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

Just to give you an idea of how I'm doing, here's one side of a conversation I had today with someone I know in the wildland fire business. It's just my side, for the sake of brevity.

"Yeah, hey, it's Casey. Listen, I've got a little problem I hope you can help me out with. You know that fire in Yellowstone right now? It's got a section of the park road closed, and I need that road open tomorrow. You can close it right back up again after a blue Hyundai sedan with Idaho plates goes through.

"Because my in-laws are in that car. They're on their way through the park to Gallatin, Montana. If they can't get through that road, they're going to turn around and they're going to come back to my house early. That can't happen.

"Listen, I'll cook you anything you want. I'll cook you a cake so big a stripper could jump out of it. Hell, I'll even get a stripper in there, if you want. Just get that road open. Mama needs a break.

"Snowing? Hmm. Yeah, snow could keep them over there too. I'll work on my snow dance tonight. But about the fire. I understand they're in there cutting down hazard trees away from the roadway right now. If it's a matter of workforce, I can get you some people. Hell, just have my mother-in-law purse her lips like she does and the trees will fall over of their own volition."

In spite of my connections, I don't think it worked. Frickin' nature. I'm telling you, internet, if they come back early from their little vacation-within-a-vacation and I'm stuck with them from Friday-Monday BY MYSELF AT HOME BECAUSE MATT "HAS TO WORK", there's going to be hell to pay. Hell!

*cue maniacal shrieking*

My in-laws are 2.5 days in to their visit, and I'm really not that stressed out. I'm not sure if I have used the right avoidance techniques (lots of yard work and naps), the right combination of perspective and anti-depressants, or some combination thereof. But somehow, I'm doing just fine.

Maybe it's the knowledge that they're leaving Tuesday for 4 days in Yellowstone before they come back for the last 4 days of their visit with us. Maybe it's because my brother-in-law had a stern talk with his and Matt's father last week about not being so nasty to Matt's mom.

Maybe it's the anti-depressants. Did I mention that already? Whatever it is, I'm awfully grateful.

Freya's first dentist appointment went absolutely beautifully today. I couldn't be more suprised, actually. I was pretty sure she'd bite the guy's arm off at the elbow. But she sat on my lap and the hygienist did a great job softening her up during the cleaning, so she was giggling and happy by the time the dentist came in and did the exam.

The bad news is that she has one tiny cavity. The dentist said he can fill it easily without even using any numbing, which is great. But I sincerely hope that appointment goes as smoothly as this one does.

When I started blogging, I probably made 2-3 posts every day. Most things were snippets from the news or pop culture, or just little trackbacks from other bloggers' interesting stuff. My pattern anymore has been to try and make one post a day during the week and taking the weekends off. But even that has gotten tricky.

I find myself sitting at the keyboard in the evenings, wondering what the heck to write about. Sometimes I'll come to the computer with a definite plan in my head; sometimes I even write my post during the day and save it to put up on the site in the evening. Other days I really struggle. And I ask myself why I am struggling so much with it. Other than my handful of loyal readers, what does it matter if I don't get a post up? Why work so hard at generating something that is low-quality?

That's why I've decided to give us all a little break. I'm not going to quit blogging, but I've decided I'm only going to blog if I have something in particular to share. You all probably don't come here for the filler. You come for the day or two a week (if I'm that lucky) when I can say something that comes from the heart, something I find important. I don't want to blog just to fill space, and I don't want to blog simply because I feel like that's a good way to keep up my advertising revenue. That's more stress than it's worth.

So, I'm just giving you all a little notice: if I'm not posting, it's because your time and mine is too valuable to waste on filler. However, stay tuned because Freya has her first visit ever to the dentist tomorrow, and I suspect that he'll be finishing his day short a digit or two.

Talk to you soon.

My friend Jess is a massage therapist in the Seattle area. It's good to have a friend who works in that field, albiet long-distance, because she keeps me from doing stupid stuff during a massage. Or she tells me if a massage was done right (it usually is).

She posted today about some of the issues she deals with as a massage therapist, and I wanted to share those with you. I figured it could come in handy for you some time. Take it away, Jess!

Here are some things to keep in mind the next time you get a massage.

In Seattle, and at least the West Coast, industry standard for the therapist is 40% of the price of the massage. Of course, *I* don't make that. I get an hourly rate (of $15 incase you were wondering). This means that massage therapists only make good money if you tip them.

This brings me to tipping. Industry standard is 12 - 15%. If you use a gift card, please tip based off the dollar amount of your massage (unless gratuity was included on the gift card. Please ask.) Please tip even if you didn't like the massage*. I've spent an hour or more touching your skin, kneading your muscles, bringing my energy and focus to YOU. If you didn't like me, that's ok. Tip anyway and when the receptionist/front desk person asks, "How was your massage?", feel free to say "It wasn't what I was looking for". They should then ask you more questions to identify what was wrong. Leaving me a $3 tip does not tell me whether you didn't like the massage and how I can better work with a client next time. It might suggest that you didn't like the massage, that you weren't aware of industry policies, or that you only had $3 cash in your wallet.

If you are late and it's your first time seeing me, expect to fill out paperwork anyway. I don't ask you to fill out paperwork because it looks more professional or because I am nosy. I am asking information that can help me determine the safety of your massage. There are certain medications that indicate it's not safe to use heat (anti-coagulants, heart medicines, pain killers, **muscle relaxers). Other medications impair your pain receptors (narcotics) so I should take care and not work too deeply.

I need to know about recent surgeries including cosmetic. If you've undergone liposuction it's important to write that down. If you had a C-Section 4 days ago I will ask you to rebook with me until you have your 4 week check-up or else I'll suggest a neck massage only. I've had 2 C-Sections so don't try to argue with me about how you are feeling. I need to know if you have a communicable disease that I might get from you and pass along to other clients. If you are just getting over the flu, stay home. Don't be surprised if I ask you to re-book when you come in sneezing and coughing, feverish or with postnasal drip.

*UNLESS the therapist did something illegal and you felt violated or uneasy.
** If you are taking muscle relaxers you should know massage is contraindicated.

When you can't think of anything to blog, tell the dirtiest joke you've heard recently. Answer in the extended entry.

What did the leper say to the prostitute?

Continue reading "The Last Resort"

Freya and I have been shopping online for her Halloween costume, largely thanks to the flood of costume catalogs we've been receiving in the mail lately. They must get my address from the kids' clothes retailers or something.

We had a couple of false starts on e-Bay where I didn't end up winning the auction, but she's gotten past the disappointment of not being a pumpkin princess this year. We had the winning bid on a cute witch costume that was very sparkly and ballerina-like, and she and I have both been pretty excited about it. My view is that as long as she isn't a princess, I'm happy. Not that I have anything against princesses, but that's kind of the fall-back mode around here anyway. If she spills something on her regular clothes, she usually chooses princess wear as an alternative. All the pretend games she plays are princess-related, and the books and movies she chooses from the library are about (you guessed it) princesses. So the witch is a great thing.

However, the seller maintains they shipped the item 10 days ago, and we haven't seen it yet. As I've mentioned before, our mail delivery person has some mental challenges and often loses things, but if it has happened again with the much-anticipated Halloween costume, I'm-a choke-a bitch, as Erica so eloquently puts it.

Cross your fingers it shows up soon.

We made it home safely from Yellowstone this afternoon. I don't know why I'm so tired--I slept for two hours in the car, but maybe being cooped up just wears me out. I don't know.

Anyway, it was another great trip. The wildlife count wasn't too exciting: lots of bison and elk, one deer, a fox and two bald eagles. However, we stayed at the cabins at Mammoth Hot Springs, and the elk there are crazy! It's the rut, which is breeding season, and there were two huge bull elk with their harems hanging around the buildings. In fact, we had an enormous 6x7 attacking a bush directly behind our cabin this morning. He was literally no more than 10 feet away. If I'd been crazy, I probably could have opened the window and leaned out to scratch his heiney. And then he'd have turned around and killed me--the bulls were chasing people all over the place, actually. The park rangers kept showing up and doing crowd control. The hotel dining room actually had elk crap at the TOP of its steps this morning.

Freya and Matt did some fly fishing. Matt did the casting, and Freya reeled in the fish. Between them, they caught 3 Yellowstone cutthroat trout, the smallest being 10 inches long, and the other two being about a foot each. Yay for the intrepid fisherpeople!

I'll try to upload pictures tomorrow--I'm out of energy for tonight! Oh, and no sign of seismic activity. Whew.

We're heading to Yellowstone NP tomorrow. I have to admit, I have a slightly nervous twitch that comes around whenever I think too hard about YNP--I mean, there's that whole super-volcano thing. I worry about it even when we're not right there. I figure in Boise we're right at the edge of the safe zone, and so chances are middling that we'd survive the blast. It's you folks to the east that have to worry more, since you'll have all that ash to deal with. We westerners might get a day of lead time to...you know...get underground or something.

So, if the whole thing goes kablooey in the next couple of days, watch for me passing over Wisconsin and the eastern seaboard a couple of hours later. I'll be the one in a zillion tiny pieces. If it doesn't happen, I'll be back to fill you all in on Monday.

Dear Freya,

As I write this, there is a controversy raging (locally, anyway) about how President Obama gave a speech today to school students across the country. It was about trying hard in school and taking responsibility for our own future. But a lot of parents don't like him as a person or as a President, and they didn't want their kids to watch it.

There's a lot of political controversy these days, and it weighs on my mind. Many people around me have said they've never seen the country this divided because of all the politics. It scares me a lot--just when I think we're heading in the right direction, other people think we're going wildly off course.

When people say things I disagree with, I try really hard to still respect them as people. Each of us have come up with our own reasons for our beliefs; we don't know what someone else's life path has been like and the circumstances that led them to this point. And whether I agree with a person or not doesn't make them a bad person. I know a number of people who could not be farther away from me in political and religious beliefs, and I still like them. Good people are everywhere, and we need to look for them. Don't dismiss someone out of hand because of a label they wear.

Calling names doesn't help win an argument. In fact, when politics and religion are involved, I'm not even sure you can win an argument. Even if you make all your points perfectly and back them up with proven facts, you can't change a person's mind. The only way you can get someone to see your side of the matter is with respect.

I worry for you, baby. I worry about the world we're going to hand off to you and your peers, and I worry about bringing you up with all the right tools to live with hope and to work on making the world a better place. I want to teach you that when you see something that seems wrong to you, you should speak up. But remember, how you speak is as important as the words you say.

As your grandpa told me as I was growing up, you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. (Never mind that he always followed that up with, "...but you catch the MOST flies with bullshit." That's just Grandpa. You know what I mean.)

I love you, sweetie. I promise to keep trying.

Mama

Man, this was a busy weekend. Well, sort of. Today was busy. A girlfriend helped me go pick up the new tree and Matt dug 1.5 big honking holes in the yard to plant it. The first location didn't work out: he actually hit a sprinkler line with the pulaski as he was breaking up the ground. Thankfully, the line didn't rupture. (The odds of that? I'd have been zero in a billion. Or whatever means that it is so unlikely that it might as well be impossible.)

After that we went to lunch and grocery shopping because we had some friends coming over for dinner tonight. We came home, I got Freya down for a nap, and then went back out to pull up our colossal sunflowers (seriously, 10 feet tall) and replant that area with some of the plants bought in yesterday's greenhouse junket.

Then I came in and dusted the house, cleaned the kitchen, vacuumed, took a shower, got Freya up from her nap, and had a dinner party.

This is all good. It is very good. Because somehow I have been suffering from insomnia the last 3 nights or so, and that is practically as unbelievable for me as the sprinkler line not rupturing today. I never have trouble sleeping, but I have stayed up past midnight for the last several nights because I just cannot get my brain to shut down.

I am very much hoping that I have worn myself out to the point that I just nod right off.

Freya and I were bored this morning, so I took her to one of the better (I think) greenhouses in Boise--Edwards'. Imagine my suprise and delight when I discovered that all of their perennials, shrubs and trees were 50% off!

We wandered around for quite a while, pulling our little Radio Flyer wagon behind us, because that's what Edwards' uses for shopping carts. Freya kept finding little things she liked, and I indulged her with a number of them because I want her to enjoy gardening and to feel an investment in the work. I got some flowering ground cover for a border area, and a few new things for a flower bed we're currently expanding.

On our way back to the cash register, I spied a gorgeous tree. It's a katsura tree, which is a deciduous tree from Asia whose closest kin in the US (though they're not really kin at all) is the redbud. They're evidently pretty easy to cultivate, and the foliage starts out as a burgundy color in the spring, then turns to bluish green in the summer. In the fall, the leaves turn apricot, yellow and pink. And get this--the tree smells like caramel after the leaves fall off! Dudes, you can't get any better than that.

As I stood there falling in love with a tree, I thought to myself, "We don't have a truck and this is way too big to stick out through the sunroof. How the hell am I going to get it home?" I have a coworker who lives in that area, and I'm sure he'll appreciate my message on his cell phone: "Hi, I'm sure you don't have anything better to do today than come down to the greenhouse and haul a tree all the way across town for me..." Since I didn't get any satisfaction there, I called a girlfriend of mine and she's coming over to help me with her boyfriend's truck tomorrow.

Poor Matt... He worked all weekend and gets tomorrow off, and the first thing he heard when he got home tonight is, "Guess what, honey? I bought a really enormous tree today. You're going to love it! The only thing is that I'm going to need you to dig a pretty big hole in the backyard."

I got to thinking that I've posted a fair number of things lately about politics and goings on around Idaho, but haven't said a whole lot about my life lately. It's easier to come up with creative things to write about by stealing from current events, especially when times are kind of dull around here.

It's starting to turn into early fall here. While the temperatures are still in the 90s, a few little maple trees here and there are starting to change color. If I thought it would keep winter away, I'd go chop them down. Lucky for the trees, it doesn't work that way. I'm resolving to squeeze every possible drop out of summer over the next couple of weeks: we took off work early yesterday and took Freya down to a little beach along the Boise River to play. The dog got to swim, and we got our topical application of Vitamin D in. Tomorrow I'm leaving work early again to take Freya to the local waterpark. We've never been there, and I won free tickets on a radio contest earlier this year. Since this is the last weekend they'll be good, I'd better get after it, huh?

We're heading to Yellowstone National Park next Thursday for a few days. We did it last year as a bit of a kickoff to Matt's hunting season patrols, so that he could at least have something fun happen in the fall. Otherwise, it's just work, work, work. If you want a postcard, post something to that effect in the comments.

Finally, everything else is really pretty much the same. Freya is still in her Montessori school, I'm still having a good time at work, and Matt is girding his loins for the busy part of his year. Exciting times around here.

...just because I have a strong opinion does not mean I need to share it.

...when my gut says, "Don't get involved," then don't.

...never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.