Soul Pancake Prompt

List Five Details About Your Life That Distinguish You From Others

1. I broke my wrist while unfastening my own bra.
2. I once had a nerve bubble in the vicinity of my right elbow that was so large that the surgeon photographed it and submitted it to some freaky nerve-bubble surgery journal.
3. My witchy Scottish grandmother passed some of her gifts to me but they hardly ever work--except that I sometimes get an uncomfortable feeling that I know too much about what some people are really thinking.
4. I once saw an angel in my college apartment kitchen. He was washing his hands. Great wings but I have often wondered what he had to get clean from. That was also about the time I first started to understand that sleep was not just for the weak.
5. I write it all down. All of it.

Oooh, I Want This

Oh, Jacqueline Sanchez, you have captured my heart right here. When I am rich, I will buy this from you. I will buy TWO.

Comment of the Day

Re: organic quinoa pilaf. "Mommy, I don't want this mush to be the last thing I eat."

This Week in Wisdom

1. Never regard the threat " . . . or I'll poo in my Batman jammies" as idle.
2. Even those of us with classic profiles can suffer the indignity of nose zits.
3. Booking a holiday more than two hours in advance of departure tempts the gods to throw some mucus your way.
4. It is completely worth however much it costs to have someone else deal with the coonhound's "fish bum" issues.
5. It is not as easy as you'd think to find a red Lego lightsaber beneath the deck. It's easier to, say, find two wasp nests.
6. Wal-Mart isn't the hell hole I'd imagined it to be. For an evil empire, it is at least brightly lit and features an extensive array of baseball bats.
7. The whole "guys in trucks" thing is STILL NOT OVER.
8. You will miss the coyotes howling when you can no longer hear them.
9. The little indigenous grey squirrel? The cute little one with the white rings around his eyes? Yeah, he's a shit like the rest of them.
10. Always make it clear to the arborist that he is free to use your bathroom. Otherwise, you'll catch him peeing on the raspberry bushes outside your bedroom window when woken from your sick bed by the sound of. . . oh no is that a burst tap in the garden??

Strategic plan

Hey, DARPA plagiarized my strategic plan!



The only thing they changed was the little truck at the bottom right, which is supposed to be a station wagon.

Check out Danger Room for more. If you want to know why I read something called "DangerRoom," you've not been paying attention.

Take it easy with Malcolm Gladwell

Just finished up Malcom Gladwell's "Outliers" -- and MAN did it ease my mind about not being able to afford private school. As it turns out, the incredibly successful amongst us get that way by putting in their 10,000 hours of practice and then, essentially, being in the right place at the right time.

Now all I have to do is figure out where that place is, and stand there with Kid waiting for DESTINY.


Note to Malcolm Gladwell's mommy:

Try to get him to do something with his hair.

Summer Camp Redux

This summer, I hereby pledge: no summer camp.

Instead: ice cream in the park.
Swimming outside (or inside if necessary) at least twice a week.
Bike riding without training wheels.
Teaching Elvis more stupid tricks.
Camping in the backyard.
Early morning strawberry shortcake pigouts.
Midnight awakenings to look at constellations.
Memorization of all Star Wars openings.
Building a bat house.
Learning to work a yo-yo.
Setting hula hoop records for the voodoo bungalow.
Learning to turn a cartwheel.
Baseball!
Face painting.
Bakugan tatoos on bottoms if desired.
Freezies and pop.
S'mores.
The great smell of Deep Woods Off!