New PJ's

It's cold now and that means it's time for new cold weather PJ's. The boy and I picked him up a new pair at the store the other day. My wife instantly claimed that they were too big, even before he put them on. I insisted that the next size down was too small and these were just fine. Last night he put them on, and it looks like I was right. They do indeed fit just fine. One point for daddy.

Guest Poet

Twas the Night Before My Birthday

Twas the night before my birthday, and all through the house

Only I was stirring, jumpier than a mouse.

Streamers were hung by my doorway with care,

In hopes that some presents soon would be there.

I jumped off the walls, and I'm happy to say

I'd be turning ten the upcoming day

I'd asked for some awfully big presents this year,

Certainly bigger than toys around here.

And in the kitchen, there arose such a clatter

I snuck down the stairs to see what was the matter.

I saw it was Mother making the din

Surrounded by pans, what a sight she was in!

She sat in a chair with an excited look,

Flipping madly through the recipe-book.

And what to my wondering nose should I smell

But batter in the hands of eight singing elves!

They held some batter so shiny and red,

I knew in a moment they were making shortbread!

The need for ingredients began to appear,

So she clapped, and shouted, as you will soon hear:

“Get sugar, get flour, get water too!

Get cocoa, get nuts, and frosting, only blue.

Grab sprinkles and milk, we're wasting daylight!

We must make a cake for my daughter tonight!”

As dry leaves before a hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.

So up to the pantry her helpers they flew

With a mixing bowl, and ingredients too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard in the next room,

My dad's tired feet stomping-BOOM, BOOM!

As I covered my mouth and was turning around,

Into the kitchen my dad came with a bound.

He was dressed all in P.J.s from his toe to his head

And with an expression like he'd just come out of bed.

A cold cup of coffee he held in his hand,

And it looked like he'd fallen from a separate land

His eyes were so tired, his smile not there,

And it looked like a rat had crawled into his hair

His pajamas were wrinkled from a fitful sleep,

He'd stayed up too long just counting sheep.

He went straight to my mom, who'd finished my cake,

Her elves had set it in the oven to bake.

He called to her, “Hey, I've got Lela's present!”

(The mailman had winked and said it was pleasant!)

He went to quickly help my mom wrap the gift,

Then he went and told her it was the end of her shift.

He'd guard the cake while she was away,

She had to rest up for work the following day.

My dad gave her a good-night hug

Before putting hot coffee into his mug.

Taking a sip, he sat down to wait,

Knowing he'd prob'ly be staying up late.

I wanted to scream(I didn't), instead,

I crept up the stairs and snuck into bed,

Whispering to myself as I walked out of sight,

“Happy birthday to you, and to you a good night!”

Note: My daughter had an assignment for school that she wanted me to read. Quite frankly, it's better than the drivel I write on here and I thought it deserved wider recognition. I hope you enjoyed it. 

Dog Jail

I've written about our special dog before. How we found her in the woods and she's getting a little more normal and all of that. Well, she's getting less normal again. It seems that leaving a dog with abandonment issues alone for a week is one way to blow a few circuits in her head.

High security, but only here.

See, you just can't take a dog to Disney. I guess you could if it was a service dog, but Patty is more of an anti-service dog. It's not like we totally abandoned her though, we had a really nice responsible neighborhood girl come over every day and make sure she had food and water and was doing well. They know each other and they're happy to see each other and Patty had a nice warm bed in the garage and everything. We came home and she was fat and happy. Or so we thought.
She didn't even try to get out of the yard the whole time we were gone. I assume she just laid in the garage and contemplated her bleak future alone. After we got back though, she was so happy that she was determined to never let us go away again. Ever. If we left the yard, she was leaving the yard. First it was by mashing the gate open with her body. Then it was through a weak patch between our fence and the neighbors fence. Then it was by tearing off an attachment of the fence to the gate and prying the fence out of the way. Then it was back to the patch again. Over it. Around it. Under it. Every time I fixed some part of it she poked and prodded and dug until she could get out.
She didn't stay out. She just worked and worked and worked to get out, did whatever looking around she could do, and came back in to wait for us. Oh, she occasionally went and found something dead to roll in, but she wasn't running away (unfortunately) she was just getting out. I finally had to cut the old patch out of the corner and doggy proof it. I bought four, two foot long pieces of rebar and pounded them halfway into the ground about three inches apart. Then I cut up some old leftover wire from making the guinea coop and wired a patch in. I also used wire to tie it to the rebar. I also purposely left all of the pokey ends of the wire sticking out to deter her from digging at it. After two days I had to get out more wire and wire the neighbors fence to our pole to stop up gap about two inches wide that she was still managing to squeeze her body though.
She's been working at the corner for a few days now and I think I've stopped her. The weird thing about all of this is that there are about 50 other places she could get out if she tried. Failing that, she could simply climb or jump over the fence, it's lower that the kennel that she broke out of this summer. This isn't about escaping as much as it's about dealing with her mental illness. She's obsessed with getting out and looking for us, but her brain is so broken that she's unable to use any problem solving skills to do it. She can only see the gate or the corner as possible escape routes, she seems to be blind to the whole rest of the yard.
I'm hoping that if we can keep her in the yard for a few weeks the episodes she's having will wane. She'll somehow forget that we left that one time and start to believe that when we leave we'll come back. Perhaps some of those broken circuits will heal and she'll move back toward normal. Maybe.

Oh....tree....

What we started with.

The tree I was posing next to in my last post wasn't actually the tree we picked for our Christmas tree this year, though it was in the running. Instead we picked the fine tree you see in the upper picture. Normally I pick trees based on their overall shape and density of branches and quality of top. It's a hard process to describe. A good tree just looks good. A bad tree can look bad in a wide variety of ways. 
The six summers I spent pruning Christmas trees as a kid exposed me to tens of thousands of trees. I saw every way that I tree could go wrong in growing. I was also tasked with attempting to fix some of those faults and I know that a lot of the things I see wrong with trees in the field aren't so much the fault of the tree as the lack of skill of the pruner. Poor trees never had a chance.

Sturdy branches.

With the tree farm so close, and the family that runs it so nice, we were destined to find a tree that we found acceptable. Which we sort of did. The main selling point for our tree this year was sturdy branches. The poor thing had been pruned way too hard on it's last go. Instead of having soft fine branches full of needles, it was festooned with stumps. It's more a collection of small pine logs than a tree in many ways. It was also completely lacking a top in the conventional sense. Yes, it had a highest point, but instead of that point coming to an actual point, it was shaped more like a basket, or more optimistically, a mesa. I wasn't initially sure what we'd do about it but I figured we'd sort it out.

Not too shabby.

We brought the tree home and bolted on the stand. A quick shove through the door and we were in business. Lights and tinsel and ornament after ornament. This is where the hefty stumpy branches proved their worth. Adults tend to put ornaments all over a tree. Little kids tend to pick a spot and cram as many ornaments as they can on one branch. In the past we've had trouble with formerly tall proud branches reduced to hanging on the floor under the weight of the ornaments. Not this year. This year the branches didn't budge. 
As the decorating continued I was still scratching my head about the top. I could have just set a beach ball up there and called it good, it wouldn't have rolled away. Then I noticed that in the back of the tree a branch was hanging down to the floor. There weren't any ornaments on it because it was in back, and all it was being used for was a chew toy by our toothless cat. A quick snip and a zip tie and we had a top. My wife complimented me on my crafty solution for an artificial top. My dear, it's not an artificial top, it's a prosthetic limb.

Tree Hunting

My kids woke up this winter day

Fields of Beauty

Put on shorts and a Tee
It's how you dress
When you're in Texas
To cut down your Christmas Tree

The day was pretty, the Trees were green
The search was long and hot
We looked here and
We looked there
To find beauty, we did not

An ugly tree, a lonely tree
Finally caught our eye`
No one else will
Pick this tree
If we go and walk on by

We chopped it down, a mighty fall
This ugly weird shaped tree
We brought it home
And dressed it up
Now it's pretty as can be

Road Laundry

I only have five pairs of underwear. My wife shakes her head at me about this, but really, it's generally not a problem. I've got an underwear drawer that's spacious and clean, and when it's all clean I've got what I'm wearing plus enough for four more days. Since my first baby was born I've never ever gone four days without doing laundry. Ever. There are a lot of things in life, like my small supply of underwear, that aren't an issue right up to the point where they become an issue. For me, that point came when we were packing for our recent trip.
We took our trip in my wife's truck. Fantastic vehicle her truck. Comfortable, gets ok mileage for something as big as a house, cruises at 70 with no drama. It's a good truck. However, it does not have a lot of extra space for luggage once you put people in the seats. Since we wanted to bring all of the people in the family, that meant we had to figure out how to not bring a lot of stuff. The trip was going to be nine days long, but a quick calculation let us to the conclusion that we couldn't fit 9 days of clothes. We could pack for 6 and just double up on some days. Or we could pack for three and buy new clothes if we need them. Or, and this was actually a new thought, we could check and see if the hotel we were staying in had laundry. It turns out that it did.
We decided, based on my four day reserve of underwear, that we would pack for four days and do laundry at least once on the trip. It turns out that we did laundry twice, and it was fantastic. Our luggage was half of what it was had we decided to pack enough to wear for the whole time. The whole family was packed in two smallish duffel bags and one small backpack. When we unloaded at the hotel we looked like we were just overnighting. It was awesome.
It turns out that every hotel we stayed at on the trip had coin operated laundry available. This may be old news to some but it was new news to me and I was delighted with it. So if you're laying out your family's clothes for your next vacation, remember, there will almost certainly be a washer and dryer where you're going. Pack light and every third night or so tell your wife that you have to go do laundry. It might be the most peaceful hour you get on your whole trip. Enjoy it.

Baby 'Gators

Big Boys.

If you drive I-10 through Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, you're bound to see billboards for a variety of alligator based experiences. Whether they're fan boat rides through the swamps or 'gator farms or 'gator ranches, alligator culture abounds. As many times as I've driven that stretch of road I've never stopped. I always looked at the swamps and imagined what lived in them instead of actually stopping and seeing. On this past trip that changed. We took a break at stopped at The Gator Ranch in Moss Point Mississippi. Word on the street is that the upcoming season of the show Gator Boys will be filmed on location there. The burly looking guys with cameras and shirts that said "Gator Boys Crew" on them were also a clue. We don't have cable, so we'll probably never see an episode, but if you do, be sure to tune in.

A girl, a gator, and I really nice guy.

So what did we see? Gators. Big ones and little ones. Really big ones. Alligators in excess of 13 feet in fact. Intellectually I knew that a 13 foot alligator is big, but that didn't really prepare me for actually seeing one. They're really big. Like really big. The kids were also able to hold a small one which was really cool. The alligator they're holding is somewhere between one and a half and two years old. Again, pretty cool, not the kind of thing you get to do when you grow up above the Mason Dixon line.
All in all the stop was well worth our time. We didn't take the fan boat ride though I have no doubt it would have been worth it as well. I don't know how many of you are likely to find yourself rolling through southern Mississippi any time soon, but if you do, keep your eyes peeled. In fact, I'm starting to think that I should be keeping my eyes peeled more when I drive. I've been passing a lot of cool things in my hurry to get from one place to another over the years. Maybe it's time to slow down.