Small but Mighty

Last night Kaylee & Steve had a camp-out sleep-over on the deck, and Kaylee was pleased that the Tooth Fairy found her out there anyway.

Yesterday evening was also the annual world-wide SMA Candlelighting event. August is SMA Awareness month, and in 2004 a Mom named Karen Slavik wanted to do this. FSMA wasn't interested in participating and wouldn't allow anyone to promote it on their site, but we spread the word through our little guestbook and chat at SMA Support and Our SMA Angels, and afterwards I put up photos of all the kids and families around the country with their candles lit in honor of SMA children here and gone. For three years I collected and put up the photos, and then I faded to the background a bit and other organizations took on a more central role in it. I look through the photos taken and comments posted, and I see so many of the kids who lit candles who have passed on since. If you look at the link posted, you can see the candle-lighting we did at Virginia Beach for the 2nd and last SMA Support Gathering I hosted. At the time, Gatherings were unheard of, and now they are common-place, and it's perfectly normal for SMA families to get together in groups, call it a "gathering", and enjoy each others' company. That's a very good thing. There's been a lot of progress in the SMA community over the years. A few things remain though, including this candle-lighting event that went from nationwide to worldwide pretty quickly thanks to the internet. At 8 p.m. in every time zone around the world, families light a candle in honor of SMA children everywhere. As the candles go out in one time zone, they are lit in another, creating a wave of light to go around the world. Small but mighty, just like these kids and those who fight for them.

I am currently reading a book called "Why We Decide". It's actually a pretty interesting analysis on how our brains work, and why, on everything. Addictions, split-second choices that are made on feelings alone, working faster than our mind could possibly process. Intuition that is fact-based but we don't know how or why. A baseball takes .35 seconds to get from the pitcher's hand to the plate. A baseball player's brain takes at least .25 seconds to swing. So he has a fraction of a portion of a second to decide whether or not to swing. How do they decide which ones to pass on and which to swing on in .1 or less of a second? Intuition brought about by cues they may not even know they are processing. How a tiny human brain can outprocess the biggest computers. Smaller but so powerful. Flying was used as the opening example of this-in knowing what to do and how when you don't have time to think it all through. It's an interesting read.

My plan was to go fly the T-6 today, and the winds were just what I could have used some additional time playing with. Unfortunately it was 2 p.m. before my headache went away, and by then it was 92 degrees and I just didn't feel all that well. So I read a book on decision-making instead while Steve worked out in the garage and Kaylee played more on her slip-n-slide. I'll get some time in later this week, weather permitting.

We enjoyed some fresh sweet corn that Richard & Ann cooked, and Kaylee even wanted seconds. I love it when she eats her vegetables...and likes it. ;)