All I'm Saying there's a joke in here somewhere

Twenty-three and a half hours from now, my plane will be probably taxi-ing along the runway, about to take off to Seattle and then connect to Fairbanks. Thirty minutes from now, my in-laws will be landing at the Boise airport.

I'm nervous (about the former--not the latter). I pretty much get this way every time I travel, but obviously more so now that I'll be missing my beautiful little girl so much while I am gone. I kept waking up in the night and snuggling her closer to me. I'd think about how nice it was to put my hand on her little tummy and feel it rising and falling as she slept, and then as she'd dig her toes into my leg (as she likes to do--she's like a little cat that way), I'd think, "Yeah, it's kind of annoying now, but I'll be missing it quite a bit here soon."

I know I'm going to have a great time and it will be a total adventure and I'll be glad I went. But...still...I'll sure miss the little tot.

I'm leaving on a big work trip this Sunday and will be gone for 8 whole days. Anyone want to guess where I'm going? You have no clue, do you? (Unless I've already told you elsewhere.)

I'm going to Alaska. North to Alaska, go north, the rush is on. (Who sang it, Internet? Who starred in the movie?)

I'm leaving for Fairbanks on Sunday (which is where I'll be spending the bulk of my time) and will have a day trip to Galena, and then will be in Anchorage for a day before coming home the following Monday. Having never been to Alaska, the whole thing will be a big adventure for me, particularly Galena, from the sounds of it. My coworkers tell me it is more of a village than you generally get to see on a tourist trip, and it should be pretty interesting. Wikipedia tells me that Galena has a population of 675 and has no road access whatsoever--if you want to get there, you either fly or go on the river. And if you go on the river, it's easiest if the river is frozen and you go by snowmobile. Cool. I also might get to see native fish wheels, used for catching salmon while I am in Galena. Cool.

Can you tell I'm just a little excited? On the other hand, I'm leaving my Little Miss Freya for eight days, and that's going to be a tough go of it. Hopefully tougher on me than on her, right? Matt will take great care of her as usual, and her grandparents from Wisconsin are coming out to spend a week. She won't lack for adoration and attention, that's for sure.

Anyone want a postcard?

Well, I'm now back online with our sweet new HP Pavilion laptop. We went to one of the electronics box stores in town and picked it up on a Memorial Day sale. It was a good price and I really like the computer, but holy crapinetly, don't plan on getting out of one of those stores with just paying the price of the new computer.

We got the one we wanted, then Ectomorph Sales Boy said, "So do you run Microsoft Office at home?" I said, "Oh, yeah. But doesn't that annual update/membership transfer over with our old computer?" He explained that since we'd bought our old computer prior to 2003, it was different software. (Maybe that was bullshit--I don't know how high a resolution I need to set my Bullshit Filter to with those guys.) So we decided that we'd better get Office 2007. And then there was the anti-virus software, which evidently doesn't transfer over either. Sigh...

I had him run the prices on whether they installed it vs. if I did it at home, and it was $63 more to have them do it. So I figured it'd take me four hours or better to get it all figured out and done, and it was worth my time to have them do it. Anyway, we finally got out of there and have the new machine up and running.

So what does one do with one's old PC, especially when one isn't real bright about removing personal data? How do I recycle it without dealing with identity theft issues?

Just in case you don't hear from me for a few days, it's because of our lousy hard drive. A replacement is in the works, but we could still have a short period of inability to get online. (A miracle that it is working now, and I'm not convinced this will even post.)

Didn't want anyone to worry. You all have a good holiday weekend!

Ahhh, it turned out to be a pretty good day. After a fabulous lunch with girlfriends (if you live in or near Boise and haven't gone to Cucina di Paolo on Vista, you're really missing out), I decided to swing by the beauty college and see if I could get in for a manicure and pedicure.

I realize the beauty college isn't the height of luxury, or even necessarily the most sanitary place to get treatments done, but it comes down to two things for me. One, I am a cheap-ass, and two, you can't get that kind of people-watching anyplace else.

One of the girls at the front desk had an entire pie section of hair dyed primary red (against the black background) and then had hot pink painted on eyeshadow. You know, like the pigment kind. It was all kindsa ugly. It looked like primary colors had been high on the recent curriculum, as many of the students were sporting blue and red streaks. It works for some people; on others, not so much.

The girls who did my nails were entertaining. They got to telling me about some of the dilemmas they've run into, especially when people lie about whether or not they have "at home" or "box" color on their hair. They said one lady went in for a perm and lied about her previous treatments, and one of the whole curlers--hair and all--fell right off her head toward the end of the process. One of the students had box color on her hair, then colored it at the school two more times...and her hair fell out in giant clumps. So now she's got a shaved head and generally wears a wig. In fact, while I was there one of the other students stole the wig and was wearing it around.

I can hear you wondering why I allowed these people to touch me. Because it's entertaining, dammit! And let's not forget the cheap part.

Stupid freaking computer...we've been struggling with our hard drive for 6 or 8 months now. It just spontaneously crashes and goes into reboot mode, but sometimes it will spend a half-hour booting and rebooting and rebooting. It's enough to make you crazy. I was waiting for 3 different items on e-Bay last night, and it crashed with four minutes to go on the first auction--and then spent the next half hour going through its regurgitation cycle before I gave up and turned it off. We should probably just buckle down and buy a new tower or something, but man, I hate spending the money.

In other news, I took today off work to have a "me" day. And how have I started my magical day all to myself? By shampooing the carpets. I am a party-freaking-animal, aren't I? Later this morning I have "rehab", and then a nice lunch with girlfriends, and I'm getting my hair cut and colored this afternoon. So it isn't all drudgery.

You guys have a really nice day, okay?

Ahh, it finally rained here! It seems like this has been an extremely dry spring in this part of Idaho. It was a winter full of snow, and it was a long, cold spring. For the longest time, it was all we could do to get above 60 degrees here in the Boise valley, and it was far colder in the mountains. The snow has been so slow to melt.

This weekend, we had temperatures around 90 degrees, and the rivers started to run very high because of all the snowmelt in the mountains.

We lacked rain for the longest time, though. A few weeks back, Matt had been out working in the grasslands south of town, and he said that with every step you took, the dust billowed up around you. That's about a month and a half early for that kind of dryness. (Dryness must be a word, as it didn't trigger the spell-check...but it sure doesn't look right.)

And today, today it rained. The air smells cleansed and delicious. My little plants out in the garden look happy. At least, I think they look happy. I'm relaxing and enjoying this.

Tomorrow, however, the winds are supposed to kick up again. And I had been planning on wearing a gauzy skirt. Scratch that!

Leilani asked me to put up a post describing my physical therapy exercises for the benefit of all who may want to try them at home, rather than attending intimate rehab on their own. I'm going to preface this by pointing out that I am SO NOT a physical therapist and if you undertake these exercises and terminally sprain your cooter, that's your problem for just following along with some random internet person.

Descriptions in the extended post. Again, if you are a male relative or coworker of mine, do us all a favor and just pass this right on by. Pretend it is a post about men who love men, and we'll just let you go right ahead. (That should shake them off.) (Also, can you tell I am just the tiniest bit concerned about this?)

Continue reading "You Better Work"

Okay guys, what's up? My reproductive organ posts are always generating tons of comments, so now I want to know why there aren't any comments at all for the last several days. Did I scare you off?

It looks like MovableType is working okay...my StatCounter shows there've been a number of visits to the page over the last several days. I think you're out there.

Are you just speechless, or what?

UPDATE: Thanks to alert reader, Donna who pointed out the site error when comments are clicked on. (I think Loni commented on it a while back, but I chalked it up to an earlier, corrected error.) I hope to have it all straightened out soon!

Because of my previously-mentioned fear of airline disasters, it very much struck my attention when some coworkers were talking about a retired United Airlines pilot who came to speak at my workplace yesterday. I'm glad I didn't see the presentation, but it sounds fascinating. And terrifying.

Wikipedia has an article about it, in case you are odd like me and can't look away from this kind of stuff. In a nutshell, a part fractured off the DC-10 with 300 people on board, and sheared through the entire hydraulics system, leaving the crew effectively unable to steer it. Steering is important. Fortunately, a DC-10 instructor was flying as a passenger, and came to the cockpit to help. Long story short, they landed this enormous aircraft on the far-too-short 6000 foot runway at Sioux City, Iowa. The fuselage burst into pieces, some of it caught fire, and many people died. But over 180 lived, an amazing feat, when you think that they kept it in-flight for 45 minutes while emergency resources mobilized in Sioux City. They switched power back and forth between the wing engines, and that gave them a crude steering ability.

I'm telling you; this stuff freaks me out. But still...it's amazing, isn't it?

Seriously. Don't read what is in the extended entry if you are at all squeamish about the realities of the female reproductive system. It's another of my Full Disclosure posts, and I am not kidding: if you are a coworker of mine, a male relative, or someone who gets a little wobbly when the word "menstruation" is used (i.e., if you were born with testicles), do not read the extended entry.

I swear to God, if you do you will probably pass out.

Continue reading "Do Not Read This Post"

Cute, isn't she? But do you see that flicker there in her eye? The one that says, "Don't mess with me, home skillet"? She's deadly, I tell you. She's a man eater.

I'm referring to the Toddler Whine. She is able to tone some of her utterances at a pitch that strikes my ear like a dull chisel--it's almost physically painful. I'm trying to ask her to not whine at me or yell at me, but I don't know that she gets what exactly I mean. I don't want to turn it around on her and use the same tone, but I'm not sure how else to convey that I really need her to not communicate in that pitch.

I swear, dolphins are beaching themselves somewhere when she does it.

Also? I was on the news today, being a spokesperson for Freecycle.

I totally incriminated myself to the neighbors, admitting I rifle through their trash and give it away to other people. Oh well. But as an acquaintance pointed out, "You know you're totally going to have people leaving shit in your yard saying, 'Casey, Freecycle this for me, will you?' and you'll have someone's cat-piss couch to get rid of."

Super duper.

So did you guys hear the story of the girl who was kicked out of her prom because her dress was too revealing? You didn't? Oh good...here it is.

Now look at that dress. Do you think its crime is that it is too revealing, or do you think perhaps it is just Dog Ass Ugly? It looks like she made it out of a curtain, a la Scarlett O'Hara. But it was a very, very small curtain.

Had I been the one making the decisions, I'd have let her in, and I'd have let her grow up to regret that she went to her prom wearing such a spectacular get-up. (And I don't mean "spectacular" in a good way, either.) Instead, she now gets to spend her life feeling righteously indignant about how she got handcuffed and hauled out for looking ludicrous.

Your thoughts?

I had a very nice Mother's Day today--I hope you did as well, regardless of whether you're a mother or not. (Because pretty much everyone deserves a nice day now and then.)

In lieu of a detailed post, I offer you this video of Freya and I recapping the day's events. Please take note of her dirty little face: that's pizza sauce, chocolate frosting, and a snail trail of boogers you're seeing there.

I'm enchanted by the idea of writing a Six Word Memoir similar to those featured in the book Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six Word Memoirs by Famous Writers and Obscure. There is a legend, evidently, that Ernest Hemingway was challenged to do this (back when, obviously), and his read, "Baby Shoes for Sale: Never Worn."

Other examples include:
- I still make coffee for two.
- Most successful accomplishments based on spite.

So now I'm casting about trying to figure out what mine would be. I've got a few ideas, but haven't settled on just the thing.

Sunny exterior; sometimes shadows leak out.
Existed, gave birth, learned to live.
I lack a self-edit function.

It's tough to capture everything in so short a space. So tell me what yours would be--it doesn't have to be your absolute best shot at it. I think it is something you could hack away at the rest of your life and maybe get one really good, "AHA!" out of it at some point. But share your rough drafts here.

Dear Baby Girl:

You continue to get more kid-like every day. You're so much less a baby than you were just months ago. We have conversations now. We talk about what we will see at the farm that we go to every Saturday, we talk about your clothes, we talk about the silly things the dog does. I am pretty sure it is rare-ish to be having conversations with someone who is only two and a quarter years old, but you're a rare-ish kind of a kid.

You are positively addicted to wearing dresses and skirts. Your dad is usually the one to get you dressed on mornings you go to school, and he said this morning that he doesn't even need to open your dresser anymore--he just opens the closet door and gets down whatever dress you point out to him.

You continue to love singing. You sing songs you learn at school like Skinnymarinkadink, and Where is Thumbkin?, but you also sing songs your mother teaches you...like Morning Train. In fact, you sat in my lap in the front yard last night and made me sing about 20 choruses of that song. I am sure the neighbors were delighted. (Sheena Easton hits some notes that no human ought to be able to. I don't even get close.)

You're not potty trained yet, and we're just kind of sitting back and letting you lead us on that one. I usually have you sit on your training potty right before your bath and we sing a song together, in the hopes that the spirit will move you during a rousing rendition of Bill Grogan's Goat. No luck yet, but we keep trying.

You're also addicted to juice boxes lately. The first thing you want in the morning is a juice box, we send one with you to school, and that's what you want when you get home. Anything that is single-serving-sized seems to be right up your alley, whether it is string cheese, yogurt, juice, goldfish crackers...whatever. The full size versions don't have any affect on you at all. You've also really slowed down in your eating, so you must be out of the growth spurt you had been in.

Anyway, you truly amaze me. You're funny, you're incredibly smart, and you are the sunshine of my life (that's another song I should teach you). I love you with all my soul.

Mama

Here's Freya's latest YouTube favorite:

Do you suppose it is coincidence that her favorite song is being backed up by none other than...THE SOLID GOLD DANCERS?!? I mean, when I was seven years old, I was totally going to be A SOLID GOLD DANCER, and now my toddler loves this particular video.

Hello, this is Kismet calling! Can I speak to Freya please?

She's totally going to be A SOLID GOLD DANCER someday. (I can't even type the name without using all caps. That's just how totally cool it is to be A SOLID GOLD DANCER. I might have to go do some Google searching for that phrase and see if any former members have blogged about their experiences. How cool would that be?)

I think my back wants to go out. Nay, I know my back wants to go out. What does that mean? It means I have this muscle just to the inside of my left hip bone that is spasming, preparatory to paralyzing me entirely if it decides to slip out of place. Or something like that.

This hasn't happened to me in many, many years. My dad has chronic back issues, and the first time my back went out, I was only 19 years old. I know it has happened once or twice since then, but I can't recall the circumstances.

I'm a little worried, because Matt is going out tonight to serve a citation and help send a guy to jail, and Freya and I will be alone during bath time. I really have no idea how I am going to get her out of the tub. I can just see me crawling to the telephone and having the neighbor come over to get my daughter out of the cooled-off water because I cannot lift her up. This could totally suck.

Let's hope it doesn't happen and I wake up and everything is fine tomorrow.

(I'm tickled to post this in the "Random Crap" category, by the way.) Also, this is not a critique of how anyone reading actually uses an outhouse--seriously, you pretty much have to work in The Industry to know this stuff.

Ulalani, who just delurked (yay!) wrote a post about a hike she recently took, and she was...well...disappointed in the outhouse at the trailhead. You see, it had been billed as a high-tech unit, and due to the odor (and maybe some other stuff) she felt it was misrepresented.

I may have mentioned before, I know a thing or two about outhouses. I spent four years of my career managing recreation sites for the Forest Service, and cleaned between six and ten outhouses a week during that time. Yeah, come rain, snow, freezing rain and snow, sleet, zillion degree temperatures, dust storms, you name it, I cleaned the Vertical Government Shitbox. It was interesting.

Now, I look at the outhouse Ulalani pictures and I think, "That's a pretty nice unit, there. Looks like a two-room Sweet Smelling Toilet (SST) with a nice concrete paneling made to look like wood, but a whole lot more fireproof. Probably made by RomTec out of Oregon. Yeah, that's a pretty nice shitter." But it was stinky. Well you know, it didn't have to be stinky. You can put a whole lot of dookie in one of those (I believe somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 gallons) and it won't stink. Unless! Unless! The very specific shitbox technology is defeated...by the user. Yes, it is the user of the outhouse who makes it a stinker, and not with what they do inside the hole.

You see, the outhouses these days are designed to vent the stink out through the big black pipe on the outside. Did you know it is black for a reason? Why yes, yes it is. It is black because it will heat up, the heat then draws the air from inside the concrete poo vault up and out, high enough off the ground that it shouldn't waft down to the smeller. (Of course, sometimes prevailing weather conditions like wind and inversions can defeat you.) Also, the unit should be oriented so that the black pipe faces south and/or east, so that it receives as much radiant heat throughout the day.

Next, (and this is the very most critical part) the air must be kept from wafting up into the room through the toilet riser. That means the lid must always be closed when the throne is not being used for its primary purpose. And the door must also be closed. Not only does this keep the stink down, it keeps the flies from getting in the room, and from getting in the poo. And boy howdy, you don't want flies in the poo. Not only do they fly up and tickle your butt when you're seated...but they draw in spiders. Yes, nothing like opening the lid of the toity and seeing big cobwebs strung around. Clenches me right up.

So, to recap:
1) Toilet lid closed
2) Door closed

Finally, based on my professional experience, just walk up the trail a tick and potty in the woods. Don't dookie--that's not savory for anyone, but piddles are totally okay. Frankly, I'd walk a long way into the woods to piddle, rather than hoisting my lady bits over some open hole. Outhouses...brrr. But if you gotta, you gotta.

There's your lesson. Don't say I never taught you anything. And have I mentioned how grateful I am to not have to clean outhouses nowadays?

I don't know why I am, but I am tired. My activity today consisted of cooking French toast for breakfast (freedom toast in some parts of the world, I guess), showering, and then hanging out with my dad, who came over for his weekly visit with Freya. We had a concrete contractor come over and confirm his bid, and we hired him to expand our patio next week. Then Freya napped and I made chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, and Matt got to work site prepping the patio extension area. He really did a lot of manual labor today--I just feel like I did.

We got the neighbor to come over and help move sprinkler heads around, and I took care of Freya and their four year old son while the work was ongoing. And I made barbequed ribs, roasted potatoes and asparagus for dinner. And then we went and got groceries.

I should not feel utterly rendered, but I do.

When I was growing up as a Jehovah's Witness, we lived about an hour away from the nearest Kingdom Hall, which is what JWs call their churches. We drove there every Sunday for the 2 hour public talk and Watchtower magazine study, and then again on Thursdays for the 2 hour ministry school. We also had a 1 hour book study, where we'd go over whatever JW publication was up for review--that was on Tuesdays, but it was in the town we lived in. So I spent approximately nine hours a week in church, counting the drive time.

I found out this week that the "Governing Body" (that purports to translate God's will to the worshipful JWs) has given out some new direction that the book study was going to be cancelled because of rising gas prices, and because, once again, it is so close to The Time of the End. That's JW-speak for Armageddon. Speculation has it that declining attendance at all the JW worship is the reason for the book study cancellation--they're doing whatever they can to make the religion a little less...time consuming. (Don't get me started about mandatory door-knocking.)

Anyway, some online discussions I participated in got me thinking about all the times I was told while growing up that Armageddon was imminent. I spent most of my formative years worrying myself sick about Armageddon, actually. The JW publications had some really lurid pictures of what that time was going to be like; my vision of the Time of the End included walking through a fire-blasted landscape, walking past the dead bodies of mothers and babies, and recognizing the faces of people I knew--even family members--on the dead. Vultures and carrion eaters abounded because of the human food. As the faithful ones, we'd be pursued by government police who would be trying to catch us and put us in concentration camps. This would go on for "a short time" (assume a year or so) before Jehovah and Jesus would finally decree that it was all done, and would immediately throw all the nonbelievers into a lake of fire (everlasting destruction), and the rest of us would get our reprieve in a new paradise right here on earth.

Yeah. I spent my childhood worrying about trying to live through a holocaust, and was convinced that I'd be seeing dead mothers and babies rotting on the ground. I was encouraged to believe those things. Can you imagine? Can you imagine filling a child's head with that kind of thing, and then expecting them to grow up mentally healthy? Much less believing in a benevolent god...

So it interests me and yet saddens me at the same time that they're trotting out this Time of the End business again. In those discussions with other former JWs, the terror of Armageddon seems pretty universal--not because we were looking forward to the end of evil and eternal life in paradise, but because we were so, so frightened of all the horrible things we would see and that might befall us. And I know that there are other people and children out there right now, living through that same terror.

It is unconscionable.