Will it matter?

My buddy Jon died today in a motorcycle accident. I don't know the details. There was a deer involved. Jon worked as a bartender some times, and he was my companion more than one night while I sat alone listening to my husband and his dinner music band. Jon was a good listener, always sincere. He had a charming smile.

Jon and his partner were one of the first couples to get married in Massachusetts a few years ago. They caused quite a stir out East. I think they had their picture on the front of the New York Times or something. Jon said some controversial things before the wedding. He caught the attention of Focus on the Family which used his comments to build their case for heterosexual marriage.

Look -- as a student of the Bible I know the verses selected to point a special sin finger at Jon, but as a student of Christ I am obliged to also note the verses that point the finger at me as Romans 3:23 states so aptly.

I have been on the internet this afternoon and discovered that Jon was considered both a hero of the movement and its downfall. Feted by some and used as a tool by the other side. Did I know any of this before today? No. He was the guy from the restaurant. He was a supporter of my community. He was a friendly face on the bike path. He made a mean Shirley Temple for the pregnant girl. Jon was my neighbor. He was my friend.

Everybody in the pool

It was hottish today, so I thought I'd get out the pool for Baby D. I went through many, many pools with Colin. We have an uneven back yard and I was always looking for one that would -- what? Make the yard even? I don't know. Our pools always have a deep end and depending on where you put them, they can have a really deep end. So, anyway, I went to the pool graveyard and I only had two choices. One has sides that are held up by the water and therefore collapse. (Difficult to get in and out of when you are two feet high.) The other was, apparently, something I thought would be big enough for a floaty or something for myself. It was huge. As I recall it took an entire day to inflate and fill and Colin and I went in it once. Nope. Off to my local Pamida I went.

Now usually I travel to the next, larger town to go to Target. I am a Minnesotan. We go to Target. It had better be pretty cheap to make us go to the Southerners' store -- Wal Mart. I did not have energy to go to the next town, so I went to our little Pamidaa which, I swear, is straight out of a Twilight Zone episode. I am always a little afraid to go in. Perhaps I will not come out. I went in there one time and I saw no one. No one. Not a shopper. Not a clerk. Not a pasty looking stock boy. No one. Fortunately they did not have what I was looking for and so I just left.

Since all I needed was one baby pool, I thought it would be all right. Baby D and I drove up and looked at there inventory. All they had was big pools and one with a little canopy thing. After a painful checkout, we took the pool home and I started to blow the thing up. While I was working on it Baby D went inside with Colin and pulled five keys off my keyboard. I got it put together, found a flattish spot in the lawn, filled it up with water, put the boys in swimsuits, got toys from the bathroom and . . . it started to rain. We came inside and played camping instead. So much for the pool.

Happily ever after

Baby D and I finished reading Charlotte's Web and I am happy to report that Wikipedia says E.B. White was just a writer with a number of successful children's stories -- no checkered past, no reading into his work, no angry children.

Dear Sarah,

Since I feel pretty confident you are the only one who reads my blog (well, you and apparently Digital TV Brazil), this blog's for you:

TEN DEEP DARK SECRETS

1. As we are now 373 some odd days away from my 40th birthday and (ahem) middle age (I guess), I think you are going to have to begin some conversations with me thusly, "Say, Lisa I've tagged you on my blog. I know you know what this means, but perhaps I will explain a little to remind myself . . ." I am surprised how subtle the transition is from hip to out of it to tragic.
2. I have had up to four vacations planned at once. Right now I only have the next two planned out, but I may sneak in a long weekend in the fall, and if we have fun in Wyoming I think you and I should take the children to the Black Hills when school lets out next year . . . with or without our spouses.
3. I once knew the Knights of the Round Table. Now I can only name Gawain, Galahad and Lancelot, of course.
4. I hate my hair and am perfectly willing to let a Nioxin Certified (?) stranger press a wand (?) to my head without knowing what he is doing with said wand. I will probably also pay for this experience -- in product if nothing else.
5. Baby D and I are finishing Charlotte's Web and I just know I am going to cry -- like I don't know how it ends.
6. I'm waiting for my dog to die. I don't know if that will make me cry.
7. On my last trip to Disney -- hot and crowded -- I began to think I don't love WDW as much as I once did. SHHHHHH!!!!!!! I'm sure a fall type trip will cure this.
8. Colin plays piano better than I do. I'm thinking of practicing his lesson when he's not at home.
9. I'm lucky if I change my sheets once a month.
10. When I was an only child I so wanted a little sister. I'm sure I threw up at the hospital due to the excitement of it all. And you are a great sister! I always have a fun time with you and I know I can always count on you for a good, reassuring word on a variety of subjects. I'm sure I am a bit emotionally messy for you, but I hope you know how much I admire and adore you. So there!

Now, I imagine I should be tagging someone else, but since I don't know anyone else, I'm stuck. How about http://sylverlining.blogspot.com/. We haven't read a good word from her for a while.

But really . . . why?

So a guy calls me at lunch to follow up on my membership to his real estate website . . . fellow real estate agent that I am. I am not a real estate agent and was just about to hang up on the crazy man who was trying to sell me something over the phone when he said, "No, wait, we have a credit card number for you. It ends (blah, blah, blah)." This was bad. It was my credit card number.

Turns out someone has stolen my card number and is signing me up for things. Gevalia Coffee Club, for example. Why would anyone do this? I can see stealing my card number to steal things. Maybe you need them and your momma didn't teach you not to take things that don't belong to you. But why steal a number to pester someone? And to pester them with coffee? Honestly.

Tragic Children's Literature

Baby D (Shall I call him Toddler D now?) and I have been reading some classic children's literature before he falls to sleep at night. We started with Peter Pan. When we finished, I looked up author J.M. Barrie on Wikipeda. Barrie, divorced from his wife developed a close friendship with the Davies family and their boys George, John, Peter, Michael and Nicholas. He wrote the stories for them and has over the years been accused by scholars of having a pedophilia type obsession with them.

Yuck.

Next we moved on to Alice In Wonderland. Never married Lewis Carroll developed a close relationship with the Liddell family and their girls Lorina, Edith and Alice. He wrote the stories for them and over the years has been accused by scholars of having a pedophilia type obsession with little Alice.

Yuck.

The Davies boys "flatly deny" any wrong doing on Barrie's part and a recent letter discovered n the Carroll family papers suggests it was Alice's nanny Carroll was really obsessed with . . .but still . . . it's all so sad that these fine children's stories are tainted by this sort of rumor.

So now we are beginning Winnie the Pooh and I thought I ought to read about A. A. Milne before got to far and became upset by some sort of rumor following him through history.

A.A. Milne was married (Hooray!) and they had one son Christopher Robin (of course!) but they really wanted a girl they were going to name Rosemary (Wait. Why would they say such a thing out loud?). That is why CR needs a haircut and is dressed in those coats and frou-frou shoes (I thought that was just an English thing). The success of the Pooh stories far out weighed the other serious literary work Milne had done and he became angry and resentful until he died. Christopher Robin, meanwhile, was unmercifully teased at boarding school about being Christopher Robin and ended up writing three autobiographies of his torture, cut off all relationship with his parents, and was angry and resentful until he died.

Oh, bother.

Obsession

It's 17 days to Florida. 17 days. Definitely 17 days! I've been having a Rain Man experience with our upcoming trip to Florida for about 9 months, but a record cold Minnesota March has made things much, much worse. Much worse. I made our dining reservations two months ago. My parents will be joining us for a few days and they were wondering if we could change things around. NO!!! Can't you see?! I've planned this out to the minute! 17 days. It's supposed to be 40 degrees today. That's 40 degrees above zero. 17 days.

I see my last blog was about Baby D injuring himself. This week he has burned himself on the flat iron again. Please don't call social services. I swear I am protecting him. He is so fast. After this burn he cried for an hour straight. It was an angry cry with a definite element of "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." He has a large blister today. He's also poked himself with a paperclip and fallen off a chair leaving a large bump on his forehead.

17 days.