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

Tomorrow is the beginning of Idaho's first wolf hunting season in many years, or in the words of some Idabillies, "Since our forefathers first exterminated them for a good reason." Local, national and international media are scheduled to be on-hand with the conservation officers on opening day.

Personally, while I am quite a big fan of having wolves in Idaho, I am somewhat glad there is a season on them. I've seen five different wolves in my travels in the forest, and three of the five have stuck around long enough to get a good, long look at me. Folks around here who hate the wolves need a lot less time than that to get a shot off, and I strongly believe it is in their best interests to learn that mankind is not just an interesting anomaly in the forest.

Personally, I could care less if folks have to work harder to get their deer and elk each season. Pragmatically, I recognize that part of my family's income comes from the sale of big game tags and hunting licenses. While I in no way believe the wolves are exterminating the big game herds (as some would have us believe), I'd like to see a system in place that balances the needs of the predators--humans and wolves. ("Needs" being an extremely subjective term in half of this statement.) I wouldn't stand in the way of someone legally harvesting a wolf in Idaho, but I'd sure be disappointed if a close friend of mine pulled the trigger. I feel like wolves deserve a chance to reestablish themselves, and frankly I feel like there's a bond between wolves and humans that we should hold at least semi-sacred. They bonded with our ancestors and bore some of the credit for our species' success. Man's best friend is a descendant. I cannot reconcile hunting them and killing them for nothing but sport.

Ultimately, it could be a very short season: a federal judge in Montana is reviewing an injunction filed against the state of Idaho by an environmental group. He has said he'd rule on it as soon as he possibly could, and that could, potentially, be as soon as tomorrow. If so, it could end up being a one-day season.

I had the strangest dream last night... I have been known to have extremely strange dreams at times, but this one takes the cake. Part of me is thinking it came from eating hot peppers with dinner, but another part of me hopes that it was the universe telling me not to be afraid. (Not that I have any more reason than the next person to be. I'm rambling here...)

In my dream, I was riding in a shuttle bus or something with a group of people. There was a girl I know from high school there, so I don't know if we were students, or she just happened to be there. We were driving up Highway 55, which is a very windy, narrow road going north out of Boise into the mountains. As we rounded a corner, the bus lost control and rolled several times into the river.

The next thing I knew, I was on a train coming into a station. People were waiting at the station for us, and a knowledge came over me that those of us on the train were dead and the folks ahead were loved ones who'd died before and were going to guide us through this next stage in our existence. I knew that I was dead, and grief tore through me at leaving Freya and Matt behind. But then it was gone suddenly, and was replaced by peace and acceptance.

I searched the faces at the station to see who would be meeting me, and there was my grandmother waiting, but not as I had known her. She was a beautiful twenty-something, dressed in the finest fashion she'd have worn in the 1930s when she was actually that age. She looked a little like Greta Garbo, actually.

She got me settled in a beautiful farmhouse home that was to be mine, and then I realized that I hadn't yet seen a dear friend who'd been lost to cancer about 6 years ago. I decided to go look for him and thought, "What sort of heaven would Mike choose?" Since he was a logger, I knew he'd be up in the woods, and so I started putting together the things I'd need to spend days out looking for him. In this heaven, there were sort of stores along the roads, but you could just walk in and get anything at all you wanted for free. You could walk the aisles with a cart and put anything in--there was no cashier. Cars were parked along the roads and you could take any one you wanted--if someone took the one you'd been driving, you could just hop in the next one, or take a bicycle. It didn't matter and no one would be angry.

The dream started to fade at this point, but the gist of it all was that "heaven" was whatever you'd want it to be. You could live wherever you wanted and have anything you wanted. People would come and go, and I later realized that my friend had decided to return to life on earth by putting his soul into a baby in the womb. You could stay as long as you liked, and you could wait at the train station for your own loved ones to join you. And there were children, too; children who'd died young, and we took them in and gave them homes and the love they may not have received while on earth. We raised them and healed them so that they could return to have another chance.

It was a little bit sad to wake up from this dream. While I don't exactly believe in the afterlife, it would be so nice to think that there was a place with that kind of freedom, acceptance and peace ahead of us all.

You'll probably read about this on the national news, and you'll probably shake your head and think, "God, what a fucking backwater Idaho is." In our defense, only about 25% of the citizens of Idaho would have something like this cross their minds. I have nothing to base that statistic on besides 34 years of residency (Idaho native here), and while one in four is incredibly high, please keep in mind the other three of us aren't certifiably insane.

Idaho GOP Hopeful Jokes About "Obama Tags"

BOISE, Idaho — An Idaho Republican gubernatorial hopeful insists he was only joking when he said he'd buy a license to hunt President Barack Obama.

Rammell told The Associated Press Thursday he was just being sarcastic and sees no reason to apologize.

I sincerely hope the Secret Service does investigate this. It is 1000% inappropriate to say something like that about any human being, and heaven knows the GOP would have come off its collective rocker if a Democrat had been caught out saying something like that about George Dubya.

For the other three of us, I beg the forgiveness of all of you out there who are wondering what's in the water.

I'm going to be a busy girl on Saturday. The backstory is that our CSA folks have had all the members come out for dinner in the last month or so, and they served something super-delicious and I'm going to replicate it: Anaheim peppers stuffed with chicken & cream cheese.

It's actually very easy. You get your peppers, put a lengthwise slit down one side and scoop out the ribs and the seeds along the ribs (you can leave the stem and the seeds at the stem), then put in a cooked strip of chicken, 1-2 tablespoons of cream cheese, and then pop a whole pan of those in the oven at 350 for 20 minutes or until the peppers are softened. Then you pull them out, sprinkle some shredded cheddar on top, and place them on the grill for a couple of minutes to finish.

They're delicious, and the truest beauty of them is that you can make them ahead and freeze them. Then you just thaw them out and cook them up any time you want.

I can't wait--I have 10 lbs. of peppers and about 8 lbs. of chicken. We should be in fat city (literally) before long!

I've had two dreams over the last couple of months that I have been hanging out at The Pioneer Woman's ranch in Oklahoma. I've never met her before, never even really corresponded, unless you count unreplied-to comments I've put on her site. Sheesh, she gets probably 20,000 hits per day (I really have no idea), so it's not like I'm expecting us to bond or anything.

But it's weird that I'd be having these dreams. In one, I went there on a shopping trip because she and her sister-in-law had started hand-tooling leather and had this amazing gift shop set up. Not that I even shop for hand-tooled leather. Ever. But it was evidently good enough to get me to the middle of the country.

In the most recent one, wolves had been released on their ranch and Marlboro Man was pretty pissed off about it. I figured I'd better just keep my opinons to myself about that. Maybe it has something to do with Idaho selling wolf-hunting tags starting this week. (And remind me once again: do not engage the wackadoos on the local newspaper's website comment section and/or forum.) While my heart is a little distressed about the wolf hunt, my head knows it is probably the best thing for the species' survival in the long run: wolves that run away from people are a lot less likely to be illegally poached than the ones that (currently) stand there and look at you with mild curiosity.

Anyway, I got off track there. Do you ever dream about people from the internet that you've never actually met?

We took Freya to a classmate's birthday party yesterday. It was at a place called Wahooz, which is a kids arcade place, with miniature golf, video games, etc. It was quite fun, until I let my friend Jane (Freya's BFF's mom) talk me into going on a roller coaster simulator.

To be entirely fair to Jane, it didn't take much talking. I knew I'd had some discomfort on roller coaster rides in the past, but that was years ago and surely it was better now, right? Besides, it was a simulator. How bad could it be?

Bad enough that I hit the "panic button" about 3/4 of the way through. The first few loops were fine, but then it started shaking from side to side, literally looping us clockwise and counter-clockwise while upside down. Not just upside down loops, no; loops to the left and the right. I can't handle spins to the sides--that's a lesson I learned about 30 years ago on the tea cups at Disneyland. I shut my eyes and tried to gut it out, but when my guts almost came out and I broke out in a cold sweat, I couldn't pound that button fast enough.

I used to be great with carnival rides. But then I went on The Mind Eraser at Ehlitch Gardens in Denver. It has you sit in a seat that is suspended from above--you're hanging with your feet loose, instead of sitting down buckled in with your feet on the floor of a cart. Then it does an outside loop, which makes you feel like you're getting flung into outer space. Something about that loop threw off my equilibrium and I haven't gained it back yet. It took me a day or two to fully recover from that, and I have to admit that I still haven't fully recovered from yesterday's experience. Scrolling too quickly through a webpage gives me vertigo. What a wuss.

I do believe I'll be keeping my feet on the ground later this week when we take Freya to the Western Idaho Fair. I'll send her on the kiddie rides with Daddy, whose stomach is infinitely stronger than mine.

We're back from San Diego. I have to say I really appreciate how, when I post about going on vacation, you guys don't use that information to come in and rob our house. However, if you do decide to, could you please do something really heinous to the carpet so that we have to get it replaced? It's in rough shape and I'd love for our homeowner's insurance to cover it. Thanks.

We made 4 trips to the San Diego Zoo, 2 trips to Sea World, 1 trip to the beach at Torrey Pines, 1 trip to the Wild Animal Park, 1 trip downtown, and 2 trips to Whole Foods (though we could have gone every day because of their gluten-free section). We also got our shopping swerve on at the Fashion Valley Mall, which was a little too la-di-da for me, though I did score at H&M.

It was really a fun time. I have to admit, I really gained an appreciation for the vacations my parents took us on as kids. Every time we went somewhere, it was a gesture of love for us because of the effort it took and the money it took. I found myself wanting to make each experience extra-special for Freya, whether that meant buying a great souvenier (like her first Barbie), or in explaining something so she understood it well, or giving her the opportunity to lead the way and find what meant something to her. When we came back, I thanked my father profusely for all those gifts he gave me--I didn't realize at the time what it really meant.

Here's something interesting for you: the SD Zoo has a sign up on the p a n d a exhibit that says you may not use any photos of the p a n d a s on websites that have any commercial purposes. I do not know why that is--could they be copyrighted? And you know what a renegade I am, so...BEHOLD!

Speaking of renegades, on one of our trips to Sea World, there was a mother who was talking to her toddler, and I swear to God, the kid's name was "Maverick." She must have been a HUGE McCain/Palin fan or something. I spent the rest of the day walking around doing my best Tina Fey and chanting, "Maverick! I'm a maverick! Maverick!" It probably wore Matt out a little.

We got to see the orcas. We kept calling them "Shamu," but it turns out the real Shamu died in 1971. Sorry, kiddies. I'm sure they composted her or took her to the cat food factory or something. Here are some other orcas for you instead.

I learned some interesting facts at Sea World. Did you know 1 square inch of a sea otter's pelt has 650,000 hairs in it? And you'd have to shave every hair on every person's body in the entire Shamu Stadium 5 TIMES before you'd equal the total number of hairs on a sea otter's body. (Math people think up odd things, don't they?) I also got to see one poop in the tank. That was literally remarkable.

We rode a carousel in Balboa Park that was built in 1889. I think that's pretty damned cool. The horses had real horse tails. Like from real horses. Tails. Neat! Here's Freya and I riding our trusty retrievers:

Finally, here's a money-saving tip for all of you who travel: check out Restaurant.com for discounts at many excellent eateries. You buy your "gift certificate" for whatever denomination, but at a greatly reduced discount. For example, I bought when the discount was 80%, so I got $25 gift certificates for $5 each. You then go to the restaurant, present it at ordering, and you get that discount off a $35 meal. Restrictions apply, like you can only use them for certain meals and you have to have a party of 2 or more, but they ROCK. We had some outstanding food (like at The Parkhouse Eatery) and racked up bills of about $25 total for Matt, Freya and I all to eat. That's having stuff like pate', chopped salad, lobster quesadillas, etc. You can't eat that cheaply and that well any other way I know of. So check out the website--you just search by zip code, and you can find lots of places locally or at destinations you're going to.

It's good to be back--didja miss me?

Folks, we're off on our summer vacation tomorrow. (Monday) Freya's Montessori takes off a week in August each year, so we are timing our trip around that. We'll be heading off to sunny San Diego, and I'll tell you what, I have one excited three year old on my hands. She's been my little shadow all day, and she's just been chattering on and on about what we're going to do down there. (Sea World, the zoo, etc.) I haven't had so much trouble help in getting my bags packed since I don't know when.

We're leaving Grover in good hands with our usual dog-sitter and the house will be well looked-after. The weather in SD promises us highs of around 72 and lows around 68. I'm actually packing a sweatshirt! But I have hopes that we can spend some quality time on the beach and play in the waves a bunch.

You guys all have a great week, and I'll get you all caught up when I get back.

I'm 34 years old. Back in my teens, I was given to expect that the acne stuff would be over by now. I did have a handle on it for a while; after Freya was born I was getting regular microdermabrasion treatments, wherein a very small sort of belt sander ground off any pore blockages and cleared up my skin. I used beta-hyrdoxy acid and a topical antibiotic to keep things clear. It worked great. For a while. My hippie voodoo doctor took me off the topical antibiotic. ("Are you crazy? You try to avoid antibiotics for colds, but you'll put it all over your skin--the skin is the fastest conduit to getting drugs absorbed into your body!" And once I quit that, the dental hygenist noticed that my teeth were much cleaner and had less tartar scaling--I think it had thrown off my natural oral bacterial balance to the point it was harming my teeth!) I also quit the microderm because it was getting expensive.

Here lately though, something has really changed. For the last several weeks I have been dealing with huge, painful pimples. And they're deep, too. I have one below my mouth that makes me look like I just had a brutal form of dental surgery, the swelling is so bad.

I think it's time to roll the big guns out now. I'm going in tomorrow and trying an ultrasound facial, also called hydrodermabrasion (as if that word wasn't long enough already) or dermasound.

If this doesn't help, I might have to resign myself to having zits until forever. The undertaker's cosmetician is going to say to herself, "Good heavens, she was 96 years old, but she had the acne of a 13 year old!"

You know how you readers are always telling me, sometimes in embarassing detail, how my blog has changed your life for the better, how you've made a complete turn-around in your crack-smoking and polyamorous lifestyles? And then all the crazy gifts you send me? I mean, seriously, an Audi? I totally would have been fine with a Jetta. Sheesh, the way you all go on.

Well, it's time for me to give you a little love in return, a balancing of the scales, as it were. I'm going to help you get hooked up with TextLink Ads, the service who does all my blog advertising.

What advertising, you say? That's right, folks. It is THAT discreet. Check the right hand sidebar, clear down at the bottom. Intrusive? Hardly. And yet I make between $25-75 per month out of it.

If you're interested in signing up, let me know. I should mention that they're currently running a deal where referrals will gain me $25 per. Okay, so I'm not doing this totally out of my generous spirit, but I would like to see you all making some money off your own sites. It really couldn't be easier, and it certainly pays for your annual hosting costs and whatnot.

Post in the comments if you're interested, and I'll send you the affiliate link. Thanks!

...and I really don't have any particular reason to be. Yes, I worked a full day, and yes it was a work-out day, but neither was too terribly strenuous. I just came home tired and haven't been able to muster a lot of energy since.

You know what I should be doing right now? I should be getting the house picked up prior to the cleaning lady coming tomorrow. I should be making a big batch of refrigerator salsa with all the stuff from last week's CSA shipment, particularly since we pick up another load of veggies tomorrow. I should be getting Freya ready for her bath. I should be out saving the world or something.

Looking on the bright side, at least I came up with something to blog about and then managed to get it posted. It isn't all a total loss.

Let's all hope that I am considerably more sprightly in the morning. I'm not even halfway through the week!

I'm pretty damned disgusted with a spate of recent fatalities in Idaho where sheriff's deputies have been killed while driving without wearing seatbelts. As bad as that is, worse things happened in Los Angeles today.

Death Toll in California Crash Rises to 8

Saturday's crash near Dinuba, Fresno Co. involved a Dodge Neon and GMC Sierra pickup and initially claimed the lives of 4 of the 5 young children traveling in the Sierra, the 2 adults in the vehicle were taken to hospital for treatment and details of their conditions have not been disclosed, and all 3 occupants of the Neon.

California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer Felipe Martinez said it appeared that none of the 10 people involved in the crash were wearing seat belts. Officer Martinez added that it is not clear whether the men killed in the Neon, their identities and ages have not been made known, were responsible for the theft of the vehicle.

The children who were killed ranged in age from 1 to 8 years old. Not one of them was wearing a seatbelt. I can't imagine what those parents could be feeling right now; they've lost all of their children at once. However, I think they should be charged with 5 counts of involuntary manslaughter. Had their children been in the appropriate safety belts and seats, they'd all likely be alive, though possibly some would be badly injured. The parents' actions contributed to these childrens' deaths.

I know I sound somewhat heartless. But they willfully put their children at risk. Never mind the car chase, never mind the stolen car. A doddering 80 year old could have mixed up the pedals on her Caddy and done the same thing. A city bus could have lost its brakes and done the same thing. You just don't. risk. your. children. like that. What possible reason could they have had?

Poor little kids.

The folks at Spyglass Gardens had a bunch of us CSA customers over for dinner tonight. Those folks are nuts: not only do they manage a farm, have a CSA with 46 customers, and work three different farmers' markets each week, but they also have tried to get each customer to come to the farm for a meal. There were probably 20 of us there tonight.

The food was awesome. We had anaheim peppers that were stuffed with cream cheese and a piece of chicken breast tenderloin, and were then baked in the oven until everything was done and oozy, and then topped it with cheddar cheese that melted in. We had grilled summer squash and zucchini, grilled pineapple and onions, and corn on the cob. Dessert was marionberry shortcake ala mode.

It was also really great to just hang out and meet some of the other customers and watch all the kids run around. We made our regular visits to the chickens (the poor girls are moulting and not looking too good, but feeling frisky), and Freya got to feed the koi in the fish pond.

Possibly best of all, it was sunny and 80 degrees; perfect barbeque weather. I'll tell you, this CSA has been a total success!

It's certainly the end of fire season, such as it was. Boise sets record for rain Thursday; 50 lightning strikes, golf-ball sized hail reported in Treasure Valley

Almost a half inch of rain fell at the Boise airport by 11 a.m. Thursday, setting a rainfall record for this day in history, according to the National Weather Service. Thunderstorms brought isolated rainstorms and about 50 lightning strikes in the Treasure Valley.

Golf ball-sized hail was reported at Amity Road and Surprise Way in Boise at 7:40 a.m.

I've lived in Idaho my whole life and I have NEVER seen a heavy rainfall in August like this. It was unreal how loud the rain was at times today. It was difficult to tell what was thunder and what was just the rain pounding on the roof of my office building.

I have to admit, I do feel kind of bad for all the contractors who supply things like catering and shower units to the wildland fire camps. The economy is in a really bad way in the first place (obviously), and I know a lot of people were hoping for at least a moderate fire season in order to pay their bills. While I don't want the forests to burn down, I know the income the fires generate is relied upon by a lot of small businesses.

From the New York Times:

The American Psychological Association declared Wednesday that mental health professionals should not tell gay clients they can become straight through therapy or other treatments.

Instead of seeking such change, the association urged therapists to consider multiple options, which could include celibacy and switching churches, for helping clients live spiritually rewarding lives in instances where their sexual orientation and religious faith conflict.

I'm very glad to see this. Instead of criminalizing or ostracizing gays, let's start ostracizing those who try to make homosexuality out like it is a choice or aberrant behavior.

Matt is out working tonight and so Freya and I were hanging out at home. I'd had a pizza lunch from work and brought home leftovers, so I didn't have to cook anything tonight. I had some time on my hands, and when I opened up the pantry I thought, "Smells kind of funny in here. I'd better get to the bottom of this."

Let me set the scene for you: we're sort of hoarders. More accurately, Matt is genetically a hoarder, and I've just gotten tired of battling it and have more or less thrown in the towel. So we go to CostCo and we just pile the new stuff on top of the old stuff. There's no method of organization. (I realize this is strange for a person with mild OCD, but it comes and goes.) I envy my neighbor across the street whose pantry literally only has enough food in it to keep her family on starvation rations for 2 weeks. We could probably live off of ours for six months if we kept things lean.

Anyway, there I was. I started pulling the crates of juice boxes and the crates of canned beans and tomatoes off the floor. Then I started sorting out all the plastic bags into a heap to take to the Montessori. (They want them for some reason.) I put all the non-perishable items we'd bought pre-gluten allergy diagnosis into a bag to take to the food bank. I got rid of old boxes of cereal that were stale, probably four boxes of stale graham crackers, restacked all the canned goods, etc.

The whole project took nearly two hours and my recycling bin is full of broken-down boxes. I'm thoroughly pooped, but I feel good about it.

The sad thing is that it'll only stay that way for a week. We see empty space in the pantry and it must be filled, and so we'll turn over all that hard work with the next trip to CostCo.

This missing Idaho child has finally made national news, it seems. He's been missing about a week and a half now, and due to his mother's extremely checkered past, foul play has been suspected.

He disappeared from his mother's apartment area when he was on a scheduled custody visit with her. She's been convicted of felony child abuse, and her boyfriend mysteriously is not allowed to be in the same room as her two year old daughter (at her own request to the court, and yet she still lives with him). All signs have been implicating them in the boy's disappearance.

However, as this article states, a child's body has been pulled from a large irrigation canal downstream from their home. (And tragically, it runs just 1/8 of a mile away from our house, and that just breaks my heart--if it is him, his little body would have come past here.) The media reports that the mother left the police department offices in tears this afternoon, implying that she either had no idea he'd be most likely found dead in the ditch, or that the stress is finally getting to her and she's cracking. I don't know. She's already been tried and convicted by most of the community here, not excluding myself. I guess the next few weeks may bring us some answers.

This experience has chilled me for any number of reasons, but mainly because he disappeared only about 3 blocks from Freya's Montessori school. Until the history of the family came out, no one knew (and truly, we still don't) whether an abductor was at large or not, and I was petrified. I was literally planning out how long I could work at home and keep her out of school and in my sight. I'd like to say I can't imagine what it would feel like to lose your child, but my imagination has been putting in some pretty heavy overtime lately.

Little Robert...I'm so sorry for whatever has happened to you. May your next shot at life be far better than this one was.

Dear Middle-Aged Couple Near Us at the Boise River Tonight:

Although I apologized in person, as did my husband, I'd again like to take the opportunity to say how deeply sorry we are for the actions of our dog this evening. You see, as an obsessive-compulsive springer spaniel, he tends to fetch a stick in the river until he is so purely water-logged that he has to...well...excrete some.

I can honestly tell you that I have never seen him poop in a body of water before, nor have I ever seen it that particular mustard color and consistency. It is terribly regrettable that he did it just a little ways upstream from where you had your chairs set up in the water. But hey, good thing the stench reached your noses before the poo reached your toeses, right?

Anyway, we hope you'll forgive us.

That nice young family with the incontenent dog