Football

So is it just me, or is there anyone else out there that thinks watching football on TV is boring? It seems that all too frequently holiday hangouts turn into game after game of head-bashing, body-smashing, bone-crunching testosterone fueled, ball-flinging, brain-boring physical combat-TV-daze watching. Where I could find hundreds of preferable alternatives courtesy of the satellite, football is the only thing that seems to be playing on the screen. And it seems that I am outnumbered. At least tonight. Maybe for the new year I should resolve to embrace the game...or maybe not.

BORING









things that are more exciting than football...
getting my teeth drilled by the dentist
memorizing the dictionary
high council talks
history by coach blackham
counting sheep
etc...

Raccoons

Calder is one of the craziest and most adventurous people I know. He can scale mile high cliffs without a drop of sweat going to anxiety. He has sailed alone on the open ocean, miles from shore and other land-born creatures for days at a time. He uses power saws, waving digits and limbs precariously close to rotating blades without flinching. I thought his fearlessness was relentless. Then we moved into our Midway country house complete with country mice and other critters and found the weakness in his manly persona...raccoons.

Before we restored the log cabin, it was home to many furry creatures. The neighbors said they used to hear raccoon fights at night, the ceiling was home to families of black-eyed bandits, and they had chewed several holes in the stairs. The first day Calder walked into the house he wore a hazmat suit and carried a stick. He would throw open closet and bedroom doors like cops on Law and Order expecting a raccoon to jump out and attack him from every new space investigated. It wasn't hard to startle him with a sudden movement his direction, and I took advantage of the opportunity to make him jump. The only sign of raccoons left were wheelbarrow loads full of feces we shoveled out of the house (which had been abandoned of two-legged humans for 40 years) and a couple of carcasses we found in the crawl space. The first one we pulled out hadn't been dead long, and our neighbor Mike helped us pull the smelly bugger out.

Since those initial days, we have had a few more encounters with the ringed rodents. They have loved hiding under our deck and the neighbors have seen them scurry under the deck hatch many times. Before we sealed the crawl space we once heard them scratching under the floor, which I will admit was a bit creepy. They are considered pests in the valley and the non-native species really proliferates in the rural town. Most locals shoot or run-down raccoons on sight. But their numbers never seem to dwindle. One of our neighbors shot almost a dozen of the rodents during the late summer, all from the comfort of his porch.

Last week Calder opened the deck hatch to close the crawl space and seal out the wintery cold air. I was at work, on the phone with him while he was opening up the hatch. Mid-conversation I heard a frightened "Oh my..."and then nothing. Just open air. My heart jumped as I pictured him falling off the roof, or being attacked by masked men and I quickly wondered who I could call to rescue him from whatever calamity had befallen him. "Calder?...Calder?" I queried with no response. Finally, "oh my gosh, there is a raccoon RIGHT there!" I should have known--he was scared speechless by the critter. After he regained composure he was able to explain that the culprit was not just any raccoon, but a DEAD raccoon, lying in the opening of the crawlspace. When he opened the hatch he saw it there in front of him and afraid it was alive, cried out in fear. One of these days a raccoon might kill Calder--by giving him a heart attack.

Even a dead raccoon was not something Calder wanted any part of. He called our neighbor Josh and Dottie the dog over to help handle the problem. Dottie couldn't find any other raccoons under the deck, so hopefully we won't wake some night to scratching under the floorboards in case on is trapped, and then Calder can avoid the underside of the deck until Spring.

Gingerbread 2009

Look familiar?

Growth

Here we are. Another year has passed, and before the calendar reads 2010 I thought I should try my hand at blogging once again. Don't worry, it is not for lack of activity. This year has been full of hills and valleys, and the changes in between. I could have filled pages and pages of exciting details. Its just that this whole blogging thing feels a bit like journal writing--if you don't do it regularly, when you finally do you aren't sure what to write, how to summarize the time you've skipped, to know if you should fill in since the last entry or just let the reader figure it out on his own. And if you skip playing catch-up, then what pithy topic does the errant writer choose to break the silence? I don't know.

Lately I have been growing things. I grew a baby, a garden and a thyroid tumor all during the last year. Stella was by far the cutest thing I grew, the garden was the tastiest, and the tumor the least work--so little work I didn't even notice it until my mom pointed it out one day. Now the garden is gone, but just for the season, to be planted again next spring. The tumor is gone, hopefully for good, and I am left with a fading necklace of a scar and some thyroid pills. But Stella, she is still here. Here and growing. I guess technically I am still helping her grow with all the breast milk, but she has really taken on a life of her own. And we are happy she is here to stay.

Before

After

Later
Before

After (this was timely for Halloween)
Later
Late June in the garden (after)

Year 2

I think I maxed out on photo-taking while we were working on our house. Because it seems that for the last year or so I have hardly used our camera. Which means that if I want to contribute to the blog, it has to be in written format...and who really wants to read that much? 

I am trying to be inspired by the many bloggers out there, but as with music, novels, and movies, I think I am more of a consumer than creator when it comes to blogs. I will try and start carrying my camera more frequently so there will be more photos, and thus more frequent entries. As you can see from the span between posts (more than a year) I have not really been committed to life as a blogger. But I am on a quest to change that--mostly because if I come to my blog more frequently, I will have easy access to link to your blogs and can keep up to date on the latest happenings.

It seems that most of my friends have blogs spurred by children. Blogs create a forum for posting all of those chubby cheeks, bathtub parties, and the like. Since we remain childless, we will have to start entertaining you with pictures of our projects, which are kind of like our children--at least in terms of time and photo ops.

Our Projects: Many of you know about the house project, and the barn, then came landscaping (which is ongoing) and the latest is vegetable oil--barrels and barrels of it. Yes potato chips and french fries--especially those sweet potato fries from Gurus are on the top of my not-so-healthy food list, but don't worry I'm not talking about eating all that grease. I am talking about feeding that grease to our cars, and using it to commute to work every day. It is pretty awesome as fuel prices continue to rise to fill up the fuel tank with used veg oil. Besides the cost of converting our cars, the many hours Calder spends collecting, cleaning, and tinkering, and the numerous pairs of pant and t-shirts that have been vegified, it is a relatively inexpensive way to get around these days. I would post a photo of the barn, house, landscaping, or veggie vehicles, but I  don't have recent pics of ANY of these. So for now all you get is the written update. Sorry to disappoint. Maybe in another year or so you will get the visuals...if I get around to it. 

So here goes year 2 of our blog. I hope to fill it with exciting posts and interesting information, and great pictures of all of our projects and adventures. Just don't be too disappointed if the next entry is Year 3.

like lemmings...

...finally, along with the rest of our generation, and because, like jogging in Provo, popsicles in the summer, or neon in the nineties, it is the thing to do, we have started our very own blog. After several attempts at web pages, and fearful mass emails, I figured that we should take advantage of the technological tools offered by modern society (and Google) and keep a record of our lives that you all can occasionally check up on, but will not otherwise be force-fed. I give you no promises to timeliness or frequency, but do check back occasionally--just for fun, as this might be the best answer to my faltering communication with the world outside my office and our yard. Do stay in touch.