Veseventures

So today's the first day of summer, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. As if we could really forget it. Anyone with a TV has heard the local news babbling for the past week that today would be the summer solstice. According to the local news (here on the west coast of Florida), the event took place at 6:51 AM, EDT. I slept through it, or, at least, tried to. Not that the earth shook, or anything loud happened to announce the occurrence...But I'd gone back to bed to try to catch a couple of extra minutes of sleep. My son, M., had to work today. His schedule is such that he has a one-day-weekend every other week; the up side is that the other weekend is a five-day-weekend. He works Wednesday through Saturday, has Sunday off, then works Monday through Thursday, while another guy at work works the opposite of M. So, this weekend, while M. has a one-day-weekend, the other guy has a five-day-weekend. M. has to get up at 5:00 AM to get ready, so I frequently set my alarm as ...

I'm not sure why, but I get whiny when I'm sick. Throw an occasional ache or pain my way, the normal I-just-mowed-the-lawn ache, the twisted ankle during a morning run, and I can usually shrug it off. But give me a bad cold, the flu, or anything like that, I jump full-force into whiny-little-kid mode. I fully expect my mom to fix me hot cups of tea and toast or soup, with the knowledge that that evening, my dad'll get home from work, bring me a class of Canada Dry Ginger Ale (the only kind he bought when one of us kids were sick) and sit and me the funny pages or some really cool book. I've been sick the past week. (You kind-of suspected something was up, right?) My mom, who's in her 80s lives several states away, and my dad, the Ginger Ale king, died almost seven years ago just short of his 80th birthday, which meant I was sort-of on my own. Actually, I sort-of was given the cold (which morphed into bronchitis) from my younger two sons. Growing up, all four ...