Dear Kim,

I was thinking about you and cars.

You put me behind the wheel of a some very powerful machinery at a young age. I remember one day heading down country roads with you trusting me not to kill us. I'd jerk the wheel toward the ditch then slam on the brakes every time a big truck came our way. There seemed to be a lot of trucks. Fortunately you laughed each time and just let me keep driving until I figured out there was enough road for everyone.

And when I wasn't driving, you were on the prowl. "Let's look for some cops to run from," you'd say. My heart would jump because I knew there was a fairly large percentage of your brain that would allow this to actually happen. Then you'd turn up the radio and search for empty parking lots.

The perfect doughnut.

The car would spin and gravity knew just what to do to exhilarate me.

Now I think about the prospect of my kids riding around in 400 horsepower automobile looking for the perfect parking lot and maybe a cop or two to run from.

I think about that scenario and I wonder if, as I was grounding them for life, they'd be able to tell I was jealous.

Thanks for the rides.

A Major Weather Event

Downstairs it sounds like a cocktail party. Allie is talking to herself. Julia is talking to herself. The weatherman is talking to all of us. I'm thinking of starting a conversation with myself.

Tornadoes are being sighted all over the place. I'm glad I put a toilet in down here.

All conversation has suddenly stopped. Power flickered.

Allie says to Julia, "We're not going to get out a game. We're about to have a major weather event and there's no time for it."

Embedded tornadoes in the rain shaft or hell shaft.

What the hell is the hell shaft? Maybe I heard it wrong.

In the middle of all of this there's an escaped convict running around near us.

Wait a second. Gotta run. Doorbell is ringing.

One Bad Chomp is All it Takes

The table on the deck is covered with cherry pits.

As hard as she tries, Allie isn't able to propel a pit more than a few feet away from her body. Come to think of it, I wasn't able to launch them much more than ten feet or so. I seem to remember being able to make them fly great distances. I don't know if it's diminished lung capacity or rusty technique. It doesn't matter, I've got a whole bag of these suckers to practice with.

Allie needs to practice even more. She likes cherries a lot but just doesn't have the knack for eating them. She does as much damage as you could imagine to each piece of fruit and comes out looking like a gunshot victim after eating four or five. This evening I couldn't stand the carnage so I took the bowl away from her. I reverted back to when she was very little and I had to bite the cherry in half and remove the stone for her. It's kind of gross when you think about it but she seems to prefer these half-eaten cherries. It's not just the convenience. She reads my face to see if she should pass on the sour ones.

After cherries we made smoothies.

It must have been fruit night or something.

How the hell are your supposed to eat a mango? Do you use a peeler and then just cut into the thing until you can't cut into it anymore? It seems like you waste a lot of the mango because the dense interior makes up so much of the fruit (although it is kind of fun to gnaw on).

Where was Julia?

I don't know. I think I made her afraid of cherries.

"One bad chomp and they'll shatter your teeth like glass."

Julia stayed inside.

Anyway, this was another memory I want to keep here.

More Batteries for the Weather Radio

Deb and the girls went to see the in-laws this weekend so I took the time alone to get some things done. The thing is, after I mowed the lawn yesterday the humidity suck out all of my ambition. I wound up in the basement playing Verbosity.

While I was down there I guess my neighborhood was being roughed up by winds high enough that some of my neighbors claimed it was a tornado.

I did hear the weather radio going off upstairs, but I was too busy describing a cow as a "mooing thing".

Later I came upstairs and the power went off. That left me without much to do so I started moving things around out in the garage. I wasn't accomplishing much when Larry and Karina pulled up in the driveway and asked me if I wanted to go with them to survey the damage.

I didn't know what they were talking about. I had noticed some trees in the park looked damaged and I saw some kids picking up pieces of siding. I knew there had been some high winds but. . . duh.

We drove around in the truck and I was on the cell phone describing the damage to Debbie. A block away I saw a few trees uprooted, some swing sets trashed, siding gone, even a roof blown away. It wasn't the total devastation of the tornadoes we saw three years ago but it was as close to the house as you can get. I'm amazed and grateful that we didn't at least lose a tree and a shingle or two.

Later I came home and sat in the dark and played with the girls' Leapster. I totally trounced Allie's high score on I-Spy. Heh.

Now the weather radio keeps going off telling me watch out for flash floods. The basement had 65% humidity last night. I'm going downstairs to see if the walls have caved like the National Weather Service keeps telling me they might.

Summer

I want to make Strawberry ice cream from scratch.