Via Jill: This Minute. I'm not a parent, but this resonated with me nonetheless.

As did these words in Merlene Davis's column about black dads:

[David] Cozart said Billy Ray Cyrus warned his daughter Miley that attacks would come in her life, saying, "The turkey with the longest neck will get shot at."

"That is what our black men have been through," Cozart said. "That is what has occurred."

But a man is supposed to rise to the challenge. If there are nails in the street and you drive over them and get a flat tire, that's a problem, he said.

"But you just get out, change the tire and go on," Cozart said. "You don't stop driving. It is like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane: You have to do it."

[I'm not saying I've faced anything near the challenges that any of these people have. But sometimes I do feel like that turkey, and sometimes I have to scold myself into changing the damn tire already.]

[And all that said, I'm having a pretty good morning -- some new, unexpected monkey wrenches to juggle, but when I've had enough sleep, stuff like that showing up doesn't faze me near so much. *balances ball on tip of nose and unicycles on*]