No moon only sun. It's supposed to be harvest time, frost on the grass, and yet here we are. I can almost hear the grass growing out there. Weeks of rain, and now a break, two days of sun and the green lives reach one last time for the sky. One may hope. The lawn could use something resembling a bonus run at it, get set ahead of the winter and lay out a carpet of growth, a thicket to protect against the bad years yet to come.

The world spins only locally for us, me, and that's good. School year and marching band, homework too much of it and always something else to do at the band hall. Every weekend a game and then a competition. Get a few hours of nothing to do but veg, and then start it all over again. At this point my daughter's caught between enjoying the tension of it, she'd smack me for saying that, and then by this point in the week just ready to throw her hands up and crawl into her bedroom with a book and not look at anyone for a month.

I remember those days well. It's easy to sympathize, even as I'm working to make sure she's sticking to the homework. Her class load, oy, her teachers this year have apparently decided en masse that they are the ones to let the kids know, hey, this is the real thing, time to dig and find out what working for a living means.

One of her teachers in the long ago told her, "Work smart, not hard". Always a wonderful sentiment, right? Especially for a smart kid. Problem being, that can make that same smart kid careen off into a rut. The one where they decide that they never have to work hard.

I was like that, so's our daughter. Poor kid. She's hit the first indication that there are many, many things in this life where working hard is working smart. And oh buddy is this that year for her.

Mine own? Oh yeah I hit that wall. Took a year off to go to junior college and get my head on straight. Wandered around the country doing odd jobs for a while, came back and got a retail job, took a bus load of credits at the junior college that transferred back to the big school nicely, when I was back into the fold.

It sounds easy now. Maybe if I'm lucky my own experience can help my daughter's path be a little smoother. Not a lot, that's never how it works, just a little.

And then when she hits the really rough patches, maybe she'll be ready for them. One hopes.