A fun afternoon

Today Isaiah took the boys fishing.

When they all left the house left the house,  I looked around at the mess and thought "I am finally alone, I can clean this up with no one bothering me." Then I said "pshaw" and I picked up my purse, got in the car and drove to the nail salon.

I haven't had my nails done since I went to North Carolina four years ago to visit my sisters. (I think it was four years?? I can't believe it!) I remember my little sister being upset that she did not get the six-inch-long nail extension that she was hoping for in the rural small town Vietnamese run nail salon. We all warned her that this was not Miami and they do things different here. She wouldn't listen. So she had to go back to Little Cuba with embarrassingly short nails.

So anyway, after four years of nail neglect, I treated myself, all alone to a nail painting by a Vietnamese man. When I was there I was able to watch the "News" Which was just a bunch of political fiddle-faddle commercials (OMG Can you believe how HORRIBLE the other senator is yadda yada) and lots of computer generated looking women with too much makeup (or too much air brushing?) who all talked excitedly about things lot of things as if they were actually important.

It was fun.

I painted my nails a bright color.  Not even an earthy color, partially because they didn't seem to have earthy colors but also because I wanted something a little shocking, something totally not even me.

Then I got home. And two little boys walked in the door and with the most ridiculous smiles on their faces, exclaiming with sheer joy "mama, I caught some weeds!!!"  They were stoked when I told them how proud I was.

It was a good afternoon.  Even though there were dirty dishes left in the sink.  Isaiah probably forgot about them because he liked my shocking nail color so much.

Shocking.

The word Shocking is really, really over used. It hardly shocks me anymore to hear that something is shocking even if it is or would be shocking, and it hardly ever is something that's worthy of being called shocking in the first place. Isn't this a shocking idea? Maybe I should tell this new shocking idea to the internet world that the word shocking really has absolutely no shock value anymore. Its simply, shocking. 

Mama Please?

Matheson: Mama, may I please have five dollars so I can sit on that Longhorn for thirty seconds so you can take my picture?

Mama: No, but you can enjoy watching someone else's mommy pay five dollars for her child to sit on it.

Strawberries.

Last fall we planted a large bed of fresh strawberries, that I looked forward to immensely.  They survived through the exceptionally cold winter involving mounds of snow and below zero temperatures. When spring came, I cried for joy that they were still alive and looked forward to an abundance of amazing Oregon strawberries.

But at the first sight of a red berry, I became terrified that other critters might get to them.  I am not that generous, so we bought a net to put over the strawberries so that we would be sure to be the only ones enjoying our harvest.  One day I we realized that we were not really getting enough berries.  Five a day does not seem sufficient enough to feed a family of four. I thought maybe the critters had found their way through our heavy barricades.

Then one day, we discovered that birds and squirrels were NOT our problem, but grubby hands of  two little boys who have no strawberry self control whatsoever. We learned that every day when they went out to play they found themselves at the strawberry bed, and every day they put their fists through the net and pulled out every strawberry they could find, weather white green or red, and as they pulled them up through the net, they smashed them with strawberry juice everywhere. Very little fruit was actually getting into anyone's mouth. Although the children were filled with joy, my heart would sink at each green strawberry that got eaten that never got a chance to be filling my tummy with goodness.

I fought with them relentlessly.  I squealed, I threatened and I tried to punish. But they would NOT stop eating the green strawberries. I begged and pleaded. One day I just gave up.

I gave up when I decided the best thing to do was to look at my two year old's face and fists, covered with red juice.  I decided to listen carefully to the small voice saying "mama I like strawberries" as he shoveled about eight green ones into his mouth. I suddenly thought that the sight of this child brought me so much more joy than any strawberry could bring me.  Even an Oregon strawberry. So I will always be able to hold this memory in my mind of the greedy children and laugh.  So maybe I did not get to enjoy very many strawberries from the garden, but the strawberry garden gave me something a memory to cherish.

zucchinis

We have a fairly decent sized garden in our yard.  This is our second big garden. This is also the second time that rotting pumpkins have been dumped into the bed of dirt at the end of the growing season. And the second time that random pumpkin plants have popped up all over our garden once spring came. Pumkins are actually very beautiful, so Isaiah removed some of them and re-planted some in various places all over our yard, outside the garden, and in the garden.

The other day we noticed that many of the pumpkin plants were producing zucchinis. And we planted two zucchinis in the yard before our pumpkin plants decided to make zucchinis. So now we have over six zucchini plants that are giving us at least five zucchinis every day. What am I going to do with all these zucchinis?

A fish

This is a bird that just caught some easy lunch from a fish hatchery. Isaiah wanted me to take a picture of it but I did not have my zoom lens, so this is what he gets. I was going to say something silly about this picture but the more I look at it the more I kind of think its kind of interesting.  Maybe I am just weird?

Isaiah suggested that the bird was trained to take fish from the hatchery and deliver it to a nearby restaurant for their customers to enjoy.  What do you think?

The Blair Lake Project

Last weekend, we went camping at Blair Lake.  Here is a list of the things we forgot:

1. Propane
2. My pillow
3. Socks of any kind.
4.  A cutting board
5. Isaiah's sweater
6. Marshmallows.  Or any sweets of any kind.
7. Bread. This would make lunch interesting to say the least.
8. And most importantly, home made ranch dip to go with the potato chips.

You know what? This was about the most memorable outdoor weekend I have had.  Who needs socks when you have each other? And grass-fed steak?

Delicious steak on a makeshift cutting board.