Category: family

every friday mornng my dad, who lives in saraland, alabama, goes to the local krystal fast food resturant an eats breakfast with “the boys”. “the boys” are a group of 70 year old men who sit around, drink coffee, eat cheap krystal’s biscuits, and discuss the world as they know it. they solve all the world’s problems but then unfortunately because they are in their 70’s they quickly forget the answers to these problems before they reach the door on their way to solves the ills of the world. it has to be a tiring process knowing that you have just solved all the issues with which humanity regularly struggles and yet also knowing you can’t remember the solutions which you reached. life is tough for “the boys.”

being as this is the thanksgiving holiday i have been spending the week hoping between my parents, in saraland, and pam’s parent’s, in tilman’s corner, just down the street 15 minutes or so. since, i was in town dad asked if i would like to go with him to listen to “the boys”. you see, my dad is no where near 70 yet but unfortunately he is old enough that his memory has begun to fade. when he listens to “the boys” and then leaves he is only able to remember that what they said was really good. he simply can’t remember what was so good about what they had said and thus he can’t remember the solutions to the problems of the world that they reached. by going to hear “the boys” my role was suppose to be “the young one with the good memory”. “the boys” would discuss the problems, reach the solutions and then i being younger than either “the boys” or my dad would remember the solutions and bring them out to the world. the plan was that at 6:30 a.m. dad would knock on my door and i would go to join “the boys” with him.

i stayed up all night waiting for my dad to knock on the door, get me, and together with “the boys” solve the ills of humanity. at 6:30 a.m. i didn’t hear anything. i was afraid to get up and open the door. what if something had happened to “the boys”? what would become of the world? i waited. at 7:00 a.m. i was still expecting that at any minute my dad would knock on the door and th world would be made right. i continued waiting in my room listening to pam breathe until 7:30 a.m. then i opened the door and walked out into the world. i looked around hoping to find my dad, for i suddenly realized that i didn’t know where the krystals is that “the boys” met at. dad was no where to be found. he had already left to eat breakfast with the boys and had forgotten to knock on my door. apparently his memory is worse than i originally thought.

so the my strategy has to change a little bit. i now have to bring someone young enough to remember to get my dad to knock on the oor so that i can then go to “the boys” and be young enough to remember their solutions.

the world will have to wait just a little longer.

i officially feel pretty crudy now. therefore, i’m not going to type very much and i’ll put off describing the great and final battle for supremacy of the my front yard until later (needless to say our lawn is strewn with the dead and mangled bodies and yellow jackets and azela bushes and my body is marked with the battle scars of fighting stinging insects).

tonight was halloween and so i left the house for the first time tonight to take the kids trick or treating. adam went as strong bad (from www.homestarrunner.com) and noah went as a walmart emplyee. it was fun – always is. i have to say that i can’t stand older kids who go to the houses begging for candy without having a custome on. i’m okay with older kids trick or treating (i’m okay with teens and adults trick-or-treating also) as long as they take the time to put on a costume. it’s just plain lazy not to try some type of costume. if you came to our house with a costume we gave you a handful of candy, even if it was a lousy costume. no costume though and we gave you one tootsie roll. the interesting thing was people who came with others who were in costume. a handful for you and one tootise roll for you. it was fun to watch their faces.

my wife makes the best chicken noodle soup in the world. it’s true and i’ll wrestle you to death if you disagree with me. you might not think that chicken noodle soup is that big of a deal. of course, you would be wrong. homemade chicken noodle soup is better than the feeling you get after a sneeze that you struggled really hard with. it’s better than the feeling you get when you find the perfect parking spot that three other people just drove past. it’s better than a glass of ice cold water right after you finished cutting the lawn on a hot day. it’s that good, and pam’s is the best. i’ll wrestle you to death if you disagree. she made this soup tonight and i ate three bowls. it’ was really good.

i think that most of western society has neglected the joys of soup. there is simply nothing as good as homemade soup on a chili night. soup is the best of two worlds. it’s a warm drink to warm you up and a meal at the same time. i don’t really understand why everyone neglects soup. if they had a spoonful of pam’s chicken noodle soup those soup haters would change their minds. it’s the best soup in the world and if you disagree with me i’ll wrestle you to death.

btw, last night i had to drive two hours to percy quinn state park in mississippi for parkview church’s men’s retreat. i left baton rouge late because of the pbs homecoming and i didn’t get to the park until around 11. of course by then there weren’t any park rangers around. i tried calling everyone whose cell phone i knew to get them to tell me where in the park they were. no one answered so i drove around looking for cars that i knew. i didn’t see any. around 12:30 a.m. after driving around for 2 1/2 hours looking for them i decided that there was no way i was driving the 2 hours back to baton rouge and i could just find the in the morning. so i slept in my car. i haven’t done that in a while. it felt very transient. kind of cool. not sure why it felt so cool. that has to be something spiritual to it because it was just fun. of course, it would have been better with some of pam’s chicken noodle soup. it’s the best in the world and if you disagree with me i’ll wrestle you to death.

i found the guys this morning and the retreat was awesome.

today was the day (actually you can probably say that about any day – for example “yesterday was the day” – it’s a just a given that any word that describes an actual day, today, yesterday, sunday, is the day but that’s really neither here nor there – another saying which doesn’t make much sense – what does geography or proximity have to do with anything?). this afternoon was the day in which pam and i were opening adam’s room back up to him. i told ya’ll a couple of weeks ago that we were going to redo adam’s room and that he said he didn’t tust us. what i didn’t tell you was that we were doing this whole thing alla “trading spaces”.

most likely you’ve heard of this show but i’ll describe it for you just in case you haven’t. “trading spaces” is put on by “the learning channel” (which should be renamed “the let’s take not-so-reality t.v. and base all our programming on it channel) and it involves interior decorators coming into two neighbors houses and completely trashing everything in 48 hours, only to leave the neighbors to hate each other afterwards (this is where the real show should be – they should make a show about the neighborhood wars and battles between the two couples that start just after the cameras are turned off ove4r the fact that one of their living rooms was painted with leopard print – that’s educational television). the only rule seems to be that you can’t actually see what happens to your house (there are actually other rules but they break these all the time). this is done so that you can be embarrassed and have it caught on cable television.

well, it’s sad to admit but we watch this show (i’m not really a volunteer in this process and usually just skip it all together). pam and my boys love the show. so they came up with the idea of doing each other’s room “trading spaces” style. they’re actually too young to do any of the work so “trading spaces” style for a 9 and 6 year old means when it is their turn getting kicked out of their room until their room is finished. so we kicked adam out of his room thursday and started on the road to redoing everything. it took until last night to finish it but after much blood, sweat, and tears everything was done and after school today it was time to unveil adam’s room.

we brought him into the room and the kid who told his loving parents that he didn’t trust them went bezerk. he loves his room. his general remark on the whole thing was “i didn’t think ya’ll had a ‘taste of cool’ at all but apparently you do.” powerful words from a 9 year old – at least i think they are – i’m not really sure what “a taste of cool” is. i hope it’s not like the monkeypox or anything. i’ll post a picture or something later (if i can figure out how to do that) for now i’m going to take me and my taste of cool to bed…i think i feel a fever coming on or something.

after a long and exhausting day my family and i are now back home in baton rouge. at 11:30 this morning we started our trip back home from a wonderful weekend at gulf shores, alabama. we figured the traffic would be a little heavy so we had planned on allowing an hour and a half, or at most two hours, to make the trip to mobile, which normally takes 45 minutes. turns out we were way off. apparently all the drunks and just generally bad driver in the southeast decided to get together over labor day around gulf shores and hold a “how not to drive” convention. it would appear that part of this convention was a demonstration on highway 59. the bad driving demonstration clogged up 59 all the way from gulf shores to the interstate (about 30 to 40 miles). it would appear that the bad drivers were having such a good time chocking up the roadway that they quickly voted and unanimously decided the take their convention into mobile via interstate 10. this of course messed up i-10. the trip from gulf shores to mobile lasted until 3:00 p.m. (almost 4 hours!). that made for a world of fun, in fact too much fun for us, so we decided to stop and finally eat lunch and visited with my parents. this took about an hour. we figured by then all the crazies would have left the road. we had three hours worth of driving ahead of us between mobile and baton rouge. we were looking forward to a pleasant journey for the rest of the time. of course, i hadn’t thought of the fact that the people leaving the bad drivers convention would be going in all directions and spreading havoc as they went. our three hour drive extended itself to 5 hours. all in all this made our 4 hour trip into a nearly 9 hour trip. we averaged about 33 miles per hour. pretty excellent speed for a horse, but not for a 626.

here’s the point of all this. my kids decided to start asking questions. what place would you most like to go it? not a restaurant, but what geographic place (i.e. state or country). what car would you most like to drive? etc. my 9 and 6 year old made the journey enjoyable. without them I probably would have just fumed over the long trip. instead, i laughed a lot with my family. life is a journey… try to enjoy the journey. i’m trying real hard.