Tea for How Many?

  My dad drinks milk and sugar in his tea.  This is how I learned to drink tea.  More milk than tea. Plenty of sugar.  I had a cup like that with my dad last weekend.  My dad remembers how he likes his tea.  

Not sure he remembers me.  But I'm pretty sure he still loves me.

Thank Boo Very Much

Expressing a little appreciation to those who traveled the Ghost Town Trail with me. 

Thank you, Jake and Dan, for letting me take the lead.  Five different times. 

 Thank you, STP, for sticking with me. 

 And humoring me by riding back and forth over the bridge so I could get your picture.

Thank you, Nancyann, for driving a gazillion miles so you could bike 18.

And for the t-shirts.  Glad we happen to be in the same family.

Thank you, Uncle Ronnie.  For providing extra bikes.  And helmets.  And for organizing and taking the lead.  And for riding clean-up.  And for not jumping out of the woods and scaring me right off my  bike. We couldn't  wouldn't do this without you. 

Thank you sag wagon crew.   For hauling downed bikes and tired and pregnant bikers.

 For delivering lunch.

And driving us home.

And thank you, Uncle Michael, for being so good looking.  

It's not every day that you get to ride bikes with a cello player and a ukulele player.  With a handicapped lady and a pregnant lady.  With a Jedi knight and Captain America.

Truly, I am thankful.

Driving Myself Crazy

Drove myself to Denver today.  See this map?  All three white lines are Quebec Street.  Two of them are mono-directional. In opposite directions. The third Quebec street is the one I wanted.  And see E 40th Ave.?  It is also called Sandown Street.  This is good info--too late.
My GPS tried to help.  Arriving at destination?  Sure, if I wanted to park on the un-named yellow on ramp to I-70 E and jump a chain link fence with my suitcase.  Recalculating?  I think so.
A trucker tried to help by beeping his horn at me.  Unfortunately, (or maybe fortunately) I don't understand city horn honking. Believe me, if I knew where to go and what to do, I would have already been doing it.
A young woman thought it might be helpful to express her displeasure at my merging skills.  I hope her gesture made her feel better.  It wasn't particularly encouraging to me.
When I finally arrived at my hotel, (after circling it twice and a short unplanned drive on I-70 E) they let me park wherever I wanted. (Which I did like a champ!)  They processed my reservation without any problem.  And they offered me a warm chocolate chip cookie.  The beautiful young woman at the desk asked me how many cookies I needed.
One.  I just needed one.   Dozen.
So looking forward to the shuttle which will take me to class tomorrow am.

Lacking Wisdom

Gave the Goob my dentist appt. in August to have his teeth cleaned before he left for school. Because we had to cancel his appt earlier in the summer and they couldn't get him in again until September. He and the STP came home from the Tuesday appt with an appt to have his 4 wisdom teeth removed on Thursday.  

Seriously?  I think it is like a woman taking her car to the garage to have the oil changed and they convince her she needs new brakes and the transmission may be bad.  

Hey, we have this cancellation for wisdom teeth extraction day after tomorrow.  

Look, this kid has 4 wisdom teeth.  Lets take them out.

So they did.  The dentist commended him for being a great patient because the extraction wasn't easy. Filed that under 'things I never thought I would hear a dentist say about the Goob'.  He had to spend a couple of days swishing his swollen mouth and limiting his activity to video games on the couch. Big stretch there.
A little iffy to have your wisdom extracted a week before you leave for the university.  Just saying.

Really just recording this here, because I couldn't remember if all the girls had their wisdom teeth removed or not.  This blog is as close as I have to a medical record.

Sixteen Letters

First week of college and I have already received 16 letters from the Goob.  All of them in response to my text messages. I am trying not to be a helicopter mom, but after six days I needed to know if he was still alive.  So I just asked him.  Which ellicited a three letter response.  

 After a full week, I made contact again.   I used a minimum number of characters to share a little information to let him know we were carrying on life even in his absence, and I let him know we were still here to support him--in the form of a question, which garnered another 3 letter response.  

Late Saturday night I sent him a message just to let him know I loved him (and to see if he was staying up late).

His 10 letter response?  Love you too

Sixteen letters.  That about says it all.

The Envelope Please

Helping the Goob pack for college...

Me:  I'll put in a couple of envelopes and stamps.
Goob: Why?  Do you really expect me to write you a letter?
Me: (slight hesitation)  Umm...
Goob:  Did my sisters ever write you a letter when they went to college?
Me:  (more hesitation)  Umm, no.  (I put the envelopes back)
Me:  If you needed to...would you know where to find and envelope and a stamp?
Goob:  In a museum?

I might miss that boy.

Later in the packing process...
Me:  Are you taking your afghan that grandma made for you?
Goob:  Yes, I am.  I might take a picture and send it to her.
Me:  You will need an envelope.

You Might Be From Wyoming...

 ...if you have enough antlers in garage to spar with all the grandkids.  And the kitchen is a perfectly acceptable place to do it.

Adding to the Not A Sandpail List

 6.  Go tent camping at a Wyoming State Park.

 

7.  Wear matching head gear with some of my favorite people.

8.  Make cherry peach jam.

9.  Go fishing

 More than once.

11.  Just Dance.

12.  Picnic on the mountain.

13.  Kayak every chance I get.

14.  Ride the RZR.

15.  Feel the Christmas Baby move.

Think this needs to be my EBS list--

Especially Blessed Summer

Its Good to Have a Papi

We took the BGITW to the county fair parade in the little town that is the county seat.  The kind of little town where it is still acceptable to throw candy from floats and equally acceptable for small children to run into the street and gather it up by the handfuls.  The kind of parade that has tractors and firetrucks and political candidates in equal numbers.  And this one tractor pulled barrel train. Truthfully, I have wanted to ride in this since the first time I saw it.  But the main street of the county seat lined with crowds in the middle of the day is not where I was going to ride it.
Want to ride?  No, I say.
Do the kids want to ride?  I defer to their mother--the Queen of Queens.  No way, she says.

Come on BGITW, says Papi.
I'll drop them off at the park, says the tractor driver.
Where's the park? says the Queen of Queens with just a touch of panic in her voice.
And that is how the 5 year old from New York City ended up in the Big Horn County Fair Parade.  Proudly riding down Main Street, Small Town, Wyoming.  Throwing candy to less fortunate children who could only watch from the sidewalk.

There Are No Words

Last Weekend

I positively love this child.

She spent last weekend with me.  

We spent some quality mother/daughter time on the scaffolding.  We talked and we laughed.

 and we got just a little silly.  Because we both know the introduction to the backyard circus book. 

She encouraged me that we should make a porch swing.  And that we could make a porch swing.  And that we could make the good porch swing, as opposed to the simple porch swing.

And we spent some quality mother/daughter time with power tools.  We talked and we laughed and we maybe cried just a little.

Because no one sinks a screw head  like us.  But at the end of the long weekend we had a porch swing.

And a reminder of how much we like each other.  And a realization of how much we miss being together.

And then we took an ussie.  Cause we are great.

Perfectly Clear

No sand pail list this summer.  But I liked the idea of keeping a list of things I did.  Let's add these to the list:
1.  Kayak in a crystal clear mountain lake.
2.  Jump into a crystal clear mountain lake from a diving platform.
3.  Watch 4th of July fireworks reflected on at a crystal clear mountain lake.
4.  Photograph the sunset over a crystal clear mountain lake.
5.  Bring home a rock from a crystal clear mountain lake.

Spectacular

 I've seen some pretty spectacular sunrises and sunsets this past month.  I don't stop and take pictures of them all.  But sometimes they are particularly more spectacular than usual.  And then I have to roll down my window and snap a few pics.  This one was the sunrise on my way to work. At 65 mph.

 These were a sunset on my way to the late movie in the little city.

 The STP was driving, so I took about 35 pictures of this one.

 Okay, maybe I took closer to 50, but I deleted two of them.

 This was the sunset on the 5th of July at the lake.  I have some of from the 4th of July, but they aren't as good.

 The STP took pictures of the sunset on the 3rd of July and posted them to FaceBook.  Trust me, it was spectacular.  So at sunset on July 6th we were driving east through Montana and the STP asks about the sunset.  I glance behind me at the few golden edged clouds to the west and say, "I've seen better."  And then God Himself says, "Oh, really?  Game on."

And then every cloud in the sky turned some shade of pink.  Except the very tops of them which turned golden and glowing.  I mean 360 degrees of Montana sky.  And then the clouds touched the earth.  And the rain was pink and purple.  And then the sky turned every shade of yellow, orange, and red.

And then the sun dropped low behind the mountain and shot glory rays heavenward.  And finally the STP just pulled over so I could snap a few pictures.  And we were both laughing at my 'I've seen better' comment.

And then as the colors faded, the dark clouds in the east touched the ground again.  And God Himself sent a few bolts of lightning through the sky.  Bright bolts that split the sky top to bottom.
And by then I was giggling like a little girl.  Like a little girl who had just lost a tickle fight with her Dad.  Pinned to the floor, wiggling and giggling, forced to cry 'uncle'.  "Uncle Bob", I gasp in between giggles.
God Himself says to me, like He said to Job:
“And have you ever ordered Morning, ‘Get up!’
    told Dawn, ‘Get to work!’Do you know where Light comes from
    and where Darkness lives
So you can take them by the hand
    and lead them home when they get lost?
Do you have an arm like my arm?
    Can you shout in thunder the way I can?
Can you pull in the sea beast, Leviathan, with a fly rod
    and stuff him in your creel?
I give.  God Himself wins this one.  And He shares the victory with me.  Spectacular.

Flat Alex Goes to DLBC

Kodachrome

Kayaking at Dickey Lake, Montana.

Give us those nice bright colors

Give us the greens of summers

Make you think all the world's a sunny day.

Oh, yeah.