Christmas gifts and reading

Christmas was good and the kids still enjoy their toys. In fact yesterday Kanga threw a birthday party for the doll she received. Tigger got TWO remote controlled cars (and they both use the same frequency so they can't be at the same time) and Angel has worn the wrap I gave her several times in the last week. I got some airsoft stuff (including a new automatic electronic gun) and while I haven't gotten out yet, I have been able to adjust my new gear and role play in the basement while everybody was asleep. Yes, I put on my camo and practiced changing mags, moving, and aiming. Dorky, I know, but I've learned that it pays to practice. I've also started reading two books that my mother got me: The Read-aloud Handbook, and Lyle's Law by Lyle Feisel. Mom told me that The Read-aloud Handbook was a big influence on her parenting. I can see it.

Mom read aloud to us a lot growing up. When I was younger I found it hard to sit still and pay attention for many of the books. I have vivid memories of two scenes from Fellowship of the Ring when she read that to us, but I know that I liked to move around and play on the floor while she read. Mom confessed that she was worried about me a couple of times and my apparent lack of commitment to reading. She stopped worrying when I discovered that you could get books about animals, planes, and guns. It was just a matter of finding my interests. She made efforts to find books that I liked and read them to me. The Belgariad and the other Eddings books were the start of many successful read alouds. Books were always a big part of our family, and still our. I'm glad that my daughter is an avid reader and I hope I can encourage my sons to the same.

Rain

I love Sandra Boynton's song "End of a Summer Storm" from her Frog Trouble album. I also like William Joseph's song, "Sanding the Storm." Both of these songs just invoke a good rain storm, with or without thunder and lightning. The drive in to work today was a persistent rain, not a drizzle or a downpour, just a stead rain with dark clouds and somewhat foggy conditions. A wonderful day. It will probably break before noon, but it reminded me of a dark and stormy night my freshman year of college.

I had a night class (GEOG 1000) on Tuesdays. I actually enjoyed the class, which made it easier to go. The professor was good and I liked the subject material. My dorm was a good twenty minute walk from the rest of campus, but I had no problems with it. I enjoy walking, day or night, sun or snow, doesn't matter. It had been chilly so I had worn a coat to class in preparation of my walk home. When I got out of class it was a night a black as pitch. The rain was falling heavily - although I wouldn't call it a downpour. The clouds were low and inky. There was no wind to move them. It seemed that light was being sucked out of the very air. I remember walking to the windows in the lobby of the Biology - Natural Resources building (where our class was) and looking out at the blackness that was the night. I then stuffed my coat in my backpack, took off my shoes and socks, and rolled up my pant legs. With nothing other than my t-shirt and jeans and carrying my shoes I set off for home. It was warm - because rain will actually heat the air, a fact I learned in that very class - and no one was around. My feet were tender I don't normally like to go barefoot, but I picked my way home, in the rain. And I enjoyed every minute of it. I have a distinct memory of following the lines of tar in the patched parking lot. I don't remember seeing anyone. I'm sure it's because no one else was as stupid as me. When I got home I took a hot shower and changed into sweats and relaxed. I haven't done anything like that since, but I often think fondly on that dark and stormy night, carrying my shoes, and enjoying the rain.

College memories

It gets to be late in the evening and I don't feel tired and I feel the need to stay up just because I am and not feel "the need" to go to bed. This is irrational. Don't get me wrong. If I have to get up in the morning I will make sure that I'm in bed by the time I need to be. The problem arises when it's not that time yet and I'm still up. I feel a need to fill the space. I had a roommate that would stay up to all hours watching TV. He didn't do it in our room, so I never had an issue with it, but I did start to wonder. I have always been a bit of a late owl but he was worse than me. I asked him once if he "suffered from insomnia." He replied that he didn't suffer from anything that he just slept when he was tired. I thought about that and while it did make sense, I also knew that sitting in front of a TV is not conducive to feeling tired. Once morning I woke up and noticed that he wasn't in his bed. My first thought was, "He doesn't get up early, so he must not have gone to bed yet." I was right. He stumbled into the room just as I was swinging my legs to the floor. I was still amazed. "You can't honestly tell me that you are just now going to bed." He didn't, he just collapsed on the bed and was asleep almost immediately. We had a class together that morning. We had a quiz in class. My roomie didn't make in time to take it.

Maybe the reason why I was thinking about old roommates is because we watched Monsters University this weekend. It was a good film that had some real character depth. I like the perspective on it and the way it fed into Monsters Inc - which I saw my freshman year of college. My cousin, a good friend and I would get out of class early enough to catch a matinee. We watched The One, K-Pax, Ocean's 11, and Monsters Inc on opening weekends that way. We liked Monsters Inc. so much that we went back with a larger group of friends the next day for an early showing. So we watched it twice in 24 hours. Great film. Anyway, watching Monsters University got me thinking about many of the different stereotypes about college. I think that I see through many of them because I work at one. Granted, there is plenty of things that may be accurate and I just don't see them. For the most part, I think that college is what you make it. Whatever you want to get out of it you will. 

Applesauce

In addition to enjoying the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints this week we put up 13 quarts of applesauce. It was a lot of work, but also a trip down memory lane. I have fond memories of helping my mom make applesauce using her hand-cranked processor she would let us turn the crank or use the plunger to push the boiled apples into the screw. 

The screw is designed to mush the soft boiled apple through the holes in processor while the skin and core get pushed out the end. It's a pretty slick unit and I was glad to be able to borrow it for our apples. We have three trees and we suspect that one is a Granny Smith and one is a gala, but we don't know what the third one is. We got about twenty pounds of apples and spent several hours in prepping and processing them. We had to use the bath canner as a stock pot because we didn't have anything else big enough. As soon as i lifted the lid of the pot and I could smell the apples i felt excited, the same way I felt when I was a kid helping out. Kanga helped us by mushing the apples down the processor. She did a great job, even when she got a gob of hot apple squirted on her face. Once we got all the apples processed we moved the stove to the garage for the canning part. I set up a table and we processed thirteen quarts, one bottle shy of two full batches. 

Again, it was a lot of work, but like my mother pointed out, you have a very real product left over. When we moved into this house and learned that we had fruit trees we were very excited. At the same time I was a little worried about being able to eat the fruit before it spoiled. I should also say that I was always nervous of eating fruit right off the tree. Mostly because I hate the idea of eating a bug. Berries, particularly raspberries, are nice in that regard. You can see if it's good or not immediately. I was really worried that we would have these trees and that the fruit would be wasted because of my hesitancy at eating it. I was also intimidated at the prospect of canning it. I remember what a process it was by asking my mother and was worried that I would do a horrible job. I'm glad that it worked out alright and in many ways the canning is easier than I thought. It's still a lot of work, but as my mom noted we have twenty three quarts of fruit that we grew ourselves. That is fruit we can use in the winter and fruit that we don't have to buy. I had to admit that sitting down to this...

was worth it. 

Remembering the sting

Today I posted the follow on Facebook:

I had just finished some sprinkler work this afternoon and was putting things away when I was attacked by a swarm of wasps. Luckily I was wearing a long sleeve shirt, but two made it through, stinging me, one on each arm. I yelled for my daughter to get in the house and stormed into the garage. There I found several more walking in circles because their stingers were stuck in my shirt. I beat them to their respective pulps with my leather hat and a roll of packing tape then scraped by arms with a tape measure to clear the two stingers. I went inside to check on my daughter and took her into the bathroom to show her what stings look like. There another wasp (from my leg?) made an appearance. I shooed by daughter out and shut the door. We battled to his death and I flushed his broken body down the toilet. Twenty minutes later I was downstairs and pulled something out of my pocket and another wasp came with it. Again, we battled around the room. At last I pinned him between a towel and a pillow and I punched him to death against the wall. His body too was flushed down the toilet. When my son wakes up from his nap I am going to get a wasp trap and spray. This cowardly attack against my family will not go unpunished! I've felt the sting of wasps before and do not fear it! Cower before me, you who wear the colors of yellow and black for your day has come!!

I'm not normally this adamant against wasps. In fact I'm normally quite calm and collected. This in no way means that I like them or even tolerate them much, but rather that if they don't bother me, I don't bother them. In fact, the nest that houses this particular swam is built into my shed and I've not done anything about it because it wasn't a problem - until now that is.

I've always been under the belief that if you act calm and cool around bees and wasps that they will leave you alone. This has been my experience before. While serving a religious service mission in Russia my partner and I were helping straighten metal fence posts when we disturbed a hive of wasps. Munoz, my partner, took off running before I even realized that I was surrounded by wasps. He screamed at me, "ASA!" when I didn't understand he switched to English. "BEEEEEEZZZZZZZS!!!!!" I still chuckle about his reaction as I looked up, said, "Oh" and calming walked towards him away from the nest in the post. Granted, that is not always the case. I found out that bumble bees with quite literally bite you when I was weeding a flowerbed and happened to be next to the bumbler's hole. I ignored him for a bit figuring that he was brushing against my ear but that changed when I felt a very distinct chomp. The wound actually bled and was there for two weeks. Not fun.

I like to think that my reaction to bees and wasps is due to desensitization because of a particular, rather traumatic episode when I was about seven or eight. Muscles, one of her friends, and I had just returned from swimming somewhere when we noticed that our neighbor's horses were up by our back fence. We grabbed a bag of carrots from the fridge and ran out to feed them. I was still wearing my eighties bathing suit (short shorts) and I think I still had my towel. We fed the horses for a bit and then I remember screaming and running for the house. My mother was standing there in the open doorway and she just let me barrel on through the dining room into the living room where I smashed into the couch and saw what was attacking me. A wasp fell out of my hair and landed on the couch right in front of my face. I remember screaming even loader (a feat that I'm sure surprised my mother). She mushed it with a dish towel and I felt her swatting the towel all over my body as I crouched there and sobbed. I remember saying a prayer and then I remember paramedics checking me over. I was fine. My sister and her friend looked to be in worse shape and they had only been stung a half dozen times compared to my full body acupuncture session. We figure that I had stepped on a hive that the wasps had built in the irrigation ditch behind our house.

Since then, I've mentally told myself, "I've been stung a whole lot. There isn't much fear for me now." With that said, when I saw the wasps stuck to my clothes I was quite irate and there was some shock akin to that time the wasp fell out of my hair onto the couch. But otherwise when I was stung today I wasn't afraid of the stings, I was really made. Livid might be a good word as well. Indignant may be the best one yet. I had kept my side of the bargain  I didn't disturb them and they attacked me! It wasn't until after I got in the house that I remember about that particular nest and then remembered that in my cleaning up from sprinkler work I did in fact send some major vibrations through the floor of the shed. So, it turns out I did disturb them. However, when you have small children who like to play in the back yard it is better that you get stung twice and get the drive to remove the nest than your kids suffer for your hands off approach. The traps been hung and I've got two new cans of wasp killer. Nobody messes with my family. The trick will be getting to the nest and doing so when they least expect it.....

Memories from Drivers Ed.

This weekend my family had their monthly get together. We met at my sister's new house by Park City. It's a nice area with great views and they found a very nice house. My wife and I were a little envious, but then we also have more than one grocery store within five minutes. I guess it depends on your needs and where you find work. We're very happy for them and enjoyed seeing everyone.

One thing that has become common at gatherings of people is to share the latest things they've found on line. Most often this is videos from YouTube, or some other site. As we all have our potable media devises this was easily done. In continuation of this social custom, I thought I would pass this one along.

I feel the need to explain my reasoning here. The biggest reason I share this is because this is what my experiences in Drivers Ed was like. I can't remember my teachers name at this point, but that may be a very good thing. Just like the teacher in the video it seemed like the purpose of the classw as to provide a way for teenagers to come to grips with their mortality and the "unnatural" ways of traffic and cars. It seemed that every week we went into class he would have a new story about how a girl killed a young child because she didn't walk around her car before pulling out. Or a group of teenagers who tried to beat a train and how only the driver survived and was haunted by the fact that he killed his three friends. Such stories were common place and it seemed like the teacher went out of his way to find them.

I also remember that all the drivers ed instructors were coaches. My was the tennis coach, but I had friends who had the football coach and he was known for his language. While it was nothing that wouldn't be found in a PG-13 movie now-a-days, it was always seen as somewhat humorous. I don't think I had any friends who would try to make him swear, but I did hear of students that did.

I thought I did pretty well in my drivers ed class. That was up until the test. I had done all of the "hard stuff" on the freeway and was actually just working my way through the blocks on my way back. I had just done the last item on the test and the teacher signed the paper when I noticed that I hadn't stopped for a stop sign. I screeched to a halt in the middle of the intersection and sat there cursing to myself and then pulled through. The teacher looked up, said, "If I hadn't just signed this, that would have failed you" and handed me the paper. My parents required me to drive an extra 500 miles with them before I could ask for the car. I like to think that I'm a fair driver, more defensive than offensive. And I am proud to say that I have never received a ticket and only been pulled over one for speeding.

Granted, that just means I've only been caught for speeding once.

Drive safe!