10 years already...

I'd like to introduce you all to Kermy. My photographic skills don't do him justice.

My dad and I shared a love of The Muppets. Dad found a "make your own Kermit" in a magazine and when I was about 5, he set about making me Kermit, complete with half ping-pong balls for his eyes, and pipe cleaners for his fingers. Despite running his own business, supporting his wife, 3 kids and a handful of employees, I have a foggy distant memory of him on a Sunday evening, stationed at the dining room table, awkwardly navigating his way around my mum's sowing machine.

I've been thinking about him a lot his month, as March 2015 marks the 10th anniversary of him leaving us, very suddenly. !0 years already - bloody nora! I think about him a lot, anyway, because I constantly do and say things that remind myself of him. So I thought I'd share with you some of my favourite Pop quotes:

things Pop said
When I was a 24 year old single mum and getting grief in my corporate job for having to leave on time, yet again, he said:
"You tell them 'Tony Blair wants me in work and if I wasn't in work the tax on your salary would be going to support me sitting at home on single parent benefit, so what would you prefer, huh?'"
Parent/teacher meeting when my Art teacher complained to him how I spent all lesson talking to Shelly about drama, he said:
"What specifically do you want me to do about it, you're the one in the classroom when this happens, I'm not."
Whenever I rang to say I was stranded that the latest shitbox I was driving had broken down again, he'd say:
"I'm on my way"
When he was intensive care after having a heart-attack, he said:
"I heard this guy fighting for his life in the night. They were trying to bring him back, and I was lying in bed 
thinking 'come on mate, you can do it, hang in there mate' but they lost him."
A newspaper clipping found after he died, with a Spike Milligan suggested epitaph, saying:
"Bugger, and I'd just got the hang of it."
Me: Dad, I'm sending a card to your friends Val & Gordon, what's their surname?
Dad: It's Bennett
Card gets posted to Mr & Mrs Gordon Bennett. Their surname wasn't Bennett.
After walking home from school in winter, he'd say
"You've got a good colour on you. Good Irish cheeks there". 
Coming home from school after P.E as a 5 year old, he'd say
"Good rugby playing legs there. Solid forward prop I'd say." (Paranoid about skirts/legs-out thing ever since!)
"My grandma taught me how to thread a needle."
"Every child should grow up knowing how to fix a bicycle puncture."
"Stop that, or you'll get a thick ear."