I'm not going first!!

Getting my boys to take a shower is always a challenge. As soon as I mention it they start with their "I'm not going first!" argument. This usually results in me suggesting a coin toss - which almost always devolves into another argument - "I get to call it!" "No! I get to call it!" or arguments that lead to even more arguments - "You called heads, it came up heads, that means you go first!!!"

While all this is going on the shower is running and I find myself yelling "You are wasting water! Somebody get in there now!!" This time however Trevor (7) decided to challenge me... "How is this wasting water?" he asked. "Trev, the water has been running for like 5 minutes and you still have not got in the shower yet. (At this point I decided to step up my rhetoric a bit) Wasting water is like killing the planet!". The following conversation then ensued:

Trevor: Where does water come from?
Me: The Mountains.
Trevor: How does it get there?
Me: From the snow.
Trevor: Where does the snow come from?
Me: (starting to roll my eyes) The sky!
Trevor: (smiling 'cause he knows he's bugging me) Where does the sky come from?
Me: God! God makes the sky, okay! So in other words you are wasting God's water - and you're pissing him off!"
Trevor: Jake - you need to get in the shower right now because dad says you're killing the planet and God is getting really mad!!

Jake: I'm not going first!

Me: Trev, get your butt in that shower now or no more video games!!!

Trevor: Okay...

Angry God, killing the planet - no problem...but they draw the line at Nintendo.

Back to the routine

Well it was a hard week last week (with the passing and funeral of my mother), but we all made it through (we had no choice). So now I'm going through all my work emails and trying to figure out what I can ignore and what I need to work on now. Kinda hard to get back in the routine though, hence the reason I took a short break to write this blog.

The weather here reeeeeally needs to improve. When I was in Alabama last week the daily high temperature was close, if not above, 70. It felt sooo nice. Now I've come back to exactly what I left - cold and wet. This does not make me look forward to my boy's baseball pratices/games this week. Apparently the weekend is supposed to be fairly nice, according to the often wrong weather geeks. We'll see.

For once I don't have too much to complain about - which is usually the inspiration for most of my blog postings. I must say that something like the passing of a loved one does tend to bring into focus what is important in life. It's kinda like getting whacked with a big club - but instead of making you dizzy and unfocused it does the exact opposite. I suppose it's a little like rebooting a computer (am I a geek or what) - it purges all those temporary files that tend to bog you down with unnecessary crap.

Oh sure, it won't take long for me to get back into my routine. There is comfort in routine. But hopefully I can hold onto the clarity of the moment for a while...even though I'm looking forward to someone doing something to inspire me to make fun of them. It won't take long I'm sure.