Today our lovable little Lucy becomes a teenager. She's been looking forward to this milestone with great anticipation, though if you ask me, this sassy thing has been acting like a teen since the day she climbed out of her crib.

I often tell her, "My life would be a gazillion times less interesting without you in it," and that's a fact. She is smart, funny, talented, beautiful and tough. She fills our days with sunshine and, as you might suspect, a fair bit of drama. Sweetheart, we adore you more than you could ever imagine.​

How do you measure the love and influence and impact of a great mom?

You can go back decades and try to count the times she fed you and clothed you and got you to the bus stop with seconds to spare, or simply withstood your ear-splitting music, or talked you off the ledge when a girlfriend called it quits.

You can think of how many years have intervened now and how she's still at it, mothering like a pro, shining a spotlight on the future and giving a heave-ho to all the nonsense that holds us back.
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I guess you measure a mom in smiles. And cozy feelings in your heart. And the way she insists on you and your own family always being happy and well.
Happy Mother's Day to my very special mom. Love you and talk to you soon.

Today I was lucky enough to cross paths with the inimitable Phyllis Dunning. As my English teacher at R.J. Reynolds High School, Mrs. Dunning singlehandedly imparted to my teenaged brain a deep appreciation of all things literary and poetic, a condition that continues to shape my work and personal pursuits and quite frankly my entire outlook. Not an exaggeration. So wonderful to see you, Mrs. Dunning, and to have the opportunity to thank you for a lifetime of inspiration!

The train rumbles through the industrial zones, backyards and desolate straightaways of middle Florida. First it's all warehouses, boxy and boring and sad. Then it's iffy neighborhoods and swampy forests dripping with Spanish moss and flickering with strange shadows.

The guy seated next to me is fully reclined and wearing slippers. We talk about where we're from, where we're headed. "Why you going to Lakeland, you have family there?" he asks me. Nope, just riding down for the day. "All good," he says, bleary-eyed and telling me he's been on this train, the Amtrak Silver Star, since before 3 a.m. when he boarded in Orangeburg, S.C.

We arrive in Lakeland around lunchtime, he goes his way, I go mine. Later, my return train is running almost two hours behind, but what the heck, I'm taking a vacation day and I just don't care. Eventually I'm rolling again, homeward bound, baby. A slightly peeved-sounding conductor makes an announcement: "Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, please no paper towels in the toilets. If you put paper towels in the toilet, there will be no toilet. And then you will have to hold it in till your destination."

I'm feeling a little cramped in my assigned seat in coach so mosey back to the business-class car, just for a look see, and remarkably there are available seats everywhere! No one's going to mind if I plop into one of these big, comfy spots with this nice window all to myself. Ahhhhh.

​Not so fast, here comes a serious-faced Amtrak attendant. "Excuse me sir, what's your destination?" Orlando, I answer. "Only 20 minutes away," he says, and moves on. 

We Floridians are a little unnerved by this storm. Actually a lot unnerved.

"It's all starting to sink in now," I just heard a co-worker say. "Earlier I was like, we've been through this before, but now I'm worried."

Another colleague put a festive spin on it: "Just hope and pray and drink till it's over."

If you obsessively watch the forecast and ponder the possibilities of what this hurricane could do, even inland in Orlando, it's hard not to freak.

"Come on, man, this isn't the zombie apocalypse," reasoned another guy down the hall.

True. I guess. I don't really know what a zombie apocalypse is.

My son just wants this to end well, like we all do.

"We're going to be OK, right?"
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Yep. That's the plan.

"You're not going to love all the cursing." This is a warning from my teenage son. I've agreed to spend part of our road trip to Fort Myers familiarizing myself with his music. Rap, that is. My car speakers are begging for mercy. "Sorry the bass is going crazy," says the boy. We plow through an hour of his tunes and switch to mine. Now The Who are blaring, all power chords and frenetic drums and top-of-the-lungs screaming. "It's fine," he concedes, with zero conviction. He perks up when a Cure song starts, but not much. We return to his playlist, me sneaking the volume down. I tolerate it. He goes into the zone. "If I had to choose between one million dollars or music, I would choose music, definitely." We're worlds apart but oh so much alike.

The smooth tension of the wheels screaming down the pavement. The fleeting moments of acceleration and fluidity. The contours of the surface rippling through your body. Ever since I was old enough to stand on a skateboard, this has been one of my go-to pursuits of happiness. It's true, I'm a tad old for this now. But just look at this road directly in front of my house, the perfect slope for #longboarding. How lucky am I?

Scaring the neighbors with the evil-as-hell Astoria fuzz pedal from Stomp Under Foot.