A two-tumble cut

These days, I gauge the state of my legs by counting how many times I fall while mowing the lawn.  I usually fall at least once each time.  My legs get more and more tired, and we have a big lawn, so I'm usually not in very good shape by the end.  I tend to fall because the mower gets ahead of me or I trip over my feet when I'm turning or something like that.

My recent record goes like this:  one fall, two falls, zero falls, zero falls, and two falls (just now).  My legs can be maddeningly random.  Sometimes they're good and sometimes they're not, and I can't really predict what will happen.  There doesn't seem to be any cause and effect.  I do know that they're worse when it's hot, and we're in a pretty steamy run this week.

When I was leaving work today, I could tell that they weren't in good shape.  (This is one of those days when I would have taken advantage of my handicapped parking permit if I'd had one.)  But since I fly out tomorrow, I had to mow the lawn today.  I hoped for the best, but I ended up falling twice.  I always try to arrange it so that I fall on the grass rather than on the pavement.  No harm done.  And when I do fall, I take advantage of the opportunity.  I just sit on the grass for a few minutes while my legs recover.  Not a bad way to go.

Anyway, as I said, I'm heading off to see the kiddies tomorrow.  I'll be there for two weeks.  There probably won't be much blogging since both of my faithful readers (hi, Mom!) will be out there with me.

Lindsey Wood, master gardener

Lindsey and I planted some vegetables before she left.  (Recall that I took the opportunity during one of our gardening sessions to help her understand that I didn't force Stace to move out.  It may have worked somewhat, because Lindsey seems a little more at peace with the whole thing.)

To my astonishment, the dang things are actually growing!  We planted peas, carrots, and cucumbers.  I harvested some of the peas today.  I sent pictures to Tanner so he could show Lindsey what's going on.  Unfortunately, just as some of the peas are appearing, I'm about to leave for two weeks.  Everything will probably go bad while I'm gone.  Oops.

An empty nester

Well, I'm now offiically an empty nester in more than one sense.  Not only are the kids gone, but so are the birds in the nest above the porch.  I didn't see any activity at the nest through my window yesterday, and the parents didn't dive-bomb me this morning as I stood on my front porch.  I'm a little sad to see them go.  I was going to take down the nest, but I think Lindsey would like to see it when she gets back.

Keeping up with the kids

I've mentioned that lots of people are doing lots of work to take care of the kids this summer.  For that, I'm grateful.  The kids are having so much fun that they can't generally be bothered to talk to me (Lindsey) or text me (Tanner) when I try to get in touch with them.  I take that as a good sign and try not to be too offended.

It's gotten to the point that I'm not even sure where they are at any given moment.  They just got back from Bear Lake yesterday.  I was vaguely aware that they're heading to California this week with Stace's family, but I wasn't sure of the schedule.  Turns out they're leaving tomorrow morning and that I'll probably beat them to Utah on Saturday.  They may not even be back until Sunday, so I'll be hanging around Utah without them for a day.  At the rate they're both growing, I expect they'll each have grown about an inch since I last saw them two weeks ago.

Shifting gears, I was just thinking about how mornings are going to be once school starts.  Tanner will have seminary at 5:45, I believe.  I'll have to get him to seminary myself because no one else lives down our way.  I'm hoping that someone else can take him from seminary to school for me, because I'll have to be back at home dealing with Lindsey.  I think mornings will go something like this:  wake up around 5:00, exercise (maybe, but that means that Tanner will have to completely take care of getting himself up and ready, which he didn't manage to do this year), get Tanner to seminary by 5:45, come back home, shower, get Lindsey up and fed, leave the house around 7:00, drop Lindsey off at morning child care, and head to work.  Whew!  I don't think Stace is planning to do mornings anymore like she did for the last couple of months of school, so every morning will be up to me.  I have the feeling that exercise and sleep will be two casualties of the new morning routine.

I love having a fourteen-year-old, part 2

I just had this text message exchange with Tanner, who's in Utah (original grammar included, obviously):

Me:  Your favorite missionary just got transferred to Thunder Bay.  He leaves today.

Tanner:  Cool

Tanner:  Topher?

Me:  Topher doesn't leave until September, goofy man.  I'm talking about Elder Tangen.

Tanner:  Oh cool

Tanner:  That's what I thought

Tanner:  And I was like why would he have even be going to thunderba

Tanner:  Thunderbay

Me:  Actually, two words:  Thunder Bay.

Tanner:  Who cares

Me:  You forgot the question mark:  Who cares?  Those things are important, you know.  Ah, I love grammar, don't you?

Tanner:  Shutttttttttttttttt uppppppppppppppp

Me:  Miss you too, kiddo.

An avian dilemma

Sometimes after I exercise, I go out on my front porch to cool off.  For the past several weeks, I've been surprised at how aggressive a certain type of bird has been when I'm standing out there.  It flies toward me and then veers at the last second.  I thought this was odd, but I'm no expert on birds, so I didn't give it any more thought.

When I went out to get the paper this morning, I finally figured out what's going on.  I happened to look on the opposite side of one of the pillars on the porch.  I saw a whole bunch of bird droppings.  I knew what that meant.  Sure enough, nestled between that pillar and the roof over the porch, there's a nest.  That agressive bird is just protecting its territory. (If I knew more about birds, I could tell you what kind of bird it is, but I can't.)

If it were a wasp's nest, I wouldn't have any problem getting rid of it.  But I can't quite bring myself to destroy a bird's nest, even though they're making a mess on my porch.  What if there are baby birds in there?  I guess I'll wait until it gets cold.  Not all birds leave Minnesota in the winter, but maybe if I wait until the early winter, I won't be destroying anyone's home.

Update:  I realized that I can see the nest from one of my living room windows, and there are indeed chicks in there.  My aggressive friend is feeding them.  So, the birds win for now.  I'll let them make their mess and try to deal with it when it gets cold.

And let me tell you, I got a very angry response from one of the parents when I went out to take these pictures:

Biting, swarming ants

You know how you're supposed to learn something new every day?  Well, I learned something today about a type of ant that lives in Minnesota.

Pretend that you're a new single dad who has horribly neglected his yard because you've been too busy raising your kids.  Imagine that you have a few moments today because your kids are out of town and you decide to tackle some of the thistle that's threatening to take over the house.  You find it quite satisfying to pull thistle because it's big and comes out quite easily.

Somewhere along the line, you notice there's an ant colony up against one side of your house.  You're not bothered by this because that's the garage wall and the occasional stray ant isn't going to hurt anything in your garage.  You continue to pull these noxious weeds.  It slowly dawns on you that you sure seem to be getting a lot of thistle pricks in your legs and your upper body.  You're not really consciously aware of this at first, but it becomes more and more of a problem.  You gradually start to wonder why you're feeling so many sticks from the thistle because you're not really in direct contact with the weeds that much.  Eventually, you look down and see a swarm of ants all over your legs and feet.  You suddenly realize that the irritations you've been feeling on your legs and upper body aren't from thistles.

You scream like a girl, although you hope that it didn't really come out quite as screechingly as you recall.  You run into the garage and start pulling off your clothes and shaking them to get rid of the ants.  A good number of ants spills out from your shirt onto the garage floor.  Realizing that the neighbors don't want to see what's about to happen next, you close the garage door and strip off the rest of your clothes, shaking out the ants.  You then brush the remaining ants off your body, sometimes learning their location by the stinging sensation on your skin.  You then take a shower, but you still have this eerie sensation that you have ants crawling all over your body.

Anyway, I didn't know we had ants like that in Minnesota.

Awful quiet 'round these parts

Here I am at home, all alone.  I left the kids at the airport.  (That sounds bad, doesn't it?  What I mean is that I put them on a plane to Utah.  Just wanted to clarify that.)  I'll have the house to myself for two and a half weeks, then I'll be in Utah for two weeks, then I'll have the house to myself for another two and a half weeks, and then the kids will be back.  I'm going to have a lot of people to thank for their help over the summer.

I mentioned the other day that I need to relearn how to relax this summer.  It also occurs to me that come September, I'll need to relearn how to unrelax.  I've already started to forget how crazy life is when the kids are in school, Tanner has swimming, Lindsey needs a lot of help with homework, and I'm trying to feed the kids and do laundry in there somewhere.  Ah, life.

Shifting gears, I got word yesterday that the U.S. State Department is again advising Americans against traveling to Egypt. It looks like the military is on the verge of taking over the government.  I've said this many times before, but I'm sooooooooo glad that Tanner and I were able to travel around Egypt last year.  It was a fabulous experience.  We caught it just at the right time--things had settled down from the initial revolution, and the country didn't have the out-of-control feeling that I'm getting right now.  I'm still rooting for Egypt to make it.  It's going to be rough for a while.