The Terrible Catsafterme

I’m going to have to thank my friend George Willeman for this one. Or give credit. Or blame. However you see it. On Sunday evening, November 21st, I noticed that George had posted a video link on his Facebook page. This link took me to a site called Xtranormal, and it was an infantile attempt at animated humor – and I mean that in the nicest way possible. In fact, I liked it so much, I started to poke around and see how it easy it was that even I too could create these bursts of animated childishness. Read the rest of this entry »

No matter how difficult it is to see just how, my parents did in fact have a short life together before I was born. In fact, they spent two Christmases together before I was even conceived: one as a newly dating couple who had only been together for a couple of months, and one as a married couple who had yet to set the wheels in motion of creating me and forming our family. There is a home movie that exists along with a small batch of photos showing my parents during this holiday. Read the rest of this entry »

The Christmas of 1981 was another one of the really, really good ones. I was inching my way out of childhood and toward adolescence. But whether I wanted to admit it or not, I was still a kid susceptible to the magic and allure of Christmas. Still full of excitement and anticipation of the moment that the gun would signal the opening of the gifts. This was a very pleasant time in my life. As a fourth grader, I was kept very active by my Mom, participating in several extra-curricular activities. December was a busy month, as it yielded the fruits of these many clubs. Read the rest of this entry »

When my Mom was a kid, her extended family was not quite as close as our Murphy clan is today, but they were pretty tight-knit. My great grandmother Henrietta Murlin (nee Dwyer) lived in my Mom’s household for the last years of her life, so her children and grandchildren (that is, my Mom’s aunts and uncles and cousins) were paying frequent visits to their house. So although they didn’t do the mass family gatherings that my generations of cousins have been used to, they got to see each other quite a bit. Read the rest of this entry »