In Which She Inflicts Vacation Photos On All Of You
So I'm back, sort of. Back in the sense that the bags are unpacked and put away, the wash is done, the house is in its usual state of disarray and the kitty has forgiven us for abandoning her. Actually, she seemed fine with the whole thing and looked rather horrified when we walked in the door all loud and stinky. She wore that look of "Oh. God. I thought you were coming back tomorrow. I thought I had another day to finish that season of My Name Is Earl."
All told, we had 4 days in lovely Door County (that pointy bit of land at the NE end of Wisconsin that sticks in such a fragile way between Green Bay and Lake Michigan) and did little but eat, nap, hang out with each other and go fishin'. (Caught nothin' but a very small bullhead that looked really pissed off, but after all was said and done, was left with a belly full of worm and tales to tell of his abduction to the drowning atmosphere above the lake and the monsters that live there. I'm sure he'll get lots of use of that tale down at the fish pub where they'll buy him pints and await the tale of how he single-fin-edly beat up the 4 enormous aliens and then escaped back to the deeps with their sweet, wriggling food. Good for him.)
We also taught Colin and Sara how to play Monopoly and how he who 1) buys up all the railroads and utilities and 2) doesn't get bored and quit after the first couple of hours tends to win. It's good to pass on such knowledge from one's own childhood to one's offspring.
We did, indeed, go to a fish boil and ladled butter on fish, potatoes and onions. We ate many cherry-inspired products, like pie. And wine. And brought back lots of pancake and scone mixes. And jam and syrup and dried cherries. And wine. I also let Sara learn to take pictures with my camera, and so for the first time in 20 years,I have vacation photos with me in them because someone else was snapping the scenes as well.
And so we all had a short, lovely, restful time, except for poor Molly-dog, who just thought the whole thing was wrong and WHAT the hell were we doing in this little house that smelled funny and had red tartan carpet in the kitchen and hall and WHAT would the kitty do with no one to chase her and give her a good butt licking. She clearly felt that it was all so wrong and couldn't understand why we didn't take her hint of staring hard at the car whenever we passed it, and just get in and go back home where we belonged.
It's always good to mess with your dog.
And so we've been and gone and returned and had our vacation.
The second half of the ag-med conference was as good as the first. I can now talk of ROPS and help you figure out what sort of respirator you need if you are cleaning out a silo, working in a CAFO or spraying your fields. I can also be found hollering from inside my car when driving past the fields and barns in my locale, "Hey! You! What the hell are you doing driving that tricycle tractor with the front end loaded!" and "Hey! You! I see you plowing that field in your cabless tractor without adequate hearing protection, sun screen, wide brimmed hat, respirator mask or ROPS!" In short, I've become even more of an embarrassment to polite society.
Now I must get the contents of the 2" (5cm) syllabus and good-sized textbook into my squash, so I can pass the damn test and make my employer proud to have spent all that money (actually, in the scheme of things, it wasn't that much money as such things go) for me to have done this, which means that I'll still be blogging sporadically for weeks to come. That study time has to come from somewhere.
Charles is winding up his days as principal at his soon-to-be-old district. He drove to work today in the SUV to load up almost all his office-ly possessions and move them to the new digs. He starts next Tuesday, which means we have only one more day of driving in to work together. The end of an era.
And, so, I'll leave you with this year's before and after shots of the front flower beds. You'll notice that the 3 low-lying juniper bushes at the front of the bed have gone the way of Wanda and Muriel, last year's alien-abducted cinquefoil and have been replaced by about 20 pretty-pretty flowering lovelies. (Well, they will be flowering when it's their time to do so.) You'll also notice that I need to get busy and divide all the pretties that have cancer-like grown and taken over the garden, transforming it into something that looks like the Amazon jungle.
Labels: Garden Wars, In My Spare Time, The Small-Handed Ones, Workish
19 Comments:
Welcome back. Glad to hear you had a good time.
I believe that bullhead has started his own blog, Bullhead Beats Big Bullies, where he boasts about his exploits.
You can inflict all the vacation photos you want. It looks wonderful, and the pictures of you are great. So that's the way to get yourself included in vacation snaps,eh?
My day lilies have the same malignancy going on. I don't see anything changing that in the near future.
Yes, front yard looks like an improvement - nice
LOVE the pictures. Bring 'em on.
Despite all the imminent farm accidents rolling around out there, you are relaxed and lovely and the proud owner of Park Place.
We've bought Bird-opoly, which is Monopoly in which players, strangely, rent birds. My 5-year-old loves it. So okay.
Welcome back!
Dumdad- See? Everyone blogs, nowdays. I'll go over and say, "Hi" to him. Hope he bears no ill will.
RC- Yup, that's the way. I'm not big on having my picture taken but I do realize that pictures are important to others as well as me, and I might as well give in.
Joe- Thanks. Even though it's rather ratty, now, after all the hard rain we've had, it's still better than that awful stretch of juniper.
Cagey- Thanks, to the woman who holds the gold medal in snappage.
Jocelyn- Relaxation IS lovely and vastly underrated. Colin loved Monopoly and now wants all the other Monopoly games. He didn't believe me when I said it was all really the same game with different pieces and real estate. I laugh at the idea of the bird version. If they'd had it, we'd probably have gotten that one. Instead, Colin and Charles chose the updated version where the properties are places like the Golden Gate Bridge and the railroads are airports, like O'Hare. Same game, even if you're marching your cell phone or lap-top off to jail for $200,000 bail and you collect 2 mil each lap. Inflation. Sheesh.
Looks like you had a great time. The pictures of you are good. She did a really nice job. And it was good to see your face instead of the usual feet in snow photos that I remember. :-)
Me-I feel bad for fish dragged through the water by a hook in their mouth but my husband. Well let's just say he would much rather be fishing than much of anything else.
Not a picture person? Must have gotten this from your mum. Sounds like you had a great time. I really must see it for myself sometime.
The Ole RF-er
Looks like a great vacation spot, and a lot of fun. Love the pictures. Please explain how you have not aged in the past 20 years?
You look lovely, and the kids are getting big!
My daughter never had much stamina for beyond Junior monopoly. She did love Life though.
Bullheads, UGH! I remember seeing baby bullheads in the rain barrel at my grandparents cabin in WI and my grandpa would tell me it had rained bullheads in the night. I am guessing he planted them. It sure had my 7 year old brain befuddled at why I had slept through what had to have been a rackety rain.
Blimey! The children are so grown up! And you, dahling, look gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous!
[Intern.Med. exam in a few hours, iiiiiiiiiiiiiiih!]
You all had a hat part of Door county were you all at?
Loved the pictures and the post. Keep them coming. Glad you had a great time!
Sounds like you had an absolutely fabulous vacay!
But red tartan carpet in the kitchen? WTF? Glad you went to a fish boil; I didn't somehow do that when I was in Door County. It seemed weird to go to one by myself. But I really wanted to ...it's such a DC thing to do! They boil all that stuff up in big metal trash can, no?
Nice to see a photo of you, too! You're hair looks remarkably tidy and well-styled for a vacation, I must say.
Lauren- Yes, so much nicer where it's warm and you can be in flip-flops legitimately. Fishing is one of Charles's favorite boyhood memories, so we go fishing several times in the summer. I feel sad for the fish, but even more for the worm, who gets impaled, tossed through the air, and slowly drowned unless he's eaten first.
Dad- It was lovely, indeed.
Stace- It's got that beach feel to it, just with minimal sand, lots of rocks and little, bitty waves. Trust me, I've aged plenty but the kids are big, aren't they?
Johnny- They're huge! That's what you get when you feed them, I guess. Good luck on the latest vet school horror. At least THAT one has use, unlike the how to fix a refridgerator test.
Christina- We were on the bay side at Bailey's Harbor. Not much going on there, but close to Fish Creek and Ephraim, and very pretty.
Sanjay- Thanks, Sanjay! Glad you're back!
Rozanne- I know! It was horrible, that carpet. Huge, red plaid with bits of red and green and some yellow. The owner cleaned the place so well, it reeked overwhelmingly of disinfectant for 48 of the 72 hours we spent there, despite opening all the windows we could. Better than reeking of renters past, but there's got to be a happy medium. The hair is, as always, mussed, you just can't tell as I'm facing into the breeze. Ooh! A fashion photo tip. I've seen big pots and trash cans for the fish boil. The cooking was over when we came straggling in.
OMG, your dad left me a comment! HI DIANA'S DAD! THIS IS JOHNNY, WAVING MADLY! I didn't even know you read, thanks for delurking.
[I'm leaving it here bcs I think chances of you seeing it are a bit higher.]
You can never get too much of summer vacay and all the typical games/activities that have lasted for generations! If only we could bottle it and take a teaspoon every day throughout the long winter...kinda like that cod liver oil they used to shove down our throats but LOT tastier!
You look great!
You look lovely and so do the kids. Poor Molly, I bet that was confusing. I am sure that Mad-kitty had a great time. She seems much more resilient than Eddy who is going to freak out since Keem and I will both be gone over the 4th and he's being supjected to Kari, Eric and the CHILD.
I thought you had written how Mad-kitty wanted to finish the season of My Name is Evil. Oops.
Teresa, on quite a few occasions I have encountered schools of bullhead fry in the most unlikely small, transient bodies of water, such as puddles along street gutters, and have wondered how they arrived there. I wouldn't be so quick to assume your grandpa planted them in the rain barrel, though that probably is the case. But they, or their mother, may have arrived there on their own, by the same inexplicable process that frogs sometimes rain from the sky.
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