You Can't Spell myself Without my And self!

Sarah's line this morning, at seven thirty-six am central standard time as we were going over spelling words for both her and her brother Jeffrey at breakfast! Right now her weekly lists consist of fifteen words – twelve regular words and three challenge words for extra credit – and on her list of long I sound words she's having issues spelling “arrival”. And she especially gets worked up now when she has a hard time with those challenge words …

Jeffrey has seventeen words a week right now, and one or two of those trips him up as well, but I've got to say my little four-foot-one warrior (measured the kids against the wall yesterday, and Sarah's an inch taller than he, and they're still growing!) knows what he wants and is not afraid to admit it! If it sounds like I favor Jeffrey here over Sarah, that is not my intent; even though I am really glad and consider myself blessed to have a son as well as a daughter, I don't remember being as determined at his age!

Of course, when I was six I had that shunt put into the back of my head to drain a benign tumor (pre-radiation treatment days) and I won't say that entirely made me less active or athletic, but it helped. Certainly I am not a hero-slash-vigilante-slash-mercenary on the order of Marvel Comics' Deadpool – I don't think I am that crazy or regenerative – and the collection I picked up at Minot Public Library and read yesterday I Rule, You Suck (ISBN 9780785151364) has Deadpool team up with and alternately

fight Captain America, Black Widow, Moon Knight, Doctor Bong (that's his name, seriously!), and a cult of vampires. Crazy world he lives in … and for that matter, so do I. That's one of the reasons last night I started to attend, along with sixteen others so far, a monthly Bible study in the New Testament book of Acts at Bethany Lutheran. I got there late because I get off work at seven and that's when the study starts, but I got a lot out of it, sometimes in spite of me.

And I've WRITTEN a study of Acts as well, but there is always so much more in Scripture! So afterward I got home and enjoyed half of a Totino's triple pepperoni pizza (the pizza I've complained here before tastes like cardboard, but I was really hungry) and a scattering of chips from the bags of my wife and kids. I say “scattering” because EVERYBODY HAD A BAG BUT ME, and I'm shooting for single servings to cut down on carbs. (And I'm below 190 pounds now, how cool is that?)

And Martin Luther King Jr. should be eighty-five today, David