Post - Educationalism

[Dedicated to Mom: You know I'm just kidding...] It was an early summer, Sunday morning.  The kind where the flies don't seem such a nuisance with pancakes on the griddle, a pot of syrup bubbling on the stove with berries of red and blue and a healthy dose of butter mixed in for good measure.  Sun pours through kitchen windows, and kids run about, fighting and hollering until plates are set and food is ready.  Silver dollars never had such power but in pancake form. Fast forward 20 years It's that same type of early summer, Sunday morning.  But now the griddle is idle and looks a forgotten shrine (though still more sacred than traditional ones), and the only remnants of a shared meal drips off of the counter onto tile floor as the cat laps up spilled milk.  The kids are still fighting and it seems that the currencies have changed: "Mom, I can't believe we're taking Conan.  I mean, we're hiking up a mountain, he'll just complaint he whole time

And the start of many goals: #1: Hike all 150 miles of the Lassen National Park trails (and log all the geocaches!) #2: Finish CLU certification (even if it means bringing textbooks hiking) #3: Perfect baking skills #4: Be the board

Subtitle: Why I Love My Family "Honey, what's that?" "I think it's a mouse." "No Mom, it looks like a mole." "Come on, have neither of you ever seen a gopher?" "Oh, yeah, I see it now.  Definitely a gopher." Dad bends down and pets the cat on the head, and tells him that the gopher-mole-mouse corpse dangling by a canine is a very good thing, and that he's a very special cat.   The cat, known here simply as Tetos--as Mr. Tetos to his peers, I'm sure--had just interrupted the communal, after-dinner clean-up by lolloping in with the half-dead gophermole only to ensure it's entire death by flinging it into the air, across kitchen floor sending it smack into oak-stained cabinets, shaking the Tupperware inside.  I have to admit I did feel something when the cat waltzed in there with that fear-ridden-faced mouser, bopping him around like the toys other members of the family spoiled him with as a kitten (I'

Good books stay with us like good friends pages like voices, so oft repeated phrases stories like memories and lovers noted and not yet come words that speak as only  between us and bent spine in moments reflected upon the history of a body a life whose story would go untold save for dogeared edges and errant marks that blot facade and good face betrays more than just prose that voice, a living novel reveals to us more as we go persists in hidden corners of mind and troubled mouth couches and coffee tables dusty shelves and old bus stops as eddies in a stream or deep undertow at sea rescues us from broken, shallow homes buried deep within a tale weaves and cuts into our passions, into stories we thought our own