*Last Saturday due to problems with the place I thought my visit wasn't going to happen until later that week. When I got to the van I was sobbing and bawling hunched over the steering wheel. Things like this are why. No matter what I do I just get an hour*

Just thought I'd let you know what our stubborn son has been up to. He has learned to make microwave popcorn ENTIRELY by himself. Yesterday he even took out 2 bowls and poured one bowl for himself and one for Autumn. This includes all steps from pushing the chair over and climbing up to get the package out of the box, cutting with scissors the plastic off the package, pushing the chair to the microwave and placing the bag the correct side up in the microwave, pushing the microwave popcorn button, waiting until the popping stops, and distributing it to the other kids.

This morning he outdid himself. He decided he wanted a cup of tea and was downstairs by himself for about 5 minutes. The kid actually got water in the electric kettle, plugged it in, turned it on, waited for it to boil and put it in the mug he'd gotten down with the tea bag in it. When my mom found him he was sitting with his cup o' tea sipping happily. The only mess he made was some poor aim and he spilled a bit of water on the floor. It scares me that he is making something that has boiling water as an ingredient so I told him that if I promise to make him tea whenever he wants can he please let a grown up do it.

He's kind of reminding me of the guy in "Catch me if you can". If he sees you do it, he can mimic every step.

I have mono so I'm a bit laid out but trying to be with Logan as much as possible and still doing his baths and putting him to bed every night. I was worried about L catching it but the pediatrician tells me kids under 12 get a version of mono that is just a dry sore throat and recover very quickly. Teenagers and adults get the full on 6 week fatigue and the worst sore throat I've ever had.

Anyway, just thought you'd find his new cooking skills humorous. I suppose by the time he's a teenager he will be cooking full course meals for me. yay!!

10/29/09 01:14 pm - Daily Gratitude - A story about summer.

I am not a "car person." I like them. I enjoy driving. I like elegant and unusal design. But I've never been especially interested in ticking them out or doing much other than keeping them running well.

This is about one of the cars that I truly loved. My dad helped me with it. It was from a friend of his named John Long. If I remember corretly it was his fathers or father in law's. The father/father in law had abladder problem so the front seat had evidently been an issue. I cleaned it and it never bothered me. It did make it where the car was $300 though.

There are quite a few stories from that car. One was about the title. I got it signed over and was going to get it taken care of the next day or day after, there was some reason I couldn't right away. Maybe just too busy playing. I went to look for, and it was gone. I'm pretty sure it had gone out the window. I don't recall this car having working AC so all of the windows would have been down. Even more fun with old school crank windows. But the title was gone. Nothing major, get the replacement, get it signed over etc. One problem. The owner had died in the interem. This did prompt my dad to threaten to staple a note to my chest that said "I will take care of minor details." I still haven't learned that one entirely. It all got sorted out in the end.

But that's not what this story is about.

It was a 72 Caprice. I liked how it looked from the grill with the lights on. It leered at you. The seats were wide. You could fit three people across. I remeber being able to lay down across the front seat with my feet propped on the open window and taking naps by Beaver lake where I could hear the water. The place I used to do that at isn';t even open anymore. People died from a rope swing. There are initials carved in that little + you make on that tree MP LL. I wish I still had that knife. An old Winchester three bladed thing. Just a knife like everyone in the area would have carried around that time. My dad tells me that tree is still there. I'm glad in a way. I'm also glad I never broke my neck jumping from it or got run over by a boa the day I decided to swim across the lake and back,

I liked the wide seats. I liked that there was a middle seatbelt and Lisa could sit right by me. We could hold hands. I could feel the warmth of her thigh pressed against mine. She was slight so it never got in the way of driving likie it does with some people. You could sit, tuck your leg under and turn and talk face to face. Or kiss. All the things when you're young and married and in love.

I remember working at a laundry then. The mangles always fascinated me. Giant steam rollers that could take off an arm. I remeber it being so hot between the mangles and the giant dryers that someone passed out every day. I also remember Lisa bringing me lunch. It was nice to have her come up, to sit with her and eat. It was nice to hear the compliments about her after she left. Happy memories that come up from the back of my mind once in a while and make me smile.

I can't quite pinpoint the year. I know I was married. We were living with Mike and Lynn in a house by the Mexican Original plant. Rush's "Moving Pictures" was out. James Klenc was around and had a German girlfriend who I scared with a bad habit of cutting the engine at the top of a great huge hill right before the house and seeing how fast I could get it up to and if I ran the stop sign could I make it to the house with no engine.

But that's not what this story is about either, though I am grateful for those things.

This is about one of the many things I have done that make me look back and wonder how I've managed to stay alive.

When I was bored I used to like to go driving around. Lynn had showed me Mountain Road one day when we were all going to her parents for something. It was reasonbly curvy and fin to drive. One day messing around I figured out that you could make this giant loop. I started driving it with the idea in the back of my head of memorizing it. It got easier and easier and after awhile I knew the general layout, where I had to be careful, where I could push it. It was fun and a good way to kill a little time.

The car wasn't a sports car. It was old school Detroit steel. You could seat six comfortably. It was heavy but sprung reasonably stiffly and had enough engine to push it. And I liked pushing it. At the edges of that powerband you could almost feel it's life in your hands through the steering wheel. It wasn't a sports car but it would respond, and you could milk every ounce out of it and know that it wasn't going to let you down

I mentioned Rush's "Moving Pictures" was out, that's important to this story,. This was before CD's and before MP3's. You had records and cassettes. If you wanted music in the car, it was cassettes. There are some things about music now and music then that are very different. If you got a mix tape from someone you had to listen to the whole thing, there was no skipping a song. A few players had a little thing that would do a music search for the next song or two or three but it was always finicky and never really worth the trouble.

Another side effect of all of this is that you would get a new record or tape and listen to it _a lot_. I have MP3's of whole albums that I like that I may have only listened to to a half dozen time. I couldn't count how may times I played Moving Pictures. Because I listened to it so much I eventually noticed something, the first five sings matched up with the drive. Now I had a goal. To make the whole loop finish by the end of the third song.

I set my starting and stopping points. Start was a stop sign. I think stop was where it exited back out. So I had my goal. Cut off 14.79 minutes off of a 29.43 minute drive I was already doing fast as it was. I drove it through slowly a few times. I wanted to look at it with what I was doing in mind and not just knowing the road. Then I started running through and cutting more and more time. I finally had it down to where I could do it and get fairly close.

I put in the tape and rewound it back to the start and waited for Tom Sawyer to come on. As it came up I dropped it into low because I knew I needed the extra acceleration for longer than the automatic was willing to give it to me and almost floored the gas so I wouldn't loose power from the tires letting loose. First corner and it goesinto drive and I make a point to let the rear end get loose to make the corner faster.

One thing I have done with every car I have owned is make a point to take it out to a parkin lot in dry, rain, snow and ice and spin it around until I could make it both start to spin out and stop it where I wanted. This was never for fun, just a safety thing for me. I wanted to be able to control it if it let loose, to know when it was and to be able to stop it.

There was a straightaway not too far after that let me pick up speed. Then came the cows and the fences and other landmarks I needed (No, I did not use cows and landmarks, just spectators and pit crew). I knew that I could hit 105 at one section but had to brake at the gate or I wouldn't make the corner. There were a couple of switchbacks that required me to accelerate going into them then slam on the brakes with two feet just past the apex of the turn to spin it around the 180 or so I needed at 60. I knew that there was a decreasing radius turn I had to start in the wrong lane on or I lost too much speed.

After all that and more I hit the end, my defined exit. The last chord of YYZ rang out. It was perfect. I had timed it to the second. As I sat there at the end, having made the car come alive and holding life in my hands I had one thought: "I am going to fucking kill myself." That was the end of that. I went home and sat with Lisa and watched Rambo, Mike and Lynn's retarded Shih T'su get stuck in a corner. I never even tried it again going slowly. There was no point. Not because I know I could do it, not because it scared me, not because I was afraid I would be tempted. I just didn't want to lose everything.

This is one of those stories you tell with a little relish. One of the days of being young. But a an adult there is something bigger there. You hope that your children will never do anything that stupid.

And that is what I'm grateful for, having been given the chance to carry on. Having the chance to spend more time with Lisa and my friends.