Delude Yourself...amen

It seems that there's not enough craziness in the world, so PBS is showing a bit of it this week. The Mormon show is on and my wife is spewing expletives at the tv over a Shiner Bock. What a hoot! I don't see how anyone can believe that some kids uses a seer stone in a hat and comes up with this crap.....then says that Methopendence Missouri is the garden of eden....oh, crap - you'd have to be a half-wit to buy this garbage. Sheeesh....you'd think they'd lump this stuff into the Abraham, Jones, or Hubbard craziness category, but it seems to feed on itself, a snowball of paternalistic mass delusion. Someday, folks will look back on societies of our age, and sadly read about all of the silly stupid things people of our day were duped into doing because of some crazy beliefs. Will society ever get over this superstition.... crap?

The LW and I went over to our local Y and joined tonight. I was just kinda rolling along with it - you know - yeah yeah, this'll be ok. We got our cards and got set up for an orientation on the computerized trainer system. The joy of this place really hit me when we set CP down on the floor of the Child Watch room with the two wonderful ladies that run it. There was a room full of little kids there. CP was sucked into the whirlwind immediately and began playing and enjoying herself. We were able to walk out of the room and she was perfectly fine.

Leaving the room, I didn't really know what was happening...it was disorienting and I just started to laugh. CP was safely in someone else's hands and the LW and I had some free time. It was amazing. Free time....free of worrying that we're bugging our friends by having them watch her. Free...that she was away from us, but still easily within reach. It's the first time we've put her in someone's hands who is not family, but a paid professional. Free.

Beautiful Garden

Just went out in the garden to log things down and found this while perusing the AP headlines. How can anyone in their right minds think that TerraCycle packaging looks like a Scotts product. You'd have to be nearly blind and completely unable to read. Sad stuff......they can keep their damned miraclegrow...my garden will grow without it.

New Sounds

I'm sure there's some teeth grinding racket in the fundie camps over this man's story. I feel for him and his wife and it's exactly what the LW and I had planned for and planned on doing if faced with a worst case situation. I remember the lovely wife telling me that if she was incapacitated that I should save her so that we could have another chance at making another little person together or helping another little person who doesn't have anyone.

In other news, CP has started making word sounds. Three in the past two days. Yesterday was toes and today was light and....at lunch...hat. Soon she'll be throwing the LW's wordy logic right back at her like a handful of peas.

Weekend Away

I spent this past weekend helping out with a motorcycle race in order to get my "work points". Everyone has to work their club's respective race in order to qualify for placement at the end of the year. Since riders can't race their club's event, it doesn't make sense for racers not to work. It was a long drive (almost 5 hours - each way) to and from Prescott Valley. I found Prescott Valley to be eerily similar to that strange place we called home for a year, Canon City Colorado. Strange strip/frontage road layout with wierd turn/no turn lanes, chain smoking hillbilly women, etc....

I had fun working the race, but the rest of the time it was just cold. Cold while bored followed by sleeping in a tent while cold doesn't make for a stellar weekend. I got to work on some folks that were there and it really made my afternoon fun. I got the usual comments while people were on the massage table from the homophobic fox news/dittodummy fan club that seems to inhabit this sport, but other than that, it was good.

I thought that I was going to hold out and eat a pancake breakfast there with the gang this morning, but I just could'nt stand to be away from CP and the LW any longer. Snuggling CP at the door was enough to wash a weekend's worth of dust out of my eyes.

More Teeth?

CP's a bit cranky this morning and I think that she has more bottom teeth coming soon.

This past weekend was full of gardening stuff. 3 garden meetings, one steering committee meeting, and a great potluck. We had a good time and CP got to visit with everyone. Things are growing well all over and the newest gardeners are learning by doing - the best way. I'm a bit worn out with garden stuff this week and I feel like I need a break from all things garden.

Saturday morning we fell into a bit of livestock. 2 laying hens and a duck. We'd been planning on having hens for eggs and this deal was too good to pass up. We got the coop and some feed as part of the deal as well. "The girls" have been laying one egg a day each and it's been wonderful to watch them...well, be chickens. CP loves them! Yesterday Lemon (the duck) decided that he'd had enough of our hospitality and that he'd move along down the road. He evidently flew the coop and hasn't been back. He's a funny little thing and I hope that he comes back. One of the hens, Veronica (Lakenfelder), was quite attached to him. We look forward to having two more hens for eggs and that'll be it for us.

The LW has been getting out of the house this week and heading downtown on the bicycle to work. It's good to see her out and about although I worry about her in traffic with all of the bad drivers that inhabit this town. She rides on a main street that has wide bicycle lanes and really enjoys it. I told her yesterday that it is good to have her out of the house. When she's gone, it's just CP and me....and that's nice. I don't have to worry about CP bothering her while she's working and I'm doing chores. It all works out fine this way.....except for that whole mammary gland thing........

CP's first birthday is coming up fast. 5/4/6. I can't believe a year has passed already. It seems like a sleepy blur of crying, nursing, and sleep deprivation. Wouldn't trade it for anything though.

So sad to hear this morning about all of those folks that got shot yesterday. Parents and children left behind to find their way. What a senseless mess. Why don't the people that do this type stuff just save us all some trouble and use just one bullet to end their own misery? Why erase the future of people who are moving forward? I just heard a story on NPR about people praying about this and can't really understand that either. Pray to the supposedly omnipotent entity that allowed this to happen - that seems to me to be the height of foolishness and I don't know who to feel more sadness for - people who lost their loved ones from senseless violence or people who lose loved ones to a half life of supernatural servitude hoping for the promise of redemption of some variety or another.

It's a nutty world we live in....

Shangri La

This morning is chocolate chip cookies and Mark Knopfler on the wave radio. I didn' think the LW had the CD, but I found it misplaced in the book. Today was CP's first taste of the sugary chocolate goodness that is warm chocolate chip cookies contrasted by cold milk. I think that it's obvious from the picture that she absolutely loved it. She's been holding on for later naptimes these days. It's 11am and she just wound down for the morning.

this is all the heaven we've got
right here where we are
in our shangri-la

I've been trying to follow George's advice about planning and recording in the garden. It sure helps to know what's what, but also to tell where things were planted so I can guess about what the volunteer plants are. I really use it to know how late I can get away with planting various things....or maybe not.

Furrowed Brow

The furrowed brow is CP's latest trick. She's been employing it regularly of late, and I have no idea where she got that from. She's been exerting her will lately and is becoming quite the little person. Her sign for food is being used more and more, which has made things easy for the LW and I as our mind-reading skills only work on each other.

I got out and did some riding yesterday. As a friend put it, worshipping at the church of rotating mass. Pretty funny stuff. We put in about 20 miles, then I left the others to head home to the LW. I got home to find that the LW and CP had gone up the mountain to Molino Basin to try out the swanky backpack unit that Ma & Pa sent out recently. It was a big hit and everyone who saw them smiled. CP was evidently a vision of cuteness perched above her mom's head and was waving at everyone and everything. She started it when watching the Teletubbies (her favorite and just about only show).

Nights have been rough for the LW (and I) lately. CP's up and crying a good deal lately and she'll be standing up in bed when we go in to get her. The same, but different.

Blur

CP is all over recently. She doesn't want to crawl and will prompt you to pull her up by her hands so that she can walk with you. Funny little stinker. Tonight she and I went to the GABA meeting to see Ralph and Sherry talk about their cycling tour of Italy. It was great! We got to see some old faces and they were all smiles when CP rolled in the door.

The LW has been battling flats on the bike lately and can't seem to fix them. I think that I may slice an old tube and wrap the new one for an added layer of insurance against the little "goat's head" thorns that we have here.

I got out and took the little XR for a 27 mile spin yesterday morning. It was a fun ride and the terrain looked a good deal like Fantasy Island, the local MTB spot. It was great to get out of the house, even if I did suck up dust from the fast guys most of the time.

Quiet House

The LW and CP are in Rockford right now and I got a call earlier from a noisy hotel room. It sounded like a S+11 gathering in the background, but CP was singing in the foreground. I guess her cousin Eli has called her out, quite literally, on the scream-the-loudest game. The LW said that they are evidently going to play the Notre Dame fight song at the end of the funeral. Hmmmm...

It was a beautiful day here and I didn't dry heave while changing a diaper, pick food up from the floor, or chase a crawling baby. I got out and started working on the diesel project. I finished up with the wiring harness inside the cab and got the new dash put in. It had to come out once because I forgot to change the VIN tag, but after that it went together nicely and looks alot different than it did when I picked it up.

I realized by mid-morning, as I was contorted in the cab of the truck, that delayed-onset muscle soreness was sneaking up on me after my ride yesterday. I put in 42 miles on the XR and really enjoyed it. There were lots of great folks out playing and one of the guys had a helmet cam - funny stuff.

For the LW, Auntie Melissa, and the nemesis: Bucknell, Bruins, b b buh bye KU. Sheesh......

I had a good day today, but I sure missed CP's sleepy snuggle and the "sleep song" that she hums just before she's ready to snooze.

Changing Seasons

It's cold and rainy today as it was yesterday...cold being relative of course.

News this week of the LW's grandfather's death. He was in his early 90s and had a full life. The LW will be off to the great lakes region this coming week and since the flights are screwy and she can't make it there and back in the same day, she'll be taking CP with her to avoid premature weening. Everyone there gets to see CP again of course and it will be her first introduction to many.

Today's the day that one of the LW's friends bids her long-time canine friend his last goodbye. He also had a full life and has been all over the country, camping, cavorting, and just being a good woman's best friend in general. His body and mind have evidently deteriorated to the point that he just can't hold on anymore. A good pup, that's for sure. He showed me that animals really do like massage and that they often can pick the massage person out of a crowd.

Aunt Lani and Uncle Phil took off last night bound for Pheonix, then home. We had a great visit with them. A couple of new photos made it onto the flickr badge and a few hundred were deleted from Lani's overfilled hard drive. That poor laptop.......

On the way home, the LW and I discussed whether or not I should be allowed out in public after making the jackass noise at a lady who would not answer her phone while we were eating at the B-Line. It wasn't as if everyone in the place wasn't thinking it already.....sheesh.

The LW had lunch with Aunt Brandy on Friday and took CP all the way downtown in the Chariot. It was a good trip, but CP was pretty warm by the time they got home. Saturday was a blur and Sunday morning was a trip to one of the Community Gardens. Everyone was happy to see the baby and I really enjoyed not really having to do much...well, except change another front flat on the LW's bicycle. Not being pulled on for water repairs as a rare treat and I hope for many more days like that. Things just breezed along at the garden and George shared his abundant wisdom with everyone as usual. Later Sunday, Lani & Phil made it to the Arizona Inn and we went out for Sonoran Hot Dogs down at BK's....mmmmmmm It was a first for all of us and man, they are really good. Auntie Melissa has a new blog and it's good to see her out and about playing on the web like a regular slacker...as opposed to a prisoner in scrubs doomed to work strange 14-hour shifts for days on end.

Mom called tonight to say that they had made it to Santa Fe and were tired. They left T-town this morning headed out after a whirlwind visit to see CP and get some smooches in. Did they ever......

She's suffering from grandparent withdrawals today, so it's a good thing that I took her for a 3-hour tour this morning. We went to the park and played with some other kids, saw the ducks, and then hit Trader Joe's on the way home. (note to self - Trader Joe's is a mess at lunchtime) I discussed the nearby pool in Ried Park with two moms that were there and found out that the pool is a "beach pool" where you gradually move into deeper water without having a real edge to descend from....just like a beach. This afternoon, we made a family outing and CP enjoyed herself. She thought that she was the cat's meow and I think that we'll be regulars there once it heats up more.

There are some new pics on flickr, but it seems to want to turn them on their sides. Good for downloading, I guess, but not much else.

Just put CP down for her morning nap. We're really excited for the grandparents to get to see her new teeth and funny expressions. The grandparents parked the land yacht in Shamrock Texas last night. Mmmmmm....nothing quite like middle-of-nowhere Texas and a little highway noise to put you to sleep. CP's changed alot since they first saw her.

One of our "neighbors" just had one of his three junk cars towed away for good. It was an 80s model Taurus station wagon with one window still in it - the windshield. The passenger floorboard doubled as an ashtray and there was hardly any paint left on the thing. We're glad to see it gone and hope that the others, and our "neighbor" will soon follow.

The LW was just chatting with the sister and that's how we just found out that she's got a monster.....a 950 monster that is. Man, that must be fun. There's a track day coming up soon at Firebird, but it'd be tough to get the bike shipped since we all know that she can't ride that thing all the way across the country....she's a girl! (ohhhh, I know that the wife will pipe up about that one) Anyway, it's good to know that she's got the toy and can get out and play every now and then.

There are some new pics on the flickr. Some of CP when we put her in the sun on the bed to help get rid of some diaper rash that came with her two front teeth and a few shots from our trip to Aqua Caliente park a week? or so ago.

Off to the garden meeting tomorrow, the neighborhood association Friday night, the trail riding group cleanup on Saturday morning and the newest garden's meeting on Sunday afternoon. There'll be some time for a breather in there somewhere and I hope that my LW and I can find it. Oh, well, scratch that, my folks arrive Saturday evening - maybe they'll take CP so we can take a nap. Speaking of which, we actually took a nap the other day - one of the few that we could remember in the last 10 months and it was the best ever. No worries, no baby into everything....just snuggly naptime with no where to be......... It was better than chocolate.

More money for stamps and now this? Pulling clocks?

The LW and I watched Al Gore's movie tonight. Say what you want, but unless you've got a good lead on 650,000 years of data that refutes what came out of the ice cores, you should probably turn off Fox "news", bitch-slap yourself a few times, and wake up. It was an interesting movie, but the data presented was what stole the show. If you haven't checked it out...do so.

Played in the garden a bit today. Peas, sunflowers, butterbeans, Armenian cucumber, and eggplant seeds went in the ground. The LW wanted to get a tomato plant from the nursery, so we chose a beefmaster and I layed it in the ground sideways. George cast a bit of sad news on the beekeeping front recently. The LW had so hoped to get a hive going. I guess it will be up to the desire for chickens and the completion of a water harvesting sytem to keep her occupied now.

Checked out some stuff from MS today in the Clarion Ledger. It seems as though the mayor is having a tough go of it. Pretty funny.... I can almost imagine what my grandfather has to say about that - probably something similar to his views on his former neighbor Benny Thompson.

Sunny, but cool today and some seeds went in the garden a little while ago. Tomato, pepper, pole beans, and we still have to get butterbean and eggplant seeds. The garden's shaping up and should be nice before the summer blazing begins. I got a late start last year - April 15th - and it feels good to be ahead of that time.

I think that there's some stuff going on at the Pima Air & Space Museum this weekend. There was a P-51 and an F-4 making circles over the house earlier. They landed the F-15 early and I think that he only made a couple of circles with the P-51.

Got a call today from Oma to let me know that a guy wanted to donate a tiller. I'm always a bit suspect when folks want to donate things to the gardens, but this was a shocker. Oma said that it sounded nice, and she was right. It's a Sears rear-tine model in very good shape. The fellow that was donating it said that he just picked up an electric Mantis and was very happy with it. Those things are great and if we could get one for each garden, we would. This rear-tine will serve us well in breaking ground at new gardens.....something that seems to be happening lately.

The LW has sent off two grant proposals in the past month or so and we already have been short-listed for one of them. One is a max of $15k for a garden to be set up and another involves an amount that's about 10% of that in equipment and starter equipment. Both would be nice and we hope that everything works out. Now, we just need to find a lawyer that'll set up our incorporation as a 501(c)(3) without running us into the poorhouse and all will be good in the world.

CP's teeth in the front continue moving into the open and it's funny to watch. She's been a bit finicky with food lately and that seems to be the pattern that surrounds teething for her. She's crawling faster and faster and has really begun to understand what "no" means. She's a wonderful baby and we both see these as some of the most beautiful days of our lives....even though we're sleepy and cranky. =0)

I don't know that I'd want to go head-to-head with Richard Leakey, but it seems some people there choose to remain willfully ignorant.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/02/06/kenya.fossil.ap/index.html

Don't drink anything when you watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBE2h8Gdmvc&eurl=

It's India, and apparently no rules apply:
http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/

Third paragraph from the bottom says it all.

CP's two front teeth are almost through the skin now and the grandparents will have just one more thing to grin about when they arrive in a week or two. Been working on a new website design for my work site and it's time consuming since I'm just a hack. It'll be a good change. I'm supposed to go out to the garden today and look around at how the work is progressing. I have some questions about how to hook in the irrigation timer to the existing wiring and I hope that I can get that figured out soon without turning myself into a light bulb.

Using compeed style bandages on my elbow and they are amazing. They form a little gel pad over the wound and it makes a nice cushion for when you're clumsy, like me, and tend to smack into things. 3 days and the road rash is healing over already. I'm going to pick some of these up and keep them around the house. It doesn't really make sense to have anything but these, peroxide, and some guaze for wound cleaning.