A Dad, A Mom, and Three Little Heathens

We've told them many times. 4 times exactly. My children and the Brothers for some reason like to play in the Leafy Spurge that grows in the gully behind their grandparent's house. Because the toxic weed excretes a milky and sticky fluid, they wipe the sap on their faces and arms as war paint. 12 hours later they pay the price for their wild foray into the traditional past. Hives, blisters, and red puffy marks follow the same designs as the war paint like some symmetric allergy. The first time it happened, we could not figure out what it was. Five of them, all covered in their tribal welts. On the day before Thanksgiving, We invite the neighborhood over to my in-law's house to celebrate an early feast before the next day's main event. We call it pie night. The theory is that we never have enough room to eat as much pie as we want with turkey, stuffing, potatoes, gravy, cranberries, salad, and whatever you stuff your face with on Thanksgiving, so we eat our pie on th...

Buddies, even in a hail storm As most of the nation's attention is drawn to the devastating effects of Hurricane Harvey, We in the West are burning up, literally. The fires rage in Washington and Montana and the rest of the West breathes it in. The high school football games were canceled because of air quality, (This comment is in no way meant to make light of those suffering in Texas. Instead, I'm stating that we haven't seen the sun for a while.) Portland was a blur behind smokey skies on September 5, 2017. (SBG photo)&nbsp Need I say more. Now this will seem obvious to most of my readers because you're here with me, but for those of you who read my stuff internationally, you may find our normally clear skies unappealing this time of year.   We like pine trees and forests in the West, but we don't like to breathe them. And this is the season of the burn. Every year my home state burns. Every year I breathe it in and wonder when the rains will come....

I'm not kidding. We literally travel in a huge circle around the grand stands when we go to the fair. It takes us all day. (Although, we make several trips to the food court that disrupted our circular pattern.) Our sojourn to the fair does not include buying a lot of junk, riding rides, (This did come up as a major concern for the first time with the kids) or exorbitant purchases. We go to the fair to see strange things, strange people, and to eat a lot of really unhealthy food. We also go to bond as a family, to get some cotton candy, and to walk in a really big circle. Just through the turnstile and ready to go The first thing that we did is visit the commercial buildings. We meandered through the merchandise, the orderly stalls, and the sales people barking their wares and hoping to catch the passers-by in a moment of weakness. Some merchants are better than others.  We passed by sewing machines that sew automatically, stacks of miracle cleaning solutions, plush toys...