What Do You Know? It IS the Happiest Place on Earth!

Introducing Tinkerbelle's Cousin, Annabelle!

Soaking Up Some of that Magical Anaheim Sunshine

The Last Thing We Did at Disneyland!

We fell asleep.

Which was a nice bookend considering how we started the day.

This was a big day for us since it was the first time the wife and I had been to the park in a number of years, the first time we were in charge of a toddler, first time for Annie and, of course, the first time we have ever navigated the park in a wheelchair.

The day was a great success. Annie's favorites were the Tiki Room, Pirates of the Caribbean and the Peter Pan ride. We also went on the Haunted Mansion, Jungle Cruise, and just about everything in Fantasy land (It's a small world goes without saying).

And, of course, Annie got her first set of ears to make it official.

Da Castle

Bach and My Father

by Paul Zimmer

Six days a week my father sold shoes
To support our family through depression and war,
Nursed his wife through years of Parkinson's,
Loved nominal cigars, manhattans, long jokes,
Never kissed me, but always shook my hand.

Once he came to visit me when a Brandenburg
Was on the stereo. He listened with care—
Brisk melodies, symmetry, civility, and passion.
When it finished, he asked to hear it again,
Moving his right hand in time. He would have
Risen to dance if he had known how.

"Beautiful," he said when it was done,
My father, who'd never heard a Brandenburg.
Eighty years old, bent, and scuffed all over,
Just in time he said, "That's beautiful."

The First Thing We Did at Disneyland!

We took a nap.

We decided to ride the train while Annie slept. This was also our first real road test of her new wheelchair which we picked up on Friday.

And yes, her new wheelchair glows in the dark!

Hilarious

http://youtu.be/POJEkwv-Oss

Little Did She Know . . .

This past Sunday was Annie's first trip to Disneyland. This is in the car on the way there . . .

Untitled

by Strickland Gillilan

You may have tangible wealth untold
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold
Richer than I you can never be
I had a mother who read to me.

The Immutable Laws

by Maxine Kumin

Never buy land on a slope, my father declared
the week before his heart gave out.
We bit down hard on a derelict dairy farm
of tilting fields, hills, humps and granite outcrops.

Never bet what you can't afford to lose,
he lectured. I bet my soul on a tortured horse
who never learned to love, but came to trust me.

Spend your money close to where you earn it,
he dictated. Nothing made him crosser
than wives who drove to New York to go shopping
when Philly stores had everything they needed.

This, the grab bag of immutable laws
circa 1940 when I was the last
child left at home to be admonished:

Only borrow what you know you can repay.
Your mother used to run up dress-shop bills
the size of the fifth Liberty Loan,
his private hyperbole. It took me years

to understand there'd been five loans
launched to finance the First World War,
the one he fought in, the war to end all wars.

What would this man who owed no man, who kept
his dollars folded in a rubber band,
have thought of credit cards, banking online?
Wars later, clear as water, I hear him say

reconcile your checkbook monthly, and oh!
always carry a clean handkerchief.

Yellow

Quote of the Day

"If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed."

- Edmund Burke

Quote of the Day

"Many a man has fallen in love with a girl in a light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it."

- Maurice Chevalier

My PA!

http://youtu.be/lSy1uH6TUaQ

Happy Father's day

http://youtu.be/fZa7hU6tP_s

Medical Update: Cognitive Evaluation - 6/17: Part 2

It is also important to remember that these evaluations are just a snapshot in time. So, based on all the evidence given on Friday morning, June 17th, 2011 between the hours of 8:30am and 11am, having had a light breakfast of toast smeared with peanut butter and honey . . . you get the picture - these things are not exactly etched into the side of Stonehenge or anything (see me skillfully talking myself down off the ledge there?).

The good news: not autistic.

We had sorta noodled this one out on our own over the past month and so, while it was a relief, it was not a surprise.

Next, the no news: Annie has cognitive delays.

This is not really news to us - we knew she was delayed in certain areas such as speech and these evaluations are all part of the process of narrowing down some specifics concerning her development.

The "bad" news: Annie's cognitive delays are significant enough that the county is willing to give some of our tax dollars back to us in the form of additional therapy.

More "good" news: Of children significantly delayed, Annie's case is classified as "Mild"

To a parent, this is sort of like saying, "The bad news is your daughter was injured in a car accident. The good news is, compared to the other people in the accident, your daughter was injured the least."

Soooooo . . . . Yay?

There is a label that went with the findings - it turns out Annie is an Otter. I know. We were disappointed too - we had always hoped for a Golden Retriever but we are bound and determined to not let our wee-one be defined by labels.!

Actually, the label was something that made the wife want to "Put my fist through the wall" - but these things change, nothing is set in stone - Annie has a lot of growing to do yet and the county wants to do all they can to help. So . . . yay?

The school district wants to evaluate Annie in two weeks and these things are starting to feel like a game of Russian Roulette. We treated ourselves to a much deserved but slightly out-of-our-budget lunch after the appointment today and as we sat there we both felt like we had been "drug through a knothole backwards" as the saying goes.

Annie of, course, giggled her way through lunch and is now napping peacefully.

And that gets a definite "YAY!".

Thank you once again for all your prayers and support.

Medical Update: Cognitive Evaluation - 6/17: Part 1

First off, thank you to all those who have been praying for / thinking of and pulling for us today. We really wanted to make sure that this eval was accurate as possible and I think it was.

Annie slept through the night, woke up cheerful, had a good breakfast and powered through 2 1/2 hours of observation, poking and prodding.

The first 45 minutes or so, the therapist played various problem-solving games with the wee one - hiding toys under washcloths, placing toys in clear Plexiglas containers some short crossword and Sudoku puzzles (okay, I made those last two up).

The rest of the almost two hours was spent letting Annie do her own thing while the wife and I answered about 543 questions. Fortunately, the wife and I were in agreement on about 98% of our answers so that felt good.

Each game played gets a point value, every answer to every question gets a point value. At the end all the points are added up, checked against a graph and your wee one is branded on the bottom of her left foot with a label for the rest of her life. Not really.

It is sort of like those personality tests that determine if you are an Otter, Golden Retriever, Garden Slug etc. No one description ever fully encompasses anyone - but WE MUST MEASURE SO WE CAN LABEL. And, we must label so the county can decide if they want to give more of your tax dollars back to you in the form of therapy for your daughter.

To be continued . . .

Invincibelle Spirit

LINK

Quote of the Day

Protesters again.

Here I sit, at this conveniently placed stop light waiting to drive onto base. Having to stare at them forces me to wonder to myself what I actually feel about this situation.

Sure, part of me wants to roll down the window and tell them the truth. In a monotone, sardonic voice and using a few strategically placed hand gestures to emphasize that I think their cause is noble but feeble and wearing a blank, irritated facial expression, I would say, "You guys do know that we don't make decisions about the war at this base, right? There's no direct line to the president for the commander to pick up the phone and say that the protesters at the gate have a really good point and we should definitely bring the troops home now."

It doesn't work like that.

- William Luce

Middle-Class Blues

by Dennis O'Driscoll

He has everything.
A beautiful young wife.
A comfortable home.
A secure job.
A velvet three-piece suite.
A metallic-silver car.
A mahogany cocktail cabinet.
A rugby trophy.
A remote-controlled music centre.
A set of gold clubs under the hallstand.
A fair-haired daughter learning to walk.

What he is afraid of most
and what keeps him tossing some nights
on the electric underblanket,
listening to the antique clock
clicking with disapproval from the landing,
are the stories that begin:
He had everything.
A beautiful young wife.
A comfortable home.
A secure job.
Then one day.

Brilliant!

They should hire Conan to speak at High School graduations - Millions of $$ would be saved . . .


http://youtu.be/ELC_e2QBQMk

It's Gettin' Real In The Whole Foods Parking Lot . . .

http://youtu.be/2UFc1pr2yUU

Love It

http://youtu.be/hnLsfnchbGs

Nietzsche famously said “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” But what he failed to stress is that it almost kills you. Disappointment stings and, for driven, successful people like yourselves it is disorienting. What Nietzsche should have said is “Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you watch a lot of Cartoon Network and drink mid-price Chardonnay at 11 in the morning.”

- Conan O'Brian Commencement Speech

Quote of the Day

I’m not old enough to play baseball or football. I’m not eight yet. My mom told me when you start baseball, you aren’t going to be able to run that fast because you had an operation. I told Mom I wouldn’t need to run that fast. When I play baseball, I’ll just hit them out of the park. Then I’ll be able to walk.

- Edward J. McGrath, Jr.

Roasted Pear Salad

Made this the other night and it was quite good.

"Oven-roasted pears take the ho-hum out of this green salad created by our Test Kitchen staff. They tossed together a good-for-you medley of mellow pear slices, crispy greens, nuts and dried cranberries. The creamy dressing carries yet more pear flavor sweetened with just a touch of honey."

RECIPE HERE

Best Breakup Song Ever

Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers, "Jubilation Day" from Moving Colour on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/24614436

Quote of the Day

It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else’s eyes.

- Sally Field

I Know I Have Posted This Before but Goodness it is Great . . .

http://youtu.be/JQ0iMulicgg

But wait, there's more . . . .

Yappy Hour

So I heard about this dog-friendly hotel downtown that hosts a "Yappy Hour" once a month. People bring their dawgs and enjoy snacks and drinks. So we decided to try it out. We had no idea what we were in for . . .

The Hotel Indigo in downtown San Diego designed a 9th floor deck specifically for dawgs complete with a dawgie pool and a patch of grass for, well, you know . . .

There were spectacular views of the city . . .

As well as the Padres game . . .

There were about 50 dawgs all off-leash - running around the deck, chewing on each other. There was a bar with beer, wine, cocktails and snacks. there was even a DJ keepin the party goin'.

It was waaaaaay fun and we totally plan on going back next month. We learned that the party is not actually sponsored by Hotel Indigo but by City Dog San Diego . Check out their website for next month's Yappy Hour - see you there!

Love It

http://youtu.be/_AYEgwwCYWw

Milestones

Childhood is filled with milestones; events that point to the future and what we are not yet but may be becoming. Your first day at school, first bicycle, Junior High, High School, Sports, Music, your First Kiss. What children don't realize is that their parents are hitting milestones as well. Unlike childhood milestones that point to an inspiring future of who they may become, parental milestones point backward to who they already are. When you change that first diaper there is that, "Oh yeah, I'm a dad now . . ." midnight feedings, your child's first words, first steps, the first time your little one turns to you and asks for a hug - all milestones - all reminders - YOU ARE A PARENT NOW.

Yesterday we had one of those moments - our first meeting with our local elementary school. Annie is receiving some physical therapy at home through the county right now but that care will transition to the school system once she turns three in August. So we have our first day of school on the calender - September 6th.

We are a little nervous - the teachers are a little nervous (they admitted that they had never had a physically disabled student before) so we are all going to have to put our heads together to come up with creative solutions to various obstacles.

All in all, it was a good meeting but sort of like taking a 2x4 to the noggin emblazoned with "YOUR A DAD NOW ALRIGHT!".

Just in times for father's day . . .

The Slave Auction

by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper in Good Poems, American Places

The sale began—young girls were there,
Defenseless in their wretchedness,
Whose stifled sobs of deep despair
Revealed their anguish and distress.

And mothers stood, with streaming eyes,
And saw their dearest children sold;
Unheeded rose their bitter cries,
While tyrants bartered them for gold.

And woman, with her love and truth—
For these in sable forms may dwell—
Gazed on the husband of her youth,
With anguish none may paint or tell.

And men, whose sole crime was their hue,
The impress of their Maker’s hand,
And frail and shrinking children too,
Were gathered in that mournful band.

Ye who have laid your loved to rest,
And wept above their lifeless clay,
Know not the anguish of that breast,
Whose loved are rudely torn away.

Ye may not know how desolate
Are bosoms rudely forced to part,
And how a dull and heavy weight
Will press the life-drops from the heart.

Bath 2.0

Because Annie struggles to sit up, we have continued to bathe her in her blue plastic infant bath tub. She has now outgrown it and we are left looking for alternatives.

One suggestion from another SB parent was the Papillion bath ring. So two clicks on Amazon and two days later, it's on our front porch.

Here is it's maiden voyage.

It has four petals filled with Styrofoam bee-bees. It ties in the back.

Things got a little squirrley and the mom had to struggle to maintain order and keep the wee-one's head from going under but the over-all mommy-report was "Pretty sure this might work".

Annie gave it two-thumbs up.

Quote of the Day

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

- Samuel Johnson

Reading Time

Earl

by Louis Jenkins in Good Poems, American Places

In Sitka, because they are fond of them,
People have named the seals. Every seal
is named Earl because they are killed one
after another by the orca, the killer
whale; seal bodies tossed left and right
into the air. "At least he didn't get
Earl," someone says. And sure enough,
after a time, that same friendly,
bewhiskered face bobs to the surface.
It's Earl again. Well, how else are you
to live except by denial, by some
palatable fiction, some little song to
sing while the inevitable, the black and
white blindsiding fact, comes hurtling
toward you out of the deep?

Bliss

This is my big dumb dawg on my "biggish" wood deck.

I can't tell you how happy this makes me - but I will try. When I see the dawg splayed out in the sun on the deck like this, I assume he is in a state of total bliss - all his cares lost in the heat of the sun and the smell of redwood. I wish I could be that content - if only for a moment. I pray that my daughter will experience that contentment - the sun on her skin, the wood beneath her, knowing she is fully cared for, fully safe, fully loved. I had an assistant once who had a photo of her at about age 18, asleep against her father's chest on the couch and I instantly thought, I want my girl to be that happy.

For now, this will do . . .

And Let That Be a Lesson To Ya!

http://youtu.be/9PzoxTgfRO0

Astonishing

http://youtu.be/cM5A1K6TxxM

Group Speech Therapy Update - 6/9/11

So Annie had her first Group Speech Therapy yesterday. Like you, we had no idea what Group Speech Therapy for toddlers would entail. Basically, it's 50 minutes of pre-school-play-time Boot Camp.

There are no more than four children per class and each child has at least one parent there. The hurricane of activity is wrangled by the Therapist (Speech-Language Pathologist) with her assistant following close behind alternately setting up the next activity and cleaning up the last activity.

There is a set schedule for each class:

1) 15 Minutes Structured Circle Time: We begin by singing the take-your-shoes-off song and then everyone sanitizes their hands. There are songs and toys and every toy has a purpose and every song has movements with a purpose. For example, there are these vibrating wands that the kids are encouraged to rub on their legs, and arms and tummies - eventually rubbing on their face and mouth all of which is to progressively stimulate oral/vocal awareness.

2) 10 Minutes of Large Movement Activity: This can be a see-saw, swings, bouncing on an exercise ball etc. - all of which have been set up in the "Gymnasium"

3) 15 Minutes of Sensory Play: This is where things can get messy and we are encourage to wear clothes that we don't mind getting gooped up. Yesterday they squirted mild shaving cream on a table and handed out little plastic people and dinosaurs to play with.

4) 10 Minutes of Wrap-up and Good-bye: Clean up, more songs, putting on shoes etc.

All throughout, the adults describe EVERY LITTLE DETAIL of what the toddlers are doing - "Put on", "Take off", "Fall down", and so on.

Our therapist was fantastic. One of those people who just seems to have a smile plastered on her face 24/7 but not in a disingenuous way. Afterwards I said to the wife, "I'm exhausted - how does she do this all day?". "I don't know", replied the wife, "But she sure seems to love her work."

And I believe she does. If your toddler needs to be in Speech-Therapy Boot Camp, she's just the person you want as your child's Drill Sargent.

Meadowbrook Nursing Home

by Alice N. Persons in Good Poems, American Places

On our last visit, when Lucy was fifteen
And getting creaky herself,
One of the nurses said to me,
"Why don't you take the cat to Mrs. Harris' room
— poor thing lost her leg to diabetes last fall —
she's ninety, and blind, and no one comes to see her."

The door was open. I asked the tiny woman in the bed
if she would like me to bring Lucy in, and she turned her head
toward us. "Oh, yes, I want to touch her."

"I had a cat called Lily — she was so pretty, all white.
She was with me for twenty years, after my husband died too.
She slept with me every night — I loved her very much.
It's hard, in here, since I can't get around."

Lucy was settling in on the bed.
"You won't believe it, but I used to love to dance.
I was a fool for it! I even won contests.
I wish I had danced more.
It's funny, what you miss when everything.....is gone."
This last was a murmur. She'd fallen asleep.

I lifted the cat
from the bed, tiptoed out, and drove home.
I tried to do some desk work
but couldn't focus.

I went downstairs, pulled the shades,
put on Tina Turner
and cranked it up loud
and I danced.
I danced.

Hilarious

http://youtu.be/t4_dZPVg8KI

People Who Take Care

by Nancy Henry in Good Poems, American Places

People who take care of people
get paid less than anybody
people who take care of people
are not worth much
except to people who are
sick, old, helpless, and poor
people who take care of people
are not important to most other people
are not respected by many other people
come and go without much fuss
unless they don’t show up
when needed
people who make more money
tell them what to do
never get shit on their hands
never mop vomit or wipe tears
don’t stand in danger
of having plates thrown at them
sharing every cold
observing agonies
they cannot tell at home
people who take care of people
have a secret
that sees them through the double shift
that moves with them from room to room
that keeps them on the floor
sometimes they fill a hollow
no one else can fill
sometimes through the shit
and blood and tears
they go to a beautiful place, somewhere
those clean important people
have never been.

Almost Makes a Person Want to Recycle . . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYnd5JRu86E&feature=player_embedded

Go Annabelle Day - Friday, June 17th

It amazes me that we have not had a "Go Annabelle" day in about two years. For those who are not familiar, "Go Annabelle" was the brainchild of a friend of ours.

In the past, Go Annabelle days have involved surgeries or doctor's appointments that make our parental knees shake. This go-round it involves a cognitive evaluation.

About a month back, one of Annie's therapists raised a concern about autism.

It has taken us a month to work out the insurance kinks but now we have the eval scheduled for 8:30am on Friday, June 17th. It's a two-hour deal where specialists interview mom and dad and observe Annie. The goal is to get a comprehensive evaluation of the wee-one's cognitive abilities.

I have no idea how a person might evaluate a two-year-olds cognitive abilities but I imagine it is something like trying to nail jello to a wall.

So our prayer request is for ACCURACY. We need Annie to be her normal, average self - not extra happy, not extra grumpy, sleepy or spastic. We are praying that the medical folks are at the top of their game as well. If Annie needs behavioural therapy, we want that to be evident, if she does not need it we want that to be evident as well.

In short, we need a "Go Annabelle" day.

Sport 'em if you got 'em.

Thanks for your continued prayers and support.

PTX: Potty-Training Extreme

It's been a while since I posted something from these guys. This is great:


http://www.dadlabs.com/The-Lab/potty-training-extreme-azrin-foxx-method.html

Ode to Hardware Stores

by Barbara Hamby in Good Poems, American Places

Where have all the hardware stores gone — dusty, sixty-watt
warrens with the wood floors, cracked linoleum,
poured concrete painted blood red? Where are Eppes, Terry Rossa
Yon's, Flint — low buildings on South Monroe,
Eight Avenue, Gaines Street with their scent of paint thinner,
pesticides, plastic hoses coiled like serpents
in a garden paradisal with screws in buckets or bins
against a brick wall with hand-lettered signs
in ball-point pen — Carriage screws, two dozen for fifty cents —
long vicious dry-wall screws, thick wood screws
like peasants digging potatoes in fields, thin elegant trim
screws— New York dames at a backwoods hick
Sunday School picnic. O universal clevis pins, seven holes
in the shank, like the seven deadly sins.
Where are the men — Mr. Franks, Mr. Piggot, Tyrone, Hank,
Ralph — sunburnt with stomachs and no asses,
men who knew the mythology of nails, Zeuses enthroned
on an Olympus of weak coffee, bad haircuts,
and tin cans of galvanized casting nails, sinker nails, brads,
20-penny common nails, duplex head nails, flooring nails
like railroad spikes, finish nails, fence staples, cotter pins,
roofing nails — flat-headed as Floyd Crawford,
who lived next door to you for years but would never say hi
or make eye contact. What a career in hardware
he could have had, his blue-black hair slicked back with brilliantine,
rolling a toothpick between his teeth while sorting
screw eyes and carpet tacks. Where are the hardware stores,
open Monday through Friday, Saturday till two?
No night hours here, like physicists their universe mathematical
and pure in its way: dinner at six, Rawhide at eight,
lights out at ten, kiss in the dark, up at five for the subatomic world
of toggle bolts, cap screws, hinch-pin clips, split-lock
washers. And the tools — saws, rakes, wrenches, rachets, drills,
chisels, and hose heads, hose couplings, sandpaper
(garnet, production, wet or dry), hinges, wire nails, caulk, nuts,
lag screws, pulleys, vise grips, hexbolts, fender washers
all in a primordial stew of laconic talk about football, baseball,
who'll start for the Dodgers, St. Louis, the Phillies,
the Cubs? Walk around the block today and see their ghosts:
abandoned lots, graffitti'd windows, and tacked
to backroom walls, pin-up calendars almost decorous
in our porn-riddled galaxy of Walmarts, Seven-Elevens,
stripmalls like strip mines or a carrion bird's curved beak
gobbling farms, meadows, wildflowers, drowsy afternoons
of nothing to do but watch dust motes dance through a streak
of sunlight in a darkened room. If there's a second coming,
I want angels called Lem, Nelson, Rodney, and Cletis gathered
around a bin of nails, their silence like hosannahs,
hallelujahs, amens swelling from cinderblock cathedrals
drowning our cries of Bigger, faster, more, more, more.

The Ineffable

Good Poems, American Placesby George Bilgere

I'm sitting here reading the paper,
feeling warm and satisfied, basically content
with my life and all I have achieved.
Then I go up for a refill and suddenly realize
how much happier I could be with the barista.
Late thirties, hennaed hair, an ahnk
or something tattooed on her ankle,
a little silver ring in her nostril.
There's some mystery surrounding why she's here,
pouring coffee and toasting bagels at her age.
But there's a lot of torsion when she walks,
which is interesting. I can sense right away
how it would all work out between us.

We'd get a loft in the artsy part of town,
and I can see how we'd look shopping together
at our favorite organic market
on a snowy winter Saturday,
snowflakes in our hair,
our arms full of leeks and shiitake mushrooms.
We would do tai chi in the park.
She'd be one of the few people
who actually "gets" my poetry
which I'd read to her in bed.
And I can see us making love, by candlelight,
Struggling to find words for the ineffable.
We never dreamed it could be like this.

And it would all be great, for many months,
until one day, unable to help myself,
I'd say something about that nostril ring.
Like, do you really need to wear that tonight
at Sarah and Mike's house, Sarah and Mike being
pediatricians who intimidate me slightly
with their patrician cool, and serious money.
And she would give me a look,
a certain lifting of the eyebrows
I can see she's capable of, and right there
that would be the end of the ineffable.

Coffee Cup Café

by Linda Hasselstrom in Good Poems, American Places

Soon as the morning chores are done,
cows milked, pigs fed, kids packed
off to school, it's down to the café
for more coffee and some soothing
conversation.
"If it don't rain pretty soon, I'm
just gonna dry up and blow away."
"Dry? This ain't dry. You don't know
how bad it can get. Why, in the Thirties
it didn't rain any more than this for
(breathless pause) six years."
"I heard Johnson's lost ninety head of calves
in that spring snowstorm. They
were calving and heading for home
at the same time and they just walked
away from them."
"Yeah and when the cows
got home, half of them died
of pneumonia."
"I ain't had any hay on me since that hail
last summer; wiped out my hay crop, all
my winter pasture, and then the drouth
this spring. Don't know what I'll do."
"Yeah, but this is nothing yet.
Why in the Thirties the grasshoppers came
like hail and left nothing green on the ground.
They ate fenceposts, even. And the dust, why
it was deep as last winter's snow drifts,
piled against the houses. It ain't bad here yet,
and when it does come, there won't be so many of us
having coffee."
So for an hour they cheer each other, each story
worse than the last, each face longer. You'd think
they'd throw themselves under their tractors
when they leave, but they're bouncy as a new calf,
caps tilted fiercely into the sun.
They feel better, now they know
somebody's having a harder time
and that men like them
can take it.

Un Bel Di

by Gerald Locklin in Good Poems, American Places

Because my daughter's eighth-grade teachers
Are having what is called an "in-service day,"
Which means, in fact, an out-of-service day,
She is spending this Friday home with me,

So I get up in time to take us,
On this summery day in March,
For a light lunch at a legendary café
Near the Yacht Marina.

Then we feed some ducks before catching
The cheap early-bird showing of
My Cousin Vinny, at which we share a
Dessert of a box of Milk Duds large
Enough to last us the entire show.

Afterwards we drive to a shoe-store to
Get her the Birkenstocks she's been coveting,
 But they're out of her size in green; we leave
An order and stop for dinner at Norm Calvin's
Texas-style hole-in-the-wall barbeque rib factory.

When we get home I am smart enough
To downplay to my wife what a good day
We have had on our own. Later, saying
Goodnight to my little girl,
 Already much taller than her mother,
I say, "days like today are the favorite
Days of my life," and she knows
 It is true.

The VCCA Fellows Visit the Holiness Baptist Church, Amherst, Virginia

by Barbara Crooker in Good Poems, American Places

We are the only light faces in a sea of mahogany,
tobacco, almond, and this is not the only way
we are different. We've come in late, the choir
already singing, swaying to the music, moving
in the spirit. When I was down, Lord, when
I was down, Jesus lifted me. And, for a few minutes,
we are raised up, out of our own skepticism
and doubts, rising on the swell of their voices.
The singers sit, and we pass the peace, wrapped
in thick arms, ample bosoms, and I start to think
maybe God is a woman of color, and that She loves
us, in spite of our pale selves, so far away
from who we should really be. Parishioners
give testimonials, a deacon speaks of his sister,
who's "gone home," and I realize he doesn't mean
back to Georgia, but that she's passed over. I float
on this sweet certainty, of a return not to the bland
confection of wispy clouds and angels in nightshirts,
but to childhood's kitchen, a dew-drenched June
morning, roses tumbling by the back porch.
The preacher mounts the lectern, tells us he's been
up since four working at his other job, the one
that pays the bills, and he delivers a sermon
that lightens the heart, unencumbered by dogma
and theology. For the benediction, we all join hands,
visitors and strangers enfolded in the whole,
like raisins in sweet batter. We step through the door
into the stunning sunshine, and our hearts
lift out of our chests, tiny birds flying off to light
in the redbuds, to sing and sing and sing.

Me and My Friend Dorothy

Quote of the Day

If He who in Himself can lack nothing, chooses to need us, it is because we need to be needed.

- CS Lewis

Quote of the Day

Life after all is fair; ultimately it breaks everybody’s heart.

— Rachel Maddux in Good Poems, American Places

Me and My Uncle Day

Quote of the Day

"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."

- Oscar Wilde

Seriously Love This Stuff

http://youtu.be/GJtq6OmD-_Y

Napping in the Park

The Day I Made My Father Proud

by Michael Moran in Good Poems, American Places

The doorbell jarred me
toward consciousness
on a sultry Sunday morning
when I was nineteen,
a college sophomore.
I had slept where the bourbon
laid me—on an old couch
reclaimed from a curb.
The party had sped by,
left me road-kill,
limp and snoring,
so my roommates said,
and now I stumbled
to the buzzing door,
remembering what I had never
completely forgotten—
my family is coming.

Dad at the door.
I mumble, 'I overslept,'
as he surveys the wreckage
of these tired rooms:
lip-sticked cigarette butts,
crushed aluminum cans,
glasses floating sliced limes,
broken brown bottles,
a sticky wooden floor under
smoked-and-perfumed air.
He turns slowly to me
and winks! 'We can't
let your mother see this,'
as if we'd planned the party
together, drank from the same
Yellowstone bottle all night.

We spring to action,
sponging spills, opening windows,
gathering garbage. He spins
through the rooms
with the grace of a dancer—
a miniature Falstaff—
humming old barroom songs
from his Navy days,
chuckling softly, his eyes
gleaming as he hides
the half-emptied Jim Beam.
By the time my mother
has herded all my siblings
up the stairs to the apartment,
we have salvaged it to decency.

You see, he thought I was
too serious, worried that I
read too many books, never
got into real trouble.
I remember the way
he stared at me
one Halloween evening
when I told him
I was staying home
to read King Lear.
His cold brown eyes
were sad, disgusted,
the eyes of an Elizabethan
reveler who had just heard
that the Puritans
had closed the theatres.

But that morning
I made him proud,
couldn't have done better,
unless, perhaps,
one of the girls
had slept over
and answered the door,
wearing nothing
but my faded
red flannel shirt,
top buttons
undone.