High Plains Panhandler

Wrapping up Thanksgiving

It's the last day of our stomach-bursting Thanksgiving holiday, and tomorrow the kids (I'm sure of it) will be thankful to return to school. But just in case, here's what they're really thankful for, in their own words.

Alex (five years old):

I'm thankful for this family and Obie and Daddy, Mommy, Colleen, Megan, and Alex, and art. And air. And my friends, Spencer and Christian. [Now Alex starts spelling.] P-I-S-H-R-S. That spells pictures. I'm thankful for pictures. And my shirt. And Elvis. And holidays and everybody, even zombies, but there are no zombies. They're dead right now. I'm thankful for C-H-E-E-X [Alex now pinches his cheeks] and going outside.

Colleen (11 years old):

I'm thankful for my family and friends because they always help me through hard times when I need it the most. I'm also thankful for the outdoors. Whenever I need a place to go I can just sit on the hammock and relax. But sometimes it's rainy, so I just sit in my room. I'm also thankful for music. Except for when I have a headache, music fills my ears and I like it. Except when my brother and sister are playing their instruments. Then I don't like it. I'm also thankful for my Mom when she helps me practice. Sometimes I just feel like I'm going to cry, but I keep going. Sigh.

Megan (eight years old):

I'm thankful for my family because they cheer me on with things I'm nervous about. When I'm sad or even happy they help me and make me laugh. They're talented and nice and provide the things I need to live. My Mom helps me with my violin, and I'm thankful that she'll help me always. And it's nice to think my Dad will be there to make me laugh at hard times. Even my younger and older siblings help me. I love my family very much.

Nobly, ignoble-style

So there I was earlier tonight, taking a break from some meetings and standing there in the Lincoln Memorial, reading the Gettysburg Address that's inscribed on the wall. I heard a teenager next to me ask a question about this sentence in the address:

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

And the teenager said: "Is 'knob-lee' a real word? What's a 'knob-lee'?"

Sigh. The yoots these days.

Apple pickin'

We ventured south to the apple orchard outside the Big City of Lubbock, Texas to pick several pounds of pink ladies and (a tasty variant we just discovered this year) Arkansas Blacks. One of the bonuses of picking your own apples is that you can eat as many apples as you want while you're out with your bucket, and since the orchard controls all pests naturally, you don't have to wash off your apples before you eat them.

It's a little tricky to find perfect apples, but it's not so hard to find apples that slight flaws but are otherwise just as tasty as the perfect and happily genetically modified ones you find at the grocery store. We ate plenty of apples and, perfect for the kids, just dropped their cores on the ground when we finished (the orchard lets all apples stay where they fall; apparently rotten apples make for good fertilizer - and there's just something special about that rotten apple smell).

During our trip, I noticed Megan was busy holding a piece of paper against the van's window. She didn't want to show me at first, but then she spilled the beans. This is what she was showing to everyone we passed on the road: "Help! I've been kidnapped. Call the police! 911."

Wiseguy!

Obie the Kitten

I know there are factions in the world: classic Star Trek versus the Next Generation, fluffers versus the nutters, cat people and dog people. I suppose we fall into the warm-animal-on-lap-during-winter category.

Thus comes Obie the Kitten into our lives. The girls had spent the past couple of month bugging us for a kitten, and we finally relented (after diligently assigning all pet clean up and feeding responsibilities to the kids and giving the mandatory "the cat isn't a toy" lecture). We headed to the animal shelter to see if any of the kittens there would be receptive to a mess of kid-powered over-attention.

The first time we looked around the shelter, we weren't sure which kitten to adopt. That's until we came across Obie, who purred and curled and did all the cute kitten things that make for great, shlocky calendars. Obie had been scheduled for . . . well, a long nap, but someone had lost the papers, so we snatched him for ourselves.

(The shelter was a pleasant enough place, but when we were leaving the shelter, Alex decided to look at some dogs and followed the sidewalk between two rows of outdoor cages. After an eruption of barking and growling, Alex rushed back, his face pale. I looked at the sign hanging by the first row of dogs: Pit Bull Bite Evaluation. Yikes! Amarillo's had a rash of pit bull attacks recently; I guess this is where all those mean, nasty, and vicious dogs go.)

After the adoption Process, which demands shots and a certain type of surgery, we brought the kitten home and then sat around the table concocting names. Colleen wanted to call him Duma (which, unfortunately, was the name of a cheetah in a Disney movie and was too uncomfortably close to the name Dumas, a town north of here that I have visited once and accidentally had calf fries for lunch. Here is the article at Wikipedia about calf fries. Read at your own risk). Alex wanted to call him Jungle Cat. Megan voted for Kipper, and Suzanne wanted to the The Edge, but I think she was trying to squeeze a reaction out of me. Either that or she wanted to ask the kids one day, "Has anyone cleaned out The Edge's litterbox?"

I suggested Obie, and, contrary to popular belief, it wasn't because of Obi Wan Kenobi from Star Wars. Our new kitten has three white little booty feet and one one long white splotch on this rear leg. I pointed out that he looked like he had a boot on his leg, so we should call O.B. for One Boot.

And that's what we ended up with, although the most of the time the kids prefer the variant "Obers." (One time Alex actually called the kitten "Obi Wan," which, contradicting my earlier claims of Star Wars-free influence, made me secretly cheer him on.)

Obie Fact of the Day: he has a deep distrust of the white king's rook and its pawn on our chessboard. For some reason, possibly only understood by felines, he jumps up on the game table, somehow grabs the rook and pawn, and hides them behind a flower pot. I fear that if I accidentally try to castle on the king's side during a game of chess, Obie might inexplicably fall into a catatonic state.

Back to Jury Duty

Today I was summoned for another trip to the jury duty room. We live in Potter county, and the country courthouse summons me to jury duty approximately 873 times a year. This is mainly because I meet an important qualification: I am alive.

Eventually I was dismissed because the defendant made a plea bargain, but hours before that happened I was stuck in a large jury room (with vending machines for my comfort and convenience!), surrounded by all sorts of strange and bizarre people. Behind me sat a man who, I'm not kidding, sounded like a coffee maker out of water. I actually thought one of the comfort-inducing vending machines in the back of the room was broken and wheezing, but when I turned around I saw it was this guy who was simply sitting there, arms crossed across this chest and breathing like this: Kagraagkaaggg kagraagkagaaa.

And then, to my left, a woman sat down and lodged her oxygen tank into the seat in front of her. Every few seconds the tank would make an odd hydraulic hissing noise, like it was releasing gas: pshsssss pshsssss pshsssss.

So I started tapping my pencil on my desk to make time with gurgle man and gas lady: kagraagaa gaa, taptaptap, pshsssss, taptaptap, kagraagaa gaa, taptaptap. I finally had to stop when I got the skunk eye from the jury duty administration woman at the front of the room.

Still, now that I think about it, I might have stumbled across an entirely new form of music: the jury room shuffle. I'll have to bring a microphone the next time I'm summoned. I'll be a mogul yet. An impaneled mogul!