Making Money

Yesterday, while I was washing dishes with the television tuned to TLC, my nine year old said, "Mom, we should build a machine so that we can make money."

"Really? What type of machine should we build?" I love it when children come up with creative ideas. Children are natural entrepreneurs.

"A machine that makes money."

He didn't want to build a machine that could do something useful and that we could sell, he wanted to create a machine so that we could print counterfeit currency. I assumed that he came up with the idea after the program about the man who had won five million dollars in the lottery. I guess, in his little mind, it would be easier to just print money than to win the lottery. The two are probably just as ethical, in his mind. Who knows?

I asked him what he thought would happen if we did print money. His said, "We would get rich."

I told him it was illegal. He said, "We wouldn't get caught."

"So, as long as we don't get caught you would be happy with printing money, even though it's against the law?"

"Yes."

I didn't judge. Mainly, because a part of me was busy spending...

A few hours later, I asked him again if he wanted to make money. He said, "We can't." I was relieved that he had come to that moral conclusion on his own without my help. Children are natural learners, after all. I was proud of myself for avoiding didactics.

I asked, "Why can't we make money?"

"We could if we lived out in the country."

The truth is, he has "made" money before. He turned our dining room into a restaurant and created menus for his customers and even "made" money so that they could purchase food. Does a restaurant like that exist? "Here's fifty Chili's Bucks, have a nice meal."

Now, isn't that the kind of person you would want "making" money; The kind of person who would give it to you?

Guess what this is:

Patchwork of Springs (not too silly)

Our Texas Mountain Laurel has been adorned in purple cascading blooms. The scent always takes me back to Southwest Texas State University (Texas State), as there was a long walkway seasonally walled by the lavender flowers. The trek to class was an event when the little trees were in bloom. When the air didn't smell like the river, it smelled like the grape flavored powder from Fun Dip and Pixy Stix candies.

The breeze brings the yummy fragrance into the house when the doors to the backyard are open. If I close my eyes I can imagine myself back on campus. I remember some of the characters I encountered on the way to class. I remember the frat guy who wore base; I remember the mean Prozac PETA girl, and I remember the fighting stallions.



I miss living in a place where you could safely, and without destination, walk from evening until sunrise, and where you could, without guilt and with a few new acquaintances, eat breakfast before finally going to bed. I miss the guy in the dorm beside ours who would play Eric Johnson’s “Cliffs of Dover” so loud that we could open our windows and hear the music as if it were playing on the stereo in our room.

I wonder why I was in such a hurry to get out of the dorms and into an apartment. Looking back, dorm life was the best part of college, though I hated it at the time.

I wonder what I was thinking when I chose a Saturday morning class as if I would actually attend a Saturday morning class. Only I can boast that a lack of common sense was the reason I failed Philosophy.

It’s amazing how a scent can gather up old memories and press them together at the folds. For a brief second I can see right through the fabric to all of my springs, but they quickly fade and wilt like the flowers on our Texas Mountain Laurel.

Saturday Silliness (dream)

Salvador Dali "Sleep"

The sound of thunder woke me up this morning. Remember that earthquake of a thunderclap? Anyway, I was in the middle of an audio-dream. Do you ever have audio dreams; the dreams that are more verbal than visual or emotional? It’s as if someone is talking to you in your ear - real time. It’s not always associated with a story or a plot. Sometimes, the words conclude a dream, like a punctuation. I don’t always remember the actual dream, but sometimes I will remember the parting words.

This morning my dream ended with a voice saying, “Some people wake up to light and some people wake up to wind…” just as the thunder was pulling me out of my sleep.

At first, I thought, “Silly unconscious brain! You forgot about how some people might wake up to sound!” But, after I thought about it, I realized that when you are experiencing something, it speaks for itself. The fact that it was happening to me completed the thought. “Some people wake up to light, some people wake up to wind, but you will wake up to thunder!” How cool to become a part of the narrative. Wait, I already was, it was I who was dreaming.

It’s very windy right now. If the wind woke you up, I guess you were one of the people who woke up late! Lazy!

Isn’t that fun? My dream made me didactic. =P

That concludes my little post on "Saturday Silliness." But, before I go, I have to share with you something my nine year old told me:

Last night, while watching a play put on by the junior high homeschoolers, I leaned over and whispered something in my nine year old’s ear. He put his hand up in front of my mouth and whisper-screamed, “Mom, your breath is burning my eyes!” Isn't that sweet?

It wasn’t onions, I promise, it was my menthol cough drops. I’ve been hitting the cough drops like an addict lately. I've been coughing for three to four weeks since the flu. Seriously, it was the cough drops!

P.S. Don't you think it's hypocritical of me, unemployed and all, to call someone sleeping in on Saturday "lazy?"