Whoa! Didja get the numbers off that truck?!?

2001-08-18 again - 9:21 a.m.

Coffee... need more coffee.

I awoke to the sound of backup beepers and diesel engines. Governor George Ryan's Illinois First Roadbuilding and Contractor Kick-Back program is wide-awake on Saturday morning and in full swing, improving the highway a block from my house. They're behind schedule, what with all the contaminated soil and asbestos that got in the way. Weenies. Back in MY day we inhaled asbestos while changing the brake shoes on our cars and had picnics on contaminated soil, and we liked it. Gasoline made great weed killer, remember?

I should be getting dressed and buying groceries, but I'm typing something you can read instead, my little audience. I'm father to two adolescent eating machines. They live with me in the summer, and spend the school year at Spidey's house. Son1 is 16 (you met him in the last entry) and Son2 is 14. They spend the days eating at my house. Soon I hope to have them socialized to the point where they can make that leap of inspiration... that the dishes they use don't skid to a stop on the countertop. Noooo, they can go all the way into the dishwasher! That's why I ripped out that base cabinet last winter and plumbed in a nice quiet Maytag, so I could reclaim the counter space for... counter space!

They'll both be in the same school this year. It's a shiny brand new one; they're not done building it yet. Growth is the key word in the county I live in and the houses are growing faster than the corn growing in the fields they're replacing.

Despite all the bad decisions I've ever made and the wrong people I've shared a mortgage with, these two guys are the things I've done right. So far.

This is their last week with me. They start school in about 10 days. The dogs and I are going to miss them. Even though their shoe sizes are larger than mine and they have hair sprouting from new places, I still like to go in and watch them sleep like babies. That's when I go rocketing back about 14 years... sometimes they have placid faces and sometimes they have that astonished mouth half open look on their face. But they're my babies.

My fondest hope for them is that someday they will see that look for themselves in their own creations. I just hope they can do it with a girl they want to live with forever; and that she has the same idea.

the last one -*- the next one