Eldest Graduates From College

Today, Eldest graduates from college. Like all major life events, this gives me pause to remember. I remember the morning my wife’s water broke. It was July 1st and she wasn’t due until August 4^th. It was four weeks before the due date and we were both concerned.

It shouldn’t have surprised me that my wife went into labor early. She is early to everything, she comes from a long line of women who are early to everything.

I called the doctor’s office, which was closed, and was given the number for the on-call answering service. I called the number and the man on the other side asked his scripted questions. “What is her due date? How far apart are her contractions?” and so on.

When I told him her contractions were many minutes apart, he asked if this was our first child. It was. He told me to call back when the contractions were two minutes apart.

I wanted to reach through the phone, grab him by the neck, and shake him, but I did not.

Instead, I took a deep breath and said, “Let me start again; my wife is due August 4^th.” And then I stopped. There was a long silence on the line and suddenly the faceless voice on the line said, “Ooohhh. She is four weeks early!” I could almost hear the panic in his voice as he told me he would page the on call doctor immediately, and if I didn’t hear from the doctor in twenty minutes, I should call back.

Eldest was born the next day. She was healthy and happy. At least I think she was happy. She didn’t say much those first few weeks and months, so I cannot be absolutely sure. In fact, she didn’t say much the first few years. Beloved and I would often have to encourage her to use her words, which she adamantly refused to do.

For most of her time in grade school, middle school, and high school, Eldest wanted to be an engineer. She took all the math and science classes she could. She took classes on electricity and computer aided drawing. And we still had to remind her to use her words.

Today, three years after graduating from high school, Eldest graduates from college. Like her entrance into the world, and in the tradition of her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, who all believe that being on time is late, she is graduating early.

Today, Eldest graduates with a degree, not in math or science, but English. Apparently, all those years of admonishing her to use her words stuck with her and now she writes—and wow, does she write! (Check her blog out at kaleigh.distaffen.com)

So, Eldest, congratulations on finishing your baccalaureate degree. I am in awe of your quiet strength, your tender wit, and your firmly caring heart. I am proud of you and can’t wait to see what this new chapter in your life brings.

Spring is Here; That Means One Thing

It is spring and that means facing one stark reality; I have put on weight over the winter. Actually, I have put on weight over the past 20 winters. Well, to be totally honest, I have put on weight over the past 20 winters, springs, summers, and falls.

Over those years, I have lost hundreds of pounds as well; unfortunately, it was the same 5 pounds, over and over again.

This spring, I have determined to lose weight. I am going to do this by eating healthy and getting more exercise.  From what my Facebook time-line tells me, this is the wisest way to lose weight, and I figure if it is on Facebook, it has to be true.

So, this afternoon, at lunch time, I started on my journey of healthy eating. I cast about the kitchen, considering all my options for a healthy diet. My gaze fell upon a box of raisins. Eureka! I shouted. I felt comfortable shouting that, because I was home alone.

Eureka! A raisin is a healthy food and one that should help me lose weight. After all, a raisin is simply a grape that has lost a lot of weight. I opened the container of raisins, took one out, and put it in a bowl. I walked to the dining room with my healthy lunch and sat down.

I stared at the lonely raisin in the large empty bowl and thought. I thought, “This is not a well-balanced diet. It is simply a lonely raisin in a rather large bowl. I must eat a balanced diet, for that is what it says to do on Facebook.”

I walked back to the kitchen and searched for something healthy to keep my lonely raisin company. I found a wonderful dairy product to add – vanilla ice cream. One large, well-rounded scoop was added to the bowl and the raisin placed on top. I took my healthy lunch back to the dining room and sat down to congratulate myself on my journey to health.

As I gazed upon my raisin in its bed of frozen dairy product I thought to myself, “this isn't a balanced meal at all. It's not healthy. I must have protein.” I picked up my bowl, with the raisin in its bed of ice cream and meandered into the kitchen. I looked about for an appropriate source of protein. I spied a jar of peanuts on the counter. Peanuts would be perfect, except for one thing, I am allergic to peanuts.

Instead of the peanuts, I opted for a spoonful of soy butter. It looks and tastes similar to peanut butter, but it doesn’t try to kill me.

I carried my bowl back to the dining room and sat down. I gazed at it, deep in thought. Something was gnawing at me. Something was wrong. I considered all the possibilities and quickly realized I had neglected carbohydrates.

I quickly grabbed the bowl and bolted for the kitchen. Pretzels! I crumbled a handful of pretzels on my lunch.

By now, I was becoming quite hungry and rushed back to the dining room to finally eat my mid-day meal.

Before I could dig in, I looked one last time at the bowl. It was well-balanced: fruit, dairy, protein, carbohydrates, but I needed something to tie it all together, to turn it into a meal worthy of not only my weight loss goal, but to please my highly-refined palate.

And so, yet again, I walked into the kitchen. This time I knew exactly what I needed and didn’t hesitate. I opened the refrigerator and pulled out the chocolate syrup. I applied just enough syrup to tie the entire dish together, creating a culinary masterpiece, from just the humble beginnings of one raisin.

I inspected my lunch carefully before I left the kitchen and realized I now had, basically, a brown blob. I needed color! What better way to add color, but sprinkles, and lots of them.

Finally, I was satisfied with my creation. I sat down at the dining room table, and grabbed my spoon to eat, when it hit me. It occurred to me that I had to be more cautious around silverware.

It also occurred to me that this lunch, this afternoon meal, was too much. There was simply too much in that bowl.

Therefore, I picked out the raisin, threw it away, and ate only what remained. 

Is It Time Yet?

It is the first week of April and that means two things: yard clean up and prom shopping. The first, yard clean up, is a necessary chore.  It has been a long, cold and windy winter. Since my house is on a corner lot, and only a block from a multitude of stores and gas stations, there seems to be a lot to clean up. 

I didn’t keep an accurate tally, but I picked up a multitude of old soda pop bottles, a few beer cans, a host of cigarette packs and an assortment of lottery tickets.  Needless to say, the bottles and cans were empty, as were the cigarette packs. And if there was a doubt, every single one of the lottery tickets was a loser. Every. Single. One.

I found this to be rude. If you are going to deposit your personal property on my personal property at least make it personally profitable for me to put your stuff where it belongs.

This complete disregard for my labor in keeping my yard clean left me in a funk. To alleviate that funk, I decided to do some therapeutic shoe shopping. Note, the shopping wasn’t for shoes that are therapeutic, it was the shopping that was meant to be therapeutic.

For my long time friends and readers, you know that I find nothing therapeutic about shopping. I do, however, find spending time with my family therapeutic. Beloved, Middlest, Littlest, and I went to the mall. The young ladies went shopping for shoes for their respective proms.

While they were looking for new soles, I took my watch to a jeweler for a quick fix. After I handed my timepiece to the kind gentleman behind the counter, he said the repair would be done in about 15 minutes. I, out of the force of habit, looked at my wrist to see what time it was, so I would know when to pick the watch up. Then I looked at the kind gentleman behind the counter, and we both laughed at my epic fail.

While I waited for the womenfolk to pick out the right shoes and my watch to be repaired, I sat out on a bench in the mall. I was facing one of the kiosks that sells mediocre jewelry at bargain basement prices. There was a young couple shopping for some bling. The male part of the couple sat on a bench near me, while the female looked over all the shiny stuff.

After a few moments, the female came around from the far side of the kiosk and yelled in the most romantic way possible while shopping at a mall and looking at mediocre jewelry, “Hey, what you last name be again?”

Upon hearing that crime committed against grammar and the English language, I looked at my wrist to see if it was time to pick up my watch yet. The watch was still at the jewelers and had not magically reappeared on my wrist.

My family, however, did magically reappear and declared that despite the enormous square footage of the shoe store, there were simply no prom shoes to be had and so, we continued to shop. And shop. While I repeatedly checked my wrist to see if it was time to leave yet.

I Am So Over This

It has been quite some time since I last wrote a blog post. The main reason for this is, I haven’t written one. Some of the secondary reasons have to do with the flu, a root canal, and ongoing visits to medical professionals for back problems. These issues, combined with trying to work three jobs, has left little time to write; in fact it leaves little time to sleep or eat although the numbers on the scale don’t seem to indicate that I actually have been eating any less.

Up until three years ago, I only worked two jobs. Then my second job, for a company that prints time sensitive documents, cut back and laid 20 or so employees off, contracting their jobs out to a third party company. I was somewhat thankful that they kept me on, even though I went from working 30 hours a week to 10 hours a week. In fact, for a short time, I was working a meager 7 hours a week in the middle of the night, loading trucks.

And then, two years ago, President Obama did something. He made an announcement. I have noticed he is good at announcements. He has a knack for it. He announced that he had created something like a bazillion new jobs in the previous year.

Being a patriotic American, and not wanting to let anything go to waste, I got another job. This job paid, per hour, fifty percent more than what I am making at my job for the printing company. I have kept that printing company job because I enjoy the people I work with. They are a great group of guys, and more importantly, they laugh at my jokes.

Last weekend, some guy, who apparently is my bosses’ boss, and I have only seen once in my eight years at this job, came in for the night. At the end of the night, he said he wanted to talk to me. Now, it is 2:00 in the morning, and I want to go home and go to bed. Instead, I found myself in the unenviable position of talking to this guy.

I could tell he was nervous. His eye lids fluttered, he stammered a little, and he failed to make eye contact. I remained kind and gracious. He babbled on for a few minutes, telling me how much he appreciated the 8 years I have worked with the company and all the things I have helped to do.

It has been my experience that when a boss you have never met starts telling you he appreciates your work, he is either in a chemically altered state, or there is bad news to follow. In this case it was bad news. Although, I suppose bearing bad news and needing to be in a chemically altered state  are not mutually exclusive, and may actually go hand in hand.

To sum up his convoluted, less-than-direct discussion, because I don’t work more than 13 hours a week, they have to pay people overtime to make up for this lack. Therefore, if I don’t work more hours, they are going to hire someone who will work more; then they will take my job and give it to the new hire.

He was kind enough to give me a week to think about it. I accepted his offer of time to consider my answer.

Since I have decided not to take more hours at the printing company, I expect my schedule to open up in the near future. Please, do not tell President Obama, he might take it upon himself to make another announcement.

I May Not Like Politics, But I Like Voting

It was Election Day here in the United States, and election days are always a big deal. The period leading up to Election Day is a time when candidates for office and political parties spend enormous heaps of money to “get their name out there”.

Apparently, getting a candidate’s name out there means saying many bad things about the other candidate in the election. This year one of the candidates accused his opponent of thinking our senior citizens didn’t need teeth; another person accused his challenger of not wanting people to work and earn a living wage.

In spite of the spate of negative advertisements, this year’s election was “only” a mid-term election. This means we weren’t voting for who was going to be president, which, apparently, means many people didn’t think it was an important election and consequently, didn’t get out to vote.

Allow me to point out that no election is unimportant. That is like saying that lunch isn’t important since it is neither breakfast nor dinner. Lunch is very important-especially to me. I like sandwiches, and lunch is the one time each day when I can eat a sandwich without people condemning me.

In fact, mid-term elections are also like a sandwich. If you take the middle of a sandwich away, you are only left with a couple slices of bread and mustard, which is not a sandwich; it is simply boring.

Mid-term elections are also like those other mid-terms -- mid-term exams in school. No industrious and serious student, would say, “I am not going to take my mid-term exams this semester. They aren’t important. Now, final exams, they are important; I will take those.

And so I voted on Tuesday. I voted because I am industrious, serious, and not boring. I also voted to discharge my civic duty. To sweeten the deal after I voted, the nice people at the polling place gave me a sticker that proclaimed “I voted”. I wore that sticker with pride, until I went to work that evening. I work in a home for individuals who score lower on some tests of intelligence; lower than you or I might score. One of the residents, a dear friend I have worked with for over a decade, saw my sticker. His eyes got big and round. “A sticker!” he exclaimed, “I want it.” Since it was the day after his birthday, I let him take the sticker.

It was later that I noticed that it seemed to be the “thing” for people to post pictures of their polling place or their ballot on social media (Odd, I know, but some people really shared those pictures). Many, many, people posted pictures of their little sticker, proclaiming that they had voted.

Swept up in the passion for the democratic process, I grabbed my phone to take a picture of my sticker and share with the world that I had exercised my democratic right and responsibility to vote.

Then I realized I had given my sticker away. So, I took a picture of my shirt, where the sticker once hung, and I posted that on social media. 

At first I felt flaky for posting a picture of my shirt without the sticker, but then I realized it wasn’t a big deal. After all it was just a mid-term election.

How Many Languages do You Know?

I have mentioned before that each of my daughters speaks another language besides their native tongue, English. Let me clarify, Eldest speaks Spanish; Middlest speaks Latin (and is learning Spanish); and Littlest speaks French.

I must clarify further. Because these are young people, heading quickly into young adulthood, they are also quite fluent in the modern dialect of Mumble. For those not familiar with that dialect, let me explain. Young people are accustomed to speed: On every corner there is opportunity for fast food; access to the internet is at speeds of over 10 Mbps (I remember my brother demonstrating his first modem at a whopping 300 bps, that could barely keep up with what he typed.); and it is normal for high school students to take a number of Advanced Placement classes, so that when they graduate from high school, they already have college credit. (Eldest started her college career with a year’s worth of college credit.)

In order to keep up with this frenetic pace, young people have developed the dialect of Mumble, or as it is scientifically known, Speedglish, as opposed to my native tongue, which is apparently Sloenglish. The basic structure of Mumble is to truncate as many words as possible and to string them together into one fast paced word. An example might be, “Nahbraugodidalwrngudunderstan.” In regular English or Sloenglish that short burst of noise would be, “No brother, you have it all wrong; you do not understand.”

Do you understand? I hope so, because the concept evades me.

Having daughters fluent in Mumble was handy a couple of summers ago when we were flying from one coast of the United States to the other coast. As I was passing through the TSA check point, I found out quickly that TSA does not stand for “Totally Stinking Awesome”. A TSA agent issued a direction to me in Mumble. I responded politely, “Excuse me?” One of my daughters, seeing the awkward social situation I was in, translated for me, “Dad, he wants you to take your glasses off the top of your head and put them on right.”

I was glad for the translation, but baffled as to the reason. I mentioned to the kind TSA agent, “They are simply for reading.” He was insistent that the security of someone was dependent on my wearing my reading glasses while trying to walk through the security checkpoint. So, I lowered the glasses to the tip of my nose, arched my eyebrow and peered over the top of my glasses (everyone hates that) and asked, “Izdizbetterbro?”

He gurgled, “Yah”.

My daughter scolded me, “Dad, stop it, you are not doing it right.”

And I replied in the only real Speedglish I know, “Fuggedaboutit.”

My Scientific Observation of The Blood Red Eclipse

This past week, Wednesday, October 8^th, there was an eclipse of the moon here in the United States. This eclipse was called a Blood Red eclipse, due to it being close to dawn and the moon taking on a reddish hue at the height of the eclipse.  I remember as a youngster my parents awakening us one late night to see a lunar eclipse. I was fascinated to watch the moon slowly disappear as a bite shaped piece of shadow kept growing. At that young age, it reminded me of Cookie Monster from Sesame Street slowly devouring the moon like some celestial cookie.

For this most recent event, I was at work. There were a small number of people who were standing outside to watch the eclipse. I stood back from the group and watched both the eclipse, and people’s reactions as they exited the building. I found that there were four distinct categories of reaction.

The first group of people fell into the “Wise-Acre” group. These were mostly men who would say, “Oh, you are looking at the moon? I got another moon I can show you.” To which the only appropriate reply was, “If it is all the same, we would like that moon to remain eclipsed.”

The second category were those people who have an affinity towards agriculture and farming. They would look at the group of watchers, glance at the moon, and immediately begin to sound out, “Moooooooooon.” This was humorous the first time, but soon it became rather ridiculous, prompting me to think, “Holy Cow people, that joke is done, stop milking it.”

The next group of people were those who don’t believe anything, unless they see it on the television or internet. Their reaction to seeing the crowd and never even glancing skyward was, “Oh, are you watching the eclipse? I saw it on the television.”

Really? You saw it on television?

In this same category were those who pulled out their smart phones to open up some star tracking app so they could see the moon. Come on folks! It is the moon! How did Newton ever find the moon without his apple product?

The last group was the Sci-Fi nerd group. These wonderful people walked out the door, saw the moon gazing group, turned towards the moon, reached out with their hands in the air and begin to utter growls and grunts. I must say, I was speechless.

I enjoyed watching the moon as it slipped behind the earth’s shadow, but that enjoyment was eclipsed by my co-workers reactions.

Wanna Buy a Trombone, Kid?

It has been almost a month since I last wrote a post. This happens every year at this time. With the start of school, and thus, for me, working three jobs, I get a little bit overwhelmed and simply hang on, until I get re-acquainted with the swinging of a crazy schedule.

And I think I am there. Therefore, I have booted up the computer, opened the word processing software, put in ear phones, and begun to listen to the music that is most likely to get my creative juices flowing.

For me, that is classical music.

You see, one summer, my uncle offered to sell me his trombone. I mentioned that possible purchase to my mother. Immediately she thought of all the noise, and the disruption, and the noise, and loud wailing of a brash brass instrument being played. She quickly responded, “Tell him you don’t want to play the trombone, you want to play the violin.”

I am sure she thought to herself, “I dodged a bullet there. Now there will be no noisy brass instruments in my house.” Her frame of reference was listening to the local classical music station and hearing the soft melodies from the strings of a world-class symphony as they were played over the radio.

That September, I signed up to play the violin.

My poor mother was in for a rude awakening, because every student, no matter how good they become, starts at the same place; a place full of squeaks, squawks, and scratches.

Over the years, with a little practice, as little as I could get away with, the squeaks, squawks, and scratches became less, and what I played sounded more and more like a reasonable imitation of music. In fact, when I was in college, I was even able to play with the college orchestra. If memory serves me correctly, I think they were quite desperate for string players.

None of my daughters played violin, however each of my three daughters took piano lessons when they were little. Eldest still plays, and plays quite well. In addition, Eldest and Littlest played the clarinet and Middlest played...well, I will keep that surprise for a moment.

As you can imagine, with three little ones who had to practice piano, in addition to the other instruments, our home was full of music most of the day.

Middlest, for her second instrument, decided on playing the French horn. I remembered my mother’s consternation over the noises that came during the early months of violin playing, I decided that I could live with listening to Middlest play the French horn. Besides, of all the brass instruments, I find the sound of the French horn to be most rich and lovely.

Middlest worked hard at playing and I enjoyed the sound of her practicing. Except for that one day, when everything she played sounded flat and blah. There was an odd feeling that crept over me as I listened to her practice. I decided to check to see if she was feeling ill. When I entered the room where she was practicing, I immediately saw why her sound was so flat, she decided to do her practicing while lying on the floor.

I took pictures on my phone of her practice method, but somehow they all got deleted. I discovered they were deleted after she used my phone to make a call.

Well, now that I have spent all of this time discussing the musical leanings of me and my family, I still have to write a blog post, unless you have already tuned me out.

School Supplies, Therein Lies a Great Angst.

Last week I wrote about the end of summer. When I was younger, the year was divided into two separate, but unequal parts, Summer and School. Now that I drive one of those yellow buses part time, the year is again divided into those two parts.

Summer is fading quickly and School is approaching like a freight train, loaded with pencils and paper, that is late for a delivery to Walmart. School supplies, therein lies a great angst. 

When my children were in grade school, it made sense to get five, one-inch binders, in the five different colors that the teacher specified, because when the teacher wanted to teach the science lesson of the day, he, or she, simply would say, “Students, we are going to start our science unit for the day. Please clear off your desks and get out your purple binder, three sheets of paper and a pencil.” Simple and easy; no difficult directions. Each student took out his or her 2 and 3/8 inch, purple folder and was ready to study science. No student accidentally pulled out an English folder, or math folder, or last week's tuna sandwich.

I suspected that as the children progressed from elementary school, through middle school, and into high school, the lists of school supplies from teachers would become less and less specific.

I was wrong.

Littlest is a Junior and Middlest is a Senior at our local high school. This means that they each have over a decade of experience in a formal learning environment. They have figured out how they learn the best, they know what systems of note taking and keeping work well with their learning styles. Additionally, they are female--females with highly developed senses of personal style.

Yet, there are still teachers who want to dictate what size and color binders they should use and how many pens and pencils they should have on their desk at all times. Sometimes I think that some of these high school teachers are secretly “wanna be” elementary school teachers, but were unable to teach well enough to be entrusted with our most impressionable, malleable, and, eager to learn students.

In the past, the school would send home schedules a week or two before school started. This would allow time to correct errors in the schedule and then to figure out what items the teachers would require the students to have, and then to go shopping for them. At this late stage, most of the items in the department store were picked over and more often than not, Beloved and I would have to go to an office supply store and pay top dollar for some purple 2 and 3/8 inch binder.

This year, our local high school has developed a new schedule and rather than sending it home, in an effort to “go green”, they were simply going to hand out the schedules on the first day of school.

This  schedule is quite complicated and never-before been done by our high school. It is something like an eight day, six block, rotating schedule; honestly, I am not sure exactly what they call it. The best way I can describe it is to imagine watching the Olympic diving competition on television. The diver prepares to dive, the crowd hushes, and the television announcer’s voice quietly and intensely narrates, “Now the high school schedule is up to dive. This should be an eight day, 6 block, rotation, with a double gainer, and a half-pike.” The diver leaps off the board, executes a blur of twists, turns, and somersaults, before straightening out, just in time to plunge head first into the water. Finally, the exultant diver emerges from the pool, all wet.

As for myself, I am partial to that age-old standard dive, the belly flop.

Many students and teachers believe this schedule will be a flop, the administrators of the school believe the schedule will be graceful and score high marks.

My daughters believe that it’s all wet.

Either way, I foresee more shopping.

Oh bother.

Summer is Quickly Coming to a Shopping Halt

For my family, this is the end; of summer that is. There were such high hopes for this summer. Early in the summer, I spotted a tweet from a twitter friend, Rachel @girl_onthego, referring to her grandfather’s brain museum. More correctly, it is “The Museum of Neuroanatomy,” and it is located in Buffalo, NY, which is a scant hour drive from my home. It sounded off-beat enough to pique the interest of my daughters and me. I thought it would be a good thing to do.

Although it was on our list, it didn’t get marked off as done; we have decided to keep it on the list.

We did have a busy and wonderful summer. Littlest, Middlest, and I went with a group of teens out to Greenville, Illinois for a week of Bible Quizzing competition. As a family, we spent a day at the fair and an evening at a ball game (I wrote about that adventure last week). This past week, Beloved and I celebrated our twenty-fifth anniversary. The details of that celebration will be kept under-cover.

Any long-time reader of my blog knows that I dislike shopping and the end of summer means more shopping: school shopping. I am not sure which I dislike more: school or shopping. Be assured, gentle reader, that I went to school. I even have a bachelors of arts degree in something or another. Notice that even though I was confirmed a bachelor, I still married, and being married is way better than school. Even if my wife works at an educational institution and drags me shopping.

Going shopping with women folk is an experience. Once in a while I will be asked whether I like one piece of clothing over another. The interrogator will hold each piece up over her appropriate body part and look at me expectantly.

I rub my bearded chin softly and make fluffy noises to my self with my brow furrowed. Then I reach out and touch the fabric of each item; I examine the quality of the stitching. Then I pronounce judgment on which one I like the best.

I always end up choosing the least expensive item, for, you see, while caressing the fabric and examining the stitching, I always look at the price tag.

While on one of these recent school shopping escapades, I was thinking to myself, “Self, it will be so nice when school starts and the shopping will be done.”

Beloved, as if reading my mind, hugged my arm and with a warm giggle said, “As soon as everyone gets back to school, we can go Christmas shopping.”

Oh bother.

How Did I Celebrate My Birthday?

It was my birthday this week and I took some time to review my life, especially in relation to birthdays. At least this is what I told my wife, when she asked why I hadn’t loaded the dishwasher yet.

A few years ago I received a book of quotes from Mr. Rogers, the children’s television personality from here in the United States. One of my favorite quotes is, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” I have never been good at birthdays, so I keep trying.

When I was 12, I was out riding my bike on my birthday. Like most 12 year old boys, I wanted to be a cowboy, and so I pretended my bicycle was a horse. And like most cowboys, I held a long piece of grass in my mouth. I am not sure where I saw a cowboy engaging in this blade of grass chewing behavior, but it was probably on television.

It was a wonderful warm summer day, and the breeze felt good as I rode my bike at a full-out gallop. I rounded a corner and the hooves of my horse slipped on loose gravel. I was elated that I had not suffered too badly and escaped with only a few minor scrapes.

Unfortunately, that entire day I had a scratchy throat. Nothing seemed to help. Not drinking water, not drinking a carbonated sugar-filled beverage, not even the homemade ice-cream roll my mother made for my celebration.

At the end of the night, mom asked me if everything was alright. I finally told her about my scratchy throat and explained that it felt like I had a sliver in my throat. She rolled her eyes, grabbed a flashlight and looked in my mouth, all the while muttering about my odd way of describing things.

Then she stopped. She stepped back and looked at me, and then looked down my throat again. In absolute amazement she called my father; “Come look at this, he has a sliver stuck in his throat.”

That sentence was repeated a few more times at the hospital emergency room to nurses and doctors and then they repeated it again once they looked at my throat. It seems that when I fell off my bike, that long piece of grass had slid down my throat and a small piece had impaled itself into my flesh.

 I am not so good at birthdays.

A few years later, as a college student, I was working at a camp. I stopped into the office early in the morning to pick up something I needed and the office manager stopped me and handed me some mail. It was a letter from my mother. I put it in my pocket and promptly forgot about it until lunch time. Then, when I had the chance, I sat down and read the letter. Mom started out the letter by saying, “If I timed this right, you should be getting this letter on your birthday.” I stopped short, realizing that, indeed, it was my birthday. I had squandered half of the day in ignorance, not realizing it was my birthday.

I am not so good at birthdays.

Therefore, I decided some time ago, to keep working at my birthday, specifically my 26^th birthday. All year long, when people ask how old I am, I say I am 25. Then when my birthday comes, if it is a success, I will move on. So far, they haven’t been a success.

This year was no exception. It started out wonderful, with a trip back home to the county fair, with my wife, daughters, and a couple of their friends. I visited with my mom, and my sister, and her granddaughter, who developed quite an attachment to Eldest. (Even though my sister is the youngest in the family, she is older than I). It was a wonderful day. We ate funnel cake, since birthdays and cake go together. We bought some maple syrup to pour over homemade waffles (I love breakfast, and real maple syrup is amazing).

Things were looking quite successful.

Then in the evening, the family and I went to a baseball game. My alma mater, Roberts Wesleyan College, was holding an alumni picnic before the game; it was great to see friends. My youngest and middle daughter spent a little time with the college mascot, Reggie, and there was food.

Things were looking quite successful.

It was a chilly night, with temperatures in the mid 50’s (F). This was not a bad thing, since I sat between Beloved and Eldest, and they snuggled close to keep warm. I like snuggling with family almost as much as I like breakfast. But, about halfway through the game, it began to rain. A light rain, just enough to make us all damp and to make it feel even colder.

Not only that, but the hometown team was losing, by quite a significant margin.

I am not so good at birthdays.

So again, my birthday wasn’t a success, but I will “try, try again.” It’s tough being twenty-five again, but I will persevere.