Me, my Dad and My Sibs

Since it’s Thanksgiving, I’m thinking a lot about my family and how lucky I am that I grew up in a happy household. I really love being with my family–but we are really competitive. I’m not quite sure how it got started, but no matter what the game is, we all really want to win. I mean we REALLY want to win. some prime examples from childhood include (but are not limited to:

Monopoly
No Bears are Out Tonight
Scrabble
Labyrinth
Risk
Uncle Wigglyl
Chutes and Ladders

When we get together now, it only takes about five minutes for a dictionary or encyclopedia to come out, because we’re always talking about etymologies of words, how to pronounce things, what book something was isn, or who said what when. (Last night coming home from the airport we had to call someone to google a quotation. Since I’m a competitive person, I’ll tell you right now that I was right–George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”) Last summer on the way to my nephew’s wedding I told my brother Paul that I take one enteric aspirin per day. I pronounced it en-TER-ic. He insisted it was EN-ter-ic. When the dictionary indicated I was right, we had to do a test where we asked three pharmacists to say it–he was convinced that health professionals said it his way (wrong!) But I think our competitiveness is usually in good fun. Often there is a bet involved. When I claimed a few weeks ago that our family used to own a Rambler and Paul H. said no, he bet a million billion dollars that he was right.

Guess who owes me a million billion dollars?

Udderly Delightful!

Today I milked a cow!  It’s not technically the first time.  I tried once when I was about 16, but it just didn’t work.  I somehow thought that all you had to do was pull!  But today I tried again at Prophetstown State Park and it worked–what a miracle!  There were lots of barn cats of various ages running around. There was a whole gaggle of little girls who were oohing and aahing over the cats, so I didn’t get a chance to pet the kittens.  There was a cat named Michael, who went right up next to the milking pail and waited until the “milk maid” squirted some right into his mouth.

Liz didn’t want to try to milk at first, but I made her!  She thought (quite rightly, I think) that the teats looked a bit dirty!  They had washed them off, so I really think it was just their natural color.  Makes you think about whether you should really have that next ice cream cone!

Liz and I went for a 3 mile walk first, and it was so pretty outside, and warm enough that I took off my sweater.  We only saw one person on the whole walk–a man in a Cubs cap who was taking nature photos.  I stepped right over a little garter snake who had been sunning himself in the path.  It was such a beautiful day!

Got any Heimlichs you want removed?

Last night I was watching the news, trying to get sleepy, when a story came on about a local teacher getting an award for being a hero. It seems she kept one of her students from choking to death. Said student had a habit of putting things in her mouth, and on this particular day, she had put a ring in her mouth to suck on it. The camera showed the teacher getting her award and then moved to the girl herself–about 9 years old–for an interview:

“Well, I know I shouldn’t put things in my mouth, but I did anyway, and then I started choking on my ring.  Mrs. Jones saw that I couldn’t breathe and came to help me.  Then she gave me the Heimlich Remover.”

It was a pretty serious moment in the interview, but I still had to laugh.  Sort of like today when I heard President Bush say, “Our childrens can learn.”  Can our childrens?