SneezingCow.com

Home of Michael Perry – Author, Humorist, Singer/Songwriter, Amateur Pig Farmer

Posts Tagged ‘kids’

Instant Show and Tell

This is what happens when you forget to close the garage door overnight and there is road salt residue on the floor:

Porcupine

Actually, I kinda envy his way of dealing with trouble. Hide your face and act prickly.

When I was little we had a similar situation. My dad tossed his cap on the porky’s back and got some quills for us.* So I did the same with an old dishrag, and both girls had something for show and tell.

*Late-arriving fact-check email from my mom: Hey, loved the picture, but got your facts a little off.  You guys were walking with me … and a juvie [young porcupine] was walking west.  We followed it for a while, then I took one of your caps and touched it to the little fellow and got some spines.  Dad did the same for me on our honeymoon or I probably would have been too afraid to try it since the old lore was that they could throw their quills, not just let them loose.

Food Critic

Made punjabi curried kidney beans. 5 y.o. asks for thirds, says “This time it doesn’t taste like laundry detergent.”

Motivational Shrieker

“You can’t WISH it to happen, you have to MAKE it happen.” Me, to my five-year-old, on the subject of getting your socks on. Finally those old Tony Robbins cassettes are paying off.

The Old Green Chair

Sometime back in the 1990s I scuffed my knuckles getting it out of grandma’s basement. I remember clambering on it at Christmas when I was a tot. Now I share it with my daughter’s purple teddy bear.

So much reading in that chair. So much writing. And some naps. It pops up in my writing here and there.

It’s all busted down and I think it has probably messed up my back.

It’s among my favorite places in the world.

Leader of Chickens

I usually don’t post pictures of my daughters (writing about them is enough invasion of their privacy) but enough time has passed on this one that I think it’s OK. She liked to lead the chickens around the yard, and they complied. This daughter and some of these chickens were also featured on the cover of Coop, the paperback version (see image below).

Also, the running gear beneath that coop is the same set I described in Visiting Tom. In the same book I wrote how my elder daughter and I camped out in the coop the night before we turned it over to the chickens.

“Coop” Paperback c. J. Shimon & J. Lindemann

Late Parenting Lesson

And still learning it: In the midst of parenting worries, so often it’s the kids themselves who lend me the gravity required to pull myself together.

Tall Versus Small

The five-year old this morning: “Big people can’t judge little people.” She offered this not as a tantrum-fueled retort but rather as a thoughtful observation, so I just said “Hmm…” and shelved the Life is Filled With Certain Disappointments speech for later.

Miscellaneous Today

Friend in iffy band situation says: “It’s like dating a flaky hot girl – you just enjoy the time you have.”

Says the five-year-old after watching Dad struggle along: “Jogging is just fake running.”