Wandering around outside a little while ago (Okay, yes, I was smoking. Get over it.) I saw that the dandelions are coming into bloom and I found myself lost in a memory from long ago. My father used to pay us each a penny for every dandelion we dug up in the yard and presented to him. A whole penny! That was back when you could buy a candy bar for a dime or my preferred sunflower seeds for a nickel a package.

And I remembered a day when I snuck off by myself, carrying my newest library book, and sprawled out in a meadow near our house. Close enough to the creek to hear the water but far enough away to escape the dragonflies, I soaked up the sunshine and lost myself in--I don't know what faraway fantasy land it was that day, but somewhere far, far from Kansas.

I still read that same way--with complete abandon, inhabiting fully the landscape of the story. I can dodge cannon fire as a soldier of the Napoleonic era, face the deafening wrath of a hurricane while aboard a frail sailing ship, or chase along after a detective as he turns over and absorbs clue after clue.

Any of my siblings would be delighted to explain to you just how flawed my memory of my childhood is. I find it difficult to hold onto bad memories. When I look back, I see an endless stream of golden, sunlit days dotted with butterflies and bowls of freshly churned ice cream. And sometimes, very rarely, there was snow.

With effort, I can remember some of the other days, but I can't relate to them. They carry no emotional baggage.*

I'm actually very much at peace with that.

Some things I do remember emotionally.

Kennedy's assassination. Maybe I was six and I didn't really understand what was happening, but I have a distinct memory of the black cloud of desolation that seemed to fill the world around me.

Kent State. That was a shocker, even though I was several years older at the time. I didn't understand how American 'soldiers' could shoot American people that way. It just--I could not relate to it, on any level.

Man landing on the moon. Little or no impact from that one. By then, I'd been reading science fiction for many years and my attitude was, "Of course we're walking on the moon. Get on with it already--Mars is waiting!"

I arrived at work at 7:45 again today. Lacking anything better to do, I went ahead and started working. Used to be, you had to drop a building on my head to get me out of bed in the morning, but not these days.

I mention this uncharacteristic earliness because I think it's a sign of how well-rested I am these days, after the Long Hiatus.

Also because it tends to make for very long work days. Like many of us, I eat lunch at my desk more often than not. And while I always have big resolutions of using the hour to catch up on my personal email or my web reading, the knowledge that someone here once turned me in for playing solitaire on my lunch hour tends to inhibit me. So mostly I just keep working while I eat. (Intermittent blogging aside, you can't say I don't give good value for my salary.)

If you're looking to see what my Words of Wisdom are for today? I advise Googling to find out how many calories are in 1/3 of a chocolate-frosted cake donut before you eat it.

I really should stop blogging without a purpose, shouldn't I?

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* The time I was walking home from school with a friend and a strange man pulled his car up and called us over, inviting us to "pet the puppy" in his lap.

The first year trick-or-treating was restricted in our small Kansas town, because of rumors that someone was handing out apples laced with razor blades.

The time we were out on a magazine/newspaper drive for our scout troop and a man gave us an entire wagonful of incredibly explicit pornography. (I'm going to be honest--that one left a mark.)