Sooooo, I've been quiet here for a looooong time. Soooo long that I guess I want to add extra ooooooo's in every word.

I do have a reason.  About a year ago I decided to get serious about something I've wanted to do for a very long time, which is to write a novel. So when I have free time, my writing energy goes toward that instead of here.

At this point I have novel that's being polished up and a fancy editor that's waiting to check it out early next year. I'm hoping to publish it sometime next spring.

Anyway, I'm starting a website under my pen name and will be updating that with fun stuff. I'm writing under the pen name JA Andrews and since it's more for my writing, I won't be throwing info about my kids up quite as often. I'm sure they'll show up sometimes, because they're hilarious, but not all the time.

So, if you're interested in getting emails about once a week from me of the same sort of stuff I usually post here, send me an email (or just reply to this if you get it in an email) and let me know. I'll add you to the list.

I won't send many emails. One a week IF I'm on top of things. And I'll let people know when I get my book up and running.

Thanks everyone, and hope you're all doing great!



A little added bonus for the day:
For those of you who love Star Wars and The Princess Bride, this made me laugh and laugh and laugh.

Highs and Lows - the Highs part

NOTE: After declaring in March (!) that I was reviving the blog I wrote a couple posts, then forgot to post them.  That means that now they are MONTHS old.

As Supreme Ruler of this blog, I've decided to publish them anyway.

Without further ado, one of the out-dated posts...

**************************************

High: Liam likes chicken

Liam has decided he likes chicken.  This is big.  Liam has, since he began solid foods, been a strict vegetarian.  Which is a problem because I'm not.  And I cook the food.  And I cook a lot of chicken.

Who doesn't like chicken?  Well, I'll tell you who.  A kid who ALSO doesn't like anything that anyone would say tastes like chicken.  Honestly, it's easier to tell you what he does like.

Me: Liam, what food do you like?

Liam (looking at me solemnly with HUGE brown eyes): I like LOTS of food, mommy.  I like donuts, red Doritos and Fruit by the Foot.

Me: Yes, that is a lot of food.  And healthy to boot.

This has nothing to do with what I'm writing, but it cracks me up.  

BUT, this week he decided he liked chicken.  Definite High.


Oh, and yesterday he almost got in trouble, then to smooth things over, he looked at me with those enormous brown eyes and said, "Mom, you are the BEST!  You are the BEST COOKER!  The best CHICKEN COOKER!" Here he even clasped his hands rapturously, "Which I love! Because I LOVE to eat CHICKEN!"



High: Ball gowns

Belle dressed up like Cinderella to go to see the movie Cinderella.  It was awesome.  I love that kid.

High: Owl hats

I grabbed a little knit owl hat at the checkout counter of a local thrift store for $1.  Liam has worn it almost non-stop since.

He even sleeps in it.

High - Big Boots.

This picture makes me laugh.  And cringe a little at the idea of broken, twisted legs.  But mostly laugh.

Highs and Lows

NOTE: After declaring in March (!) that I was reviving the blog I wrote a couple posts, then forgot to post them.  That means that now they are MONTHS old.

As Supreme Ruler of this blog, I've decided to publish them anyway.

This one in particular is out-of-date because the mammoth dog has gone to live with a family who has a hobby farm and other animals and all sorts of outdoor activity that he can participate in. Seeing as he was utterly uninterested in playing with children, he was bored at our house and now he has other animals to pretend he's in charge of.  So the dog is happier and I get to breeze past the enormous-bags-of-dog-food aisle at Costco with nary a glance into it. Win-win.

Without further ado, one of the out-dated posts...

*****************************

It's been too long since I posted Highs and Lows.


A Bloody Big LOW:

I haven't started swearing like a Brit, this low is actually bloody.

Side note: I'm not British.  My knowledge of British culture is from tv and movies.  As far as I know, Britain is made of up Downton Abbey, MI6, and the Duchess of Cambridge.  That being said, I have no idea of the severity of the word 'bloody'.  Am I Brit-swearing like a sailor? Or is it the equivalent of 'crap'? I expect an answer in the comment section from my two British readers - Tanya and Kristin.

Side note #2: This Low section deals with a lot of blood.  If you don't like blood (Mom), it might be best for you to just skip ahead to the Highs...

SO, the Low: My dog had a nose bleed.

Yes, a nosebleed.

What caused it?  No one knows.

The vet guessed 'kicked in the face by a horse.'

Ok.

Maybe.  He showed no other signs of trauma and let me jab him in the muzzle without doing anything.  (This is pretty normal, the not doing anything.  Because he's like Eeyore.)  So I'm skeptical, but there are horses next door.

Regardless of what caused it, I went out after lunch one fine day to check the mail and there was blood everywhere.  This is not an exaggeration.  All over the driveway, on the front steps and on the garage floor.

And one look at the dog revealed two big, black, bleeding nostrils.

It was like the set from a horror movie.

You know those scenes where some homicide detectives are discussing blood splatter patterns? I just kept wondering what they would make of this.  Would they get 'Newfoundland with a nosebleed and a tendency to shake his head'?

I hooked the bleeder up in the grass so I could scrub blood off my driveway and front steps.  

After all the scrubbing, I had to go inside and tend to little people and I figured that when I came back out the problem would have solved itself.  Because I don't know how to stop dog nosebleeds.  (The ever helpful internet recommends putting an ice pack on his nose.  Go ahead.  Try to put an ice pack on your dogs nose.)

But later - still bleeding!  This is when I chatted with the vet.  She asked questions and said, "That's strange...kicked by a horse?...both nostrils? Odd...wait 'til tomorrow and see."  So I did.

Then it got to be late evening, and STILL BLEEDING.

At this point we realized it could be a sign of heat stroke and, since he's basically a yeti, the 60 degree weather might be killing him.  So we got out the doggie trimmers and tried to trim off his thick, thick winter wool.  But he has as much surface area as the state of Connecticut.  Connecticut with a fur coat so thick it would make a polar bear jealous. And he was droopy and sad - even for him.  So we just trimmed his back (poorly, because we were losing the daylight) and put him in the grass for the night, since I didn't want a repeat of the blood-on-the-driveway incident.

There he was, a droopy, half-trimmed, nose-bleeding, black yeti.

The next morning - Oh, the humanity.  (The canine-ity?)

The dog had gotten himself free from his constraints and was lying on the back porch against the door.

And the blood was just everywhere. Because he was STILL BLEEDING.

We have a big porch.  It's multileveled.  And I swear he had dripped on every single inch of it.

This prompted a discussion with my husband about just how much blood a yeti can lose before it becomes a problem.  My feeling is that you have to be getting close at TWENTY HOURS of nosebleed.

With that Medman ducked out the door to work.  It's possible he's never been so happy to go to work.

What came next was an hour-long, grizzly version of a Cinderella scene. Not the go to the ball and dance with the prince part.  The scrubbing on hands and knees with a scrub brush and a bucket of bleach water part.

Except I swear Cinderella's animals helped her.  They sewed her a dress and freed her from a tower.

My animal was impersonating Jackson Pollock. With blood.  From his nose. On my porch.

The details--I can't even talk about.  Suffice it to say that this was among the most gruesome hours of my life.

I finished cleaning the porch, took a shower with the hot water set to "sterilize", got the kids dressed and went out to decide whether to try to get the 130lbs of bleeding, dead-weight up into my van and to the vet or just leave him to sail across the river Styx in peace.

When I went outside--NO blood.  None.  Just a happy dog shoving his drooly head at me and wanting to be scratched. And wanting to chase deer.

So...a day-long nosebleed then.

Ok.

The official theory is that he ate a mouse that had been poisoned by rat poison, which has blood thinner in it.

My personal theory is that he stopped bleeding because he ran out of blood, but his brain works so slowly he hasn't realized yet that this is a problem.


Highs?

After recounting this little tale I just can't bear move on to Highs and add pictures of my kids to this...so let's postpone those for another time.  (Sorry, Mom, if you skipped the bloody part just to land here...)

I miss my blog. And funny things keep happening.

I miss my blog.

I miss writing down those crazy/stupid/disgusting/funny things that I DON'T WANT TO FORGET but always do.  Because it's easy to forget the funny part of life.

Studies have shown that forgetting about the funny leads to early onset cantankerousness.

So, I'm reviving the blog.  Hopefully to write semi-regularly again, but I know myself well enough to know that I'm not promising anything.



Meanwhile, here are the funny things that popped into my head which I don't want to forget.



Funny Thing #1. My kids are loving Eye of the Tiger right now.  I have no idea why my husband decided to play it one day, but they are in love.  They beg to hear it all the time.  As well they should.

Liam loves to tell us about "things you've never seen".  Usually this is true because he tells us about things that are absolute nonsense.

So, while we're jamming to Eye of the Tiger he says with his usual passion, "I LOVE this song! I do! I LOVE it!  And there's another song you've never seen! It's called the F of the Dragon."

It took me a couple seconds to figure out what mental path his three year old mind had toddled down to get to from Eye of the Tiger to F of the Dragon, but when I did, I laughed hard.




Funny Thing #2.  We got a dog.  He's the size of a small bear and if you're wondering what he's like, he is a hairy, drool-y Eeyore.

Yes. That is exactly what he's like.  Here's a real picture...

The funny thing about the dog is that he refuses to do u-turns.  Refuses.  He'll walk into the kitchen, nose around looking for scraps - which of course he doesn't find due to my exceptional house cleaning practices - then, to leave he backs out.  

Even if he's turned himself so far around so he's almost facing the exit, he turns himself BACK around and drops it into reverse to leave.  

We make loud beeping noises while he does it because he's such slow, lumbering thing.  

I really want to call him short bus, but I feel as though that is derogatory to all the sweet children who ride short busses.  He's just like some sort of old folks home van driven by a geriatric patient who does 16-point turns to get the van out of a parking space at Walmart.  

For instance, to get to our garage you go downstairs then u-turn to the right.  The dog has been known to go down the stairs, turn left and wait patiently until someone opens up the garage door so he can back himself out.  

I feel as though I should get him rearview mirrors.  

Funny Thing #3. Not funny, but makes me happy:  It's March which means open burn season here. That means we get to collect the vast amounts of wood laying around in our, well, woods, and BURN it!  I love fires.  And I love when it's drizzly so the kids all throw on their cowboy hats.  Even my little girl who was sick so bundled up against the drizzle.  I love how everyone's hair smells like campfire for the rest of the day.

We're so very Montana.

I have to say I don't feel as though this post really lives up to the funny post I feel like it should, but I'm rusty.  And I'm happy to know that now that I'm writing again, my little brain will cling to those funny things until I can write them down.  

Hope everyone is doing well!  

You like Khgunk?

Ok, this is another post about Liam.

I blog because I remember the parts of my kids tiny years that I blog about better than the parts I don't.  And my blog is always heavily weighted toward the kid who's about 2 or 3 years old.

So I realize the blog is Liam-heavy lately, but he's two.  And two-year-olds are hilarious.  They get a bad rep, but that's just because they are passionate.  About EVERYTHING.

See?  Passionate about his "Sauce Boss" crown.

And it's easy to remember how passionate they are about not getting that toy they want.  But they're also passionate about funniness, and wonder, and encouragement, and kindness.  

And questions.

Liam and I were in the kitchen the other day when he looked at me with the blazing hot intensity of a million suns and said, 

"Hey!" He was using that oddly macho-man voice that he uses.  It's somewhere between a mafia hit man and a disgruntled, middle-aged, German businessman.  "You like khgunk?" 

I stared at him blankly.

He continues to look desperately at me and now points at me too.   With a crooked finger.  (Because he never points with a straight finger.  It's always hooked so you really don't know what he's pointing at.)

"You like kkhgguunk?!?!"

He was SO intense and I had SO little idea what he was talking about that I was feeling a bit taken aback.

Me: "Gunk?"

Liam: "No, Kunk!"

Me: "Kunk?"

Liam, looking aggravated, "No!  KKKUNK!"

At this point I'm starting to laugh because it doesn't usually take me this long to figure out what he's talking about.  So I start 20 questions.

Me: "Is Kunk a food?"  We are standing in the kitchen, after all.

Liam, looking at me like I'm stupid: "No."

And he gives me nothing more.  

Me: "Uh... is Kunk a....toy?"

He sighed here, as though it was exasperating to have to deal with such an idiot.  "No, Mom.  Kunk.  Smells yucky.  A Kunk."

Lightbulb ON.

Me:  "OOOOH!  A skunk!  I forgot you have something against starting words with 's'!  Skunk!  No, I don't like skunks.  Because they smell yucky."

And he grinned at me.  "Me no like kunk either." 

And he left. 

"Glad we had that talk!" I called after him.  But he was passionately on to something else. 

And it's a thing now.  Everyone in the family now hollers at each other, "Hey!  You like kgunk?"'

It's fun.  You should try it. 

'Nana Bed

I let Liam help me make banana bread.

Well, I started to make banana bread and Liam came running across the kitchen hollering, "I help you?  I help you make 'nana bed in that - wha- wha- wha- what you call that red ting?"

"My mixer.  And yes, you can help."

From that we should take away 2 facts.  

1. Liam is in the phase of verbal development when he stutters.  And it's cute.

2. I deserve a pat on the back because I just quadrupled the time it's going to take to make banana bread.  Maybe pent-tupled.  

But look how happy...

So I got my softened butter into the mixer and realized I was out of sugar.   Since leaving a two-year-old unattended by a mixer and surrounded by baking ingredients is stupid poor parenting, I unplugged it and moved EVERYTHING else out of his reach.  

Because that boy loves to add things to the bowl.   

Like picking up the big salt canister and shaking it over the bowl where a batch of cookies are mixing.  

I will never again grumble when that little salt chute is hard to open.   It's obstinacy saved our cookies.

But I digress.  

I cleared the counter, gave some sort of motherly warning/threat/ultimatum about messing with the mixer and scooted down to the garage.  

Where I found no more sugar.  

Which turned out to be ok, because since Liam couldn't reach any of the baking ingredients, the resourceful boy found crumbs, fuzz and an old, crusty piece of shredded cheddar on the floor which he squished deep into the soft butter.

Gross.

Obviously the whole making banana bread idea needed to be counted as a loss.  I threw away the defiled butter, wrote sugar on the shopping list and looked sadly at my over-ripe bananas.

Now, you could make a case that the moral of this story is that I need to keep a cleaner kitchen floor,  but I'm going to choose to take away from it the eternal truth that you can never trust that a two-year-old will not cause trouble.   

I've got the GPS - never need a map again!*

Driving to the grocery store this morning Belle asked, "Can I tell you how to get there?"

Me: "Sure!"

Ok, the exclamation point indicates more enthusiasm that I was able to whip up because this exact scenario plays out every time I drive the kids somewhere.  But I tried to sound encouraging.

Belle: "Ok.  You go around...THAT TURN RIGHT THERE!"


Wait - you should know the setting so that this story can reach its full potential.

credit: Ed Suominen

To get from our house to the store (or anywhere else we go) we drive:

• 2 miles along a winding forest road which has approximately zero side streets. 
• Turn left onto the highway. This is the only turn.
• Drive along the highway through pretty valleys and forests for 10 miles to town. Again, minimal side streets.
• Every single thing we do in town is actually on that highway.

So when Belle was yelling "THAT TURN RIGHT THERE!" she was not in fact telling me where to turn, she was referring to the winding turns of the road itself.

This continues almost non-stop.

"TURN!! TURN!!
"DON'T DRIVE OFF THE ROAD!"
"DON'T BONK THAT TREE!"
"TURN HERE!"

As you can see, it turns into more of a driving lesson than actual directions.  And maybe you can see why I hesitate just a moment before saying "yes" to someone wanting to holler "directions" at me.

We get to the highway and she says (calmly for once), "Turn here."

Me: "Right or left?"

Belle, looking and pointing left: "Um....RIGHT!"

Me: "Nope. That's left.  Remember, you write with your right hand.  Write-right.  Easy to remember.  Which hand do you write with?"

She tentatively raises her left.

Me, laughing: "Never mind.  I'm turning left."

Belle: "Now... GO STRAIGHT!  NO!  TURN HERE!!!"

All of this is once again referring to the turning of the road itself.

And as if that weren't enough, now that we're on the highway, every 45 seconds or so Liam shouts, "CAR COMING AT US!"

He's hollering about that car driving calmly and safely in its own lane of traffic headed the other way.

Belle:  "AND TURN AGAIN.... NOW THE OTHER WAY!!!"

Liam:  "AHHHH!  CAR COMING AT US!"

Belle:  "Straaaaaaaight...NOW TURN!!!"



If you had only an audio copy of our trip, you might think it was a bit more exciting than it really was.


Half way to town (which is a whole 5 minutes into her directions) Belle stops, clearly exhausted, and sighs.

"You know what mom?" she says, "If that car in front of us is going to the store, just follow them.  And if they aren't....um...then just find a different car and follow them."

*quoted from that funny little lost car in Disney's Cars.

Love Hurts

I'm just going to skim over the fact that I haven't blogged in six months.  Let's just pretend we just chatted last week, ok?  Ok.

******

Yesterday Belle convinced a butterfly to land on her finger.

Never-you-mind that I had told her a hundred times that butterflies are scared of people and will try to get away.  Especially from little girls who run shrieking after them.

She did it.  It sat on her finger while she walked all the way across the yard hollering for everyone to come see her and the butterfly "who is getting used to me!  I think he really likes me!"

Sure enough, there he was, perched prettily on her little index finger as though she were Princess Aurora.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wwarby/

"His front legs are not sticky," she explained patiently to me, "but his back legs are.  That is how he stays on my finger, even if his front legs slip off."

???

I'm no butterfly expert, but it seems like all their legs should have the same amount of stickiness.

Then she turned so I could see the back of it.

Oh.

"Honey, is this the butterfly you caught before in the net?"

"Yup!" she answered positively beaming.

"The one whose leg got pulled off?"

"Yup!  But he's perfectly fine!  I knocked a chunk of his wing off too, but he can fly perfectly! And he loves me!"

And I couldn't.  I just couldn't sit by and let this continue to be so cute.

Because what she had called the "sticky back legs" was really butterfly guts that had oozed out of the missing leg socket, glueing the poor creatures rump to her outstretched finger.

Ew.

To my credit, I didn't actually say "Ew."  Although I won't rule out the fact that she might have seen it written clearly on my face.

I tried to explain what was going on and suggested she might want to go put the poor amputee on a soft piece of grass and come wipe the bug guts off her finger.

Belle's deep love of the butterfly faltered slightly while she tried to get the ridiculously sticky innards off of her skin.  But then she tracked the little guy down again and tearfully chased it across the yard yelling her goodbyes and declaring her love until the insect hobbled - or whatever the airborne form of hobbling is- out into the forest.  Probably to die.

Wait, is a butterfly an insect? Hold please...googling... Well, yes. But funnily enough, things are insects partially because they have six legs.   So, I guess his insect status is now a little iffy.

Good thing he has Belle's undying love as wind beneath his now injured wings.

A worm by any other name would still be...a caterpillar.

Liam has a stuffed caterpillar.

See:

He is fond of it.  Originally it was given to Dalton as a gift from his sweet friend, Gus, but somehow it's been handed down to Liam.

I've only had moderate success in convincing my kids that this is indeed a caterpillar.

It's always called a worm.  Whatever name it goes by, it's soft and squishy and fuzzy and Liam loves to sleep with it and carry it around.

One day, while trying to distract Liam from whining, or crying, or just being two, I asked him, "What's your worm's name?"

I didn't really have any curiosity about this - his name was going to be Wormy.  Because that is how my children name everything. Dogs are Doggy, fish are Fishy.  Even the moon is Moony.

Liam considered his squishy, little, stuffed worm and said seriously, "Name is Crunchy."

Me:  "Crunchy?  You named your soft...squishy....worm Crunchy?"

Liam, decidedly: "Yup.  Is Crunchy Worm."

And I laughed and laughed and told Liam he was weird, but in a good way.

And I vowed to make that name stick.  Because it adds joy to my day to call it Crunchy.

But then, a few days later he was in full nonsense-word mode (which I'm sad to say he reached earlier than the others.  I dearly wish he was fully coherent in regular English before he started loving nonsense words...) and was pretending his worm was a light saber, of course.

I said, "Is Crunchy Worm a light saber?" (Because I am that good of a conversationalist.)

Liam said, "No, not Crunchy.  Name is ... Booby!"

I snorted because isn't it unfortunate when nonsense words turn out to not really be nonsense?  I'm sure he's never heard the word booby, so I decided to try to shift things a bit in the hopes he didn't remember exactly what he had said.

Because having his favorite caterpillar be named Booby Worm was just too weird.

So I said, "His name is Poopy?"

Stop judging me.  I don't know how Poopy is much better than Booby.  There's no script for these things, people.

But he looked at me like I was an idiot and said very pointedly and with very deliberate pronunciation, "NO. Name is BOOOO-BEEEEEE."

And I was at a loss.  So I just let him walk out of the kitchen making Jedi noises and swinging Booby the Light Saber Worm around.

But you can bet your boobies that I was not letting that name stick.

In fact, like any good mother I decided to pretend that conversation had never happened and bent all my energy toward reinforcing the name Crunchy.

And I'm glad to say, I win!  Booby is a thing of the past and the soft caterpillar is officially Crunchy Worm.

Then yesterday, in an unexpected twist, Liam gave Crunchy his own Pringles container to live in.

"Mommy, this my friend.  Right here. Is Crunchy Worm."

Liam didn't bother to finish the Pringles before adding the worm, so I'm happy to report that today, Crunchy is probably a little bit crunchy.

Cowgirl Up

It's possible that I need to cowgirl up a bit since I live in the wilds of Montana now.

Fine, it's not technically the wilds, but it's quite a bit more wild than anywhere I've ever dwelt.  And I love it.  Really, there's something freeing about living here.  I'm not sure what it is, but I keep coming back to the fact that I can breath here.  That sounds odd, I know, but it's true.  I find myself breathing deeply and satisfyingly.  Perhaps I have an inner cowgirl that I never knew about and she's happy to be living on the frontier.

Yes, I can hear you.  It's not REALLY the frontier.  There's a town 10 miles away with a grocery store, coffee shops and gas stations.  I have neighbors and (what sounds really un-frontier-y) a Home Owners Association.  But it's a frontier-ish sort of HOA.  It coordinates use of the wells that bring water to our houses and has rules like, "Don't shoot guns on your propery.  We all live too close to each other."  And "Don't keep your yard trashy with run down trailers and cars on cinder blocks."

Ok, those may be my paraphrase of their rules, but really it just keeps the couple dozen houses in our little community being nice-country instead of trashy-country.  So I'm good with it.

Back to the point.  Cowgirling up.

First I'd like to point out:



The ways I've already cowgirled up.  


1. I've become like Paul Bunyan.  You can call me Paulina.

We have a wood burning stove in our home - just like every other house on the frontier.  We also have baseboard heating, but it was pretty obvious from the smoke above all the other homes that we were the only ones not using our stove to heat our house.  Since we had a woodshed with a bunch of chopped wood in it, we got a chimney inspector to come out and check out the stove and chimney that hadn't been used in several years, got the 'all clear' and started burning wood.

Can I tell you how cozy it is to have a little toasty stove in the computer room?  Right now it's behind me burning cheerily.

This is not the corner of my room.
Mine's has a carpet of wood splinters that I need to vacuum.
And I don't have a TINY dog the size of my shoes.

And how does this make me lumber jack-ish? Because most of the wood outside is too big for the stove, so each day I head outside... through the snow...with my ax...to the woodshed and chop them down to size.

Aren't you impressed?

You wouldn't be if you could see me do it.  Jason can do it with style.  He chops with authority.  Like a flying scissor kick to the wood.

Mine's more like a slap.  A hard slap.  Maybe a backhanded slap.

But still. I chop wood, people!  And even if I don't look quite as cool as Jason, I get it done.


2.  I make bread.

I know, this isn't very unusual and the reason I make bread is because my hubby gave me a Kitchenaid mixer that does all the kneading for me.  But I have made dozens of loaves from scratch since we moved.

This is sort of a lame point, but I couldn't just have ONE reason why I have already cowgirled up.


Why I still may need to cowgirl up a little bit more:

1. What to do with the trash?

We're too rural for trash pickup, but there are places around where there's a dozen dumpsters and you can dump your trash there whenever you want to.   Before it got cold I was wondering how best to deal with stinky trash.  My ideal answer is to put it in cans outside, but I can't because there's too much wildlife (see next point) and sticking it straight in my car would make the car stink, so it was stinking up the garage while I continually forgot to take it to the dumpsters when I went into town.

Anyway, I was at a little gathering of homeschool families and I asked someone what they did.  They just sort of looked uncomfortable and then mentioned the dumpsters that I already knew about.

Finally one mom said, "I dunno, we just burn ours."  Everyone looked relieved and nodded.

Apparently they just have some sort of trash container thingy and they just throw it all in and burn it.  Just whenever they want.   Willy nilly.  I'm still nervous because in Oregon we tried to do a little campfire (in our portable grill!)  and the neighbors called the fire department to report it.  Guess cowgirls don't worry about that sort of thing because no one else around here cares.

We don't have any trash burning container thingy though, so I'm just becoming better at using the dumpsters.  Maybe next summer when it's nice out in the evenings we'll all head out nonchalantly and burn the day's trash.



2. Hide the evidence

There is a good deal of wildlife around here.  Lots of low-on-the-food-chain animals like deer, so there are also some of the I'm-above-deer-on-the-food-chain animals.

In particular we've had some sightings of mountain lions nearby.

A few weeks ago one ate a dog a couple properties away.

Oooh! That's another thing our HOA does.  The secretary calls to warn us when there's a mountain lion in the area.  In fact that's really the only reason we've talked to her  She always begins with, "Well, you shouldn't let your kids out to play unsupervised, we've spotted another cat in the area..."  (I would like to note that I feel as though "cat" is a bit of an understatement, even if technically correct.)

*********

Can we take a moment to discuss the mountain lion?  The first time we heard there was one in the area I kept careful watch on my kiddos and kept an eye back under the trees in the forested part of the property.

Because, yikes. Even surrounded with cheery yellow flowers.

Then, we googled mountain lions, and do you know what???  They're in the TREES, people.

Yes, they climb trees and lurk there.  Seeing as I'd been walking around under a LOT of trees, keeping my eyes peeled on the ground for mountain lions, that made me feel a little creeped out.  

Especially because that whole camouflage thing that animals have going?  It really works

One day I was out chopping wood and admiring the world around me.  I was almost done when something moved right next to the woodshed.  It was a buck. Antlers and everything.  

Seriously?  How long had that big animal been right there? They're practically invisible when they stand still.  

Does anyone think I'm actually going to spot the mountain lion before he pounces on me from a tree?  

No.  

My only hope is to try to slap him with my ax before he kills me.  

****************

At the same homeschool gathering I was mentioning to one of the moms that I wasn't sure what to do if I saw the mountain lion.  Is this something for the police?  It seems a little heavy for an animal control officer to deal with.  Do I call the forest service?  After all they are the ones in the paper that are always trapping and releasing troublesome bears.

This woman looked at me with a little "Oh, poor city girl" look and said, "I'm more of the shoot it, bury it and shut-your-mouth kind of girl."

All the other moms nodded.

Right.

They did offer to come over and shoot it for me, but I'd have to help them bury it and be part of the keep-your-mouth-shut group.

So I guess if there ever is a mountain lion on our property (and if I'm cowgirl enough) I'll have to shut my mouth about it and you won't hear about it here... Sorry!

Part 2: Where We Are

Last time (so long ago it is all but forgotten...)I wrote about Part 1: Where We Were, so now it's time for where we are.

Oooh, except I need to tell one little tale about How We Got Here.  

Part 1.5:  How We Got Here

The move to Montana was weirdly smooth.  If you remember our pukefest move to Oregon, you may recall that it was not smooth.  Slimy, yes.  Smooth, no.

But this time was different.  

Between what history will refer to as The Great Purge (again, a whole different sort of purge than the last move...) where I did my best to empty our home of possessions before we moved and having several weeks more than we had expected to pack, we were in great shape.  

I could have pinned a picture of the inside of our moving truck to Pinterest and it would have gone viral.  It was that good. 

There was really only one possible glitch: the tow dolly. 

The tires on Jason's pickup were at the top edge of the approved size so there was a chance it wouldn't fit on the tow dolly behind the truck.  

No big deal, said we.  If that happens we'll just do a switcheroo and I'll drive the pickup and we'll tow the minivan.  

And of course, because that was the ONLY possible glitch, that is what happened.  

The truck fit width-wise, which I was excited about, but those strappy things that actually hold the truck onto the tow dolly were about 8 inches too short.  And that seemed significant.  

So we went through the rigmarole of moving all the things Jason had safely packed into his truck and crammed and smooshed and wiggled them into all the available space in my van.  Jason put the van on the tow dolly.  And it fit!  Hooray!  I even checked the strappy things and they fit beautifully.  

Then there was a strange clunking noise and when I looked at Jason he was just staring at me through the van window.  

I was looking around at the wheels and the tow dolly and wondering why he wasn't getting out when I realized what that clunk had been.  

Turns out my van rides low enough to the ground that if you tried to open the doors they hit against the side of the tow dolly. 

And the kids and I laughed because it was funny that Daddy was stuck in the van.  

Except it turned out that he really was stuck.  Neither front door would open.  Neither side door had enough room to open.   He was completely barricaded in the front seat by all our possessions. If he opened the window and climbed out, there was no way to put the window back up. Same problem with the sunroof.  

So many openings and no way to get out.

I kept laughing, but Jason wasn't laughing quite so much. 

So the final answer was he'd just have to climb out the back. Through the 6" gap between the TV box and the ceiling and through the gauntlet of the rest of our junk.  While we laughed but he did not.

Good times.  

The kids still randomly say, "Remember when Daddy got stuck in the van?" and everyone has a good laugh.  

Part 2:  Where We Are

Besides that, we did arrive happily and uneventfully in beautiful Montana.

And it really is beautiful.  We live 10 minutes outside the city and are surrounded by mountains and woods. (Perhaps I shouldn't call it a city.  Let's say town.  Unlike the last small town we lived in, this one has no Walmart and no fast food.  Both of which I consider to be perks.  My kids have only had fast food twice since September 1st.  Liam has even stopped asking for nuggets and fries at every meal.  It's a beautiful thing.  And yes, apparently you have to remove the fast food to 60 miles away before I stop giving in at dinner time and zipping through the drive through instead of cooking...)

There are deer everywhere and the little fawns have grown a ton over the months we've been here.  They're often right up close to the house.

Even when there's a superhero right at the window.

There are the most beautiful woods - right on our property!  You should smell the air here.  It's like a spa treatment for the lungs.

We also have the World's Creepiest Stump.

We wanted to put red glowsticks in the eyes for Halloween...but that stump is a ways out there.  In the forest.  In the dark.  Did I mention we have a young mountain lion in the area?  That eats pets at night?  And near Halloween there were bears? So let's all just imagine how cool it would have looked......  Ooooh!  Creepy!  Right?



And the stars.  Oh my heavens, the stars!  Just picture the most stars you've ever seen then multiply that by 1,000,000.  Um, you still better double that.  There are that many.  It's gorgeous.  So gorgeous that it makes highly educated people stand shivering in the cold, craning their necks up and saying, "Wow......ooooh......wow... so many.....wow....AHHH!  BAT!"  That last part was for the bat that kept dive bombing our heads.  Those things are so silent.  And flappy.  And REALLY hard to see in the pitch dark.

The Milky Way?  It really looks milky.  Seeing as the real reason I did rocket science in college was because I like looking at stars, not because I want to design space craft to go visit them, I'm in heaven.  Or maybe just below the heavens.

So hello from beautiful Montana.  Come visit us!

Where we've been and where we are

Ok, four blog posts in 2013 is pretty sad.  Especially since I have plenty of things to blog about.

Let me 'splain.  No there is too much.  Let me sum up.

• We lived in Oregon.  
• We moved to Montana.

Hmm, it is as I long suspected - summing up does not make interesting reading.

Unfortunately, if I put everything I want to say into one post it will be more of a novella.  So I think I'll do this in at least two posts (which will probably still both be long...).

Part 1: Where we've been and Part 2: Where we are.


Part 1:

Where we've been - Geographically

We spent 11 months in the lovely but wet state of Oregon.  It was nice.  When the sun shone it was very nice and there are good things to remember, especially from the sunny summer.

Geographical Place #1: Mt Rainier

Oregon and Washington are peppered with volcanoes. You'll just be driving along a highway, minding your own business when someone will gasp because suddenly, over everything else, there looms a silent volcano.

But we all know that it's the silent ones you have to watch.

They are simultaneously mesmerizingly beautiful and incredibly creepy.  Because you know they're just biding their time until they become this...

Geographical Place #2: Mt. St. Helens

This volcano is noticeably less beautiful than the last, eh?  That's because one sunny spring day 30 years ago it blew up and destroyed everything around it.  And they tell you that while you're standing at the base of it.  Things like, "The point where you are standing was incinerated 2.3 seconds after the main eruption.  Here are a bunch of creepy informational posters about all the people we know who died because the mountain suddenly killed them."

Thankfully the semi-morbid nature of the information was balanced by the fact that there was a plate on the floor attached to a seismograph that the children were supposed to stomp on.  "As hard as I can?!?"  Yes honey, stomp away.  Watch the needle move.  Or just stomp, because we all know stomping is more fun than watching needles.



Geographical Place #3: The Pacific Ocean
We did get to go to the beach quite a few times.

Dalton had fun in the waves.

In the ice cold waves.

I tried, but the ocean water was freezing the blood in my feet and then trying to send blood ice cubes back up my legs into the rest of my body.  I'm married to a doctor and I've watched enough TV to know that once that ice-blood reached my heart I was going to die.  I had to go back onto dry land.  For the good of my children.

Thankfully Belle and Liam wanted nothing to do with the water and someone had to supervise them.

Belle was in love with her swimsuit.  You'll notice that she's the only one not fully clothed.  I guess Belle's blood is unfreezable.

Liam often found deep sand pits that other beach-goers had dug.  Yes, I know his eyes are closed.  It's challenging to photograph a hyper 2-year-old at the beach.  This was the only picture out of 46 of them that even showed his face.  Picture big brown eyes and there ya have it.

And look!  Even a picture of Jason and me.  Unheard of, I know.  That bright light above me is my halo.  Those things just don't photograph clearly.

Three tiny children...one big world.

Where we've been - Educationally

Educational Subject #1: Botany

We homeschool, so what do we do when summer gets a little boring?  Scour Pinterest for science experiments, pick the easiest one that requires minimal preparation, uses things from around the house and ends up with a pretty result.

Like dying white carnations by putting them in colored water.  How cheery are these?

image credit

These are some other family's carnations after a little time in the colored water.  People claimed to see colors starting within a half hour.  Hooray for quick gratification!

Listen up, kids, it's school time.  Flowers drink by sucking water up through their stems like straws!  Yes! Just like straws!

We bought carnations, made a gazillion different cups of colored water and waited expectantly.

And waited...

And waited...

...FOR DAYS.

And here you go!

What?  Can't see the colors?  Allow me to zoom in...

There!  Yes, there!  Blue!  Please tell me you can see the blue.  (Confession time.  That blue is seen by zooming in AND adjusting the color saturation in Photoshop.  But c'mon, I can't leave this as a total science fail.)

If we're handing out awards to the most colorful flower the real winner is the short one that actually fell under the yellow water.  Yes it's soggy but at least it's not white any longer.

So now my kids probably do not believe that flowers drink through their stems.  They clearly get water into themselves by being dunked.


Educational Subject #2: Zoology 

We went to the Wildlife Safari which is an enormous drive-thru-zoo.  It's like a 2 hour road trip through the African, Asian and American wildlands.

The highlight was getting to be this close to a lion.

 

(See the car window in the picture?  I think Jason could have reached out and touched her, although he declined my dare to do so.)  Those are some serious creatures.  She looked so beautiful.  But we kept saying how if she looked straight at us and snarled, we'd have floored it.

There were also bears in ponds...

..and giraffes on roads.

But the real danger in the place is this fellow.  

I'm not kidding.  The lions brooded, the bears lolled, the cheetahs paced, the tigers looked regal.

This peacock?  It walked up to our car, circled us, then chased and attacked us.  Smashed its deceptively delicate-looking head right into the taillight of my new minivan and cracked it.  Punk.  We actually had to drive away from it faster than the 10 mph we were supposed to be driving before it would leave us alone.   I would have plucked out his fancy tail feathers and made the kids turn them into quills as an art project if I'd known he'd damaged my car.  Or just tossed him to the lion.

Ok, that wraps up our summer.  Thanks for readin--OH NO, WAIT!  I forgot one thing.


Where we've been - Metaphysically

The house we lived in in Oregon was never homey.  Never.  We just didn't like it.  It was echo-y and cold and hollow and the whole time we were there we just felt sort of disgruntled with it.

Our second to last day there we were having dinner with the neighbors and they referenced, "Well, you know...with what happened in your house..."

Um, no.  We don't know.  What happened in our house?  Our house that looked like someone was fixing it up then at some point just whipped off the rest of the work and left it as is?

Turns out the owner's son was living there and fixing up the house...

...before he killed himself in it.

Really neighbors?  We lived there for almost a year and NONE of you brought up what was probably the most shocking thing to happen on the block since...I don't know...since Lewis and Clark came through?

So, if you don't believe in bad juju magumbo you can just be surprised that NONE of our chatty neighbors referenced this event.

But if our lives do leave echos in the places we live, then you can hope that the (painfully) noisy laughs and squeals and hollers of our children which happily echoed through the house for 11 months redeemed it a little so that the next residents might find it more homey.

Tune in next time for Part 2: Where we are.  

What's in a name?

Yes, you may have noticed a little bit of a lag in blogging lately.  And yes, a "little bit of a lag" may mean that I've basically dropped it completely over the last, um, year.  I have excuses, but only a few are good and none are interesting to write about, so let's just pretend I've haven't ignored this little patch of the inter-garden for the past season, chop our way through the weeds and move on.  I'll try to get back to posting regularly, but for now, here's a quick snippet.

To ease back into things I just must record some things both Dalton and Belle have said recently that have made me laugh more times than I can count.

One day all of us were outside playing in the hose and Jason kept teasing Dalton and soaking him. In an effort to tease Jason back, Dalton yelled, "Daddy, you are a moron with a cow!"

Which made Jason and I die laughing.  First of all, we'd never heard him say moron in his life.  And then "with a cow"?  What?

So we joked about it for a little while.  Well, actually we laughed and laughed and Jason and I called each other morons with cows for about the next, um, couple days.  But we did pull it together and after finding out Dalton didn't know what moron meant, we explained the word and that he shouldn't call people that and don't use words you don't understand.  You know, all the other good parenting things we had to say in an attempt to make up for our first response.


Which leads us to the conversation I had with Belle:

Me: "Belle, I know Daddy and I were laughing about it, but I don't want you to call people morons.  It's not nice.  Do you know what it means?"

Belle: "No."

Me:  "It means they are not smart.  That they are stupid.  So I don't want to hear you calling anyone a moron, ok?"

Belle shifting a little and looking confused:  "Well, ok, Mommy...But then what do we call the morons?"

And I died laughing and had to leave the room.

The glass ceiling

It was months ago when I posted about Belle's level of love for me compared to her dad.  I just can't compete.  The glass ceiling is real, people.   In our house that ceiling lies right below the level of her father.


Exhibit A: Our conversation while I was putting her to bed.

Let the record show that I was being kind and snuggling with her even after she was already supposed to be in bed and we'd been having a lovely time talking about Winnie the Pooh.

From a recording of Winnie the Pooh: "Oh, Bear!" said Christopher Robin. "How I do love you!"

Me, giving her a hug: Oh, Belle! How I do love you!

Belle, smiling back sweetly: Oh, Mom! How I do love Dad!

Jingle Belle

This post is preemptive in case you ever happen upon me and hear me singing some nonsensical tune.

I am not crazy.

At least not in the sing-nonsense-to-myself sort of way.

These days I sing nonsensical things for one reason and one reason only.

Belle.

The girl has a future in composing pop music.  If pop music is still around in 2033, she'll be a millionaire.  She has SUCH a knack for inventing catchy songs.

Sweet
Her debut song was "We are friends together."  Those were the only words but the tune was so nauseatingly cute that I was sure she'd learned it from Barney.  But no, apparently she came up with the tune and phrase in her own little pink brain.

I would putter around the kitchen crooning, "We are friends....together!"

Since then the words have gotten odder and the tunes much more catchy.


Quirky
One of my very favorites is the rolling romp of a song that goes, "And it's always NIGHT on the moon!"  Those are the only words again.  It just repeats.  In its peppy way.  And I often find myself tossing laundry into the dryer to the beat of it .

Besides, those words really make me laugh.  It was WEEKS of singing it before the inevitable happened.  Dalton, who I though had a pretty good grasp of the whole moon-earth-sun relationship, stopped singing, crinkled his nose and looked thoughtfully out the window.  Then he said, "Wait a minute.  Mom, IS it always night on the moon?"


Funny in a gross sort of way
The winner for downright weirdest is the one she made up while she was waiting for someone to come and assist her in finishing up her toilet.  After her usual sing-songy call of, "MOO-OOOMMMM!  I POO--OOOPED!" I came upstairs to find her on the toilet singing quietly, "There's no one here to WIPE me!  There's no one here to WIPE me!"

I almost want to video her singing these so you can get them stuck in your head too.  Because I'd love to not be the ONLY person perusing the cheese selection at the grocery store while singing, "There's no one here to WIPE me!"