Through a somewhat unfortunate set of circumstances, Kaylee lost two sitters in a three-week span.  It had nothing to do with any behavioral issue, and I don’t feel either of them did anything wrong.  Well, not the first one, Saint-or-Sitter, at least; she gave me two weeks’ notice and a valid reason, as opposed to 18 hours’ notice and an incredibly pety excuse, but maybe that’s a post for another time.  Regardless, all is forgiven.

The whole situation turned out to be a blessing, though: Her Cuteness has started preschool.

As her father, and the man who has essentially been her sole unpaid care-giver for the last 14 months, I’m saddened.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled — utterly ecstatic — that she’s growing up.  I get to see the transformation every day, and I’m amazed by how she’s changed just in the last two months.  Of course, someone apparently keeps giving her Defiance Hormone Injections in her sleep.  Either that, or The Terrible Twos really are as maddening as people have led me to believe.

But she’s…growing up.  It’s a double-edged sword, because I’m excited about watching her learn and grow, but I’m also seeing my baby girl slip away, going through a transformation that will eventually culminate in her reaching adolescence and, for me, what I predict will be a rapid succession of at least 47 peptic ulcers.

And let me interject this: there is not enough caffeine in the world — especially not for someone with a tolerance to the stuff that would make an elephant addicted to heroin seem minor in comparison — to make up for an average of four to five hours of sleep per night.  Believe me, I’ve tried.  I’ve probably accounted for at least 30 percent of the gross domestic product of Colombia for the last year, if you exclude the drug trade.  And, with a resting heart rate of an already meager 48 thanks to six months of running nine to 15 miles per week, I might go into a coma if I stop drinking the stuff.

But, I digress.

Kaylee was excited to go to “school.”  She was a little apprehensive when we first got there, but by the time I was ready to head off to work, I almost had to pry her away from her new-found friends and toys long enough to get a hug and a kiss from her.  And, if they would have let her stay, she would have happily spent the night there after her first day.

I’d like to point out how proud I am of the fact that I haven’t held her back from any culinary experiences, in spite of my own picky food tastes (strange to hear that come from an accomplished cook, I know).  This is a girl who loves broccoli and lima beans.  So I wasn’t surprised to hear that she ate all her peas yesterday.  I was, however, shocked to find out that it caught her teachers off-guard.  It would seem to me that these people wouldn’t be shocked by any food preferences.  But, considering this is the south where collared greens and fried okra are considered delicacy instead of “lawn clippings” and “something that should never be put on a plate,” maybe I shouldn’t be all that surprised.

So, day one of preschool came and went.  She was excited to go again today, so that’s a win for me.  It’s affordable, everyone there is fantastic, and — most importantly — Kaylee is finally going to have a chance to broaden her horizons and make new friends.  Her social development should become a lot more rapid at this point.  I don’t know if that excites me, or if it scares me in ways spiders and rattlesnakes could only dream of.

I think it’s the latter.

I enjoy my life.  There’s not much I have to complain about, aside from a pending divorce.  But of the few things about my life that I could actually say suck — and it’s generally a relative concept, as in, “relative to winning a million dollars on the same day a Belgian supermodel falls in love with me, not having a garage is kinda crappy” — there’s one that stands out and truly pains me every day.  It’s the fact that I can’t save the world.  By God, I’ll try my best, but I’m just me.  And the only man who can do it hasn’t come back yet.

But, yes, not being able to fix what’s wrong truly burdens my heart.  I see so much war, crime, bigotry and just general hate in the world, and I want to tell these people that it is the meek, humble and compassionate who shall inherit the earth, not the dictators and warmongers.

But there is something I can help fix, and I’m going to do all in my power to do so.  And you can help.

You all know I’m a single father, and we’re hundreds of miles from our nearest family.  My life revolves around that little girl, and I spend most of my time worrying about her.  When she has the sniffles, my heart aches for her.  When she cries for her “Dedo,” I want to cry too.  All minor, passing afflictions, to be sure, but she’s not just someone who depends on me; she’s part of me.

It’s that build-up that brings me to Katie Fitch, a beautiful little three-year-old from Florence, South Carolina.

See, Katie has hepatoblastoma.  Don’t try to say it, or you might wind up with your tongue in a splint.  But, essentially, it’s a cancerous tumor of the liver.  Cancer.  In a three-year-old.

My next-door neighbor and close friend is a pediatric nurse who deals with cancer patients all the time.  I have no idea how she can see this stuff on a regular basis and be anything more than a basket case for her entire shift — I merely read a story about someone and almost broke down crying in part because of the innocent child being afflicted with such a horror, and also because I can’t do anything about it.

Katie’s family is taking donations; you can contribute directly from the Web site they’ve set up for her.  I ask anyone who can give to do so.  Help make a future for someone who doesn’t even really have a past yet.  I implore you to find some way to scrape up a donation, even if it’s only a few bucks you scraped together by foregoing a cup of coffee, a Big Mac or a pack of cigarettes.  And please, tell your friends and family.

None of us can save the world.  But if everyone tried to save a small slice of it, we wouldn’t just save it — we’d make it infinitely better.

You can read all about young Katie and make a donation at KatieFitch.com.

Do I really look that old?
We often develop close relationships with the people around us at our jobs.  Those relationships, though (in Information Technology, at least) are usually tightly based on alcohol consumption, and not so much on actual personal knowledge of one another.  On my birthday a week ago, at a small celebration in my honor held by my manager and open to my coworkers, a friend speculated on my age.

He guessed 35.

D’oh!

I decided to let him live, but that wasn’t a decision I came to lightly.  I think it was based largely on the fact that there were several witnesses (if you so much as say “cake” in an IT department, you better have experience running with the bulls in Pamplona).

And They Partied On…And On…
I vowed this year that I would make up for last year’s birthday — the only way my 27th could have sucked worse is if someone had kicked me in the cajones, repeatedly, the entire day.  So, with that in mind, the party kicked off on Monday, August 11.  A trip to the beach — the Outer Banks is my new Favorite Place On Earth™ — launched the festivities.  A week of U.S. Olympic triumph, presumably in my honor, then ensued.

We won’t go into all the details — no, there was no debauchery, but there was food, music, general fun to be had by all, and even a $10 prize for finishing third in a beer pong tournament at a local bar.  I finally let the party give up the ghost on Monday, August 18, sometime around 11:45 p.m.  And, I’ve got to say, I think it ended a little too soon.  I had a semi-crappy 19th birthday too, so I still have a little bit of karmic make-up to do.