in the doctor's nurturing palms, the stark klieg lights casting down upon my beautiful new burden.

A daughter; a second one, in fact. Holy shit.

When a man sees his baby girl for the first time, he doesn't think of all that stuff he's heard for the past nine months:

"Oh, boys are so much easier, especially as teenagers."

"Better get a membership to a rifle range. Then you'll be ready when the boys come a callin'. Heh, heh!"

"I hope she's not like I was. I had such low self esteem and, oh, did I make some bad choices."

Nope , he doesn't think of any of it—because he melts.

Every girl he's ever known...his girlfriends, his mom, his sisters and aunts and grandma...combine into a single conscious entity, delivering a singular message:

Don't screw this up, mister.

Throughout this thirteen-year odyssey, has she pissed me off? Hell, yes. I would say she's incited emotions which had previously been exclusively reserved for either Rush Limbaugh or historically inept football referees.

Have I occasionally yearned for at least one day where I wasn't challenged on even the most mundane of statements?

Absofreakinglutely. But I'm in deep, and I'll be treading water in this pool for the rest of my life.

She celebrated last night with a sleepover. Twelve girls, all of the early teenage persuasion, gathered in our smallish house for a nineteen-hour festival of giggly giddiness. Once the agreed-upon time arrived, they poured in quickly, attacking the pillow-sized bag of candy which Webster's Teen Dictionary apparently classifies as appetizers.

Oh, yeah, and my wife wasn't around. She and our older daughter had other business to address, so I stood alone among the savages, sweatily rotating one Costco pizza after another onto the smorgasbord as the prepubescent amoeba mainlined Dr. Pepper and spoke in tones barely below dog whistle pitch.

And while a nice beer or six may have smoothed out the evening's jagged edge, I needed to maintain a Lindsay Lohan defying sobriety, since I alone had to shuttle the dirty dozen to the bowling alley for the night's main event.

My bride joined the fracas soon after, tag teaming with me on cake and ice cream duty.

Incidentally, we purchased one of those foot-tall Costco chocolate cakes—you know what I'm talking about? It's got about twelve layers, any one of which could cause even Tim Tebow's virgin bloodstream to throw a lard-laced heart clot.

After bowling and sugar, we returned to our bungalow with the mob, my wife and I finally leaving them to their own devices. Dancing, according to our birthday princess, was next on the agenda, so I plugged someone's iPod into our family room stereo and retreated with bids of goodnight and sleep tight and don't be too loud or I'll be pissed as shite.

Two ear plugs and eight hours later, I arose to survey the damage. One girl lay asleep on a recliner, while the remainder formed an interlocking tangle of toxicity, occupying every inch of the floor that wasn't already covered in candy wrappers and dusty Dorito mole hills.

I asked my daughter if they'd left the heat on all night. They hadn't; all through this sleepless night, their bodies had generated every kilowatt of the room's oppressive bouquet.

Naturally, I thought. She's thirteen now.

Reflections of a shallow pond turns one!

He's a big boy now.

Tomorrow, my baby turns one. Like any other one-year-old's birthday, it's time to hear those phrases like "Why is his head so big? Is that normal?" and "He's got to get severely dehydrated from all of that drooling. Is it normal stick his foot in his mouth so much?"

Reflections of a shallow pond began innocently enough, on July 13, 2009, after my younger daughter called me at work, imploring me to talk to my wife about the embarrassing outfit in which she was about to leave the house. 162 posts later, this journal has become a form of therapy, a forum where I can examine the inner and outer workings of life, culture and fatherhood.

I don't want to beat anyone too severely with the Cane of Boredom, so here are just a few statistics. Since I attach labels to every post, the overwhelming tag leader is kids (92), with family (26) and dad (9) trailing in the distance. The most read posts are this one, this one, this one and this one.

I think the coolest aspect to writing this ongoing manifesto is the feedback from friends, family and total strangers. It's added a dimension to my middle-aged existence which was completely off my radar. Modern social networking is a powerful instrument.

Almost every time I post something, I think, "Okay, that's it. I've covered everything." And then, invariably, I'll be standing in the shower, lathering my filthy chest, and another topic will pop into my brain, like a unicorn zit on class picture day.

So thanks to everyone for taking the time to read and comment. And maybe by the time this baby turns two, he won't want to stick his face in the Safeway Sponge Bob cake while bouncing in his high chair.

Another installment of the Minivan Chronicles

Nothing beats a good birthday party—especially when you're nine years old.

This morning I drove my daughter and two of her friends out to Bellevue, Washington, an approximately  45-minute drive from West Seattle, to a place called "Sky High Sports." Whoever cooked up the idea behind this business is brilliant. It's a huge, converted warehouse, filled with different trampoline activities, like dodgeball and foam-rubber-pit-leaping (which appeared to be a cousin of the oh-so-sanitary IKEA ball pit.). They also provide pizza and the trimmings for birthday parties.

The unexpected bonus, at least from my perspective, of this morning's trek, was the opportunity to listen to three fourth-grade-age girls talk and play in the back of our (also oh-so-sanitary) Kia van. As they discussed the party ahead, the topic turned to trampolines.

Katie chimed in."So my cousin, Annie... she's eight. She can do a backflip. On a trampoline. My cousin, Justin...he's ten. He can do a backflip. On a trampoline. My cousin Emily...she's thirteen. She can do a backflip. On a trampoline."
"Nuh-uh," said one of the other two.
"Yeah-huh," fired back Katie.

Time for the next topic. It's interesting to me how kids bounce back and forth between actual and virtual activities.
"Do you guys have a Wii?" inquired Lauryn.
"I do," said someone.
"I'm really good at ski jumping and tennis and boxing," Lauryn offered. "Really good."
I wanted to say, "Lauryn, let's rephrase that. You're really good at manipulating the Wii remote," but I abstained from being a grumpy naysayer.

Actually, the Wii really is an amazing device. Everything is so pseudo-realistic. The boxers can do everything shy of biting each other's ears off, and the tennis players come just short of screaming and threatening the line judge's life. And I kind of wish that the ski jumper would possess the potential to fall off the side of the ramp and stumble down the hill like the "agony of defeat" guy from the intro to ABC's Wide World of Sports.

The three girls then began looking outward and greeting everything they spotted along the road: "Hi, sign. Hi, dirty truck. Hi, lines on the freeway." I had to halt that activity after about thirty seconds. The old man in me tries to be patient, but has a short fuse when is comes to squeaky, little female voices shouting over each other.

We arrived at the facility and I dropped the girls off inside. As I drove back alone, I reflected upon how refreshing it is to listen to nine-year-olds laughing, talking and making up games and tall tales. I'm usually ferrying my teenaged daughter and her cronies back and forth, and however enjoyable their repartee may be, it's usually confined to talk of other kids, and it's not always warm and fuzzy. Teenagers tend to forget that their chauffeur actually is a living, breathing carbon-based organism, equipped with a listening apparatus and the capacity for higher thought and analysis.

For whatever reason, the nine-year-olds are aware of these truths. What a difference five years makes.