Dog Rehab

This summer, Darcy had a somewhat traumatic interaction with a dog named Gus. Darcy met Gus when he ran into a room where she was along. Gus, who outweighs Darcy by probably a couple dozen pounds at least, ran right at her to say hi. She ran and jumped on the couch to get away from him. He jumped up next to her. To say hi. And as I got into the room to intervene, Darcy was climbing off the couch and onto the end table in an attempt to escape Gus. She was truly terrified. I'm not sure I've ever seen her so scared, even though Gus was most definitely not trying to scare her. He just wanted to say hi. Up close. And personal. With a wet tongue and drool.


We were bummed out because she avoided dogs like the plague for quite a while after that incident. It took a lazy old lab to help get her warmed up to dogs again. Recently, it's been clear that the fear is gone, but there is still a bit of hesitation about actually touching dogs.


Our park friends came by today for brunch and brought poor cooped-up Gus to play in our yard. This is a different Gus, considerably smaller and less interested in saying hi unless he's saying it to a ball or frisbee. Darcy was quite fond of Gus and did eventually pet him. Here, though, she was just insisting on getting her picture taken NEAR him:

The picture was taken with an iPhone and emailed to me because, of course, our camera was stolen, so the quality is not the greatest. But you can see our gorgeous sunny day with my proud girl interacting with a dog. It was a great visit and it will be very nice to have Gus and his person living in California, even if they'll still be 8 or 9 hours away.

Park Friends

We're all just back from a wonderful dinner with friends. The talk was all national parks and Alaska with the current Chief of Interpretation at Katmai National Park and the just-about-to-start Chief of Interpretation at Pinnacles National Monument. They hadn't seen Darcy in a couple years, so her chatter amused us in between stories of dream parks and former coworkers. It was a great evening.


Pinnacles is not exactly the most-well-known park out there. We passed a sign for the western entrance about a year ago on our way to Simi Valley for Christmas. I looked it up and was entranced. The name-sake pinnacles are part of an ancient volcano that formed on one of the many, many faults in California. Over time (lots of time), half of the volcano stayed where it was born and the other half traveled north with the fault line about 600 miles to its current location in central California (if I'm remembering correctly from my research a year ago). That is pretty darn cool if you ask me!


I know that an awful lot of my blog readers are already big fans (or employees) of the national parks, but seriously, if you're not already, you should start reading. Our national parks protect some of the most incredibly beautiful and truly awesome places. They are everyone's backyard and should be on everyone's bucket lists.

The Roads Less Taken

I don't know about you, but I really hate driving the same exact route both coming and going to a destination, even a local destination, like from home to work and back each day. For someone with this particular pet peeve, I live in a brutal place. Only two paved roads go in and out of our county, one north-south along the coast and the other, north-east away from the Ocean into Oregon. For most other towns we go to, there IS only one route to choose from. 


The one exception is when I head south to Arcata or Eureka. Southbound, there's a great scenic by-pass that winds through old-growth redwoods AND saves gas because it's significantly flatter than the highway. I take that most of the time, even sometimes in both directions. But recently, it's been unavailable because of this:

There was a massive tree-fall across the by-pass several weeks ago. This picture comes from the Redwood National and State Parks Facebook page. I've been reduced to stealing photos because of the whole business of the computers in the hands of thieves and the hard drive in the hands of the sheriff. It's annoying.


I have to admit that I'm ok with the trees having fallen -- even though a couple of them were massive old beauties -- because it's a natural process that occurs to trees. It's not as if someone cut them down. But I was definitely not ok with having my alternative driving route taken away for weeks. It's almost ready for action now, after massive efforts to remove the enormous amount of biomass these trees hold. You can watch them on this YouTube video, also courtesy of the amazing media specialist Park Ranger at Redwood National and State Parks.


And you? What are some of your favorite drives?

Shattered Glass Flies

The glass in our door was some special kind of safety glass (I guess) and shattered into a gazillion teeny-tiny pieces when the f&%*ers who broke into our house yesterday smashed it. And those gazillion teeny-tiny pieces went everywhere. Four rooms had glass shards to be swept and vacuumed up. They made it onto the desk on the opposite side of the room from the door. They were all over our washer and dryer, and even a few inside the washer lid.

And then there's the metaphorical glass shards. It's amazing how so much is affected even though so few things were taken. I have gone through a variety of emotions since walking up to the house to see the smashed window. My first reaction was a series of loud expletives and anger. My second, on seeing that a light was on in the guest room, was a momentary fear that someone could still be in the house. My third, while on the phone with the dispatcher two minutes later, was sadness at knowing that I was going to have to walk through the house once the sherriff arrived and see what else had been taken. There might have been a few tears.

As the sherriff observed, however, I am a glass-half-full kind of person, so I am back to that comforting sense of knowing that it is just STUFF. We might lose some photos that hadn't been backed up to the external hard drives. But the computers themselves and all their power cords and cables can be replaced. Our power drill can be replaced. The change bowl will fill back up as we empty our pockets over the next few months.

It won't be pleasant financially. It's not like we have piles of money sitting around waiting to buy new computers. I mean, we DID have one pile of money sitting nicely in a bowl, but the f*&%ers took that, too.

The day did end well, however. Michael went to a call-back for a community production of Willy Wonka at 6:30 and went straight to his office afterwards to work on changing account passwords and finding specifications of our stolen stuff to give to the sherriff's office and our insurance agent. He called from his office around 11 to say that the cast list had been posted and, despite never having been in a play before, he is going to be Willy Wonka! He's going to be GREAT, but it will be a lot of work from now until March.

Today, we are taking turns being home so that the house isn't empty. I'm at work and I'm hoping to pick up a borrowed laptop on my way home later this afternoon and then we'll have internet, but still no land-line phone, at the house.

Parents, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Meth-Heads

Crescent City has had a major crime spree recently, with dozens of break-ins over the past two weeks. The fingers are always pointed at our out-of-control meth addiction in the community and addicts' need for money for their next fix. Our neighbor, Michael's supervisor, lives around the corner from us and was broken into last week.

Today, I came home from work shortly before two to find the window in our door was smashed. I probably interupted the burglar, as our other door was wide open and our external hard drive, wireless router, and other things were completely unplugged and disconnected, but still on the floor.

We have no home computer as of now because they stole both laptops, and no internet anyway until the sherriff's department returns our router after finger-printing it.

This sucks, but I wasn't willing to let it stop me from blogging.

I'm using the Family Resource Center's computer to update you here. The idiots stole our phone base (but not the phone), so we have no land-line right now. Family, you'll have to use my cell phone for the time being. We will only be able to check email at work for now as well.

Darcy's Party

Happy birthday, Darcy! Fairy-party style:

Darcy's birthday party was heavy on fairies and squealing. All her guests showed up with wings, they decorated wands, and colored fairy posters. But the two biggest hits of the day were Dylan-the-balloon-guy, who is always a hit, and Michael, who had them running and squealing as if a hawk, a rat, AND a rainy cat (the three biggest threats to fairies after humans, according to Disney) were all after them at one time. Here are the pictures -- I'd do video, but your hearing would never be the same:

Dylan's balloon skills are always impressive, but he might have outdone himself in fulfilling Michael's request. I think for a while, they were the only men in the room and they took refuge in a corner and spoke of music, ending up here:

He's pretty good. Elvis is now enjoying Patty Jo's chair by the fire. From past experience, he could easily hold his air for two or three weeks without changing a bit.

The Darcy-Fruit Paradox

Birthday pictures will come tomorrow. Today, enjoy my fascination with my child's love-hate of fruit.

My child does not eat fruit. We sneak some into her with an occasional 100% juice serving, but she mostly spurns that, so her daily fruit consumption comes in the form of Trader Joe's freeze dried bananas. It's the only thing that resembles fresh fruit that enters her body. When asked, she will tell you -- and that IS a universal you because she is not shy with this information -- that it's "too juicy". When her beloved Miss A brought grapes for the weekly nutrition-in-the-garden activity, Darcy was the only student out of 900 Miss A sees every week who refused to taste it. Too juicy.

Despite this stubborn refusal to eat fruit, Darcy likes to play with pretend fruit (she has Melissa and Doug's wooden fruit that can be "cut" for a fruit salad because the pieces are velcroed together) and has long-term jokes/stories about fruit. For the longest time, she would talk about "mam fruit", always with a giggle, and when we moved to this house, she decreed that the dogwood fruits (ripe this time of year, about golf-ball sized, and red) are mam fruit. So she's really excited now because she just noticed that some of the mam fruit are ripe. 


It took us months to figure out where she had come up with this term. One day, we were watching Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends and she said, "This is the one with the mam fruit!!" That perked me up and I watched carefully. In this particular episode, a firefly loses his glasses and while he's looking for them, he bumps into a fruit and says, "Oh! Excuse me, ma'am, have you seen my glasses?" Thus is born the mam fruit.


So it should not have surprised us when she created the lemange this weekend. A lemange is half lemon/half orange and it easily created when you own the Melissa and Doug fruit set described above. When I asked about the flavoring for her birthday cupcakes, she asked for lemange-flavored cupcakes and that's what she got, thanks to the miracle of lemon juice and orange extract. But the best part about this is that shortly after deciding on the name for this new creation, Darcy sat down with her paper and coloring supplies at her small table. When she was done, she came and showed us this paper:

I love that she can write. In sentences. With the correct spelling. And punctuation. And I love her imagination. I would love it even more if she could imagine herself EATING SOME FRESH FRUIT juice and all.