"When the Spirit moves you, let the music groove you."

Hey there,

how about a poorly edited update? Josh Ritter's new cd is out right now. it's called the animal years and you need to check it out.

life here on the ranch is fine. it's real dry so last weekend, every day involved the fire department trying to work their magic by keeping the fires away from buildings and young children.

my routine (that's the name of the game here. routine routine routine. something that i don't handle well) involves waking up at six thirty-something and realizing that my alarm has been going off for several minutes since 6:30. i then proceed to hit the snooze until my neighbor next to me demands that I get up. then i go to the house that i'm working at, wake the boys up, get them a cinnamon roll, keep them from fighting so early in the morning, and then getting them off to school.

after that i try to avoid people at all costs so i can go back to bed.

after a healthy nap, i wake up and go back to the cabin before the boys get home from school.

once everyone is home, there is an hour of quiet time in the rooms to refocus. obviously "quiet time", "in the rooms", and "refocus" rarely happens. these are teenage boys man, they don't want any of that. it's part of the routine though.

after that, we go outside, watch a movie, prevent fights, go fishing, go play football, go look for crawdads, and whatever else might come up.

then comes supper. wow, supper. first of all, 12 and 13 year olds are picky so you can imagine that food that doesn't get eaten and the peanut butter and jelly that gets vanquished. "It's Science." Second of all, provoking and fighting at the table is as routine as supper every night.

Gym time, outside with the water guns, following up on the supper time fights, a movie, or quiet time is the name of the game before bed depending on the mood.

then comes bed, then comes paper work, then comes the night staff to relieve the houseparents.

once i'm done, i'd like to go to bed but i took a sweet nap eight hours earlier so i'm not interested in sleep. i usually just hang out with some of the people i've met here and inhale their second hand smoke or practice music. then i fall asleep to do it all over again.

so that's that. it's all about routine here. i'm not sure if i'm ready for that kind of commitment but the boys here need some sort of consistency in their broken lives. i wonder if i can offer that despite my lack of commitment to routine. apparantly freedom might actually come from consistency. we''ll see.

anyways, life is good, there are good people here, and i am tired so i'm going to go enjoy a sweet nap and dream of what it's like to live in seattle. i hope.

james