Thirty One

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Well, I did it. Thirty-one days, thirty-one posts. I hope you enjoyed them, had a chuckle or a moment of, “Hey, that’s happened to me.”
I had a good time and I will continue to post, though at a slower pace. The daily blogging coupled with my day job as a reporter meant lots of hours of writing, and the workload took me into the night only to emerge from my office with a week of stubble and bags under my eyes to scare my wife as she was nodding off. “Oh, I forgot about you,” she said.
So a bit slower.
I’m thinking every Monday and Thursday, reaching you those days or a bit later maybe if you get it by email or by re-email by my dad, a loyal reader who can have trouble with his computer every now again that has him calling one of his children to come by and help him fix it.
If you like what you read on Pine Tree Paradise, please spread the word.
And buy the book.
Well, eventually…
It’s good to dream big. Maybe the next Millennium Trilogy? Or Twilight Saga? Hemingway, Steinbeck or Bradbury?
Hey, it may run in the genes, this dreaming large. My seven-year-old daughter is plotting her week as we walk home from school. On top of school (she goes in the afternoons) and her three mornings a week at art school, she’s thinking of taking up ballet again. “And, oh, theater,” she tells me. “And horse riding.”
She continues.
I think I’m going to get a good nights sleep – or two – before any new projects…

At War

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“Well, if you weren’t so slow, man.”

I have a sweet tooth, and that was all fine until the kids came along. Birthdays? Yup, they lick the bowl after the cake has gone into the oven. And then the spatula after the icing has gone onto the cake. I don’t get a finger in anymore. It’s all licked clean by the three kids.

The pigs!

Well, I can live with that because after they’ve gone to bed I can sneak in an extra slice of cake. Or two. The secret is to maintain the form of the cake. You can shrink it with a slither here and a slither there, even a big slice here and a big slice there. But don’t dare alter the form. They’ve got that memorized and they’ll sound the alarm in the morning.

“Hey, who’s been eating the cake?” my seven-year-old daughter will say.

There is another vital caution. You mustn’t leave it out because the dog will eat it. Yup, she’s done six or seven cakes, maybe more. Cut a gorgeous slice of chocolate cake and put a heaping of cream on top and retire to the living room with a hot cup of coffee and the silence of three sleeping children and by the time you’ve polished it off and returned for seconds the dog’s polished off the rest of the cake. She’ll be licking her chops and looking guiltily meek. “Sorrrryyy…”

She’s done two birthday cakes in the same day. Got the first before the blowing-out of the candles, while we were setting up the house for the party. This sent my wife in a whirlwind of activity to fix up another before the guests arrived. Then she did the second after we retired to the living room exhausted after a whirlwind of kids. I cursed. I fumed. I scrubbed the floor. She’d even eaten the candles and the Minnie Mouse decorations. I refused to take her out to do her business. Let her stomach get queasy, the fat bitch!

She held out…

And waited for the next birthday.

And I learned a few lessons. First, make sure you force your way into the jumble with the kids to lick the bowl and the utensils. Second, make sure you sneak in three slices after the kids have gone to bed or else it’ll be in the dog’s belly.

“Or you could just put it out of the dog’s reach, you fat bastard,” my wife told me.

Yeah, well, that’s a thought.

How to Get to Heaven – and Back

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“All aboard!”

My eldest daughter has figured out how to get to heaven and back.

“It’s up there,” the seven-year-old tells me, pointing up to the stars. “Way up there.”

I look up.

“I’m going to go one day,” she says.

She tells me that she will visit Tomas, our cat who died of old age last year, and she will visit Maggie, our Cocker Spaniel who was run over our first year of living on the coast. And she will visit Sofia, her older sister who is not with us, who was born still at full term, whose eyes we never saw the color of.

“I talk to her, on my own,” she says. “When I need to, at school sometimes, and when I don’t feel too good. And when I’m happy. When we’re at the beach and it’s pretty. I say, ‘Look, there’s a whale,’ and I tell her about the sea and the sand dunes and my boogie board.”

I listen and then I ask how she’ll get there.

“With the fairies. They’ll take me up and they’ll show me the way. We’ll go up, way up – right up there,” she tells me as she points up to the stars.

We look up at the stars for a while.

“That’s how I’ll get up to heaven and then back here again,” she tells me.

I think I’ll hop a ride.