Updates

I thought I would update you on Ryleigh's bedtime routine. The good news is that she still needs me. Putting herself to bed only lasted one night. A new twist has been added, however. Instead of telling her stories, she now wants me to sing her story songs. I don't know where that request came from, but the first song that came to my head was "Grandma's Feather Bed" by John Denver. It meets both criteria - story and song:

"When I was a little bitty boy, just up off the flo'
We used to go down to Grandma's house, every month end or so.
We'd have chicken pie, country ham, homemade butter on the bread,
but the best darn thing about Grandma's house was the great big featherbed" and so on....

I remember singing it in school during music class, and even going so far as to explain some of the lyrics such as "forty-leven geese" and "took a whole bolt of cloth for the tick". If pressed I can recite the first few lines of the preamble to the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence or the Gettysburg Address, but I can recall every word of "Grandma's Feather Bed". I'm not sure what that says about me, but it's not something that necessarily makes me proud. Maybe if someone put the Declaration of Independence to music I could remember it.


On a separate note, I'm not the only one who was impressed with the way the people of Texas responded to the hurricane relief effort. Vice President Dick Cheney is quoted as saying, "he [Cheney] was impressed with the sophisticated planning Texas has in place, in case a major hurricane hits the state." See the entire article here.