"My Crazy Kids"

A house without power By Allan Olson It was stormy last Thursday morning in this neck of the woods, and as a result of some high winds and/or lightning strikes, several thousand residents found themselves without power, including those in my home. It’s amazing how much we rely on electricity – our televisions, computers, radios and for those of us in the sticks, even our cell phones. It’s been so long since I had no power that even I found myself laughing at my own stupidity at the things I briefly tried to do during the short outage. Since I can still use my laptop without being plugged in for at least for a few hours, I was just going to jump on the Internet and check on the storm that was impacting us. I clicked on the browser and – oops!— no power means no internet (SMRT, right?). No big deal. I will just use my smart phone to accomplish this simple task. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue – except that where I live I have little to no cell service, and so rel...

Best of Friends, Worst of Enemies – Still By Allan Olson    A few years back (approximately seven years ago), while I was in college, I had an assignment to create a website. While I’ve forgotten the exact term of the website, it was one that would lead a person through multiple pages from multiple links. On my site, one of the pages I wrote about my oldest son Nikolai and his cousin Michael, who was only a few months older. The title of that page was “Best of Friends, Worst of Enemies.”    These two boys are growing up together, at the same age, in the same grade, with many of the same interests, and on every occasion they are together there is bound to be a few hurt feelings among the many hours of laughter.    For a time, these two cousins lived only a short distance apart, went to the same daycare provider and played with the same toys while there. They were seemingly never separated, and on more than one occasion there was expected(?)...

Summer Fun By Allan Olson If last week is any indication of how the rest of the summer is going to be, I think I’d like to fast forward until September when school resumes and some normalcy (if that exists) returns. We celebrated the kindergarten graduation of Marcus and Abigail last week and Nikolai finished his final day of third grade on Friday. With that, it is now the beginning of a busy summer for us. On Friday night we had a fire and a enjoyed a game of dodge ball in the back yard. We eventually succumbed to sleep, after trying to watch a movie, with all of us (even the kids) proving too tired to watch the whole thing. Saturday was another very busy day. Some of us slept in – making it until at least 7 a.m. – and then the day began. While the kids were busy, I decided to make use of some “spare” time and work in the garage. I began moving boxes, sorting more stuff, and doing some general cleaning. I was just getting further into the “mess” when I was told it was ti...