My Story . . .

During successive Sundays at the church I currently attend (Trinity Community Church in KCK) we were challenged to remember our faith journey as we read along with the scriptures detailing Jesus Christ's journey of faith. Obviously, mine is of no comparison, but it is part of who I am.

The story into which I was born:
Two parents, married (always only to each other) who moved to Bellingham, Washington to answer the call of the Lutheran church. My father heard the call in college at Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma (which I later attended for two years). He went to seminary in California where he met my mother who was training to be a social worker. She'd wanted to major in math at the University of California, Berkeley, but was told that women shouldn't (implied: couldn't) focus on math. She's excellent at it, by the way. My father proposed to my mother out of desperation; she'd been angry at him. Good for me, she accepted.

They moved to the little town on the border of Canada where they lived in a falling-down parsonage and in 1969 had their first-born daughter. Me. They wanted more children, but mom miscarried and was told no more children. They adopted my sister and five years later, my brother.

My father, George Melvin Beard, was an openly religious man all during my childhood and even into my early adulthood. His father, Melvin Delmar Beard, was a grocer and a quiet, thoughtful Christian. He chose to lead by example and I've never known a better image of what a Christian should aspire to be. His wife, Georgina, was a housewife as far as I know. Dad does not talk about her.

My mother, Andrea Annette (Anker) Beard, played the organ during most services, directed the choir and/or junior choir and taught Sunday school. Her father, Andrew Anker (Anders Gjertsen) emigrated from Norway where his people were ship-builders and sailors. He happened to get sick near San Fransisco and was put ashore to get medical help. Although he didn't like beer, he worked for Burgermeister Brewing and was able to trade free beer he received at work for goods and services. He was also a boxer for a time until a cauliflower ear convinced him that fighting would not increase his life-span or attractiveness. My grandmother, Mildred Rose (Dyal) Anker was a preschool teacher and one of the finest seamstresses I've ever known. At some point, she was also a cook for a wealthy family and I have many good memories of helping out in her kitchen.

The story of how I was raised:
From my earliest childhood, my parents identities were rooted in the church. During my junior high years, my father's church was right next door to the school, so we sometimes walked to school/work in the morning together. I'd go in after school sometimes too. We went to church every Sunday, but on any given night my dad might be called to a hospital or to a bedside to pray. He conducted weddings, funerals and baptisms (including the marriages of all of his children and the baptism of my own two children). Church was an extension of my family. My identity was "pastor's kid" and I carry that with me to this day. I went to church camp in the summers and to youth gatherings all year round. My sister and my brother often chose to sit in the balcony to distance themselves, but I liked the music, the ceremony and the order.


The story I chose:
I decided to attend Pacific Lutheran University, the same small, private school my father had attended. I loved it there but couldn't afford to stay. A big part of why I loved it was the religious community that supported and uplifted me. I joined the worship leadership team, reading the lesson and lighting candles. My favorite part was baking the unleavened bread for communion. At KU, I found that community again with Lutheran Campus Ministries. My then-boyfriend/now-husband and I enjoyed going to service and to the Sunday night suppers where we took turns providing the meal.

After college, I stopped going to church regularly until we moved back to Temple, Texas. We found a wonderful, welcoming church there and became heavily involved. Robert in the choir and both of us on church council. They threw me a lovely baby shower for my first child.

Back in Kansas City, I went to church with my mom, wherever she went. First Lutheran, later Baptist and then Methodist. She was raised Presbyterian. I still miss the ritual and ceremony that go along with being in the Lutheran church and I think that's where my heart will always be. However, being part of a church family is important to my well-being and setting aside that dedicated time for prayer and reflection is vital.

The story of when my faith stumbled:
I've found it much more difficult to become a genuine part of a church family as an adult. I am younger than most of the regular members, but older than the younger members. Many people my age have fallen away from the church for various reasons, but  I still come to be with my Lord--to "get churched". I need that uplift I get from singing the hymns and hearing the Word. It is pretty lonely here, but that's mostly my own doing. I'm not signing up for things; I'm staying on the outside. I've isolated myself. I miss my husband and kids coming to church: it was always nice to have my little insular family unit. Life is very complicated and I need my church but I need to contribute more of myself.

Tornado and dogs

So, it's 4:30 pm on May 26th in Kansas City, KS. The tornado sirens have been going off since about 3:45 and we came down to the basement immediately after my phone told me to. The sirens started up moments later. Funny how we listen to and trust our phones and how helpful that technology can be.

Our current dog, Kyla, has never been downstairs and we've never had to make her go until today. She tucked her tail and though she didn't run, she cowered away as if I were punishing her. Even her favorite pig-skin twist wouldn't convince her to take those first daunting steps. I had to pull her down the first three steps before she went down the rest on her own. She's finally calmed down enough to stay still beside me which is a relief for both of us.

The sirens stopped about 4:35, but I'm going to wait a little longer down here. We've got most of the creature comforts except the one I always need when we have a tornado drill--a bathroom! One of these days we're definitely going to get one installed.

2016 Reading List

Mothers, Tell Your Daughters (completed 1/3/2016). A book of short stories by Bonnie Jo Campbell. Most stories were about poor women and their relationships with each other or with the men in their lives. A common theme was abuse that went unrecognized. Many of the stories also dealt with caretaking as a shaping influence. I enjoyed the story "Daughters of the Animal Kingdom" which was about a woman in the sandwich generation--taking care of her mother and her own family and having very little time for herself. In my favorite scene, she finds refuge in the chicken coop, among the warm, soft feathers where she is discovered by her husband. I'll definitely have to check out more by this author.


Dirty Chick: Adventures of an Unlikely Farmer (completed 1/19/2016). Any book with a chicken on the cover is one I will at least pick up, but this was really a gem. Young, financially secure urban couple decides to sail away and ends up in New Zealand with a baby who has cognitive delays. They (naturally) decide to become farmers--it makes some sense in the book--and house-sit for a year to try it out. While drinking a lot of home-made wine, the author, Antonia Murphy and her husband fall in love with farming and animal husbandry as well as their neighbors in the small, rural town. Quirky, funny and endearing.

$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America (completed 1/22/2016). A treatise on poverty after the 1990s dissolution of the welfare system, Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer's book explores the root causes of America's extreme poor. They discovered that about 1.5 million households lived on the cash equivalent of $2.00 per person per day. That is about a 70% increase since the 1990s when AFDC (Aid for Families with Dependent Children) was dissolved. The book follows several families struggling in this type of poverty. The striking thing to me was that even though there was a certain amount of pride associated with not applying for food stamps or the limited federal aid available, all of the families had people in them who had worked and wanted to continue working but could not find a job for a salary that would get them off of the $2.00 a day cycle. Very informative, but a slow, data-heavy read.

 Bazaar of Bad Dream (Completed 2/6/2016). I've been saving this one up--doling out stories to myself, but finally had to finish it last night. Several of the stories had been previously published and one, "Ur" was re-worked to modernize it, but there were enough new stories to give a number-one fan like myself something to chew on. I particularly enjoyed the very creepy "Bad Little Kid" and the Dolores Clairborne-like "Drunken Fireworks". King is highly successful in capturing the voice of the average American. This makes reading his stories less of a solitary exercise and more of a conversational one. Keep 'em coming, Mr. King!

 Crimson Shore (Completed 2/28/2016). If you enjoy a good detective murder-mystery and you like quirky characters, Alyoisis Pendergast is the pinnacle of the craft. Created by Douglas Preston and Lee Child, he is a quirky, eccentric, loner of a man who still has enough sympathetic qualities for the averager reader to identify with. This is many books into the series, but each would certainly stand alone. In this one, Pendergast needs a little help from his ward to solve the entirety of the crime perpetrated on a little sea-side community. As always, his special skills come into play and it's a pleasure to "watch" him work as he leads the reader inextricably from one clue to the next. In this novel, he and his ward are on their own, (on "vacation") so the reader gets to know each of them a little better. As always, I'm sad when I finish reading because I can hardly wait to see what Pendergast will do next!

 Slaughterhouse Five (Completed 3/4/2016). I read this with my son who was studying it for his sophomore English class. I'm sure I've read this book before, but it's been so long I've forgotton most of it. So it goes. (To use the most frequent phrase in the book.) Ostensibly the story of Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut's voice creeps in throughout "I was there . . ." as the story shifts through time and space. It culminates in the bombing of Dresden during WWII as he takes readers to the shelter/prison of a slaughterhouse that may or may not have saved his life. Although I find the whole alien side-trip distracting, Vonnegut is certainly a trip to read. And I mean that in the most psychedelic way possible. Not my favorite author, but an important voice.

 Eat Pray Love (Completed 3/15/2016) This book is divided into three parts as Gilbert visits Italy, India and Indonesia. The Italy part was a joy to read (partly because her descriptions of the food and the scenery were so full of joy) and I whizzed through that. As she went through her time in the Ashram, the story became slower, more self-reflective and delved deeper into unravelling what caused her to want to make the trip and change her life. Each section (The book is further divided into 109 min-sections after the prayer beads used in Inda called japa mala.) became more thoughtful and complex and I often wanted to stop and reflect or re-read. So, ths book took me over a month to read. It was worth it. Gilbert takes you with her, unhesitatingly, on her journey of self-discovery, and what a journey it is!

Dry (Completed 3/15/2016). Poor Augusten Burroughs! This man dealt with a lifetime's worth of crap by the time he was a teenager, so it's no wonder that he ended up with a substance abuse problem. The miracle of it is that it was alcohol and that he managed to kick the habit before it killed him. Oh, and that he was able to write about it with such unflinching honesty and humor. I wanted to go clean his apartment, to hold his head as he came to in the morning, to help him somehow. All I could do was to read, laugh, wince, and groan. If you've ever known an alcoholic or drug user and wondered what was going through their head that made them act so crazy--THIS!

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (Completed 3/20/2016). So clearly, I'm a fan of memoirs and when I saw this one in the Kansas City Star's list of recommendations, I picked it up. I've never had a chance to see the perspective of a white South African person and I thought it would be interesting. Yes and no. The writing was a bit stilted, but the life this woman lived, with her deeply racist parents in a deeply racist enclave of white expats was certainly revealing. I'm noticing that a lot of what I've been reading has been about the effects of poor parenting on the now-adult children and I need to keep in mind that although memoirs represent a "truth", it is one person's point of view and can't possibly encompass all sides of an issue. I don't think I'd read anything else from this author, but this was certainly an educational read.

 Mother, Can you NOT? (Completed 4/28/2016) This is composed mostly from the Instagram account of Kate Siegel and her mother, Kim Friedman. As I am not an Instagram user or follower, I didn't know if I'd enjoy this. Glad to say it was laugh-out-loud funny! What's really hard to accept is that this mother-daughter couple is so very into each other's lives and are not resentful of each other. It gives one a new perspective on what parents should and should not know about their children's lives. Myself, I wouldn't feel comfortable telling my mother an eighth of what Kate does, but their relationship seems to work. Plus, it makes entertaining reading.

 The Butterfly Garden (Completed 5/10/2016). Read on my Kindle, this was a first of month deal for Prime members, so I wasn't expecting too much. So glad to be wrong! This was a complex story told by the victim of a mass-murdering serial kidnapper and rapist who "kept it in the family".  Identity is clearly of utmost importance to the victim, but she doesn't reveal very much at a time, so you are compelled to stay with her story. Well-written and detailed (but not too much so), this author reminds me of Hitchcock in the way she artfully crafts each scene to give the reader just enough detail to peak their interest, not so much that it will give anything away. I hope she writes more!




Out of the Dust (Completed 5/18/2016). This is on the recomended list for 8th grade English, which I'll be teaching in August, so I thought I'd better get reading! What an unexpected gift this book was! After reading Of Mice and Men every year for Freshman English and having read other accounts of the Dust Bowl, I was prepared for a dark and gloomy go. What I got however, was Karen Hesse's luxurious poetry using the limited perspective of Billy Jo, a teenager who experiences the devastation first hand. For instance, you get this gem, an entire chapter:

Breaking Drought. 

After seventy days
of wind and sun,
of wind and clouts,
of wind and sand,
after seventy days,
of wind and dust,
a little
rain
came.

 Lust & Wonder (Completed 5/20/2016). I've read several of Burroughs previous memoirs, so was excited to pick up this one. Sadly, I was a bit disappointed as it mostly covered his recent adulthood and dealt with his (considerable) internal craziness. I guess disappointed is too strong a word. I was expecting the extravagant loopiness of his former memoirs and instead he writes about things that all adults struggle with (work, illness, resisting temptation, communicating with loved ones, ect.) except that he has some additional complications. I'll pick up some of his fiction next time.






The Graveyard Book (Completed 5/26/2016) I love Neil Gaiman and have also read his American

Gods, the Ocean at the End of the Lane, Smoke and Mirrors, Neverwhere. I tried Anansi Boys but couldn't get into it. This one was part of my summer reading of middle school texts and I enjoyed it very much. It follows a human boy, Bod, who must shelter at a local graveyard for several years. Gaiman introduces some supernatural elements, but much of the book is a fairly typical coming-of-age story. I don't mean that in a pedestrian way, as I don't know anyone who can't identify with a coming-of-age story. This is magical realism at its best. When the protagonist learns how to "fade", it seems perfectly reasonable that he should be able to do so. My copy also had some lovely, spooky illustrations that helped set the tone for the story. Highly recommended!

Locally Laid (completed 6/5/2016) Non-fiction about a writer and her husband who have a fairly normal life with a little five-hen backyard flock until the hubby decides to become a mid-agriculture chicken farmer for pasture-raised, free-range chickens. His first shipment numbers in the thousands, but each and every chicken gets to go outside for most of the day, hunt and peck and act like a chicken and not a machine. I liked the idea of the book but got a little bogged down in the writer's histrionic account of how her life is falling apart while her husband is working 17-hour days. Get a grip girl! Very informative about mid-ag production, marketing and selling. Enough to convince me that a back-yard flock of five would be just about right.

American Housewife Stories (completed 6/9/2016) Funny little vignettes about how the American

housewife lives, loves and learns. I particularly enjoyed the twisted back-and-forth of "The Wainscotting War" and the bittersweet crazy of "The Fitter". Helen Ellis is a subversive, entertaining writer and she's definitely going on my list of people to read more often.

The Manning Sisters (completed 6/11/2016). Two romance novels in one book, the first dealing with Taylor Manning, the headstrong school-teacher and her on-again-off-again romance with ranch owner Russ. Pretty typical stuff, but tropes exist for a reason, right? I enjoyed the push-me, pull-you enough to read the whole then, then got a little turned off by the second novel, about Taylor's younger sister, Christy who was very wishy-washy and so much of a "Pleaser" that she ignored her own life. Grow a pair! Would probably take another Debbie Macomber novel on vacation or to jury duty. A fast, light read that doesn't require deep mental manipulations. Just suspension of disbelief.



Out of My Mind (completed 6/17/2016). A Sharon Draper novel (trying to catch up on my middle school

reading before I start teaching in August) about a young lady with cerebral palsy. One of my 9th graders read it last year and actually got involved in it, so I wanted to give it a try. Interesting style and an engaging read. Quite a few sad and frustrating bits, but because Draper puts you in the head of a person who cannot speak or move well, you really get the idea of what it might be like to have that experience. It came out in 2012 and references Stephen Hawking's situation so it's a very modern take. Not sure how, or even if, an author would have thought about getting into the brain of someone with that particular disease before the computer technology existed to help them speak. This book gives a voice to a formerly voiceless segment of the population.

Walk Two Moons (completed 6/22/2016). I read this because it was on the middle school reading list, but I'm so glad I picked it up. The cover is not at all compelling, but the story (really stories) inside absolutely are. The narrator is a 13-year-old girl named Sal (short for Salamanca) who has suffered the loss of her mother and as she goes to Idaho with her grandparents to seek her out, reveals another story of her friend Phoebe. Expertly told, with lovely imagery and word play as well as a sense of fun. Laughter and sorrow are intertwined here so well that it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. A lovely read.

 End of Watch (completed 6/25/2016). I received this around the 15th and held onto it as long as I could because I knew I would rip through it. The third in his
"Finders Keepers" trilogy, this one is arguably the best, but only because I had such an investment in the characters created in the first novel, Mr. Mercedes. This book went everywhere I went because I didn't want to put it down any longer than I had to. Some of King's best work to date!

 The Dead Won't Die (completed 6/28/2016). This is the second in "The Deadlands" series. I read the first one several years ago and found this one in the library. Most of the book follows the main character, Jacob, former Deputy of Arabella. Much of this book refers to the previous Plague of the Undead, so it was helpful to have read that one. In this one, Jacob and his friends are trying to fight their way out of an advanced society and back to their post-apocolyptic world of Arabella (WHY???). Jacob is clearly a fighting machine and I really felt sorry for him by the end of the book because he never once went to sleep (unless you count him losing consciousness several times) or ate or drank anything during the course of the last third of the novel. I stuck with it, but probably won't read any more of this series though I really like McKinney's style. This was just too exhausting.


My Seneca Village (completed 6/25/2016). A book of poetry and vignettes that imagine the inhabitants of  Seneca Village, NY in the 1800s as it was before Central Park was constructed. Inhabited by poor immigrants, freed slaves and emancipated servants, Seneca Village was a community pulling a living from the swampy ground before they were compelled to move by the city for the park project. Each poem portrays a moment of a former inhabitant's life. Each poem is coupled with a brief vignette that helps orient the reader. By the end of the brief volume (83 pages), I had begun to feel like the inhabitants of Seneca were still with us. Lovely work.

 The Fireman (completed 7/2/2016). Written by Stephen King's son, this is the first of his books that I've read that is so strongly influenced by his father. I'd previously read Horns and Heart Shaped Box, both of which I really enjoyed for their originality and strong voice. I tried NOS4A2, but couldn't get into it. Reading this one was a completely different experience, like seeing a family member's child after a long absence and suddenly seeing how much the two resembled each other. The story was compelling as well. It is an original take on an "end of the world" scenario that makes the reader consider man's relationship with the world around and in him. At 750 pages, I though this would take me a while, but once I picked it up it was hard to put down. Anxiously awaiting his next novel!

Farewell to Manzanar (completed 7/7/2016). More of my middle school reading. I'd been hearing about this book for several years, but didn't know it dealt with Japanese internment camps during WWII. Tangentially, one of my friends in high school had a father/grandfather who was interned in a camp in Idaho where I lived at the time. She revealed this during a study of WWII in our history class and I've not often heard these camps mentioned since. This is an autobiography and the author was seven at the time of her family's internment, but it would certainly be a good companion piece to studying that period of time in history as our crimes against humanity have mostly been omitted or marginalized from American school books. The writing is a little choppy and there is a good deal about Japanese culture that is hinted at but would benefit from further study as it is a complex culture not understood well by most Americans (myself included).

 Soldier's Heart ( completed 7/15/2016). More middle school reading, but since I love Gary Paulsen's writing, this wasn't much of a sacrifice. This book follows a single soldier, Charley Goddard, through his enlistment, training and ultimately fighting in the Civil War. This is the second book I've read featuring soldiers from Minnesota which leaves me wondering if they just kept better records or were more interesting people or what, exactly? Goddard was a real person, but Paulsen fictionalized his life to follow his real adventures. A slim 104 pages with large type and margins, this was a one-day read but not necessarily an easy one. Some very difficult topics and an ambiguous ending, but still good reading.

Wonder (completed 7/25/2016). Why, oh why did I wait so long to read this book? It was difficult to put it down to read or sleep because the story was so heart-wrenchingly good and the writing to compelling and present. Told through the lens of most of the main characters, but most notably Auggie Pullman, the story follows a young man with a particular physical deformity (nope, he's not a cyclops, as I thought from the cover) and his reaction to starting main-stream school in the fifth grade after being home-schooled. Palacio truly brings these characters to life and you find yourself rooting for their success. Don't wait to pick this up!

Winning at Life

A recent conversation with my dad helped me to start to distill my life philosophy. He'd been talking about a training program for adult men who'd been recently released from prison. Their challenges were many--finding a steady job, transportation, housing and reintegrating into a non-institutional society. What the trainer boiled it down to was three criteria for success. I loved this because the three criteria apply not only to an employment situation but to life in general.

1. SHOW UP. I see non-examples of this every day in the classroom. Students who "don't feel like" coming to school, don't come to school because it's raining/snowing/too hot, etc. I see students before and after my class but not in my class. I see students whose bodies are present, but minds notably absent. Sometimes there is a legitimate reason for not being present in your life, but most often we get distracted by technology, noise, color or what have you. Outside of the classroom, I encountered another non-example of the "show up" principle at a recent interview. It was conducted by the principal of the school and the vice-principal. Both had their laptops open and facing them (de-riguer for today's technologically tied-in executives), but the vice principal also had her cell phone on the desk and a students' tablet computer, both of which she checked several times during the interview. In other words, her body was present, but her mind didn't show up!

2. EVERY DAY. If people manage to succeed at the first principle, they're often stymied by the second. To be fully present, you need to be fully present all the time. Sure, if your workplace participates in the four-day workweek, you won't be there on Friday and more power to you! Every day gets tedious and downright hard. Every day takes a lot of grit (now there's a buzzword!) and perseverance to pull off. However, the difference between every day and just some of the days is the difference between a Steve Jobs and a Steven Jankowitz. Don't know who he is? Right, neither do his co-workers or his boss because he's not there every day.

3. ON TIME. This is one I don't have trouble with. In fact, if anything, I'm one of those annoying people who always arrive 10-15 minutes early to things. (I'm thinking--what if I get lost? What if something happens? I don't want to arrive looking rushed.)  My take-away here is, what's the point of going if you're going to miss the beginning? Why not just have someone tell you what happened? That's what they'll have to do anyway when you arrive, huffing and panting after the whole thing's started. I say, be early, bring a book, take some time to relax and prepare. On time feels good.

So, I'm planning to encourage my students to show up for life, every day and on time. After all, their lives are just starting and they shouldn't want to miss a single minute!

The Finish Line

The end of school always looks the same. Students are visiting classrooms they may never have been to before to see what , oh what they can do to try and pull out a passing grade. Teachers are pulling out their old favorite assignments and showing "educational" movies.  Administrators start to amp up the punishments because they are tired of seeing the same kids over and over. Janitors move a little slower, secretaries start to get the giggles.

In my classes, I start to think about how early I can take down the bulletin boards, because I like to let students do that. Why do students get excited about using a staple puller? Beats me, but it sure saves me time and effort. This year, we'll be boxing up six bookshelves worth of books in the room I share with another teacher. Luckily, they don't have to move far. You can't start too early de-decorating the room because it makes the last week seem really unwelcoming. So you find other ways to let the students know you love them.

And I do. Love them, I mean. Even though I usually say that I don't want to see another teenager for at least two months (except my own, of course!), we teachers get tired because we care so much. We want these kids, some of whom have been in more homes this year than in classes in a day, to have somewhere stable. We want these kids, who know more about violence and foul language than about poetry and biology, to have open minds. We want these kids to succeed in a world that doesn't always want them. At the end of the year, you find out how many of the kids want the same things.

Those are the kids who come in to volunteer in your classroom because they've got straight "A"s, or the kids you see at the end of each day, madly making up papers, assignments and tests. It's the kids you don't see that worry me. The kids who are content to pass with a D, who barely squeak by, who aren't involved in school activities, who don't participate in class. I've had dreams about these kids. I've lost sleep altogether about these kids.

Always, by August, I'm ready to roll again. I'm ready to take on the impossible task of educating other people's children. I'm filled with ideas, plans, strategies! But right now, I'm just tired and ready for the last bell that sounds like: SCHOOL's OUT!

Gardening Catalogs

     I really enjoy gardening catalogs. Every year, about this time, they start arriving in my mailbox--riots of color and hope when everything around is dead and brown. And even though my gardening policy is "if it can't survive without fussing, it can't live here" I still nourish the hope of lazy banks of flowers and foliage wending their way around my property.
     When they come, I like to spend some quality time with them. The catalogs, I mean. With my pen out, I'll circle the first ones that strike my eye. Then, I'll go back and look at bloom times, spread and height and color compatibility. I'll often cut out the descriptions and pictures, arranging them side-by side to see how they'd look. I'll start filling out the form, erasing and moving things around until I've got the ideal list. Then I'll put the form in the envelop and put it up with the bills.
      That's when my system goes off the rails. Once dreaming joins reality, I take the envelope down, tear it up and throw it away. Not a complaint, but a fact. We're paying off a bathroom that hadn't been useable for over a year because the shower leaked down into the basement and had leaking onto the floor damaging it, the subfloor underneath and the floor of the other bathroom. It was expensive to fix and we'll be paying it off until Christmas. Then there will be another project.
       Still, the sight of new blooms and heirloom tomatoes on the printed page makes me happy. It's always nice to dream!