After pulling the manly cotton over my weary head, I noticed a strong perfume-y odor. Initially I ignored it (men have a genetic knack for dismissing weird odors). But then one of my daughters jumped on my lap, gave me a hug, and said, “you smell like Mommy.”

Hrm. I put her down, and pulled the collar to my nostrils. SNIFFFFFFF… She was right, this was unmistakably the wife’s perfume.

“Honey, why does my REDS SHIRT smell like your perfume?”

“I dunno. I wore it when I took a nap,” she said.

“My REDS shirt?!?”

“Yeah, it was super comfortable. Nice and soft. I see why you’re always wearing that thing.”

“Okay, comfortable enough to sleep in, maybe. But did you have to girly it up with that offensive smell?” I asked.

“Oh, please. It’s just a sports jersey. I think you’re overreacting.”

Ah, ‘overreacting.’ I said to myself. I moved past her into the bathroom. “Pardon me, my love. I’ll be back in just a moment.”

“What are you DOING?!?” she exclaimed a few seconds later.

“Why, I’m rubbing your favorite hand towels under my armpits, dear,” I said. *rub*rub* “Wow. I see why you’re always using these.” *rub* “Nice and soft.”

———
You see, in today’s lesson we’ve learned that marriage is all about effective communication. Both parties understand each other now. (Of course, one of them slept on the couch after the lesson. But at least he was comfy in a 3/4-length raglan-sleeved Reds shirt.)

Over a recent weekend, my wife and I opened our home to an elderly relative of hers. The lovely lady, carrying the superior genes from my wife’s side of our union, enjoyed a few days of respite in our home.

Eager to prove I wasn’t totally useless, I made a pot full of theMonkey’s famous Red Sauce. I may not do many things well, but I can cook a good red sauce. The trick is to dice a half-pound of prosciutto so thin that it disintegrates into the bubbling, steamy tomato flesh, and then… well, I’d go on, but this isn’t a story about pasta sauce. I just thought that it was information that you might need to know later in the story.

One evening, expecting a large influx of relatives coming to visit, I looked at the rather large remainder of the sauce, resting quite comfortably in the fridge, the flavors getting better acquainted with every passing hour. Then inspiration struck. You know, I thought, the only thing that separates red sauce from salsa is cilantro, spicy peppers, and some sugar. Everyone likes salsa. Yes. I shall make salsa. I shall tread to the local grocer, and acquire the necessary items. I shall tell the grocer, “Excuse me sir, but I need some cilantro. And some spicy peppers.” What a captial idea! Which is exactly what I did.

At this point, dear readers, the habaneros enter into our story.

Or, as I shall refer to them from now on: Satan’s Insanity Peppers.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, all the possible anecdotes that could arise from someone working with hot peppers. But understand: no matter what you’re thinking about, no matter how terrible your imagination, no matter how many horror movies you’ve seen, nothing can prepare you for some of the details you’re about to encounter.

Trust me, it’s worse than you can possibly imagine.

I made two batches, a “mild” batch, containing a single pepper, for the children and the elderly. A second batch included five peppers, and was off limits for anyone with a history of medical and/or gastrointestinal problems. In order to evenly disperse the demon flesh into the sauce, I had to dice it extremely fine, and gently add it to the sauce using a titanium rod and a welder’s mask. (Safety first, you know.)

First off, the salsa was a hit. The mild was quite tasty, and the hot, while spicy, wasn’t too uncomfortable. Compliments abounded. The chef was quite pleased. This was the highlight of the evening.

The evening’s descent from the Everest-like summit of jocularity into the fiery Death Valley-like misery began when my sister-in-law asked for an adult beverage. I grabbed a delightfully hoppy Ale from the fridge, popped the cap off, and passed it to her. Seconds later, I could see that she was crying. “Are you okay?” I asked.

“Fine… but there’s something nearby that’s burning my eyes and throat,” she said, sniffing hard to keep her sinuses from emptying on the floor.

Naturally, I suspected the salsa. “Did you have some of the salsa? Did you eat from the bowl marked with the skull-and-crossbones?” I asked.

“No,” she replied. “I haven’t eaten anything.”

Moments later we had tracked down the source of the foul vapor. It turns out that I still had the juice and oil from the habaneros all over my fingertips. I had dutifully washed my hands, but apparently this was stubborn stuff. Even though it had been hours since I processed the peppers, simply handling the bottle for a few seconds was enough to transfer enough oil from my fingertips to her lips and nasal cavity.

For most of you, this would have been a warning flag. But I never claimed I was a smart man.

I apologized profusely, and headed for the sink for another good hand scrubbing. Ah, that should do it. I must have not done a very good job last time, I thought. Now, that beer looked good. I think I’ll get one for myself.

The evening progressed. Family members visited. People commisserated. Food was eaten, drinks were drunk. After a beer or two, I had the same urge that any normal person has, and excused myself. After all, we only rent beer, eh? Off I went.

Here is where I must be delicate, yet somehow specific. I, uh, didn’t do anything “out of the ordinary” as I relieved myself. Nothing unusual. You men will understand what I mean. You stand, you aim, you whistle a bit. Perhaps you stare at the ceiling, testing the quality of your aim by the sound it makes when it hits the water (loud=good & down the middle; silent=hitting the side; puddling=there’s a mess to clean up). Or, maybe you prefer to aim the stream from the porcelain to the middle and back again, going in circles, creating and destroying bubble clusters. (That’s always lots of fun.) When finished, of course, there’s the requisite Body Bounce, then the Leg Twitch move, which is quickly followed by the extremely-important Shake Maneuver. Afterwards, there’s the Pack & Stow, and finally, the cautious, deliberate Zippering.

It is now that I will pause to point out that the anecdote regarding the habanero oil on the neck of my sister-in-law’s beer bottle was naught but foreshadowing in this story.

I washed up (natch), then returned to my social responsibilities. Sitting down on a couch, I engaged an in-law in a deep conversation, the topic of which I have no recollection. What I do remember was staring into her eyes as she was speaking, and feeling a slight, warm sensation. A tingle, as it were. Not a comfortable feeling, but a not entirely unpleasant one either. Hmmm…, I thought. What’s this all about?

The warmth turned into a spark, the spark into a small flame, the flame into a bonfire, the bonfire into a conflagration. Within 60 seconds, there was a forest fire in my shorts. The pain quickly ramped up to what I can only define as “childbirth level.” If you were birthing Satan’s fiery child, that is.

All the while, I sat as rigid as a statue, my eyes open wide. The woman speaking to me sounded like the teacher from the Charlie Brown cartoons. “Mmm-hmm,” was all that I could occasionally get out. A bead of sweat appeared on my forehead, and trickled down into my eye, stinging it. I didn’t wipe it away. Images flashed through my head. Here, bubbling lava. Next, I flashed back to a scene from my childhood: the triple-A baseball club, the peanuts vendor shouting “get yer hot nuts here!!” The hot desert rescue scene from Lawrence of Arabia popped into my head, which was followed by what I assumed was imagery from World War II era newsreels about Dresden.

“Wouldyouexcuseme?” I stammered out and made a beeline to the bathroom, where I spent a half hour scrubbing my privates with the ferocity of a surgical intern, all to no avail. I had handled myself with fingertips covered in habanero oil. Game over.

I tried everything. I washed. I bathed in cold water, then hot. I tried lotions. I made very good friends with a bag of frozen peas. But in the end, there was nothing to do but tough it out. And dance. And scream into a pillow. And go for a run. After a few hours, I noticed the pain starting to subside, and I felt disappointed that I was going to live after all. I finally fell into a fitful sleep.

I woke up the next morning older, wiser, and with a slightly funny walk. I also have a new mission in life: to convince as many of my gender as possible to not make the same mistake as I. Hence, this post.

You can finish the song, can’t you?

MOOOooooooooo.

“Good! How does a cat go?”

Meeee-yyyoww.

“Haha!! How about a pig?”

Oinkoinkoinkoinkoink.

“Good. How does a Mommy go?”

“NOoo-putdatdown!!!”

Power transmission towers crumple under the ice. Image credit: ExtremeInstability

The pictures reminded me of the ice storm we (in central Ohio) suffered through exactly two years ago. It was one of the worst weeks of my life.

Heading to bed one night, a few days before the winter holidays, I was looking forward to having some time off. We knew that a winter storm was coming, but that type of thing really isn’t that big of a deal. It was kind of cool, actually. I was suffering from a nasty cold virus, and knew that any snow would give me an excuse to bum around the house for a few days, doing nothing.

Around one in the morning, I was awakened by bright flashes of light blazing through my bedroom window. Initially, I thought the kids were playing with the light switch. I got up, saw a few more, and thought, This is the weirdest winter storm I can remember. Lightning and everything. Soon, my sleepy brain realized that the house had no power. All that could be heard was a faint raining sound pattering on the windows. I went downstairs, opened the front door, and peered into the blackness.

As I stared, another brilliantly bright flash of lightning appeared, searing my dark-adapted retinas. But this flash didn’t behave like lightning. The neighborhood lit up like the inside of a blue flourescent bulb for at least five seconds. What I had assumed to be lightning was in fact the explosions of nearby power transformers. And in that five second flash, I saw a scary, completely changed landscape. The tree in my front yard was bent completely over, laying on the ground, the branches splayed out on the ground like the strings of a giant mop. The trees in the distance were not visible, apparently suffering from the same assault as my own feeble Cleveland Pear. I could see for miles. To punctuate the scene, suddenly the siren went off on my NOAA weather warning radio.

Immediately, I realized: This is bad. We had no power, no heat, I had two young kids upstairs who would be getting cold soon, and I’d have to act fast before the roads got any worse.

I warmed up the car, loaded it up with a handful of necessary items, and headed to my sister’s house 15 miles away. The trip took about two hours. Along the way, the kids and I were blinded by blowing transformers, and deafened by the loud, continuous cracking of trees falling down in the woods that lined the roads. I tried to keep the mood light, knowing that the girls were scared, (and not wanting them to see how scared I was), so we sang songs the entire way. If I hear B-I-N-G-O one more time, I swear, I’m gonna grab a rifle and climb a clock tower.

Long story short, my city was sent back to the stone age for ten days, buried underneath two inches of ice. Making things worse, immediately behind the storm was a frigid air mass; the temperature didn’t rise above five degrees for about a week. I made several forays back to my house in the meantime, and was able to chip my way into the back door using a clawed hammer as an ice ax. I did what I could to keep the pipes from freezing, but paid the price: my sickness turned into the worst bronchitis and strep throat I’ve ever had in my life. I don’t know what I would have done had my sister not been there to take care of my daughters while I lied on her couch in a vegetative state.

So, to sum up my week: Ice storm, no power, living on my sister’s couch, high fever, and a sick infant (I ended up passing my virus on to her).

Oh, and I forgot to tell you, my wife was swimming with dolphins in the Bahamas at the time.

Seriously.

Rather than take a crappy vacation with five people, we had decided to surprise our oldest daughter with a decent trip alone with her mother. “Go,” I said to my wife, “I’m sick anyway. I’ll watch our 18-month- and three-year-old. We’ll find some fun things to do. Take our oldest on her first nice vacation.”

Feeling sorry for me yet?

Anyway, after it was all said and done, my neighborhood was the last in central/eastern Ohio to get power restored almost ten days later. Almost 200 transformers needed to be replaced.

I only ended up losing a handful of small bushes and half a tree (I have never been able to figure out how the ice storm only killed half of my tree). My pipes didn’t freeze. I was able to save most of the contents of my fridge by burying whatever I could in a pile of chipped ice on my back patio.

I learned a few things, too. It’s amazing how people don’t realize that any given community is just a few minutes away from being sent back to the stone age. Especially in the wintertime.

Secondly, I realized how important it is to have a proper NOAA hazard alert radio. Had the transformer explosions not awakened me, then the siren from the alert radio would have a few minutes later. No home should be without one. It should be viewed like a smoke detector, when you need it, you’ll be glad it’s there. Many times I’ve been watching the local TV station’s weatherman, and heard his NOAA radio siren go off at the same time as mine. The catch is, I see what the information is right away, where he gets around to reporting the information only after five minutes of insane commercials. And they’re not just for weather; the federal government uses the same frequencies for any public hazard announcements (say, if a train carrying toxic chemicals derails near your town). Get a good one, one that has SAME technology so you can set up the alerts county-by-county. I use a Midland, which doubles as my alarm clock.

Thirdly, I discovered that a shot of my brother-in-law’s rare-breed barrel-proof bourbon is the best medicine for strep throat. It hurts, but it works. (Mostly by making you not care about how much it hurts.)

Lastly, I’ve discovered that my wife owes me big time.

Feel free to accept or reject this advice, but don’t deny it’s way more practical than “til death do us part.”

The 25 most important rules of marriage –in no particular order:

1. They must never wallpaper together.
2. She gets unlimited access to his t-shirt drawer.
3. She gets an extra alcoholic beverage when out for dinner (if he’s driving). He must not complain.
4. She must not talk during the fourth quarter of the Rose Bowl. At all.
5. She must not act aggressively to strangers/bad drivers. He must still defend her if when she does.
6. The decision to have a child comes with a commitment that the parent of the same gender must accompany said child to the toilet. An exception shall be made if the child is less than two years old.
7. He must use a bathroom on the other side of the house for his daily constitutional.
8. There shall be two closets. Both for her.
9. He must respond instantly to a call of “Spider!”
10. He must pull all dropped earrings out of the toilet.
11. Whichever spouse has had the worst day gets the last bit of wine from the bottle. If both have had an equally worse day, she gets the remainder (he’ll probably be drinking Scotch anyway).
12. She shall not complain about his scruffy beard, if she has shin stubble so stiff that it could be used to scrub the rust off a grill.
13. He must not complain about the way she mows the grass. She must not complain about the way he vacuums.
14. He must hold her hair when she vomits.
15. She has fancy china. He has remote controls. Both must be respected.
16. He is allowed to have a crush on Monica Bellucci. She is allowed to drool over Brad Pitt. Both shall be secure enough to not let this bother them.
17. The first one awake brews the coffee. No fair cheating pretending to be asleep.
18. Both must take turns hollering at the kids being the “bad parent.”
19. One shall enjoy a back- or shoulder-rub without the expectation of having to return the favor immediately. Up to one day may pass before “re-backrubbing” the spouse. Only one day, however.
20. She must at least pretend to be interested as he excitedly explains (for the 37th time) the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, or the NHL’s 2-line pass rule, or why Mikey had to hide in Sicily.
21. She parks in the garage, he parks in the driveway.
22. She must inform him immediately if any lights appear on her car’s dashboard. “Immediately” does not mean a week or two.
23. She gets the last piece of chocolate.
24. He gets the last piece of pizza.
25. She has shoes. He has caps. Leave each other alone about it.

I used to whizz outside, now I make sure the seat is back down before I leave the bathroom. I used to scrub engine grime off of my hands, now I scrub fingernail polish stains out of the carpet. I used to eat cereal over the sink. Last Tuesday I caught myself wondering if I was using the right fork for my salad. I used to wear boxer shorts around the house on lazy mornings. Now I wear sweats or pajama bottoms, so that I don’t hear “ewww, Daa-ad!!” every time I cross and uncross my legs.

I used to make beer runs. Now I make tampon runs. I shudder to think what life will be like when all four of them start cycling at the same time. I figure I’ll just hide in the bathroom, while they scrape their claws down the door and chant “daaaadeeeee….. coooommme oouuuttt….” like that chick from the Exorcist.

Most of my money goes to jeans and earrings and boy-band CDs. Most of my time goes to killing spiders.

Have you seen me?

I used to be comfortable being a little chilly. Now, I wage a battle with the girls over the thermostat. No matter what the actual temperature is, to a girl, it’s always too cold. Like guerillas, they lay in wait, biding their time, just waiting to pounce on the thermostat and jack the furnace up to 80 degrees. Sometimes they’ll get crafty, and outflank me on a distraction maneuver. “Keep him away from the thermostat for a minute. I don’t care how; cry or something.”

I once rushed the stage at a Cinderella concert. The last concert I went to was a piano recital. I was thinking about rushing the stage, but one look from my daughter told me, “do it, and I’ll cut you in your sleep.” And that was the middle child. The older one would have helped to get rid of the body.

So you can imagine how I jumped at the chance to go away for a weekend with the guys. The four of us – who I’ll call XOJoe, BackDoorBoy, CheeseStache, and yours truly, theMonkey (known to the guys as BigBoyBlue) – loaded up a truck and headed into Beverl – er, Appalachian country, specifically, the Monogahela National Forest in northeastern West Virginia.

Autumn in West Virginia.
Clicky for the big picture (2 MB) – you’ll get lost in an explosion of color.

You know you’re headed into the wild when one of the guys in the back says, “Crap! I forgot to bring my bear mace!!” Go figure. He’s worried about bears, I’m worried about coming across Lonny the Banjo kid.

Packing was light. Lots of firewood, white gas, adult beverages, and the poker chips.

And no girls.

Seneca Rocks – an outcropping of sandstone and sedimentary rock.
Clicky for large.

For four days, we slept in the woods. We ate deer meat, using only our fingers. We drank whisky. We let ourselves get really cold, then poured white gas directly onto the campfire. We passed gas, and the fire blazed even brighter. We hiked. One of our hikes was to the top of Spruce Knob, the highest point in the Chesapeake Watershed, about a mile in altitude.

Looking east from near the summit of Spruce Knob.
Clicky for large.

The only trees that can support the constant, strong gusts at the summit are red spruce. They wrap their bony roots around huge boulders of sandstone, anchoring themselves tightly. Over the decades, the branches get deformed by the strong winds, only growing on one side of the trunk.

Red spruce, deformed from the winds.
Clicky for large.

Back at camp, we lazed around, and talked about sports, cars, and whether to allow a four-flush to play in between one and two pairs. BackDoorBoy, the experienced hunter in our group, taught us how to recognize different animal trails. We slept when we felt like it, with nobody complaining about how cold or hot it was. Each was responsible for his own comfort. One evening, as he was digging through his pack, Cheesestache exclaimed, “Crap! I forgot to pack my gloves,” and the collective response from the other three was something along the lines of: “Doofus.”

During another hike, XOJoe and I ventured out onto the five-foot wide knife edge of sandstone that makes up Seneca Rocks, recklessly ignoring the sign at the end of the trail that said “DANGER!! You are responsible for your own safety!”

XOJoe not being safe or responsible from the 5-foot-wide knife edge of Seneca Rocks. He is standing at the highest point visible on the rocks seen in the image three pictures above. Clicky for large.

We returned home as a group of dirty, smelly guys, still a bit lightheaded from the altitude and alcohol, scratching our chins and necks from scruffy beards. We unpacked, shared a last beer, then headed back to reality with our families.

My girls rushed me at the door, but were stopped by the invisible wall of odor that enveloped my body. A comfortable cocoon of stink, as it were.

After the greetings, I took my boots off and checked the thermostat. Yep. 78 degrees. I dropped it to 68, then headed upstairs to scrub and shave the week away.

More pictures:
Spruce Knob Lake: (Med | Large – 2MB)
WV meadow: (Med | Large – 2MB)
Shadows play across moss and sandstone: (Med | Large – 2MB)
View from top of Seneca Rocks: (Med | Large – 2MB)
Panorama from the summit of Spruce Knob: (Large | Very large – 4MB)

Here’s a few pictures I managed to snap before, during, and shortly after the storm:

Here it comes. The mesocyclone is visible just to the bottom center of the picture. As bad as we had it, the folks about a quarter-mile north of us had the worst damage – whole sides of homes perforated with baseball-sized holes, windows blown out, siding ripped off.

 

Same pic as above, but with a negative gradient to bring out some scary detail in the clouds.

 

The storm hits suddenly. I was standing right beside these patio chairs when I took the picture of the meso. The wind hit and almost blew me off my feet; I scrambled into the kitchen and snapped this shot right after I got inside. That’s golf-ball sized hail, there.

 

Another quick picture, just outside the front door. This image is extremely stretched; it was black as night outside. After this, I made it to the basement to calm the freaking-out monkeyFam. The house sounded like someone was emptying a machine gun clip into it. Every few seconds a HUGE piece of ice would hit a window… the wife and I were expecting to hear glass breaking at any moment. Note the hail streaks in the image… they are actually being thrown toward the storm. Weird.

 

The worst part of the storm lasted for about 5-10 minutes. Here’s the front yard covered in ice.

 

A couple of hours later, here’s a drift of halfway-melted hail on my back patio…

…and the same drift after I swirled a hole in it with my foot.

 

Fortunately, we were spared any major damage (unlike the poor souls about 500-1000 yards north of us). Turns out we just got sideswiped. When I came out the next morning, I found a dead bird on my porch. I kicked him over and snapped this morbid shot.

I guess he didn’t hear the tornado sirens.

Aside from the damage to the homes and birds in the area, lots of the trees were prematurely skinned of their leaves. Normally, around here, peak autumn color is around the third-fourth week of October — but unfortunately, there are not many leaves left. Autumn will be duller than usual this year, and that means that the gray of winter will last a bit longer.

“The car’s making that clanging sound again,” Mom would say.

My father would pick at his potatoes. “What kind of clanging?”

“Like clickclickclickclick when I turn the wheel.”

“Clicking or clanging? You said clanging.”

“What? oh- sort of a click-clangy thing,” Mom would say, before addressing me. “Give your father your leftover potatoes.”

So that Saturday, by the time I came up after morning cartoons, Dad would already be underneath the car. I never really knew what he was doing under there. From my nine-year-old vantage point, he was just a pair of legs, knees to feet. Every fifteen minutes or so a curse word would float up from underneath the car, after he banged his thumb or stripped a bolt or got rust in his eye. Occasionally he would work for hours and come up for air, grabbing at a tall glass of iced tea that was always stained with greasy fingerprints.

Sometimes I’d get to help. He’d invite me to lay down on the grimy mechanic’s blanket, scooch under the car, and threaten my life with dire warnings about even touching the carefully-placed jack. Like most nine-year-old boys, though, ‘helping’ usually meant being the tool caddy. “Hand me that 5/8ths. No, that’s a 7/8ths. The 5/8ths!” he would say. “There! Right by your hand!”

‘Helping’ also meant that I often got to accompany him to the parts store. We’d enter the freezing cold store, stride up to the counter, where Dad would start fingering through the catalog until the rep came over to him. “What can I do for ya?” Gotta replace my rocker arm. “What type?” Ford. “Model?” Brougham, Ltd., 1971. “No problem. Got ‘em in the back.” Then dad would pay, and take the change and buy us both a Pepsi – if I had been good.

Times are different now. Cars are made to last forever. When they do break, it’s often something that’s too complicated for a weekend mechanic to fix. Even my father, who spent a lifetime of weekends on his back, staring up at the grimy rust of one car or another, now prefers to take it into the shop. The mechanics hook the car up to a computer and instantly diagnose the problem. No trial and error, no unnecessary trips to the parts store, no guess-timation. A computer doesn’t tell you that the car is “click-clanging,” and give you a list of possible problems. Just drive in, hook it up, and there’s your problem, Mac; that’ll be $150.

Computers and advanced technology have made so many things easier. Kids nowadays don’t have the same experiences I did. I often wonder if they’re missing something that people of my generation shared.

I was thinking about this just last Saturday, while I was installing a new router on my home network. My wife had been complaining about some sporadic problems with the old setup, so on my day off, I crawled underneath the desk, through the spaghetti strings of computer cabling, to access the back of my primary PC to see if I could figure out the problem. My six-year-old crawled beside me, and I threatened her life with all the dire warnings of what could happen if she even touched the surge protector. “Pass me that ethernet cable. No, that’s the USB. The ethernet!” I instructed. “There! Right by your hand!”

After some fruitless tinkering, I gave up and decided that it was probably time to go ahead and make the upgrade to wi-fi. So I threw my six-year-old in the car, and headed to CompUSA.

“What can I do for you?” Gotta replace my router. “What type?” PC. “Model?” Wi-fi, 802.11b, g. I paid up – and yes – I took the change & bought a Diet Coke for us to share on the way home.

It’s amazing what can change in thirty years.

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• No, honey, there’s always only been three fish in the fishtank.
• Ouch. Don’t worry, it’s okay – you’ve got plenty of blood.
• Hit Daddy in the nads again, and I’ll chain you to a pipe in the crawlspace.
• Br- uh, Cel- uh, Mad- uh, whoever you are, clean that mess up.
• Which one of you flushed a size 4t dress shoe?
• You – why is your foot wet?
• *munch*munch* no sweetie, nere’s no cookies neft. *munch*
• Let’s see… hmmm… nope, sorry, Kipper’s not on right now… but Look! There’s a cool football game!! Wanna watch it instead?
• Get out of your carseat again, and Daddy gets his duct tape out.
• Yes, you’ll love it. I put sugar in it.
• All boys secrete poison. Your mom and I will give you the antidote on the day of your wedding.
• Wow! That is such a great picture of the rabbit! Mommy? Yeah, it’s a great picture of Mommy!
• What’s your mom’s cell phone number again?
• What’s my cell phone number again?
• C’mere and pull my finger.
• I SAID…leave the baby’s eyes alone. They have to stay inside her head.
• No, you CAN’T pee standing up like da – hey, now, I said you ca – stopstopSTOP—aaah, crap. Told you. Now clean that up.

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Sleepovers; cool aloe on sunburns; the gentle breeze of a long bike ride; sweet, tart lemonade from a lemonade stand; leaning as far back on the swings as possible, staring at the clouds; violent thunderstorms with gusty winds that make the trees look angry; bathing suits, water sprinklers & wet grass between the toes; the deafening sound of a nearby cicada; skinned knees; scratching mosquito bites; running from the sultry, sweaty outside into the cool of the basement; the sharp smell of fresh-cracked peppercorns sprinkled on the hot charcoal; how good it feels to step into the soft grass after walking barefoot on the blazing heat of the patio brick; the smell of the lilac bush in May, and the lavender in July; the wonderful hot juice from a ripe tomato; corn so sweet your hands get sticky from shucking it; still playing tag at 9 o’clock; fireflies in jars; taking long afternoon naps in front of an oscillating fan; and the Milky Way stretching overhead like the backbone of the night.

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