Natural Caffeine

"... the solid ace became a solid pair of aces on the flop [5c][Kc][Ac] and a winning pair of aces by the river [5s][2h] as FlipFlopUK collected the remaining 17.5 million chips from the pot winning the entire $187,207.92 first prize after defeating the 6,153 player field!"

And scene.

Damnit Raiders of the Lost Ark had to start up now?  It's like the pool scene with Phoebe Cates or watching Andy Dufresne break out of Shawshank.  The Hovitos poisoned tipped darts, the gate of metal piercing Indy's "friend" as he tried to run off with the gold statue, being chased by a concrete snowball, and diving thru a spider web out of the tomb just in time to hand over the artifact to Belloq.

Will power finally turned up while finding the power button to turn off Indy's race thru the forest as the natives chased him. The article finally published as the Windows updates kept me up for another five minutes but that was ok because despite my utter hatred of snow there was a fresh three inches falling outside. 

All of the lights in the house were off and not needed to view my little corner of the neighborhood which was rightfully sleeping at near midnight on Sunday going into Monday.  The brightness of the powder illuminated the townhouses across the street, covered the black ice which showed for the past couple of weeks as Mother Nature can't decide if its time to thaw or hit our state with another icy blast.  It was sort of a ground level aurora borealis with a many layered orangish hue swirling around my kid's snow fort down the street that I would be traveling in five hours for work.

Pretty.

A quick few minutes of reflections on a busy month, interrupted by a sleepwalking seven year old grasping the black and orange oversized gorilla he won at Dave and Busters during our guy's day.  Picking up the not-so-little one and carried him and the primate back to the safety of his faded Transformers sheets.  Noticing he's getting bigger and requires two arms to grasp him down the stairs, yet still involuntarily squeezes tight as a side hug before tucking him back in.

You want to know what fuels my schedule?  Those squeezes.  The feeling of being needed without reward.  The feeling of not being viewed as disabled.  I'm just dad to my son and daughter, someone who provides and takes away.  Someone to cuddle with (for now).  Hopefully when the cuddling stops we can still be friends when school drama enters the picture. 

When its late and the glare of the computer screen informs me of two more pages of discussing the pros and cons of a Flat Tax system are due, those squeezes, those looks of adoration pack more caffeine than a six-pack of Red Bull.  They won't always be there, but the memories will.