After camping the last two weekends with the guys from Step Ministries, it seems almost odd to wake up at the Casa on a Saturday morning. Thing are as they should be; the inmates have all braved the Dew monster to go outside and tinkle, bringing our cold, wet, feet back into the house to trample dad's tender vegetation, finally settling back in to our rightful places on the bed. The hum of the space…

Shortly before bedtime Wednesday night, dad spots a (full) 16 oz bottle of tea on the kitchen table; in this house, a drink of any type left unattended is fair game for poaching, but dad leaves it alone... ...until morning. When the tea is still sitting unmolested, dad declares open season and quickly slugs it down. He is in the process of ironing a shirt when mom walks in: "Who drank my tea?" "I don't…

It's been 1,176 dog hours since we started my blog last Sunday; although a week doesn't seem like much, life is such a whirlwind at the Casa that it's hard to keep up with the shenanigans. Dad and I are about as tech-savvy as a pair of orangutans, and if patience is a virtue, neither of us must be very virtuous; mom says that if either of us had two brains, one of them would…

Even though there are many parallels between the story of the crate and the story of Easter, I'm very cautious about drawing any direct comparisons; what happened on that morning centuries ago changed the world, I'm just hoping to influence a small part of it. When dad was growing up, looong hours on the pews gave ample opportunity to find humor in the Bible; you can only spend so much time looking at the pictures…

Yesterday is a cancelled check, tomorrow is a promissory note, today is cash in hand I know that all days are created equal, and Mondays should hold the same feeling of anticipation as Fridays, but actually they are living proof that life is all about the journey, not the destination. What's the weekly destination for most? Saturday, of course, but when it finally gets here, we end up wasting it, either getting far fewer things…

It appears that dad is going to need another operation, and this one might be doozy; he has been searching the World Wide Web for surgeons that might possibly be willing to attempt this daring new procedure, but so far has been unsuccessful. Compounding this issue is the fact that, in addition to finding a surgical team that will take on this case and also accept his insurance,  he also needs to find a suitable…

The story of mom: many have asked for the scoop on mom's role at the Casa; I've been saving it for today,  28 years of putting up with dad's shenanigans... simply put, if there was no story of mom, there would be no story of Charlie... 28 years ago, Dad was "encouraged" to go to North Carolina to separate himself from some bad influences that were destroying his life; unfortunately at the time, he fell…