Nurture

Cookies are easy to make. I don't mean the kind where you open the package, break off a few pre-cut chunks and put them in the oven. I mean from scratch. I made cookies today and although the ready-to-bake kind might be really frickin' easy, pulling out the flour and eggs and sugar is not that tough. The cookies I made may not taste any better than the pre-manufactured kind, but they feel better.

Make your own cookies.

I have all the necessary equipment to make beer. (That really should not be a shock.) I have done it a few times and it has always gone well. But nothing I created ever tasted as good as a Harp or Bass or Bodington's. Maybe someone needs to come up with easy, ready-to-brew beer chunks. That's something I would invest in.

Buy good beer.

I have thought about opening a coffee shop. Actually I would open a chain of shops, but that is just the way I think. The easiest thing to do would be to buy into a franchise. But I really don't want to do that. I would rather take my chances on my own and see if I can do better than all the major chains in the world. My odds of success would be small, but at least I could fail my way.

Take chances.

We have recently purchased a large fish tank - 28 gallons. That's not very big for all the fish-geeks out there, but it's a good size for us. It's all ready to go and just waiting for some actual fish. Apparently you need to wait a while to make sure the water is just right before adding fish to the tank. Something tells me Chick's patience is about to wear thin and we'll have fish by the end of the weekend. Anyway, I don't know why I wanted a fish tank. We already have a few small tanks - one with a goldfish, another with a frog. We also have a terrarium with a tree frog. That's a lot of creatures in the house. I guess I like taking care of things.

Nurture.

january

Nothing grows in the month of January. The same is true for February.

Chick wants to move south - she does not like the cold. In many ways I like the changing of the seasons. That's what life is about - change. All people continue to change. Some consider it to be aging but I like to think of it as evolving. If you stop changing, or evolving or adapting, you're dead.

But as I was attempting to put a winter coat on Hank in Red Lobster today, I began to understand Chick's thought process.

I doubt that I will spend the rest of my life in my current state. Or State. I like changing and evolving and adapting.

Jack is gone. A cat can't bite a little girl and expect to live. She didn't cry - and neither did he.

That's life.

I want to move to New England. Everyone seems smarter in New England. I am tired of stupid people. I'm really not that smart but at least I take my Christmas lights down by Valentine's Day. Okay, maybe the people who leave Christmas lights up are just lazy, but the line between stupid and lazy is thin.

Snow is coming. I hope it covers the new dog shit. I don't think I could ever take a crap in the snow - I don't know how the dogs do it. I imagine that they really aren't happy about it either, but that is their life.

Shit in the snow. Makes it tough to dot the 'i'.