Need to do pretty much anything? Talk to DP.

Madeline and Dave at Valley Forge earlier this month. For some reason I find this picture especially awesome.

I've long told Dave that he should be a life consultant. He knows a lot and is a whiz at researching anything that he doesn't. Plus he has the Excel skills to whip up an analysis of any information he finds. Add to that a listening ear, and he's gold.

Seriously, I can think of times when DP was a go-to source for friends or family who wanted to buy a car, decide what to major in, get maternity coverage, pick a spouse, find a grad school, settle custody issues, find a place to live, or even just choose what to eat for a late-night snack. And that's just a start.

So I shouldn't have been surprised by what happened this morning when I showed him Violet's Christmas stocking, which I was embroidering, and proudly told him that I learned how to do a French knot to dot the "i" in her name. I didn't expect him to be particularly impressed, but I wanted to show off my new skill anyway.

"A French knot?" he asked. "Is that the one where you wrap the thread around the needle a couple of times and then push it back down through the fabric next to where it started?"

Uh, yeah. He learned it in seventh-grade home ec.

Guess I should have consulted DP before I started googling.