Join in on the Girl Scout fun!

I was asked to participate in a Brownie Girl Scout's fun with "Flat Juliette". I blogged about our adventure with her. Check it out!

http://flat-juliette.blogspot.com/2011/11/flat-juliette-has-thanksgiving-in.html

luck?

Is there such a thing as luck?

What is the deal with "number deja vu"?

That's the recurring number, that you see everywhere you go.

I have talked to several other people who say they have lucky or favorite numbers. The number 42 has always come up, over and over over the years for me.

42 is my number.

Do you have a number? Why?

Some days you get just what you need.

I am thankful for a young man who took the time to write me a letter.

Sometimes our "jobs" can seem hard. There are times when the part of my job; visiting schools, is exhausting and leaves me wondering if I am leaving behind something that is worthy of the school's efforts to host me. THEN, I get a gift like this letter and it re-energizes my batteries and makes me want to do more.

If you feel this way, remember, YOU are doing relevant things with your life, it's just that we too often forget to tell you.

WIN SOME BOOKS!

If you are interested in winning some books for your child's classroom or school library, go to the facebook page link here, LIKE it and participate in the idea which incorporates both this blog and facebook...

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Works-of-Justin-Matott/213624096290

Snow's piling up!

It's cold and it's blowy
it's white and all snowy
hot chocolate is floating whipped cream
I went to bed warm, and I woke up real cold
is this a weird wintertime dream?

I like to go sledding or snuggle in bedding
when the white stuff is whipping out there
we'll put in a movie
pop corn treats are so groovy
my snow hat gave me hat hair

School got canceled today
and that makes this day so okay
we're snowed in our house all together
With games and warm soup
no cold and no croup
it's all because of this weather!

You can't go home again...

I don't know who first said it, but you truly cannot go home again. You can return to the scene of the multiple crimes, but alas, the old place has changed. First of all, there are new people living in the old house, so the house doesn't look like it used to. The ditch running behind the old house seems to run slower than it used to and the water isn't nearly as deep as memory serves. The pond is sad, it hasn't seen a group of boys exploring its banks for awhile. The lake where the monster carp and the legends under the raft, that floated around it seems to have been choked out by the cat-tails and weeds that are growing where once lines were cast to pull in one of millions of sunfish, bluegills, carp and the occasional rainbow trout, which at this point I think we must have dreamed up. The picture of the gatekeepers that sit on both sides of the once "grand" entrance are now surrounded by industry. A storage unit company has built their units right up next to my once country neighborhoods entrance and on the other side, behind the grand entrance sign I used to hide behind with my buddies to watch the cars roar down what is one of the longest highways in the US now is far less grand and looks like it is something someone soon will decide is no longer necessary and be removed.

The neighborhood that once held so much wonder now lives, seemingly only in this author's imagination and memory. Populating the world in which Gabriel Peters and his family and friends live in is a once upon a place that must be kept alive by recording it. How many country neighborhoods have been lost to progress? How many childhood echoes lost because the child, now all grown up has never passed the stories on? Perhaps the memories of a neighborhood that once existed are only in this author's mind. Perhaps the houses even back then were just as small as they seem to me now. As I felt like all was lost and I had somehow just imagined it all, I pulled up the street, past my old home and as I was about to leave and maybe never return I saw something that made me smile. Coming down the old ditch were two boys and on each one of their shoulders were fishing poles. Ahhhhhhh....summertime memories began to flood into my head.

I went from feeling slightly depressed to feeling quite envious. I wanted to join those two boys at one of the fishing holes and while away another summer day with my toes in the water and a fat bluegill wriggling on my line. Instead, I got out of my car and walked down the railroad tracks and found myself skipping rocks across the rippling waters of good ol' Tunnel Number Three trying to reconstruct the events that had happened there .

I got ready to leave and I was feeling more than slightly depressed and wondering why I had expected more, I swear I could almost hear my character, Mr. Patchett, calling from his back yard to warn me of some legend in the old neighborhood, pushing me to return to the echos of the neighborhood that still live vibrantly in my mind.

As I stopped to get gas at the multi-pump gas station with the mini-mart that was in the place one of my favorite places to ride my sting ray had been back in the day, I looked across the highway at a neighborhood I no longer recognized or really could relate to in modern day and saw the brick SKYVIEW signs that held so many memories of my back in the day.

I wonder how the old Skyview entrance structures might look in my front yard on opposite sides of my driveway?