My son and I were quoting a familiar passage of Scripture together this morning when he corrected me:

"No Dad, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all bee stings will be given to you as well."

Tonight after dinner, my two-year old looked across the table in a serious sort of way, and asked her mother: "Mom, do you lay eggs?"

Ha.

I have a new collection of books -- accumulated, I'm ashamed to admit, from the discard shelves of friends and church libraries. About 18 months ago I got my first trunk-load full of these abandoned tomes, and my collection has just kept growing.

Ironically, I don't care for reading. I've kept several hundred of the books (I've thrown away hundreds more) that I don't expect I'll ever read. It's not that I don't want to know what they say; it's just that I don't want to have to read them to find out. Perhaps they are functioning more as reference materials than reading materials...

One of these books stands out to me. Actually, if you want to know the truth, it was on the shelves of a church library, but nobody ever cared to check it out, so the church put it in their missions fundraiser yardsale, and nobody cared to buy it, and the yardsale coordinator didn't even care to haul it to the dumpster, so they found a sucker (me) who agreed to take the whole box. Now, despite its having been rejected over and over again, I have saved the book in my family room like a treasured heirloom, waiting to never read it.

So I read it. Wednesday night. Cover to cover. It was fine (I guess). I placed it immediately onto my discard pile. I don't guess I should be surprised...

Now, for the question my wife has asked over and over: Why am I keeping all these books? The ones I have read, I have not liked. The ones I have not read, I don't expect to read. The answer (I just realized it): I am keeping these books because they were FREE. My behavior proves that I believe heartily in this maxim: "If it is free, I must need it."

For this reason, we have:
-Mismatched dishes (discards from my grandparents, of course, but I insist they are sentimental),
-Mismatched furniture (which I picked up on the edge of the highway, but it's in decent shape and doesn't stink),
-A little red wagon full of sand (we managed to liquidate the sandbox at a yardsale, but we wanted to keep the sand...)
-Two pitiful rosebushes that prevent my children from playing baseball in the yard (those poor roses were dying when we moved in -- they haven't perked up since I started nursing them),
-A little green lamp in my bedroom (I assume it was free; I can't imagine that I would have paid anything for the unlovely little thing.)

I'm beginning to smother. Why is it? Why are free things so hard for me to let go? I can tell you how I rationalize my actions. I think, "Gosh, these books are something I would never have bought with my own money; they just came along as a pleasant surprise. Now that they belong to me, they must be worth something, or I wouldn't have them, would I? Surely if I keep them long enough, I will realize their value and be glad I kept them. Besides, what's the benefit in throwing them away?"

And here's the problem -- these invaluable collections now require hours of attention. We dust them, sort them, move them, step around them...I am investing in them. Yet they seem to keep depreciating (if it's possible for something that cost nothing to depreciate).

Perhaps it is analogous to some other aspect of my life -- I just can't put my finger on it...

I love being a dad. And let me tell you -- these kids have one of the greatest moms I can possible imagine...

Well, I'm embarrassed to admit that there was no good reason for me to quit updating this blog when I did. I could make excuses...perhaps I had more important things to do, or I couldn't think of anything worthwhile to write, or nobody important was reading my posts...but when I read the blogs of my friends, I realize that these similar things don't prevent them from posting...

Shall I admit the real reason I quit? It's because I lost the high-speed wireless connection that I was "borrowing" from some unsuspecting neighbor (we'll call him Mr. Linksys) who didn't have any security on his connection. I admit that I have resented Mr. Linksys time and time again over past months for discontinuing the service to which I'd become entitled. It doesn't seem right that after sharing his "plenty" for months, he would suddenly stop, especially when someone as nice as I am had come to depend on it.

Now, amid the unfairness of the whole situation, I've decided that I simply cannot keep waiting for Old Man Linksys to begin sharing again. Even if it hurts his feelings, I'm going to have to resort to dial-up to get things done...

Where am I now? First, with work...

There's one thing I've always admired about my mother: she is busy. (Not a busy-body, mind you. In fact, she's not a gossip in the least...Nor is she overcommitted to a hundred different volunteer commitees.) She is always on-task. She was a home-maker for my whole childhood, and there was never a day when she didn't have a to-do list on the table, including housework, bills, and groceries, but also friends to write, favors for friends, missionaries to pray for, on and on. It was amazing to me that for someone who (from my perspective) had very little to do, she always had somthing to do.

Somehow, I got that gene. Even if there is nothing to do (for that matter, even when there are things that must be done), I can always find dozens of different tasks that seem worthwhile. I mean, I could read to the kids, pull weeds, organize my bookshelf, write a letter to my legislators, plan for my upcoming meeting with the local mormon missionary, clean my closet, call my sister, drywall my basement, fix the lawnmower, take a walk. And my to-do list gets longer (rather than shorter) as I work through each task.

This is my Achilles' heel (how many heels can a guy have?)...and at my workplace, it's beginning to make me feel overwhelmed. I've been thinking a good deal recently about some aspects of leadership. Perhaps I'll ramble about them some more...

For now, I'll just be thankful that I'm not inclinde to boredom. I can deal with the problems it causes later.

We're back in business -- whoever was providing the free wireless channel for us last year has reappeared after several months of dial-up. We're spoiled rotten.

Kids are good. Wife is good. Everybody asks. Doing fine, thanks. Here is a picture (from winter) since it has been a while:

Last night, my son asked from the other room, "Dad, why is it that as you grow up, your finger is always the size of the hole in your nose?"

I didn't have a good answer.

Introducing the newest addition to our clan: