Summer Re-Runs

Well, not really. But since I don't have a hot topic to blog about this week, I thought I would cull the annals of our family life, courtesy of my quintennial journal--a diary I keep for one year at five-year intervals. My wife Wendy and I have been remarking about how quickly time seems to pass now. Reading these makes it even more evident:

JULY 31, 1988--Did something today I don't remember doing for a while. With Greg in tow (my six-year-old eldest son), I slid in the back door of St. Francis Catholic Church, took a seat in the enclosed family area reserved for those with rambunctious young ones and partook in Sunday services.

Bringing the whole family to church would not qualify as quality time since Greg and younger son Scott, 3, would prove so distracting that NOBODY would get any inspirational message from the service. Greg is old enough to sit still for the hour now. But after he saw all the toddlers hollering, pounding on the walls, and running here and there, he turned to me and commented, "Dad, Scott can come. All these other kids are here."

JUNE 15, 1993--Just got back from a reasonably relaxed weekend up north. But I forgot to bring home Scott's rock he picked out for me at the lake. Following in his grandfather's footsteps (grandpa being a rock collector), eight-year-old Scott occasionally collects rocks himself, and this time passed them out to family and friends. I got to pick the last one left, but Scott tried to make me feel better when he said he didn't know why nobody picked it before. "I thought that was a good one."

JUNE 8, 1998--Wendy informed Scott's drum teacher that next week's lesson will be his last for the summer. We could use the extra $15 we paid for a lesson to replenish the refrigerator instead. Wendy almost had a fit when she found her Diet Pepsi almost gone. Scott was unapologetic. "I didn't see anybody's name on it," he said matter-of-factly. Greg habitually pounds down two cans of pop at a sitting and can easily finish a 12-pack in a week or less. Let's hope for a cool summer.

JUNE 13, 2003--In the middle of the night, the phone rings. I answer it but nobody's there so I hang up. It rings again and an AT&T electronic operator asks if I want to accept a collect call. But the person on the other end doesn't give their name. So I hang up again. Wendy, who is up now too at after 3 a.m., believes the caller is Greg, who was supposed to return from "clubbing" at 2 a.m. He's not yet home. Sure enough, a third call comes through and this time Greg identifies himself as the collect caller. I accept the charges and Greg tells me that his buddy has left him stranded at a Speedway gas station in Ypsilanti. So I have to traipse out into the early morning air to retrieve him.

MAY 27, 2008--Speaking of privacy, Wendy and I are spending our first summer alone together in about a quarter century. Longer, in fact. Scott is spending the summer at an internship in East Lansing. Greg's been moved out for almost three years. We recently cleaned a lot of his old junk out of his room. It's a guest room of sorts now.

It's time to put up my weekly blog. But I'm not feeling too inspired tonight. Maybe at work tomorrow. The muse has been there sometimes at lunch.

TONIGHT--And the blog muse has been absent this week as well. Updates from two years ago . . . Scott is back home for the summer and I turned Greg's old bedroom into a media room of sorts, moving my electric piano in there as well some some books and videos.