The Further Adventures of Twig and Tundra

If I had not been driving the kids home last night, their request that we get together to write a story with their stuffed animals would have floored me! Too often we end up getting home and the kids dash to their tablets -- Jeffrey tried to but I said if we're focusing on writing a story he and Sarah can only use it for music. I've seen the question asked before what music stimulates you must when you are writing and I have to say I don't have a specific genre. I can listen to NO music and it doesn't inhibit or propel my active creative flow. Drives my wife nuts to hear that -- I don't think Martha can imagine a world without music because she studied and played it so much in school and still sings in choirs and even though she can't read music herself (I think) notices when people like me are off key.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I saw the construction above on a Facebook friend's post who wanted to know where to find or what to use for a shrug emoticon. I liked it so I'm using it. I should be a little more that way about the things that I cannot change ... but where was I? (No, not Australia.) Last week while Jeffrey was at basketball camp Martha, Sarah, and I went to our local Barnes & Noble and she told me about a stuffed animal she'd been wanting, that white tiger in front of her picture you're seeing there that I took last night. Jeffrey saw the tiger that Sarah had already named Tundra and quite naturally sulked at the fact he didn't get anything. But at the time we'd paid sixty bucks for that basketball camp and insisted that was quite fair. Later in the week the girls were at something and Jeffrey was with me and got Twig, who is now on his third name -- Tiggs was on the tag, Tiggy it was the first few nights, and now Twig.

So the three of us got home after dinner at Burger King (Martha would be home in another hour) and bandied about plots regarding where we wanted Twig and Tundra -- the name order fit better, paralleling other single-syllable/double-syllable duos like Luke and Leia, Wayne and Wanda ... which reminds me, the kids had Twig and Tundra with them on our way back from Dadfest Saturday and the conversation went that Twig and Tundra are brother and sister and don't know it, like Luke and Leia from Star Wars in the beginning didn't know they were related. Now Sarah and Jeffrey KNOW (can't really deny that) they are related, but this worked over to Anakin and why he's bald when in the Darth Vader suit ... I really must share at least the original trilogy with them, I've been deficient in that.

There was a Star Wars edition of Mythbusters that Martha and the kids knew I'd go for -- we watched it on Hulu a few nights ago and I must admit I did not expect the questions (one from each original trilogy film) to even get asked -- but then, I was five, eight, and eleven when I saw the respective films. I am pleased to report that the three events the Mythbusters tested (Luke and Leia swinging across the chasm on the Death Star, Luke surviving in a tauntaun's exposed guts before he freezes to death and Han erects a shelter, and two logs flying and smashing an armored vehicle -- ask your local Star Wars fan to place those in context, for I'm running out of room!) Hey, all of those events did not require the Force to be "plausible".

Twig and Tundra at the State Fair. It's a working title for the story my kids and I collaborated on last night, and I promised them I would try to touch it up. We've got Twig and Tundra as anthropomorphic -- that's the boring grown-up word for having human characteristics -- going through various exhibits at the Fair, trying the foods and watching the shows and by and large being given a wide berth. Then it turns out their natural abilities come in handy (or maybe since they're tigers, "pawy") when the Ferris wheel gets stuck and kids at the top are panicking. One by one, Twig and Tundra literally leap into action to save them. I started it last night, the Sarah, then Jeffrey, then me again. But let's see what we can do to improve on it, eh?

Burning bright, David