My Seussical Life for 2004 August

Atticus is tentative about the idea of starting pre-school in a few weeks, so every once-in-a-while we'll mention some fun detail that might convince him that he wants to go. Today, Dave was testing his interest and asked if he wanted to go to "the fun place with the playground," and Atticus perked up. He said, "I'll go to the part that is recess!"

Nope, but it is 9:15 in the morning and my boys are still asleep! That is equally amazing to me. I don't know what happened on our vacation, but both Atticus and Samuel are late sleepers now. Did they over-correct in adjusting to Mountain Standard Time? Did their sleep habits mature? Who knows, but I think I'll not tempt fate by asking too many questions.

I was scolding Atticus for continually scratching a mosquito bite on his arm when he protested, "this is not scratching, Mom; it is called massaging!"

Atticus has decided what he wants to be for Halloween: The Wrong Trousers. I don't know what he expects to do dressed up as fiendish pants. That's the part that scares me.

We don't come up on a Google News search or anything, but our family picture was in the Lawrence Journal World on Saturday. Check out the picture here. Double-click on the pic to see it a little bigger.

We spent a good deal of last evening curled up in the only safe place in our apartment: the cupboard under the building's main stairs. The city tornado sirens went off around 7:40, at which time a tornado touched down literally 7 miles away from our home. It was scary, but exciting in a surreal, hard-to-explain sort of way. The tornado warning lasted until 9:50.

Our street was flooded from the torrential rainfall that accompanied the thunderstorm that created the tornado. Apparently, the drain at our next door neighbor's curb is one of the main feeders to the Haskell-Baker Wetlands just south of us. The water was pouring down the hill above us, creating a rapid moving river that filled the street full of water above the curb, submerging at least two front-yards worth of lawn. It is hard to do it justice, writing about all the rain fall. The cars that stupidly drove through that stretch of the street were up to their headlights in water, and most often stalled in the middle of it. Crazy weather.

Part of the reason for our trip to visit Dave's family in Alberta this month was to attend the wedding of my dear sister-in-law, Patty, to Sean Pitcher. After the beautiful temple ceremony and family luncheon were finished, the Pitcher family began gathering people who were ready to go "honking." I asked Dave what honking was, but he wasn't familiar with the post-nuptial practice, either. In fact, most of the Matkins were unfamiliar with "honking." That was okay; we were up for participating.

We all gathered into our cars. Patty and Shawn sat on the back of a Toyota Celica Convertible, and as their chauffeur drove out of the reception hall parking lot, we followed, along with about 10 other cars. Together we paraded down Cardson's two-traffic-light Main St. several times, and looped around town a bit, honking our horns continually. People in town waved and smiled. It was wonderful fun.

During the thunderstrom that spawned Monday night's tornado, lightning struck not one, but two tornado siren towers. They were located in different areas of the city.

I really enjoy living in college towns, but I don't particularly care for sharing roads with the students. Considering what line of work Dave is going into, I guess I'd better come to terms with this annoyance.