Bathtime/Summertime Storytelling

  Even though the summertime temps haven't kicked Seattle's damp, unprepared tuchus (yet), summertime activities as they orbit around Maya are very much underway.  Soccer is key.  And her desire to properly jump rope provides an almost daily look inside her competitive mind.  But of all the new summertime activities that seem to crop up daily, none surprised me more than her desire for a daily story telling exercise.  Granted this has nothing to do with summertime in particular - hopefully, telling stories is a year-round activity.  Still, it was only a few days ago that I got assigned to do the original stories after a few weeks of Sarah pulling that duty.  It coincides with bath time, which requires a story to be told tub-side with the glare of the bathroom lights serving as an open-mike spotlight.  I've just gotten started, but I've happened upon an age-old parental epiphany.  Making up stories that your kid enjoys ROCKS.  Maybe there's a future in it.  Not that I'm looking to be Jamie Lee Curtis.  After all, I'd hate to see some small measure of success writing children's stories morph into becoming a spokesperson for dubious ass-curative yogurt.  I'm talking more about a healthy way of bonding with the youngin', and maybe recording said stories to pass along sometime and somewhere to be determined.  My first soccer-themed story was met with raves, as was Part One of the next still gestating story dealing with a magic beach.  I don't know how long I can keep up this version of the ActiveStoryteller Challenge.  But it's a new summertime development that has me feeling rather sunshiny.

Hope your holidaze celebrations include equal parts grillin' and chillin', sans illin'.  Rock on.

"Happy Birthday America, from us bikers."

"Happy Birthday America, from us bikers."
Originally uploaded by emaggie

We had a fun Fourth in the 'hood. Some industrious neighbors got the kids on the block together for an impromptu parade. As you can see, Maya rode tall in the saddle. Hope your own fireworks were also homemade. Rock on.

"After long deliberation with my closest advisers, I've decided that I should move on and clear some brush..."

I'm prepping to take some time off from blogging given the expected craziness of the upcoming month. But I simply can't sit idly by without offering my brief shot at the Scooter Libby commutation granted by Dubya. Plainly, no one's satisfied. Nutjob conservatives are bitching about their outrageous claim that he should have been pardoned. Everyone else can't understand why an "excessive" sentence translates to "no time served" in Dubya's view of assessing a felony conviction. Where I fall is firmly upon this point - Dubya screwed it up embarrassingly, once again. If he'd pardoned him sooner or later, it would be defensible. Wrong, but defensible. If Dubya had chosen any other course of action imaginable, it would be somehow defensible. Still wrong, but you get my point. So what Dubya chose was the utterly wrongest wrong in the whole panorama. He praises the prosecutor, stands by the jury's ruling, and then throws the whole process under the bus. That's Dubya. Always wrong, never in doubt. I can't wait for the "history will judge" wheels to start turning. Oh wait...they've already begun doing so. Worst. President. Ever. Period.

Hope your own pre-Fourth of July deliberations deal entirely with beef versus fowl. Rock on.