To quote my favorite children's book, it has been a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day. The storm we have been just ahead of for the past couple days caught up with us last night. My laptop crashed this morning. And then we drove into Kansas. We had to slow down on account of the weather. We had not considered slowing down on account of weather because, frankly, we don't have weather in California. At least, we don't have Kansas Wind in California. We blew all over the road and listened to tornado watches and warnings coming in all across central Kansas--where we were driving.

The highlight of the day was meeting up with my college roommate Nancy. It is late now, so I will post more tomorrow about the past 2 days as I reconstruct my trip journal on my new laptop (ouch).

So tonight we are sitting in our room trying to adjust to a time change and listening to the rain turn to hail outside our window. I am asking how we got into this mess, it seems a good time to pause and reflect on how it all began. My column in the Appeal-Democrat ran today and the story goes something like this.....

Oh, MOM!” she squealed. “These are perfect! I'm gonna get these for Dad!”
I turned to see my 5-year-old daughter holding a pair of boxers with a bold flag motif. One side sported a blue background with white stars; the other side was emblazoned with red and white stripes.

I tried to imagine my husband's face when he opened this gift.My job was supposed to be to guide my daughter's choice of gifts for Father's Day. Just as I was turning to point out some sensible black socks, she found the boxers and made her decision.

“This is what Dad needs for the Nine States of America,” (more)