Hey Kids We Are Going to the Gym

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Cold air and a clear night, right now I am appreciating the existence of my wood stove.  I put a couple of logs on before we headed out to the gym.  I am too tired to go biking on a fixed piece of equipment right now.  But taking a few moments to use the Wi-Fi in the lobby outside the gym so as to jot down a blog post works.  Let my spouse go get exercise.

As we set out the plan was to come straight here.  Of course then I remembered it was cheap bagel day.  Why does cheap bagel day matter? Well last night I did the prep work and this morning I cooked an egg bake.  One child devoured it.  The other just stared.  My cooking creativity is gone after that 20 minute effort.  However they both love Panera Asiago Cheese Bagels which is probably a freakin’ trademark.

At pretty much the speed it took me to head off on this tangent, off we went to Panera.  However our dinner tonight was later than usual and so we were getting to the store when the all the flavors of bagels left included skunk snatch and hog udder.  The kid’s really won’t stray far from the norm.  A cinnamon crunch bagel maybe but not hog udder.  Turning around and heading out of the store there came a memory that we have no milk.  OMG, there is a grocery store two doors down.  Off we go again.

Three gallons of milk, a box of fiber one cookies and a quartet of apple turnovers later and we are back out heading for the gym.  Neither of us will eat the turnovers and the cookies are meant to be a midafternoon snack as Loren. He now works as a volunteer at the Nyaka AIDS Orphanage admistrative offices. He is doing this to get a sense of what it is like to have a schedule for work that one must meet every day. And of the various charities in the neighborhood this one aligns very closely with our family values.

Loren got some good news today.  He has been invited to Valpo for an audition for a music scholarship. (Break occurs here to call and say Loren practice your guitar, you have a lesson on Thursday.)  I am kind of surprised.  What we sent in was a sans accompaniment version of a folk song, a Swahili song and an old gospel song.  My guess is that what they want is people who can sing Kyries and Hallelujahs. 

Tonight I am so tired but it is my chance to write.  Last night I finished a book by the guy who wrote, This is Where I Leave You and it was called One Last Thing Before I Go.  It was such an old guy book.  I loved it. It has great and pithy dialog.  It had wry gallows humor.  It had a sense of the author knowing the places of which he was writing.  Although it was a quick read it was a satisfying read. Here is the tiniest sample.

“And ice-cream cones,' she says. ‘What is it with you and ice-cream cones?'

He licks around the edge of his cone as he considers the question. 'I guess no one ever eats an ice-cream cone at a funeral, or a fire. The Red Cross doesn't drop ice-cream cones into third-world countries. If you're eating an ice-cream cone, it's just very hard to believe that things have gone completely to shit. That there isn't still hope.”

― Jonathan Tropper, One Last Thing Before I Go

How can I top that?  Good night now.