Love is Scary

“Knives scare me,” announced Darcy. We weren’t planning to let her carve her own pumpkin and she didn’t want to. She did want to design her pumpkin, and she drew a great picture of a girl holding a heart balloon, shouting “BOO” (a Halloween version of Bansky’s graffiti). Carving the drawing proved difficult (you can still […]

Growth

“How do seeds work?” — Darcy Out of our compost pile grew a vine. At first I thought it might be cucumber, but the leaves grew too large. Then I realized it was a cantaloupe plant. So we let it grow and spread. Of course the first freeze ended its life, with multiple small unripe […]

Maturing

My nephew is learning to play Sorry. The board game has new rules just for him. Each player uses only one piece. Every drawn card can take you out of start (official rules allow just #1 or #2). There are no slides. “Sorry” cards are skipped. And everyone gets home… then all of the players […]

Into the Sun

“I’m always amused when someone says, ‘Shoot X or so-and-so into the sun,’” says Rand Simberg, a space consultant and an engineer. “Because they have no idea how hard that is to do.” (Click to read whole article.) NASA is about to send a probe closer than we have ever been to the Sun. Just […]

Caught

We have a clever mouse. (Yes, there have been multiple house guests.) We have tried poison traps and snap traps — no matter the brand or bait the mouse avoids capture. A friend recommended glue traps to Megan. She said her husband takes care of the traps before she gets up in the morning… I […]

Q & U and Being Best Friends

“U follows Q because they are best friends.” This sounds like a quote from the Lego Movie, but it is actually a quote from Meg helping me spell the word quote. I always get confused if it is O or U first. Megan couldn’t image how my elementary training lacked this knowledge. “It is just […]

“Papa”

I could not listen to this audio from the detention centers. My own children are in bed. Ezekiel calls for “dad” because I was foolish enough to walk back by his room before he was asleep. So I go in for a hug and to lay him back down. My oldest is not home. She […]

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