First off I would like to wish the greatest photographer in Upstate North Dakota a very happy birthday. My lovely mother climbed up another rung on the rickety ladder of life this past Monday. Happy Birthday Mom.

As I’m writing this my daughter is down stairs entertaining three of her friends. About a week ago she approached me about a sleepover. Her timing proved to be impeccable because I had recently taken a large dose of Nyquil to ward off the effects of a lingering cold.

With the fog of medication numbing my senses and sensibility I agreed to allow her to invite four friends for a sleepover. Seeing how the good lord looks over idiots, one of her friends couldn’t make it. That left three.

In the brief time they have been here I have noticed that they all appear to be aspiring auctioneers. They talk, a lot, and at the same time. They also seem to possess extraordinary lung capacity, allowing them to dispose of those silly little pauses in conversation that occur when you are forced to breath.

Saving my son some mental and more than likely physical abuse, I encouraged him to sleep over at a friend’s house. I figured that females have administered about as much damage as they can to my mental well-being, but he’s just a boy. He will have plenty of other opportunities to experience that special anguish that females bless us with.

Speaking of blessings. We had a prayerful trip back from Vermillion the Sunday after Thanksgiving. It was 50 degrees and raining when we left at about 11:30, and by 12:30 it was 30 degrees icy and snowing with a stout prairie wind. Traffic was slowed to about 50mph and dropping on the interstate.

In a 150 mile stretch I counted about 20 cars in the ditch, 6 of which were rollovers. I noticed that the rollovers were all SUV type vehicles, which is what I was driving. More than likely SUV vehicles driven a little to fast due to the four wheel drive fueled confidence of their drivers.

I to probably would have been driving a little too fast if it weren’t for my two children in the backseat. Every time I saw a vehicle in the ditch or rolled over I would glance in the rearview mirror at my passengers and slow down little more.

That made me wonder how many times being a father has kept me from doing something stupid or dangerous or at least made me concentrate a little more while doing it. My kids will never know how many times they have saved me from myself. I have come to rely on their faces popping into my head as an early warning that what I’m about to do might not be such a good idea.

Thanks to the combination of heights, chainsaws, and questionable construction, I thought of them a lot while building my log cabin. Their images also seem to make regular appearances on my bike rides. It’s a wonderful little alarm system.

I think I’ll do a study to see if fathers suffer fewer injuries due to ‘stupid’ or ‘not well planned’ behavior’s than those without children. The study will have to wait for now though, I’ve got a slumber party to chaperone.

Where’s the Nyquil?