This summer has been scorchingly hot.  Temps at or over a 100 degrees every day, but today, it was only 89 so I mowed the yard.  Skooter will be pleased on tomorrow when he doesn't have to mow.  Next week I start work for three weeks and then I have a week off and then back to school.  I have squandered away my summer as usual.  The closet still needs cleaning and the dresser drawers are still scrambled, but oh well.

We are learning to live on less as many Amercans are, hoping soon for an end to this financial crisis.  I feel like the grandmother I never knew that my mom always tells me about.  I have learned to make left overs awesome, mow my own lawn and let my hair grow out.  I feel it's a good thing, if times ever get better, I will be a more thrifty person.  Of course, I will still have student loans out of the wazoo.  Son can't go to the school where he gets a brilliant scholarship.  He goes to the one that requires loans, alas, his happiness has always come first, although to hear him tell it, that's just not true.

Well, just thought I would check in.

Peace, Love and Energy,

Tricia

I can't believe I forgot my dad's birthday.  He would be so disappointed.  Anyway, Happy Birthday Dad.  I miss you and know someday we will sit and talk again, until then peace, be still.

June 26, 1937 - September 20, 2005

The Poem for Dad I Never Shared...

A time will pass someday

When I won’t notice you have gone away.

The sun will rise and rest,

And I will remember only the friend that was my best.

For today, however, time flees,

I will not forget, or look at the sunset,

And not think of your eyes I still see,

Brilliant steel blue, fading dimly and then finally at rest.

It is the cycle of life, the natural process, you would declare,

We are born, and surely we must then we go away.

It is that watchful wisdom I miss, your constant counsel, now not here. 

I think of your words often in the day, as I navigate on my way.

Remember when I was your only darling girl?

Running to follow, jumping and spinning I would twirl. 

Your steps were long and wide, your legs swift and strong,

And in my perpetual youth I felt you could never be wrong.

It was crisp, red and orange, autumn came soon,

When you went quietly away from this earth,

The skies were gray, and it was late afternoon

Leaves red dancing, floating away, and your last breath I heard.

Now has past a winter, spring’s rebirth, and summer,

Life remains reluctantly rich and thriving.

Looking at the sunrise, the sunset in the horizon’s shimmer,

I think of you and remember your leaving.

For Dad

~ Staring into the clouds for hours.

 ~ Imagining every storm that rolled in was a signal of the end of times.

 ~ Playing school on the front porch, I was always the teacher.

 ~ Playing speed and other card games with the neighbors when it was too hot to get out of the shade.

 ~ Walking to Pak-n-Sak for an Icee and a penny piece of gum.      

 ~ Spending a week every summer at my Aunt and Uncle’s camp house on Lake Bistineau.

 ~ Home made ice cream and fish fries.

 ~ Listening to records on the phonograph through the window.

 ~ Sneaking off to our favorite swimming holes, and swimming at night.

~  Flying kites in the Spring.

 ~ Laughing at silly jokes.

 ~ Vacation Bible School with punch and cookies.

 ~ Spinning in circles until we would fall down and then just laying there looking up.

~  Playing in the rain, and making mud pies.

 ~ Not being in a hurry.

 ~ Make believe.

I have many fond memories of holidays with family.  I think we need to get back to those days when family mattered.  Children today are not allowed much imagination.  Everything is already imagined for them.  Video games, movies, internet relationships, 200 channels of television, MTV, pencil thin girls to fashion themselves after, and steroid bulk guys for the young men, and as a teacher I already see the ramifications of this.  Students don’t want to think, they don’t want to finish a book, and if they do they don’t want to analyze it.  They are so accustomed to having everything provided to them, fed to them, that they think the teacher is being unusually cruel, if he/she doesn't tell them this is what the book is about. They need immediate feed back; it is what they are familiar with.  I am not putting down teenagers, I am sad for them, for the misguided, and lost innocence.  I am the mother of one, and I let it happen to mine, if I am to be completely honest, there were times, in his childhood when the play station or the television were his baby sitters.  I couldn't trust him outside alone, like my parents could, so he didn’t go out much.  I am as wired as any teenager today, well except maybe for the text messaging, but I grew up figuring things out for myself.  Many of our future adults will struggle in life, because life is not like MTV, and every girl shouldn't look like Mary Kate and Ashley.  All teenage boys do not have to look like the Gucci model, or the latest sports figure, and they won't.  The sad thing is, is that most teens are disillusioned and believe they will have lives like those they see on MTV, they strive to be someone they are not, and when they can't they become depressed, and jaded.  Young men and women who play sports are pushed so hard, that the pleasure is often evaporated.  Where do we go from here?  I don’t have the answers, but I know we can not go back, and believe me I have my fair share of regrets with my son.  So take your kids camping, leave the I-Pod, and laptop at home, sit down and play a board game with them ever once in awhile, teach them it is okay to lose, read books to them, teach them to imagine, and dream, show them the clouds, and fireflies, and rainbows…and God.