I woke up around 6:30 AM. All the windows in the house were open and the smell of sweet summer dew was hitting me in the face as I put on a pair of shorts. I walk through the the living room, say good morning to Ruby, as I always do. I wonder if she knew?
I grab a drink of water to wash down the thick taste of cigarettes and beer left over from the previous night. A night spent like some many others, in the back yard, probably cooking out, watching the boys bounce in and out of the kiddie pool, feeding chickens, petting the cats, giving Ruby leftovers.
As I had done every morning for the previous month, I head to the back yard. I open the door. Red Feathers. I knew what it meant, but it couldn’t be. I walk to the coop. Red Feathers. The door was still shut, but my two lovely Rhode Island Reds weren’t in there. Where were they? I turn around and look toward the compost pile, where they would sometimes be if they were impatient and wanted out of the coop earlier than I could provide. Red Feathers. Every where you looked, red feathers. I froze, not knowing what to think or do. I felt robbed. Some monster had come into my yard and killed my defenceless ladies. It was all my fault. I really believed they were safe. I’ve been robbed before of material possesions, come home to a kicked in door, but that feeling didn’t compare to what I was feeling at this moment.
These were animals that I had suggested killing and eating myself when winter hit. Animals I warned my wife and children not to become attached to. But seeing the scene left in my back yard that morning hurt like not many things previously in my life.
What will I tell the children? I’ve never felt like such a failure in their eyes before. I’ll get a .22 and hide out in my back yard and kill whatever it was that killed them, that would prove myself, right? What was it? What could paint such a grewsome scene with chicken guts and red feathers?

…

Later that day, I dragged a mostly eaten carcass of one chicken out from under the deck, never found the other one. The spread of feathers over my yard says it was quit a struggle. My ladies fought for their lives, well, at least ran for them. It was either raccoons or possums.

Long story short, put a fucking roof on your chicken coop, so that’s what we’re doing this year.

My oldest son cheers for Purdue. He has the opportunity to go to most Purdue home football and basketball games, but would rather do something else most of the time. He’ll go to a football game if we’re going tailgating. Basketball games are hit and miss. But, he passes the Purdue fan litmus test. He despises i.u. and he has favorite players.
I’ve been lucky, in that my father took me to numerous Purdue basketball and football games throughout my life. I was at the 1994 Purdue/Duke game and I also went to the 2001 Rose Bowl. These were the last two real chances the Boilers had to win it all.

The other day, the oldest asked me a question about “fat Elvis.”
I said, “Who is “fat Elvis?”

The real question was: “How did Elvis die?”

We’ve had some conversations lately about Chuck Berry vs. Elvis and who the real king of rock and roll is. Somewhere, he learned that Elvis got fat and died? I told him Elvis died of a drug overdose and drank too much alcohol. For the record, he refers to Chuck Berry as his favorite musician and doesn’t care much for Elvis.

We talked about prescription drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and illegal drug use. Differences between safe use and too much. Admitted that alcohol use makes people do dumb things. I reminded him that he can’t legally drink until he is 21 years old and that drug use is discouraged, both prescription and illegal.

So, I wake up the other morning to news that a Purdue basketball player had been arrested outside a campus bar for public intox. Throughout the day, small updates were trickling in. I was keeping a close eye on the twitter stream. Our local paper, the Journal and Courier, does a good job at keeping updates live. Later in the day, I hear that another player had been kicked off the Purdue Men’s Basketball team for good. And I immediately thought, crap, that’s the oldest’s favorite player. Things unravelled all day, there are rumors here, rumors there. As of today, the entire story hasn’t been told.

When I told him what happened, his first question was, “What’s that other guys name?”
I said, “You mean Robbie Hummel?”

Yep, that was it. Number one quickly became number two. Well, he’s not a player any more, so he doesn’t have a rank really. I’m a big Lewis Jackson fan myself, you’d think he would be too.

I told him the gist of what went down; drinking, bars, guys acting tough, bouncers, state police vs. local police. He learned a lot.

Then he asks me, “Do those Purdue guys take prescription drugs?”

I really wish I didn’t have to talk to my 6 year old about this stuff, but I do. It happens to them; it happens close to home and on the T.V. screen. Kids need to know it all since you can’t hide them from it. I don’t tell him what he can and can’t do, just tell him what happens when you do certain things.

http://www.gifsforum.com/images/gif/did%20not%20read/grand/hvwe28.jpg.gif

This is one of the many odd questions I get asked and don’t have an answer for.

The oldest asked me this, and wasn’t happy with my answer of “You don’t want to.”

File this under something you luckily can’t search. I was a little worried about the images we might find searching for “Lava Injury”. I’m guessing it just burns your entire foot off, hopefully you don’t just spontaneously combust, right?

Looks like you’ll live as long as you don’t go swimming in it.

This was about all I could find.

http://volcanoworld.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/how-close-can-i-get-to-lava-and-will-it-hurt-or-kill-me/
http://www.instanthawaii.com/cgi-bin/hawaii?Volcano.warn