When Abe Lincoln wrote the Declaration of Independence, it probably sounded like this.

Another holiday weekend into dust.

Here at summer's apex, it surely hasn't felt like summer since the seasons changed a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday was miserable, the first time I haven't swam on the 4th in God knows how many years. In fact, the wind picked up sometime in the late afternoon and I had to put on some long sleeves. Which went well with the swim trunks.

My grandma brought a copy of the Declaration of Independence to my dad's party. She said, "I thought I could read it while I was here." Dad says, "I hope not to us!"

And then, ultimately, I got drafted into reading it. I did well, but I need to learn it a little better so I can do a dramatic reading next year. If we do it next year.

I wouldn't have gotten pulled into reading it if we weren't sitting around trying to recite the Gettysburg Address. But there was a point where everyone got stuck, and I whipped out my crackberry (or, as my uncle called it, my "huckleberry," which is almost as funny as when Doom called it a "blueberry") to find its text. Lo and behold, I found it, and read the remainder of it. I did learn that when my dad (and his mom) were in school, they had to memorize it. That requirement went by the wayside by the time I was in school, which seemed to shock them to no end. They know that our public schools have turned into a morass of self-esteem management at the expense of, you know, things like learning the Gettysburg Address, but I think there was an assumption that memorizing such things was still being done when I was in school (seeing as how I'm in my mid-30s now).

So I read the Gettysburg Address, and then was handed the Declaration to read. This was six beers into my day (in other words, *real* early on). I hate being read to, and I hate reading to people, but it seemed like it could be the start of a quaint tradition, and I'm glad to be a part of it.

Five weeks till we send Son off to school, speaking of "public school morass". Five weeks till we stop spending hundreds of dollars a month on daycare, probably to be replaced by the hundreds of dollars in gas money I will spend going to the school to have chats with his principal or teacher. The worst trouble I ever got into in school was the very first week, when on the playground, I thought it would be a grand idea to throw sand into the air. So the bar is set pretty high as far as expectations about his behavior. Let's just say that I have some reservations, accented by trepidation. I fear that I've done a horrible job of parenting, and I'm afraid this is going to come to light in the coming weeks. Doesn't help that I believe that doing anything less than a perfect job equates failure in my book, and this view tempers all I do (my job, my home life, my parenting). I hope to God I am wrong.