My Essay for the Week

Hi All,
Megan, you have snared me into replying. I loved this essay you wrote on silence. It is something I fight for everyday but usually to no prevail. Because of this I haven't participated 100% to this essay thing going on. But today my kids are uncharacteristicly sleeping in. The older ones are at school and the two younger are still asleep. It is 9:34 and I have decided to enjoy my 'silents' instead of taking a shower and preparing for the day. (sleep on kids, sleep on!) I've spent my time catching up with reading your essays. They are so telling into each of your personalities. I sometimes wish I could have more time so you can all get to know my personality better as well. Then I realized if I titled some of my emails better like "essay for this week" or something like that, that I am sharing something of myself but in my own way. My latest essay would be the picture of Peter. Noone commented, so I hope you all got it. Or the video of Marshall and his Lepricon trap. My children are my essays in person--and I took an hour trying to get that picture. That should tell something about me and be interesting for you to "read". Also, I thought about sending my seminary letters I write every week for my seminary students. I try to put some thoughtful insite into them, but then they are filled with quotes and thoughts of others. They also take me an hour to write. But I don't think I'll bother you with those. Or I will just enjoy the few small moments of silence I can muster up each week and read about your lives instead. That sounds better. But, know that I am here and I think all of you are great and inspiring. I can't wait to see you all at the reunion.

Ducks

Ok. For those of you who have provided “subtle” pressure for me to write an essay, here it is, a 5 minute essay (but let it be known I would rather spend an extra 5 minutes in the shower). So it is duck season again. Everyone wants to feed the ducks at the park even though the signs say “Please keep our wild life wild and don’t feed the ducks.” Every year I recall an experience I had a few years back of an encounter with a duck conversationalist (at least she thought she was one). I was enjoying the sun with my 1 and 3 year old at the park. We had forgotten to bring bread for the ducks but we decided to visit them anyway. It was early in the season and I wanted my boys to get some exercise before their nap so I challenged them that if they could catch a duck I would cook it for dinner. They ran as hard as they could with their little legs but neither of them could even come close the ducks who were easily avoiding them while still staying close enough to me to beg for a handout. I wasn’t worried about the safety of the ducks. But someone else was. A lady with her two children was close (actually standing not 5 feet from the “do not feed duck” sign) shelling out more bread than the ducks could eat. When she heard me challenge my boys she hurried over to me in a huff and proceeded to ridicule me for teaching my boys at an early age not to respect animals. Thanks to my decent upbringing I apologized and took my boys to the park, but my husband heard the other half of the story when he got home that night. Let’s just say that in my opinion there would be a lot less hungry people in the world if we could put our local fowl to good use. A duck dinner is actually a specialty in the uptown restaurants. You wouldn’t have to catch and eat all of them, just a few to keep the population under control. And what happened to a nice goose dinner? I don’t think anyone should complain if they caught all of the geese. Then we could finally use the grass area at the park for what it was meant for, to play on. And by the way, at least I was teaching my boys to eat what they caught and not just end its life for the sake of sport. So there is my essay. If you report me to the town of Newington ’s Park and Rec department I’ll deny I said any of it. I love the ducks. They are cute.

P.S. I spent an extra 5 minutes in the shower anyway.