king kong and ann darrow take iowa

you'd think sophie might relate to fay wray in this image...

...but, no. she related to king kong instead. about a month ago, she saw the 1933 version of king kong and she became completely obsessed with him. she has seen it at least 25 times since then--she loves it. and, she has determined all of our roles--gus is ann darrow, rich is the tyrannosaurus rex that king kong fights in the jungle, i am ann darrow's love interest, and paco is the crazy chief that orders ann darrow to be kidnapped and given to kong. it is hilarious--when she watches the movie she calls out whose part is coming up, when paco's men are going to kidnap gus, etc. it's wonderful. however i think most three-year olds are probably terrified of king kong...so maybe there is something to worry about in there. in any event, she loved it so much she decided, on that first viewing, that she was going to be king kong for halloween and gus was going to be ann darrow. being the best human being in the world, gus cheerfully acquiesced:

and here they are!

i love this--ann darrow holding king kong. i just wish it were in focus...

parade number one: sophie's school. i am room mom for both gus and sophies' classes and, mercifully, her parade and party were scheduled for the morning while gus' started just after lunch. so, kong flew solo in this parade.

off to parade around the neighborhood with sophie's class

parades are thrilling for a king kong bunny!

sophie's class trick-or-treating at a nearby bank

sophie finally realizes there is chocolate in that bag

sweeeeeeet

parade number two: gus' school. gus' teachers are wonderful and let sophie parade with the class, which i appreciate more than i can say. so now sophie is two for two on gus' school halloween parades since she could walk! and, again, gus is the kindest big brother in the world to let her go with him and do it happily. that is lovely.

sophie running to get to gus' school in time for his parade

we managed to get gus dressed (he decided to forego the dress at school--probably a wise choice) and he became a doctor/kong hostage instead

gus and sophie getting excited about the parade!

king kong, doctor ann darrow and zeus parading through the classrooms...

...then out into the neighborhood!

gus is like the best big brother evah. period.

i have no idea whose kid this is, but i will say this was one good michael jackson costume

a mass o' sweaty, becostumed kiddos trundling back to their classrooms for halloween parties

the big night itself! halloween. gus and sophie went out trick-or-treating with friends before i got back from ames (i spent the day at ISU) so i have no pictures of them leaving, damnit! gus decided not to wear the dress that night, either (again, that's fine) and just added a healthy dose of fake blood (which was actually edible--yuck) all over his scrubs to make him reallllllly scarrrrrrrry. so...just these pics of sophie coming home exhausted but happy.

rich, gus and sophie spent the afternoon carving the pumpkins

scary, scary pumpkins!

king kong and mommy

kong, at the end of the night, having a banana before bed

happy 50th birthday cindy!!!

a very scary happy halloween birthday to you, miss cindy! i wish so much that i were there in ABQ, decorating my house with all kinds of frightening things for a birthday party for you!!! please let me take you to dinner on the saturday night we are in town, and please write the date in ink. i hope you had a lovely time trick-or-treating with the boys and that you eat lots and lots of things that are terrible for you.

happy birthday!!!

cnn money: "stressful jobs that pay badly"

i could not agree with this more if i tried:

curator.

and they forgot to mention that it usually requires a soul-sucking PhD, the loans for which you will never be able to repay on a curator's salary. ouch!

(i could have gone with this one as well, but frankly i don't know a single photographer who makes anywhere near this kind of money per year--i think if they factored in people actually trying to work as a photographer and included their yearly earnings, it would average a low 4-figure number annually. and it'd still be stressful.)

kiva ladies

these lovely women are margarita, anoko, favour and julia--my kiva ladies. please send positive thoughts their way as they endeavor to build better lives for themselves!

a trip so nice she took it twice...in 72 hours

a bunny in the headlights

sophie bunny took a class trip to the petting zoo/pumpkin patch at the sass family farm in riverside...and she loved it! we heard about patch pumpkin patch pumpkin patch pumpkin every waking minute of every single day until we were worn down and agreed to take her back there--but it was a lot of fun for all of us (especially seeing how much she loved it). the haunted house was a little too scary for her, but she made it through. it was a little too scary for gus, too, but he insisted on going through it again to get over it. rich even won a pumpkin while we were there (though since we've been beswined i haven't gone back to get it yet); he guessed its weight correctly. it's feelin' mighty halloweeny!

sophie definitely not convinced this place is safe (it certainly smelled evil)

sophie looking mischevious in the hay bale maze

then she decided to hell with this and did the hay bale maze the way she thought it should be done

and then taught the rest of the class how to do it right

on to the petting zoo! sophie loved the chickens

and feeding the goats

and petting a quail

and petting a bunny named chocolate

and trying to be a dino

sophie and her friends on a hayride

it was pretty cute

sophie almost gets left behind...

...for snacktime!

hooray for sophie pumpkinhead...the field trip is over and sophie garnered a sweet souvenir

72 hours later: back to the farm with gus and daddy! sophie on the horsie swing

and see-saw with gus

and swing, again, with gus

too many things to do on the farm!

rich, who is too tall for his casket

sophie was really trying to play dead...

...but gus was the most convincing

sophie realizing she is back in the scary haunted house

both she and gus were pretty happy to have dad in there with them

taking the easy way through the hay bale maze

gus of the flowing locks

sophie revisiting the chickens

the bunny feeding the goat

and feeding other goats

sophie playing house

gus and his calabacita

rich, in his usual on-call outing pose

ode to lindsay

this is lindsay, my most beloved little sister, who will always be cooler than me

i completely pilfered these images from my brother-in-law's facebook page, and i must apologize to those who shot them: i'm sorry! i'm using these without your permission, i know, but there was such an obvious subtext in your 80 or so pictures that i couldn't resist duplicating them here. the theme is, of course, the undeniable wondrousness of my lovely sister, lindsay.

lindsay the magnificent and her party bus of friends: during the week they are engineers, architects, nurses, maybe a lawyer or two...professionals of many varieties

and a well-behaved party bus it was at that--amy is using two hands (i think) to drink her beer! and jake looks mighty respectable next to the guy with crazy eyebrows

lindsay and jake...just too cute for words...mainly because they match...i wonder if that was a planned decision? will they be the matching tracksuit couple powerwalking the malls in thirty years? you know what the disgusting truth is: even if they are that couple, they'll still look better than everyone else doing it. and probably me and rich on a good day.

this is the reason they were on the party bus in the first place: an allman brothers/widespread panic concert

completely respectable partying at the concert--absolutely nothing to note here...

...but, once the concert was over, and they got back to the bus, lindsay's party mode fully kicked into overdrive...

i'd like to imagine that guy on the orange cell phone calling some mutual friend of theirs and saying, "oh my god lindsay is rocking the shit on the party bus back home...i wonder if this thing shoots video?" i'm totally going to scout youtube after i finish this post.

continuing to rock the shit

i love amy's face at this gesture! is this party bus surfing? wait, should i be imitating this? oh crap, i have no idea--i am so out of the loop. maybe gus knows.

jake decides it is time for an intervention; party mode lindsay considers the sleep function

jake is contemplating the antics of party mode lindsay and how much he loves her...but hates that he spilled beer on his longhorn shirt. damn bus.


i loooooove you....!

we've been beswined.

i think it was only a matter of time--living in a college town, bugs running rampant, virulent young adults practicing bad hygiene--that the swine flu hit home. sophie has been sick for a while, got better, but has now gone downhill; i just feel moderately crappy and tired. gus, thankfully, is fine; rich, of course, is out of town and pissed that we may not join him.

anyone have any chicken tortilla soup they'd like to bring by? maybe with some fresh avocado slices? mmm, avocado...

blog action day 2009: climate change

i am honored to take part in the global initiative, blog action day, for 2009. this year's topic: climate change. not being terribly scientific but, rather, somewhat observant i thought i'd write about what we personally have experienced this year and what we can do to maybe shift the...shift.

albuquerque, traditionally the high and dry desert, has an average rainfall of about 9 inches a year. over the past several years albuquerque has far outpaced that average. it is rainier than normal, and of course few people are complaining. i remember living there in 1995 and there was a record stretch of absolutely no precipitation for over 9 months straight. extra rain in the desert doesn't seem like a big deal--no water restrictions, the plants look better, it smells nice--but it is not the norm; it is likely a symptom of climate change.

here in eastern iowa, it is a very different story as this year alone several undesirable records were set: one of the coldest months ever recorded in january, a late last frost date, coldest average temperatures in july on record, rainiest august on record...and this october is on track to be much colder than average, too. why is this important? because iowa is a farm state; we grow copious amounts of corn and soybean here. without those two crops our food industry, for better or worse, would fail. and despite personal opinions about the viability of the american model of agriculture, and i admit to having very strong ones, crop failure due to climate change is something we should all care very much about. of course, the corn and soybean reports for 2009 in iowa say this was a bumper year...so i'm not really sure where i'm going with this. perhaps i should have examined the melting of the ice caps and the reduction of polar bear habitat. i do know that there was a ton of blight on veggies of the non-corn and soybean variety here because of the lack of sun...

back to the issue at hand: if we accept that climate change is a very real shift in our world, which i do, even if i can't prove that it is happening exactly where i live (sorry), what can we do to slow or halt the progress of such? MANY THINGS.

this is a selection of what we as a family do:
1. rich rides his bike, every day, rain or shine or snow or freezing whatever, to work and back.
2. gus walks, every day, rain or shine or snow or freezing whatever, to school and back.
3. i shop at farmer's markets and buy locally-grown (i.e. not transported from another state or country) meats, fruits and vegetables.
4. i try to limit the amount of meat our family eats, but i admit we still probably eat too much.
5. i drive a hybrid car when i need to drive (please no emails about how bad the batteries are for the environment).
6. we turn off lights when we leave a room and unplug appliances when they aren't in use.
7. we reuse then recycle everything possible.
8. we keep our house well-maintained.
9. we teach our children about the importance of hindering global warming and to make mindful choices in order to combat it.

of course, i am always open to other suggestions and i would love to know what you do to lessen your impact. interested in rapidly reducing your personal carbon footprint? join me (and lots of others) for no impact week (a carbon cleanse) starting on october 18th. it should be an adventure; i'm sure i will be terrified to learn exactly how bad we are.

be good, use common sense.

a few neat-o iowa happenings

in rich's head, this outfit works

we've had a few non-swamp things going on in the triangle--sophie got her pokes out, gus tagged and released a monarch butterfly, and it snowed here on october 10th (very rude of the weather to do so). the monarch release was very cool--a woman here in town breeds the monarchs for tagging/releasing and has had some of her butterflies make it all the way to their winter place in mexico. i think next year sophie will be old enough to do it; this year i had visions of her screaming and swatting down the poor creatures in a king-kong-on-the-empire-state-building style.

work on the swamp is about to come to a grinding halt in a week or so when it gets and stays too cold to be out there. i know this is probably for the best, as i really should unpack. part three is still coming, as will part four in may, but for today let's look at life away from the swamp and bask in the knowledge that the hawkeyes are 5-0 and all is somewhat right, occasionally, in iowa city.

enjoy the pictures!

sweet sophie bunny on day six of her pokes...

...as doctor daddy prepares to take them out, on our kitchen table

she screamed like a banshee and thankfully the neighbors didn't call the cops...but sophie forgot her troubles in a giant bowl of chocolate ice cream (don't we all?)

la mariposa monarca (this is the female i tagged--the butterfly, you pervs)

gus tags his butterfly--a big healthy male

perfect placement

gus looks down in amazement as he realizes that he has drawn his own butterfly out of the 60 or so that had been tagged and placed in a holding pen before release

gus doesn't want to let go but feels certain his will make it to mexico (as did the breeder); the girl behind him is having major league second thoughts about releasing hers

what the hell?

it SNOWED. hell, i thought it was the rapture. fortunately, the kids love it...as they do everything about iowa (and yes i know it makes things easier). while it may have only left a dusting, the psychological damage was done...

...and then forgotten because gus lost a tooth the same day!

rich was feeling left out of the pictures...so here is rich. read the bottom caption to see why this "world's greatest dad" shirt is a big ol' lie. love you, honey.

since we had our first snow i made the traditional "first snow" cake--however i did forego the penguin cookies this year. i think that special edition iowa hawkeyes bud light can had something to do with it; i know it had everything to do with forgetting to tell the tooth fairy to come and visit gus...i think rich and i might be the worst parents ever.

good news for ballooning; bad news for museums

thank you, china. darth vader, the pink elephant, the giant shopping bag and their friends have been released and most are now in albuquerque. THANK YOU BILL RICHARDSON, TOM UDALL AND MARTIN HEINRICH FOR YOUR DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS!

while today was a good day for ballooning, the onion had a rather disturbing news item about recent policy changes at the met.

(photo courtesy of the onion)

the taming of the swamp, part two

le swamp

SO...i think this is where we left off: we have a swamp. it would be lovely if it weren't right in front of our house. or, really, anywhere near our house. i think a swamp is something one should choose to visit, not live with.

SO...the first thing i did: installed a big ass dehumidifier for the house (it really does help). the second thing i did: i called the city, asked them in an off-hand way if they thought it might be worth the time to excavate a grossly-blocked and possibly mythical culvert in the swamp that led straight to the storm sewer (my neighbor kept insisting it was there, and she was right)...and not only did the city dig they actually found it. the third thing i did: applied, and was accepted to, the master gardener's program through iowa state university (which has been an absolute delight).

SO...with the dehumidifier in place, city on notice, and gardening knowledge bombarding me like gamma rays, i started clearing the swamp. and it was amazing. i would estimate that i have removed at least one ton of herbaceous plant material myself and at least another ton of tree material with rich's help. and easily a third if not fourth ton of trees that a professional tree killer dude did. i bought a chainsaw for rich and you would have thought i had given him a sack of puppies he's had so much fun with it. we have taken out a remarkable amount of overgrowth. what is more remarkable is that we still have a fair amount of green left.

SO...once everything was as cleared on top as i could get it, i started working on the top soil. i almost quit the project at that--there were so very many roots that absolutely refused to cooperate and get the hell out of my "yard" once their parent plants were gone...but eventually i think i got quite a lot of them out of there, or at least enough to seriously reduce the root competition. i've never had to prep soil like that before, but it did give me the excuse i needed to buy that flamethrower i've always wanted (to boil the weed seeds). fire GOOD!

THUS...here we are: pictures for the taming of the swamp, part two...and there will be a part three.

the city actually showed up to work--and i was floored by the addition of the street sweeper, too

look what they found--an oversized version of hannibal lechter's barred mouth mask

they also cleared away all the branches and crap the the previous owner and our neighbors have been throwing into the ravine for god knows how long (that has to stop now)

they even cracked the sidewalk...and fixed it the same day. iowa city is fairly impressive, i must say.

they also uncovered this little hidden jewel--a stump covered with turkey tail fungi. i'm trying to protect it and give it some shade so it will stick around for a bit.

(notice the flamethrower in the foreground!) the city also hired a subcontractor to come out and dig some more around the drain...

...and improve the area by adding some concrete pipes...

...and in between the installation of concrete thingees and the grading that they still haven't done, we had the remaining trees taken out that were too big for me and rich to safely cut down (of course, we definitely considered doing it)...

...and this is the result. what is the most important element we see here? SUNLIGHT!!! yes, we now have sun shining on our former swamp. and a hell of a blank canvas to plant. drainage-wise, while the beehive thing is cool i have to admit it doesn't work very well--they installed it a few inches too high and the water still pools...hopefully they'll fix it when they come back to grade. but i digress...

check back soon for part three!

carter in jaipur for ORBIS

keith and rich in our very messy kitchen

the big man himself, dr. carter (also known as rich's boss), is in jaipur, india right now doing remarkable work on behalf of ORBIS international. please click here if you are not familiar with the flying eye hospital. on today's ORBIS blog, they wrote about keith's trip to jaipur and a surgery he performed on a young girl named reena.

beautiful.

before we get back to the swamp, where is the dark lord?

vader in new mexico...last year.

as previously written about a year ago, gus tooketh down the dark lord, and it was good. but where is darth vader today? HE'S IN FUCKING CHINA. as the 37th annual albuquerque balloon fiesta is about to begin, the dark lord is stuck(eth) in a chinese customs office. seriously. they were flying in inner mongolia and for some reason the chinese government will not give the balloons back to the pilots, the sponsors, the owners...anyone. they are in the black hole, the pit of despair, the road to nowhere that seems to be chinese customs.

balloon fiesta is by far the biggest economic boost the state gets every year so far as tourism revenue is concerned, and one of the highlights (i.e. darth vader) is languishing in the far east. and he's not alone--there are a dozen other special shapes balloons there with him including a giant shopping bag, a ginormous smiling sun, gigantor golf and soccer balls and a gigantic pink elephant.

yesterday the news was awash with positive stories about how bill richardson (governor of NM) and congressmen from new mexico negotiated with the chinese embassy to get the balloons released; today the news is that they are not actually in transit but are expected to be released sometime next week...just in time to miss balloon fiesta.

i'm guessing those pilots won't be returning to fly in china anytime soon.

***update*** yes, indeed, the balloons are still not in the air in any way, shape or form: they remain in china allegedly because of a communist holiday. click here for the latest report, and notice how KOB, an ALBUQUERQUE-based television station, clearly doesn't have "albuquerque" added to their spellcheck dictionary...

***update, again*** still no balloons, as of today, october 4th. at least the AP is now reporting on it. i think it is hilarious that bill richardson, diplomat extraordinaire, is negotiating the release of "the guyang 13." what total assholes they are for keeping these balloons--it's a fucking hot-air balloon, idiots. it isn't propaganda designed to convince people to overthrow your government. give them back already!

the taming of the swamp, part one

welcome to the jungle: our new front yard

so...this is it. the swamp. the swamp that is our front yard. i have never seen anything like this...but i haven't really been looking, either. the one and only time i saw the property it was march and all i could tell was that it was beautifully situated with lots of trees and a ravine running through the front yard. i hadn't counted on the vast number of undesirable herbaceous perennials that would crop up in the summer. it was a bit of a shock. if it weren't for invasive species, we wouldn't have a "yard" at all.

when we got here in august, i was overwhelmed to say the least. after a few days of opening boxes i realized that i had all winter to get the house in order but only a handful of weeks to work outside before it got too cold and the ground froze. so i dove in headfirst and started dismantling the yard/swamp...and this is the pictorial record of my foolish endeavour...actually, it isn't so much foolish as frickin' exhausting and thankless. i guess rich may be thankful that i'm not asking him to help. he's lucky i'm not planting turfgrass. anyway, pictures!

i have to admit it isn't all useless greenery--there are some hidden jewels that have sprouted on their own, like this extraordinary shagbark hickory, which i absolutely adore

but for the most part we have/had crap like this: Smilax tamnoides, most graciously known as bristly greenbrier and less graciously known as the blaspheme vine, hellfetter, and hagbrier...

...and you can see why--those suckers are inflexible and will totally stab you; on the upside, they aren't poisonous

dramatic tree in the "backyard"...

...but unfortunately, this isn't an optical illusion. this 40-foot ash is leaning about 20 or 25 degrees off of perpendicular and will fall (hopefully) right between our house and our garage. i'm guessing, with our luck in iowa, it'll miss the house but land on one of us.

another main component of the "yards": stinging nettle, just about to bloom (but still fully able to sting)

leaves of a baby red osier dogwood, fleabane, and poison ivy. got lots of all three. been trimming the dogwood in great hopes it will do something lovely. and, also in the on-the-upside category, i don't seem to be allergic to poison ivy...which is convenient because rich can't get near it without breaking out in a rash...so he says.

we have a bajillion daddy long legs

and several walnuts with a blight (they're on the chopping block this weekend)

klingons/cling-ons, hitchhikers, cockleburs...whatever these are called they are destroying our clothes. they come out easily when the ground is wet, though.

more stinging nettle, inflorescence.

this is a street view of the front yard. frightening.

however, occasionally the weeds would do something desirable like produce a red berry (in the case of this honeysuckle)...

...or produce a little cornflower blue flower like whatever this was (bird's foot violet?)...

...but then the rains came, and we realized we had only just begun to have troubles with the landscape. we didn't have a yard, we had a swamp. and a swamp it remained for several weeks.

look for part two soon!

life in the fall, in iowa city...

...revolves around the hawkeyes. through the generosity of our lovely neighbors, marge and dick, rich and i went to the football game on saturday--again i seemed to be the only person there without an iowa shirt on (i need to make a goodwill run). the variety of iowa shirts at the game was astounding--hundreds of variations on the same theme all differing combinations of black and gold. some just say "iowa," some "university of iowa" or "iowa hawkeyes," which also gets shortened to "iowa hawks;" every now and then a shirt would just say "kinnick" and i guess if you didn't get it you probably shouldn't ask (it's the name of the stadium). "i bleed black and gold" and the nike "just do it" with a hawkeye symbol are also representin'. there were a couple of girls in "will cheer for beer" shirts...which was fine, but not great. one very drunk girl (by noon) was walking around the stadium working her "IOWA: i only want alcohol" shirt way too hard and certainly making her momma proud. sadly, it probably wouldn't have bothered me on a guy. isn't there a more creative solution to that acronym? "i only want aces" or "i only want adderall" or "i only want [to make an] A"...something like that? "i only want ass" is probably a parallel to the alcohol one, and the gender isn't specified in that way so it might make for some awkward moments between friends. anyway, my point is i probably need to get a shirt. and the hawkeyes won.

gus and his friend, jack, sold cokes and water outside the stadium and made an absolute mint. this is the second time they have done it and both of them netted $100 each. i think gus is saving up for a new ipod. is it normal for a 9 year-old to have that much money? i'm not so sure. homecoming is the next game and i'm guessing they will be slammed. i do hope the weather holds for them.

pictures of something good next time.

doctor daddy and danger girl

the results from being danger girl...and rich is so not allowed to be with the children unsupervised for a while

i think rich knew he was in trouble. i got a call on my cell phone from rich that was way too calm and way too spartan to be good--it was simply, "sophie fell on the playground. she's bleeding. you have to come pick her up now." i got a similar call about gus four years ago after he crashed going way too fast down a hill on his bike without a shirt on and ripped about a quarter of the skin off his back. he had to take codeine just so he could sleep for about a week or two.

back to today: as i was driving downtown to get them, thinking maybe it wouldn't be that bad...i saw ambulance lights. two sets of them. at first i tried to pretend it must be for someone else, but then reality kicked in and i almost pushed a car parked at a red light in front of me out of the way (with my prius--clearly i was deluded) because i knew they were for sophie. i ran across the ped mall to find a very bloody, very much in shock sophie with 6 EMTs around her. she was running after a friend, tripped, and fell head first into a concrete planter. it was an ugly head wound and it bled copiously. rich, being rich, tried to dissuade the other completely freaked-out parents from calling 911; he felt he assessed the situation, put pressure on the wound, saw sophie was able to walk and wasn't unconscious, so he was going to just get her to the hospital and sew her up...if only all these people would stop bothering him...but 911 came anyway (thankfully).

i picked up sophie, took her to the hospital, and sweet dr. gina let us in to the ophthalmology department. she is a wonderful doctor--very kind, very compassionate, and very good with bleeding patients and semi-panicking mothers. rich and gus met us there and rich took care of the suturing. sophie was a less-than cooperative patient and i am so glad that rich was her doctor or else i am certain she would have been sedated--she was almost uncontrollable. four stitches later, and probably some psychological scars from both of her parents holding her down while one sewed her up, she has a lovely repair. sweet danger girl.

sophie bunny puts on a brave, pretty face

this is not something you ever want to see your husband doing to your child

waiting for the local to do its magic; gus had to leave the room right after this because he almost fainted (dr. gina helped him get a glass of water and find a chair)

big boy returns after it is all over (he's also known as safety gus--the polar opposite of danger girl) and is a little paler then when he left

the prettiest four stitches ever seen

doctor daddy and danger girl

just one dead thing in the trash this week

another chipmunk. paco did it. but this time i left it for rich; i still ultimately had to be the one to pick it up and throw it away in the trash. is it somewhat abnormal for sophie to be poking it with a stick and giggling uncontrollably--should i worry about this? hmmm.

oh my, iowa iowa iowa...

at the city park pool, before the big meltdown

iowa, my dear, you must learn to loosen up. you simply must. i am trying to be a good resident; i am trying to follow the rules. but some of your rules are, frankly, inane. counterintuitive. stupid. for example, today you had a glorious fundraiser for the open-space dog park: bring your doggie to city park pool and let them swim their little canine hearts out for a few hours. great idea. fabulous idea. love the idea. the part that's not to love: not allowing any children under 12 to attend said event. terrible idea. horrible idea. counterproductive idea.

why? because who do you think has a significant number of dogs in iowa city? families. families with young children, at that. and your volunteers should really tell families with children under 12 BEFORE they pay the fee for said event that the kids are not allowed to get in or even around the pool. we weren't told until we filled out a ridiculous amount of paperwork, paid the required donation fee and entered the pool area; sophie was devastated when she found out she couldn't go swimming (try explaining to a 3 year-old who is dressed in their best bathing suit that they aren't allowed to get in a pool that everyone else and their dog is in). then a withered woman who had worried herself to a mere twig of 90 pounds gleefully explained that the children couldn't even be in the pool area, but instead were required to watch me and paco from the other side of a 12-foot chain link fence. i can just see my crying, wailing 3-year old and profoundly depressed 9-year old doing just that...their little fingers clasping the links and whimpering...so of course we left, rather louder than i intended, and demanded a refund (and, after a lecture on how this was a fundraiser and many attempts at shame inducement, got one).

my point is that you must sometimes stop and think about the consequences of what i am guessing is intended to be a legislation of common sense. you didn't raise nearly as much money as you could have, you alienated families who would have loved to have gone for a swim with their doggie(s), and you looked like an overprotective ass. am i really that unable to watch my own children in a shallow, public pool? think, please, before you legislate yourself to death for your own good.

okay, enough.

this is what it took to get everyone away from the pool: dairy queen bribes (paco got one, too)

more new mexico pictures and some other ones, too...

shaved rich!

sorry, sorry, sorry. i know the i'm-not-happy-in-iowa storyline is getting old, but just be glad you only have to READ about it...i have to live it. and for those of you accusing me of being morbid with the dead things in the trash post--welcome to my world! it is iowa and it is hard on little things...when winter comes nature won't discriminate and will be hard on everything. new mexico was hard on little and big things alike at times, too. so there. write your own damn blog and be happy all the time and know that i love you and appreciate your readership...

on to more positive things--pictures!

it seemed like a good idea at the time: sophie, gus and i took a trip on the railrunner to santa fe to meet rich, the result of which was stressed-out gus and crazy busy sophie from start to finish

stressed-out gus; crazy busy sophie

stressed-out gus; crazy busy sophie

rich is too margaritaed to mind

sophie attempting an en bocca della verita move with a lion in santa fe

we caught paco in the backyard flinging this into the air and trying to make it fly; it didn't work

i think it was a tobacco hornworm; sophie is just too grossed out to care what it is

and she got even more grossed out when i picked it up and let it crawl on me

we released it back into the wild, and of course paco found it again

rich built this shed for the guys renting our house--it was a wee bit more challenging that we/he thought, and i'm fairly certain he could have built one from scratch easier than this

aunt lindsay will ALWAYS be cooler than mommy...

this is how i got through that last week--lots of wine and awesome friends and relatives

on the road yet the fuck again...with heavy artillery

we stopped through a tiny sliver of texas on the way to iowa

the highlight of the journey: turpentine creek in eureka springs, arkansas! sophie sees ears...

swimming tigers

relaxed tigers

stripy tigers

my guess is that sophie is trying to figure out how we can take him with us

meet missy, the tiger

turpentine creeked-out girl

sophie on our lovely patio at the crescent hotel in eureka springs--actually, i think eureka springs on the whole was the highlight

wonderful creepy owl monster detail on the fireplace

gus and sophie, in their big big bed

paco and rich in the sitting room

gus, adapting nicely

our glorious little patio

sophie and crescent sculpture

our first sunset in iowa since 2006

dead things in the trash can this week: 3 (again)

we are so in iowa.

in new mexico, we had wildlife that stayed pleasantly out of and away from the house itself (with the exception of those extremely ill-mannered squirrels that moved into our attic) and just poked their heads out from time to time to let us oooh and aaah over their otherness. here, not so much. last week rich discovered three petrified field mice in the basement, which thoroughly freaked him out. he got out the shop vac, sucked them up, dumped them into the trash, washed out the shop vac, and vowed never to go to that part of the basement again. he doesn't do critters. he barely does people, so he definitely doesn't do critters.

imagine his surprise yesterday when he went to put his muck boots on, ones he had left on the front porch for about a week, and dumped out a very surprised field mouse, her nest, and her two newborn babies. she got away but the babies and their nest got tossed out (by me) with, not surprisingly, the muck boots. rich will probably never attempt going into the "yard" again. and paco has spent the last 24 hours trying to flush out the mama mouse from under the house.

thus, it wasn't terribly surprising this afternoon when i put paco on a leash to give him his afternoon walk that he bolted after something moving in the "yard." what was surprising was realizing rather forcibly that i hadn't connected the leash to his collar but rather just to his tags...which he broke with ease and was then gone. two, maybe three seconds later i had a bloody, twitching chipmunk at my feet and a wagging, smiling paco looking up at me. gus and his friend were in the front watching this whole thing unfold and learning a host of new curse words they never knew existed. i'm fairly certain gus' friend's mom will never let him visit again. anyway, i debated leaving the chipmunk on the driveway to discompose rich but decided his delicate nature would be too rattled by such a sight, thought better of it, and tossed it out as well. nature and rich don't get along.

mercifully, trash comes tomorrow. and no pictures today.