Should be back this weekend.. miss home even with all the stuff to do.  Amanda and I are tired of the runnin around, I just wanna relax…at home =)  I think the kids do too.

Heard that Patch 3.2 downloader is out.  Maybe Tuesday? hmm? hmm?  mmmmmmm internet connection high here.  I miss the computers and so does everyone else.  See you all soon back online or at work (yuck)!

We hiked some around Lost Valley where we traversed through a cave to come out into the canyon on the other side and hike the mountain up to the very top and Eden Falls upper cave.  There wasn’t enough water to make the fall at the huge lower cave though.. during the spring there’s a curtain waterfall over part of the long sweeping curved top of the cave.  Not for us though this year.  Eric just about stepped on a snake on the climb up but he didn’t freak out!  Props to him.

The two days on the river were absolutely perfect.. upper 80′s and bright blue sky with just a few puffy clouds!  Awesome weather and a great trip along the most beautiful river I can think to canoe down.  We did the upper middle area from Ponca to Pruitt.  Every bend has a huge stone bluff, Big Bluff is the largest of them at over 500 feet tall.. and a set of rapids at each windy bend.. some are pretty fast and loud even in early June still.  It’s just amazing all along the river.. there’s a half mile hike to a 200′+ waterfall too, the Hemmed-in-Hollows fall.  It’s just a gorgeous place there in the Boston Mountains.

We made camp on a nice sandy beach on the river and watched what seemed like a million fireflies sparkle on the river and the cliff across it like they were competing against the stars in the sky!  We got off to an early morning start as the fog lifted from the river.  Eric was a big help as he learned to paddle hard in the rapids.. getting him to coordinate spinning the canoe by back paddling was a little challenging so I just had him paddle faster which he took it upon himself to do.  Next year I think we’ll take two kayak’s and I’m sure he’ll learn fast.  We might do a trip a little farther downstream that is a tad tamer.. I don’t know yet.

Here’s just a few of the pictures I took of the trip if you are interested in seeing a little of it.

A mother’s love
Can seem like hate
She’s only tough
To keep you safe

A mother’s love
Is always there
In simple ways
She’ll show she cares

A mother’s love
Can never compare
With anyone else’s
Anywhere

A mother’s love
Is here to stay
I love you, mom
Happy Mother’s Day!

However good I think my survival abilities might be out in the wilderness.. I  electricity!  The kids aren’t as much of “outside kids” as I was growing up but they can keep themselves busy inside or out.. except when they feel forced to I guess.. and the freezing rain outside isn’t a very condusive atmosphere for fun and frolic I must say.

We lost power, again, for about 16 hours yesterday..  from 9am until at least 1am on Wednesday morning.  We spent most of the day out and about.. because of the contrived boredom my kids exhibited.  We needed to return in-laws dog back to them anyway.  We had taken Buff in for about two months.  We did some shopping at the great mall for jeans that Sarah, our second daughter needed.  (C.J., our oldest, is getting the hand-me-downs now haha) and for some Christmas ideas.

I’m not a big fan of the Great Mall of the Great Plains..  it’s.. well I don’t know what it is.  I can’t put my finger on it.  I guess a mall should have two levels.. call me crazy.  I know a mall is a mall is a mall.. NOT.  Ok.. let’s go back to our teen aged years.. back to the days of Pac-man, Donkey Kong and Frogger.. back to the Rubik’s cube, MTV playing actual music and Deloreans being the coolest cars on the planet..  Duran Duran is playing on your Sony Walkman.. and there were sqaure, green, cursors blinking on your Apple ][.  A time when going to the mall to hang out was the “thing to do” by the cool crowd.  Everyone went to the mall.. the jocks, geeks, freaks, brains, stoners.. they all went to the mall because “cool kids” went to the mall.  Yes I went to the mall too.  I never really spent a lot of time hanging out there though.  I mostly went and wondered how totally awesome it would be to have the whole place to yourself and a skateboard!

Metcalf South mall was our mall.  Oak Park was the big flashy new one.. but Metcalf South was “ours”.  My dad made the big mistake of telling me that my brother had gotten in trouble for finding a way onto the roof of it and something about the police being involved..  Weeeeeelll.. you know what my teenage ambition became.  As if I didn’t already have enough of it already.  Being on the roof of things was.. well it was awesome!  Especially if it wasn’t easy to get up on.  First was school roofs..  and the fear of being seen up there.  There was a fear of being caught, but at the same time, you kinda wanted somebody to see you for that shock factor.  What’s that kid doing up there!?  Depended on who saw you as to whether you then wanted to be seen or not..  Another kid that knew you.. yes!  A neighbor of the school that didn’t know you from Adam?  Then you might get in trouble.  A teacher or janitor?  No.  School’s coach of anything.. No.  They seemed to be able to identify everybody from just a flash glance.. don’t ask me why.

Metcalf South’s roof.. seemed an insurmountable feat.  My brother had gotten up there though.. I had never heard of anyone else getting onto the roof.  It would have gotten around.  My brother is 17 years older than I am, mind you.  There was a generation between us for somebody else to have gotten up there and enough time gone by that the word had not spread through the kid’s grapevine..  Months I spent riding around the outside of the mall.. looking for some chink in the perpendicular armor of the brick fortress.  I finally came to only even remotely possible chance of having to scale up the circular tube tile facade that was the front side of the tower thingy that the flags were on.. and then swing across some bars to another foothold place that had a difficult jump to a place that offered more foothold and climbing spot.  It was pretty far up in the air though.

I chickened out once when I got up there.. but I finally did get onto MS mall’s roof!  I made my way all around checking out what I could.. and before I was ready to get down.. I stood on the west side, toward the main parking lot and made sure that people below saw me haha.. then I beat a hasty retreat to the other side where I could drop down onto low cedar bushes and the ground, on the east side of the mall.  None of my friends believed me and really doubt anyone in the parking lot recognized me..

Some time later, while waiting at a light at 95th and Metalf one day, I craftily brought up the subject to my father about Doug having been on the roof and he started in about the trouble, stupidity, whatever, blah blah haha.. He looked at me and asked me if I would ever try anything so foolheardy.. and it seemed to me, almost imperceptibly, that he was hoping for an affirmative answer, that yes.. I too had been up there.  Not sure why.. it really is just a stupid, foolish thing that only seemed important to me at the time and for what reason I can’t say now.. it just did..

I gave him a wry grin and said “Me?  Up there?  Why would I go up there?” and he gave a fake “harrumph” and kept driving..

I guess that’s why I think malls should have two levels

If going back just inserted you back in your life at say, 17 years old.. and you took over from that point, you would make the same choices and same decisions all over again.  If you were placed back to a point in time and didn’t have the knowledge of the events that would transpire over the course of the (future rest) rest of your life, then nothing would change.

If you went back with that knowledge though.. went back and knew what you know now..  knew what the future held and the outcome of events that would happen in the future (and you didn’t do anything to stop those future events from happening) how might little changes alter the course of your history..err..future.  Choosing a Big Mac in your “new” life instead of the Quarter Pounder you “originally” chose for lunch one day probably won’t alter the course of your life from what it was the first time around.. Choosing to finish a test in school differently or not piss off your parents (or to piss them off), go to college or a different course of education could have drastic changes.  You would know where your loved ones would be at a certain time unless you made some really drastic change that might somehow might have unknowingly affected their lives so that they no longer followed their “old” history of actions.  You could go meet your future wife or husband and woo them still.

But would you?  With all the money that you should have and plan on having?  Knowing incredible business opportunities, unbelieavable wealth from sports gambling and parleying that windfall into incredibly massive wealth in stocks and futures market opportunites?  Would the person you love still see you the same way?  You would be different to them from the way you were the “first” time around.  Would they still fall in love with you?  Your attitude would undoubtably be different from the power that the money and/or fame you would achieve.

However much you would like to say, right now, that you would be the same.. you wouldn’t be.  It might be just enough difference to make a difference in how your special someone thought of you.

Even if you did bring the person you love into your new life, so many things would play out differently.. like when you children were concieved.. those times and events would probably be altered from your “first” life.  Those days that your childeren were created might not ever happen.  What makes your child the way he or she is?  It’s that magical moment when life is first created.  If that happens at a different time, will that child still be that child that you know and love now?  Or will that child be a different child, with different features, different psyche, different sex?  I think your children would be different.  Could they be just as great?  Would you love them just as much?  Probably yes, but they would be different people I believe.

Why couldn’t you just choose to find and meet the one you love in your “new” life and have it all be the same? 

You would have so much money that it might not matter to you though.. you could do almost anything you wanted.. but you might not be able to get the true love of the one you love.  Money CAN buy lots of types of happiness, anyone who tells me otherwise just hasn’t had enough to make it happen, if you ask me.

But it can’t buy you love.. and for me it’s the love of my family, my great kids and wife that makes me happy.

I’ve made some blunders.. missed a lot of opportunities.. had accidents happen that I might regret having happened but I wouldn’t go back and do it all over again differently if I was given the ability to do so.  My life is what it is, my family is what I have and I’m satisfied with it!  Anything that needs improving, well, we work on improving!  It’s slow, but it’s my life and I wouldn’t change it!