Innocence

Magical Birthday Cake Tour
All the ingredients, the mix and eggs and oil and sugary blue and green frosting, were fashioned with love and care by the baker at our local supermarket into the perfect cake. A rectangle of show-stopping perfection. My wife picked it up and we hauled it to my mom and dad’s place. My mom had prepared the bestest of birthday dinners. Beef and noodles, deviled eggs, French-style green beans, heat-and-serve rolls, and her world-famous, to-die-for hash brown potato casserole with golden brown corn flakes on top. These are the delicacies that have padded

Ten Minutes
When ideas fail, words come in very handy. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Before I created The Cheek and began cranking out non-fiction stuff about my life, I loved to write short stories. I didn’t write many of them, but the few I took the time to sweat over and shape into cheesy little morsels of literary Camembert are to me tiny glimpses into my soul. I love to dip into the nether regions of my hard drive on occasion and give them another read. I tweak them every so often in an attempt to polish and shape

A Thousand Words II
This book is either really good or really bad. You decide . . . Posted in books, children

Penny
Meet Penny. When socks and library cards go missing, Penny took them. If the lights get left on or doors get left open, Penny is the irresponsible one. She occasionally opens the garage door in the middle of the coldest winter night, allowing the water pump to freeze, and loves to snarf down the last piece of strawberry pie, leaving a trail of crumbs and a sticky, bright red mess on the countertop. Penny never flushes. The Swine Flu hit our household this week, and Penny hid the thermometer. We heard her laughing about it early this morning, around 2:1

Friend of Your Youth
What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies. ~ Aristotle Kay and I were friends. For two years, we sat side by side for an hour each day in drafting class, mechanical pencils and straightedges in hand, designing dream homes or drawing specs for bolts. We swapped erasers as often as we swapped stories about high school crushes and who we planned to ask to the prom when the time came. We airbrushed signs on whiteboards in honor of our favorite hair bands and talked trash about the fledgling basketball team, my