An Ashtray and A Bowl of Nuts

I complicated the title of my last piece on purpose.  As I faced the empty title line for this one nothing clever came to mind.

Titles are hard...

In that post I wrote:

"My dad would crack nuts and put the shells in his ashtray

 and when it was full he'd dump it into the fire and the cigarette butts would 

burn quickly but we'd stare and watch the shells initially smoke and then 

 flare up, the nut oil burning them bright and fast."

 My Mom found these and gave them to me:

There's a bonus table lighter that matches the ashtray there behind, but that all wouldn't fit in the title line.

These are the exact items I was speaking of, lifted from my memory.

From Marci's "...things you don't expect to hear from the backseat ..."

"Sorry, they were just preparing you for life ... it's what parents do'"

I'm pretty sure Nick said this to Zack.  If he knows this, maybe we're done...

Thanks for taking a look at this, I thought it was pretty cool that she found these, thanks Mom.

Are you still here?

Yeah, so am I...

Sometimes I have a little bit to say about more than one thing.  I have been known to throw them all together in a forced mashup like this or this.  Sometimes I just hang things on the end... uh, sorta like I am now.

The boys are working on keyboarding here at home and at school.  You know, typing.  It's sort of cute to see them lining their fingers up on a particular way - like they did on their forgotten recorders.  However, unlike the sadly discarded wind instruments, they really need to learn this skill.  Frankly, I never did.  I don't so much hunt-and-peck, but I sure as hell don't do it like I'm supposed to.  I wish I was better.  I should have paid more attention in my high school "Personal Typing" class but Jill was remarkably distracting.  Yes, thanks for asking, they were electric.  I used a manual through college though, it's funny, we all did.  It seems so impossible now.

Here is a picture of Nick working on a project for school:

That's pretty much how I look right now, precisely.

 Peace to you.  See ya 'round.