Yeah, it really is about the kids.

I know I said I'd talk about Charlie Brown, but that's no in the cards today.  Next time. Today started off bad.  Brazen woke me up, howling at the top of the stairs.  That's never great, but today it happened sixty-five minutes after my alarm went off.  I say it went off without any evidence it actually  went off, but it does not have a habit of failing (unless you count allowing me to turn it off too easily) so I'm going to assume it went off. The rest of the day is irrelevant, it was just a series of minor, frustrating-but-not-serious failures.  But now that I think about it, it was actually a good day.  Today was the first day James gave me serious advice that I needed to hear and wasn't going to figure out on my own. Starting the day more than an hour late does not do much for my mental state, but I do my best to try to keep things in perspective.  I will not skip reading James a book in the morning as a way of waking him up gently.  I will not skip takin

A couple quick ones before I catch up on the older posts I have half-composed from the fall. Last weekend we visited my aunt and uncle and some of my cousins in Cardinal.  It was a long  overdue visit -- they'd never even met Daniel yet -- but this year has been absolutely crazy for us and my aunt is incredibly busy for a septuagenarian.  Actually, incredibly busy for tricenarian, too, for that matter.  Also, she can't visit because of Brazen.  That's a story I don't even know, just that Reta cannot stand cats and she's passed that particular foible on to her children. Coordination is a challenge, to say the least. Well, we finally managed to make it happen and we even went to dinner across the border in a very nice sports bar called Busters, I think.  I didn't realize it at the time, but now I know.  Next time I'm there I'm not even ordering off the menu, the salad bar is awesome and that'd definitely satisfy. Now the point of the story:  Ba