Astrology

Do you check the alignment of the planets before you begin your day? Not only do I not check it, I don't even think about it. That might change in the future, especially after I consider our last trip to the State Botanical Gardens.

It was a beautiful day and the kids only had a few days left of Christmas vacation. It was my day off, so we decided to head out and spend the day outside. We took some sandwiches and had a picnic at the park.

As we ate, I saw a tree stump that looked like a good spot for a photo of Randy. I challenged him to climb up the stump and pose for me. He did it happily, but on the way down he cut his hand on the edge of the stump. It wasn't a bad cut, but enough for him to run to mom with his hand in the air. That was the first sign that I should have checked my horoscope.

We were having a great time hiking along the path when I saw another tree stump and thought it was Meredith's turn. Do you see where this is going yet?

She climbed up and started posing for the paparazzi group of Amanda, Cari, and myself. After just a few shots, Cari jumped up and yanked Meredith off the stump. There were fire ants covering her shoes and climbing up her legs. We ripped her shoes off and started scraping ants off of her pants. She didn't suffer any bites thanks to Cari's quick action. The event did scare Meredith a bit and got her crying for a few minutes. No harm done, but it did make me wonder how this day was going to turn out. A few minutes later we learned that Cari's camera had been destroyed. As she jumped to grab the girl off the stump, the camera - attached to her wrist - slammed into the side of the tree stump and jammed the zoom lens. It wouldn't move and the lens appeared to be in the camera at a 45 degree angle. We even performed emergency surgery on the camera, but we couldn't revive it.

After we de-anted our daughter there was some discussion if we should end our relaxing day at the park or continue on our walk. We decided to push on.

Near the end of our walk I saw a tree stump taller than all the others. It called my name. As I walked to it, I heard Cari and Amanda starting to complain. Amanda yelled, "Nobody is climbing another tree stump today!" Maybe the way the planets were aligned didn't agree with stump climbing. "Maybe not," I thought as I climbed to stand on my perch.

As I stood there I begged someone to take my picture. Then I lured Randy to climb up and stand next to me. The girls protested but he climbed up anyway. We even challenged the day by standing on one foot.

We both jumped down without incident and then I begged Cari to stand up there with me. She wasn't going up there but I was persistent. After a few minutes of negotiation, Cari was standing on the stump with me. Amanda took a picture and we jumped down without injury.

Maybe the alignment of the planets doesn't have anything to do with climbing tree stumps after all.