Read me, you know you want to
Cooling pad. Check. Water bowl. Check. Obsessive owner. Check check. We’re leaving the house. Burke is packing her bag and I am rolling down my checklist. ‘We have piskoty and a water bowl?’ ‘Check, check.’ ‘Bottle of water, cooling vest, cooling pad.’ ‘Check, check, check.’ ‘Benadryl.’ ‘Check.’ ‘Poop bags. Sweatshirt.’ ‘Check. Check.’ We pat our [...]
SONY DSC I had a ‘free’ afternoon Monday, when Burke had to take the dog to the vet. It was part of the dog’s upkeep and maintenance retinue consisting of shots, eyedrops, checkup, prodding, pushing, what’s-that-lumps, and pills against a menagerie of small animals that can attack her: worms, fleas, and ticks. Knowing nothing bad [...]
It’s early Friday evening and Burke and I are at a local watering hole irritating all of our neighbors. “My turn,” I shriek. “OK.” “Meow meow meow meow meow-meow-meow-meow-meow. Meow-meow. Meow meow meow meow meow-meow-meow-meow-meow-meow!” “Billy Joel’s For the Longest Time!” “Meow!” We celebrate. Meow-meow-meow-meow. Beethoven s 9th Symphony?! Meow! We celebrate further. At 51 years [...]
Holidays have changed a great deal since I was a young person. Oh, I don’t mean that in a get-off-my-lawn way. Sure, there are more sweatpants than when I was young, but that’s not it. I mean in how I view holidays. When I was a kid, there had to be activities and those activities [...]
When deciding on where to go on holiday this year, we thought we might avoid planes. You see, the antics of Captain Crapshispants has made travelling in the air a bit more unreliable. We didn’t relish sitting on a tarmac. No, we thought we might stay on the ground and get around somewhere by train. [...]
Today is the Fourth of July and America’s 250th birthday. And a lot of us are just not feeling it. Oh, I get it. America is divided, we are torn and entrenched, and peanut butter is too expensive. Worse still, this division is seemingly encouraged and proliferated by Jabba the President sitting in the Oval [...]
On Friday morning, we head to Prague’s Hlavní Nádraží and board the train to Dresden. The train is cool and we have time to plot out our weekend. It’s Germany. There’s a tour of the old town Friday afternoon and a street festival on Saturday. The plan: we will do culture and then reward ourselves [...]
Periodically, my family will drop in to make sure I haven’t gone too far upriver. Oh, they claim it’s to visit and have fun in Prague, but then they ask me questions like ‘what day is today?’ or ‘do you remember dad’s birthday?’ and I know they’re doing a cognitive screening for my mom. We [...]
As a writer for kids, I am granted the chance (read: forced) to read things that might be a bit off my radar. This something leads to knowledge – whether I like it or not. Here are some things I learned this week. Acquire this knowledge at your own risk. The astronauts on the Integrity [...]
It was during a quiet, sedate reading session that Burke said the most worrying words: ‘Uh oh.’ As per my training over the last years, my eyes went to the dog sleeping at my feet and my brain went to Donald Trump. With the slightest facial movement I ask Burke what the problem is and [...]