A Splintered Mind

You may have heard the news that Evel Knievel passed away today. I wanted to take a moment to share a story from my youth as a way of commemorating him. During a hot summer month before Fonzie jumped a shark , all the neighborhood boys gathered in Tommy Swenson's backyard to subject their Evel Knievel Stunt Cycles to the most "Wicked Pissa" jumps they could think of. There were no toys like those cycles. We could rev them up and launch them into the air in the most punishing, yet entertaining circumstances. Our Evel Knievels withstood them all. Years later we would graduate to riding our banana seat bikes over our own jumps, but nothing compared with the sweet thrill of that summer. One particular day stands out in my mind above the endless others because it embodied in our young minds what Evel Knievel was all about. We had set up a particularly abusive jump for our Evel to survive at the base of Tommy's driveway. The driveway led up to the street right at the foot...

I found this over at Pete Quily's Blog . Have a laugh with me. Doodle by Lee . The code for this doodle and other doodles you can use on your blog can be found at Doodles . tags technorati : ADD ADHD AD/HD Distractions Like reading The Splintered Mind ? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, or subscribe !

It's the weekend. You have things to do. But set some time aside to prune a box and make it more useful. Today is the final project in my cleaning series. Join in. I know. I know. Some of you think that I'm anal retentive at best, obsessive compulsive at worst. I like things clean. But if you noticed the before shots, my world is far from clean. I live with five other people and I can't have things as clean as I'd like. Not unless I want to do all the cleaning. The problem with that is I'd just throw everything out. I actually use that as a threat with my girls. "I know how to clean this room and make it stay that way. You don't want my help. I promise you. You have 15 minutes or I'll do it for you." Their pretty little faces become ashen white and their hands fly like streaks of light as they finally find motivation to pick up after themselves. Meanwhile, I have my own messes to deal with . Case in point? The Computer Box. Oh, what a blessed lit...

Did you ever think one of those social networking sites could be therapeutic? Neither did I until I discovered Twitter . I have been an old fogey when it came to the social networking space. I have tried out MySpace but it really had no appeal to me. Nobody I knew used it, and the only people who contacted me where sleazy women trying to sell me pharmaceuticals. I have a Facebook page, too. It is a lot quieter than MySpace , but before my recent experiment it seemed just as pointless. Why would I want to worry about managing virtual friends and maintaining a separate email database? I already had a Flickr account with it’s posting and commenting responsibilities. Besides, I had a website with my own domain which I failed to maintain on a regular basis. Who has time for all that? No, clearly, social media sites weren’t worth the trouble. And yet something bugged me. Could it be I was just bad at these sites because, frankly, I couldn’t network with people if you locked me together wi...

Don't you hate it when life interferes with your best laid plans? Do you let it knock you down or do you keep pushing forward? With messes if you don't push forward you'll quickly be back were you started from. You would think I would know better than to plan these writing projects. It seems every time I decide to write over a period of a few days my family life or disabilities let me know they have other plans. This time it was a bit of both for me. I'll warn you in advance. This will be a longish article. Rather journally in fact, but I have some things to get off my chest so I'm hoping you won't mind the ride. A year ago this time I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo. I thought I had it all planned out. I had even pre-written articles to post in a timely fashion throughout the month so I could keep my blog current. The trouble was that I was also homeschooling and I discovered to my horror that my 8 year old was a functional illiterate. I couldn't dedica...