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

Well, the first of our three long summer weekends is over. How was yours?

Since Matt consistently works at least two of the three days of a holiday weekend, Freya and I were left to our own devices on Saturday and Sunday. We managed quite well, I do believe. On Saturday, we visited with my dad, then went and picked up my friend Mishell and her son from their apartment to take her to her driving test. They are recently relocated here from Germany, and so I loaned out the shaggin' wagon to her so she could regain her lapsed license. In the meantime, the kids and I wandered over to a nearby park and played for a while. Then we went shopping. Of course. Mishell will have a well-feathered nest at the rate we've been going lately.

We finally got lucky with the weather on Sunday. Seriously, we've had fewer than ten sunny days all spring long here in Boise. I shit you not--otherwise it has been rainy, windy, and/or cold. So it was a very good thing that we had a playdate scheduled at one of the local parks. We met up with one of Freya's little buddies from Montessori, and her siblings and parents. Heather, the mom, is one of the other two people on the school PTO with me. And I know I've mentioned we have a badass PTO, right? The kids romped around in the playground, then we moseyed over to a giant fountain in the park and the kids splashed and ran around for a good while. I got myself a little sunburn!

Look at these little cuties:

Today...well, today had its moments. I believe I've ranted mentioned here before that my eldest brother has developed a "tradition" of forcing us all to the grave of my grandparents so that we can memorialize them. I respect that tradition in many families, but it's SO. NOT. my family's kind of a thing. But my brother thinks it should be, and we all gag and shudder about it, then load up and go. How very passive-aggressive of us, yes? And I swear that every year I'm just going to say, "Look, I'm not comfortable doing this, and rather than resenting what I feel is a strange obligation, I'd like to feel good about what my family does on this day. So we're going to pass on the cemetary gathering." Does that seem awful of me?

Here we are, grave-side, in the rain, feeling resentful:

This was Freya's first trip (in her memory) to a graveyard. Her only other experience with them has been via Scooby Doo, and I know she was pretty jazzed up to solve a mystery. Alas... Here we are putting some columbines we'd picked on my grandparents' head stone.

Anyway. This year I couldn't beg off from the cemetary because we had to make a creative cover story to sneak my uncle Fred to his surprise retirement party (which was not held at the cemetary). We told Fred after the gathering that we were all going out to lunch and he had to come with us. He followed along, and no doubt thought it strange that there could be a restaurant in the subdivision we drove to. His confusion got worse when we walked into someone's house. All was revealed and there was great rejoicing when we all yelled "Surprise!" and I know he felt very pleased.

So. That's mine. Show me yours?

I'm going to preface this by saying I'm pretty damned feisty tonight. I don't know if it's hormonal or what, but I'm in a major "calling bullshit" mode. So here's a phone conversation I had with a telemarketer.

Her: Hi, I'm calling with Bank of America and would like to speak with Matthew O'Connell.

Me: Are you calling because of an issue with an account of his, or are you a telemarketer.

Her: I'm with Bank of America calling to provide Matthew with a special offer due to his having an account with us.

Me: Well, the account you're speaking of is our mortgage, and I have an equal share in the responsibility for the mortgage as well as the decision making regarding it. Why don't you tell me what you want?

Her: Our calling list splits up the two parties on accounts like that and we like to talk to each party separately.

Me: So you're telling me that as a person working for Bank of America that you don't acknowledge my authority or ownership when it comes to our mortgage?

Her: I'm not saying that, but I'm only supposed to talk to Matthew.

Me: Well, you won't be talking to him, and you're no longer talking to me. Goodbye.

I don't usually take on telemarketers. I know they have a shit job and don't probably have a lot of options in today's economy. I also know that she had no chance of being able to stand up to direct questioning like that. However...she called me. At home. On my own time. I owe Bank of America fuckall in terms of anything not directly concerning issues with the mortgage.

I'm thinking of writing a letter to the Better Business Bureau about it. Do you think it'd accomplish anything?

I've told practically everyone I know about how much I hate Qwest. I've found their service to be truly apathetic and their prices too high. However, they've been the only game in town for so long that I was really thrilled when we found out that Clear was newly available in our area. Not to mention, it was about $25/month cheaper than what we'd been paying to Qwest. "Hells bells," I said, "Sign me up!"

So we got Clear. And immediately none of the people who called us could hear a damn word we were saying. After several days of giving up on calling from our home phone and using the cell instead, Matt called Clear and they suggested that perhaps our cordless phones were just too dadgum old for their newfangled, high-falutin' technology, but that it might work if we put more physical distance between the phone handset and the modem. That's difficult in our house, because our data line comes into our office, a 10 x 10 room with only that one data plug. Still, we separated the units as far as their respective cords would allow, and the service improved to the point where it merely sounded like we were right on the edge of cell reception when we talked to folks.

And then there's been the internet service: it'll be God's own miracle if this post gets written and posted without the 'net going out on me at least once. I am guessing that 50% of the time that we try to access the internet, it's not working. We give it a few minutes and we can usually get on it, but that's just not cool. And let's talk about the speed, shall we? It's sloooooow. It takes about 5 minutes to fully download your average music video on YouTube. I end up turning the volume off, opening another internet tab and doing something else while I let the video cycle through its first stilted run. Then I rewind it and watch it once it's fully loaded.

We'll be calling Clear very shortly (from our cell phone, no doubt) to tell them they cannot provide adequate service and that we want out of the contract. They'd better not give me any guff about it, either. Considering what we paid for Qwest vs. Clear, and then factoring in how often we don't have access to the internet, it turns out Qwest is cheaper in the long run.

I'll have to eat a little crow here, I guess.

Here's an excerpt from my evening...

Me: I've got a math question for you.

Matt: Okay.

Me: You know pi? Three point one four whatever, repeating on to infinity?

Matt: Uh-huh.

Me: Well, if it repeats on to infinity, at what time does it become more than four?

Matt: What are you talking about?

Me: Infinity is a pretty big number, so it seems like there'd be a point--and it'd probably take a while--where it would eventually get so big that it would be more than four.

Matt: No. It doesn't work that way. If you write out four, it's four point zero zero zero, stretching on to infinity.

Me: Yeah, but those are zeros. Pi has actual numbers.

And you know what was strange? At that point, he was wearing exactly the same expression Ms. Lakey-Campbell (aka, The Mustachioed Mistress of Math) wore when she was trying to teach me algebra.

Math people are not real abstract thinkers, I guess.

Who says Sarah Palin doesn't know what she's talking about? The local newspaper reports a few key quotes from her stump speech in Boise today for a local wingnut candidate for Congress:

Palin, who was born in Sandpoint and graduated from the University of Idaho, talked about her Idaho roots. Her father taught school and coached in Sandpoint. She mentioned others in her family who'd graduated from Idaho colleges.

"We're all a bunch of potato heads," Palin said.

Yes, yes you are, Sarah. I'd say the contents inside your head bear a very startling resemblance to the inside of a potato--bland, lacking in nutrients, and tasty with butter.

Matt's wildlife adventure from last night just kept right on going today. He brought home the only barn owl he could get his hands on--it was dark and raining last night, so the only owl to be seen was the one that flew out of the tree cavity and clunked into a nearby shed and stunned itself. He loaded it up in a box, promised the home-owner he'd be back in the morning, and came home around midnight.

Freya and I woke up to this little critter in the garage this morning:

Before Matt returned to the old tree, he stopped by Freya's preschool with the owl so the little Montessori kids could check it out. They were pretty excited by it. You couldn't really touch the owl without long sleeves and gloves, so the kids could only gaze at it from afar.

Matt called me around lunch time and said he'd caught another, smaller/younger barn owl, as well as a baby raccoon that was in another part of the tree. He'd taken the birds to the avian rehabilitator, and the rehabber immediately loaded Matt, the birds, and a ladder up into a truck and took them to another barn owl nest he knew of. The nesting owl had originally laid 8 eggs, but only 3 of them had hatched. As I mentioned last night, the eggs are laid over a period of time, so two of the elder birds had already left the nest. One hatchling was left, so the rescued birds went right into the same nest. They stand a great chance of being totally fine.

Matt offered to bring the little raccoon over to my office on his way to take it to a different rehabber. I was definitely up for that! I called a friend to come check it out too, and she brought several of her co-workers with her. This little raccoon was so. stinking. cute. He was the size of a sandwich roll and really seemed to like getting snuggled. They don't have a lot of fear for humans at this age--it was evidently about 4 weeks old and had only opened its eyes a few days before. We passed him around and he was a huge hit. Are you ready for the cuteness? Are you sure? Well, if you're sure...

How many of you would have adopted this little guy right on the spot? Matt had several people offer to do just that. I've had a couple of friends point out though, that raccoons quickly turn into rotten monsters. They don't do it just to be bad, but they're wild animals and just don't merge well into civilized living.

Matt made another stop by Freya's school with this little guy, and this time the kids got to touch the animal. They didn't hold it (it had damned sharp claws), but they got to stroke its fur. It was a HUGE hit. And from there, Matt took it to the rehabber where it joined a litter of four other rescued raccoon babies. It'll stay there until it's about a year old, then will get released back into the woods. Hooray for a happy ending to the story!

It's a little after ten o'clock on Wednesday night, and Matt just left the house to go out to Kuna to rescue 8 baby barn owls. We've had some crazy high winds lately, and evidently some folks were working on cutting down a storm-damaged tree when they saw an owl fly out of it. Shortly afterward, a baby owl unsuccessfully attempted to fly out too. (I'm not sure whether it's okay or not, sorry.)

They got ahold of good ol' Matt, and he was thankfully able to get in touch with Fish & Game's primary avian rehabilitator, who gave him some pretty good advice about transporting the baby owls around. Since it sounds like they're barn owls, the rehabber said that there's a pretty good chance that there is a range of ages amongst the hatchlings. I guess barn owls lay eggs over a period of time, so some of them may be almost ready to leave the nest, while others are likely much younger. Interesting, huh?

The rehabber has agreed to take all the babies--he's pretty sure he'll actually be able to place them one or two at a time in other barn owls' nests and the foster kids will get adopted into the rest of the group. But I'm hoping that Matt will bring them home tonight. The rehabber lives all the way out in Middleton, and it's getting late. And I'd LOVE to be able to see these little babies and show them to Freya in the morning.

Stay tuned--maybe I'll have some pictures to share with you all soon.

When my friend Jodi invited Matt and I to come up to her neighborhood for a fundraiser with a hillbilly theme, I immediately said yes. After all, I grew up in Garden Valley surrounded by hillbillies of a sort. The fundraiser supports a program called Casting for Recovery, which is a program that creates fly fishing retreats for women going through or surviving an experience with breast cancer. Pretty cool, huh?

So Jodi puts on this party with an entire roasted pig, music, hillbilly games and a costume contest. I don't go to many costume parties, but I really wanted to be good at this one. I got to wondering what would be an original hillbilly costume. Overalls and the like are pretty easy, but I wanted to be extra creative. I tried to think of famous hillbillies, and I realized there was a perfect couples' costume that Matt and I could pull off:

Sarah and Todd Palin

I got a wig and glasses, a Wasilla Pit Bulls t-shirt, and Matt went with a First Dude t-shirt and an Arctic Cat baseball cap. We wore matching camo pants and hiking boots. (I decided to go for Wilderness Vixen Sarah, rather than Campaign Trail Sarah. It was more comfortable.)

While we didn't win the costume contest, I was taken aside by the wife of the first Democratic congressman Idaho has had in a long time, and told that we were her favorite costume. Then we went on a good long tear about Sarah Palin and what a half-wit she is. As Mrs. Congressman said, "She's comedy gold, man, comedy gold." And I replied, "Let's just hope she's the Republican candidate for President in 2012."

Maybe I'll get a job as her double.

I'm home today with Freya, who is dealing with a head cold and a fever. It's been quite a cuddly, snuggly day. (Which no doubt means that I'll wind up with the crud myself soon.) We've been sitting together on our usual chair, and she's watching Toy Story 2 right now. She just wrapped one of her dress up scarves around her neck and then around mine and smiled at me.

In the background was playing, "When She Loved Me," a song Sarah McLachlan did for the Toy Story 2 soundtrack:

When somebody loved me, everything was beautiful
Every hour we spent together, lives within my heart
And when she was sad, I was there to dry her tears
And when she was happy, so was I, when she loved me.

Moments like this just wreck me anymore. It seems like in just the last few weeks, I can see her growing weeks older with every minute that passes. Before I know it, she'll be in her teens. I know we'll still be close, but I won't have her asking me on the way home from school every day, "Mama, when we get home, will you snuggle me?"

On the other hand, a dear friend has told me that with his son and daughter, every age just kept getting better and better. They all had their unique challenges, but they also had their unique joys.

So.

May we always love each other...to infinity and beyond.

I just wanted to show you all what I got for Freya--it arrived in the mail today, and I am convinced it is perfect genius. If the Nobel Prize was given out for designing kid stuff that makes sense, this would be it:

The Boon Animal Bag

This little doo-dad is essentially a bean bag cover, and you stuff all your kid's stuffed animals in it. That forms the cushy part, and so they have a seat. It's covered in a nice, soft fur of its own, and then there are all these kind of transluscent panels in it (which are also the zippered openings through which you jam the stuffed animals) where your child can see their critters and have easy access to whatever one they want.

The other good thing is that this sucker holds a LOT of stuffed animals. We put every single one of Freya's in the main compartment, including at least four of them that were the same size Freya is, and there's still room in the foot-rest. I could probably also pack even more in the main compartment.

While it seems a little bit pricey at first blush, have you priced bean bags lately? And this has the amazingly great feature of corralling all your child's beloved stuffed animals--that she never plays with, but could never bear to get rid of.

I give it a huge thumbs up!

Matt, Freya, Matt's folks and I all headed out to Sawtooth Winery for Mother's Day today. Each year they host a Mother's Day wine tasting event, including live music, clowns and face-painting for the kids, and about a dozen different wineries come out and share their products. Admission was ten bucks, and you got a commemorative glass and unlimited tasting for 5 hours. I'm sure it's a great way to be completely schnockered by the end of the day--we left after about 2.5 hours, so I didn't get to see the fall-out.

Not only that, but I'll be treated to TWO--count 'em--TWO massages from my regular massage therapist over the next few months. And best of all, at school Freya made me a frame out of popsicle sticks with a pink construction-paper mat in the center with the saying, "Mother's hold their children's hands for a while, but hold their hearts forever," and in the center is a picture of my beautiful girl. That's the kind of thing that is truly priceless, and I'll love it and save it forever.

And speaking of priceless, also knowing that you have not only successfully passed on your genetics, but your sick sense of humor feels absolutely great. The next two pictures will demonstrate that. Look closely at my little scamp in the background.

As you can tell, I took a few French classes about 20 years ago. As you can tell, it didn't stick with me all that well.

I figured I should report to you all that the baby mountain lion appears to have moved along and is not raising any cain...that Matt has been made aware of, anyway. A little while after dark the night we saw it, it came down from its tree and ran across the road, back up into the foothills. Matt hasn't received any reports that it has come back. So far, it's been quite a good outcome.

Matt's parents are in town for a few days visiting, and by "a few days," I literally mean a few days. Counting their travel days, they're here for about 6 of them. That's quite a knock-down from their usual 12 days or so. I think we finally got through to them in their itinerary planning. As a result, I'm going to try extra hard to not get stressed out by them. Matt's mother has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and while it's pretty mild at this point, I know from my grandmother's experience that it takes a lot of understanding and good-will for seniors to deal with it as gracefully as they deserve to. So I'll do my part.

How are the rest of you doing? Anything random you want to tell me about?

It's been a while since we've had a wildlife adventure around here--since we moved down from Cascade, so that makes it more than 5 years. Can ya believe it?

Anyway, there we were, minding our own business. We'd just bought a lovely maple tree for the backyard, and Matt and I were in the middle of getting it planted. His cell phone rang, and it was a call from the Ada County Sheriff's Office. One of the farther-flung subdivisions in the county reported a mountain lion in a tree very close to one of their community areas.

Matt put on his uniform, I loaded up Freya (because nothing says "capture a mountain lion" like a four year old bait does), and away we went. My friend Jodi lives in the neighborhood the cat was in, so I called her before we headed out and, being the game warden's daughter and all-around outdoor mama that she is, she was on her way out the door already. We figured out quickly where the cat was treed, because there was an absolute butt-load of people gathered around an open area looking up at a tree.

We walked out there, and here was this very cute little cougar. There were varying guesses as to its age, but no one was quite sure. Matt had called a counterpart, and that guy had rounded up one of Fish & Game's biologists with a tranquilizer certification, so they came out with a dart gun and a blow gun. Additionally, the state's carnivore biologist came out. After some extensive conferring and talking with the subdivision manager, the decision was made.

The manager came over to where the on-lookers (myself and Freya included) had been milling around and explained that the cougar was evidently a very young animal--likely about six months old. As the Fish & Game folks had explained to him, there were three options in this situation: one, they could tranquilize the cat and take it to a zoo; two, they could put the animal down; and three, they could get everyone out of the area and hope that the little fella would come down on his own and find his way back to mama. He said that he'd decided to take the third option. To the credit of the folks there, they started applauding and saying, "Yay!" Immediately, most of the crowd dispersed.

Freya and I took our leave, and Matt stayed there a while longer. Folks were still showing up to get a look at the kitty, and so the sheriff's office had a deputy staying there and managing the humans. The kitten just stayed up in the tree. Now that it is dark, we're hoping that he'll find his way down and won't be there in the morning.

Here it is--as Jodi's husband remarked, "A week from now, the story will be that it was three times larger than that and it was attacking people." Probably so, Elmer, probably so.