Terror at the Preist Draw.

When Tim and I were first considering this trip, our biggest reservation was Havoc. He loves his routines, his yard, his room, his things. We were really concerned that he'd be miserable and feel uprooted. Instead he's absolutely thriving! He loves being outdoors, loves the tall Ponderosa pines, the rocks, everything but the wind. It's super windy today, so he and I stayed home while Tim went out with Cody and Sam.

No, the uprooted one is Zoe. She's still pouting. She seems to enjoy chasing the ravens around the meadow, and seems to like the walking to and from the climbing, and the napping when we get there, but she's still very sullen.

I'm feeling strong. Up until yesterday, I had sent everything I got on, putting to bed a few easy projects from years past. Tim's shoulder seems to have benefitted hugely from the time off, and he's back to crushing.
But yesterday. Oh, man, yesterday.

I got on this super fun and easy little climb on the right side of the Anorexic/Carnivore boulder. It's a little high for my comfort zone, but not unreasonably so. I got to the top and pulled in this little crimp, and it flexed. I yelled down to Tim (in what was an apparently high pitched and panicked voice), "Shit, it's total choss!" I've never been so scared in the six years I've been climbing.
See, I had gone up top and scouted that hold, because I hate mantling top outs. I found the crimp (small hold that only your fingertips fit on, for you non climbers), and went for the send. It never even occurred to me to knock on it, or pull on it, to make sure it was solid. So dumb! I just spotted it and blindly trusted it. In retrospect, I realized that I have never had to find my own holds before, because Tim always helps me. False security. So I stupidly pulled on this hold that was incredibly not safe while I was 15ish feet off the deck and had to downclimb so I could drop to the pads.
Ugh. I was shaking for an hour. I still feel sick, thinking about it. Unforgivably dumb. So scary.

But all's well that ends well, and today Havoc and I ran errands while Tim is climbing, and now Havoc is napping and I'm going to eat some lunch.

We made it!

We're finally here! The trailer is parked, set up, everything is in it's place, and all is well. And not a moment too soon: the driving was wearing on Tim and I so badly that I was mere moments away from screaming "Screw this, take me HOME!"

Tim is in his "office" (the truck), and I'm feeding Havoc his breakfast of bananas and granola. Zoe is lying in his bed, glaring at me and clearly thinking, "Okay, Mom, joke's over, can we go home now?"

Our home for the summer is gorgeous. It's all huge pine trees, grassy clearings, and sunshine. This morning is about 50 degrees, and the high today is 62. It's a little cool yet for my tastes, but it'll warm up as summer moves on.

Havoc still hasn't truly adjusted, he isn't sleeping well so I've been sleeping with him. Hopefully that'll resolve itself soon. I don't mind it, but I'd rather sleep with that husband of mine. He's much warmer and the nights are effing COLD!

Lubbock Texas is a shithole.

Yesterday was HECTIC.

Initially, we expected our tenant on Sunday (today) morning. So we kinda dilly dallied on the packing thing a little. She called Friday, saying she'd be there around 6 pm on Saturday. Okay, no biggie, we got to work. Saturday around 10 am she called, saying that she was about four hours away.
Begin scramble.
In the aftermath, I have no idea where our toothbrushes are, among other daily use items, but damnit, we're on the road, and that's all that matters!

There have been some "bumps", (stuck at a train crossing for 30 minutes, a few missed turns, and Havoc deciding that it was playtime when we made our first attempt to stop for the night), but overall it's been surprisingly painless. Havoc is riding like a champ, thank god. He mostly has been either sleeping or staring out his window, watching all the nothing roll by. I wonder what he thinks is happening, you know? "I don't know where we're going, but there had damn well better be balloons there."

We made it to Sweetwater, Texas last night, and hope to camp near Albuquerque tonight, and roll into Flagstaff AZ tomorrow!

Bull Creek on a Sunday

Yes, this is a photo of a fire hydrant that is in the middle of a creek. No, I don't know what it's doing there.



We took Havoc to Bull Creek today to let him splash around in the water a little bit.



The kid loves him some water! He fell down some, but brushed himself off and kept on playing.
Here, look at some pictures of cuteness.







Does anyone know what kind of fish these are? They had these cool little "clearings" in the algae, I assume some sort of neat fishy dating thing.

Kids do the darndest things.

We cloth diaper Havoc. To the uninitiated, here's what that means.

Step One: Get cloth diaper (standard prefolds, for us).

Step Two: Get diaper cover (Thirsties Duo Wraps for us).

Step Three: Put diaper into cover.

Step Four: Put the diaper/cover combo onto babies butt.

Step Five: Repeat when baby pees or poos.

Havoc, obviously, has figured out how to remove the diaper while his shorts are still on. In the brilliant words of Caitlin, "It's like that scene from Flashdance where she takes her bra off under her shirt... except this is WAY funnier."

Kids. *shakes head*

Booooooored.

We have a new tenant, I think. If this one screws us over, expect to start addressing me by the number given to me by whichever State Correctional Facility I get remanded to. She should be arriving here at some point on the 21st, we should be departing on the 22nd, and hopefully will be setting up house someplace not so suffocatingly hot by the 25th or 26th.

Tim has out the super glue. Oh, lord. I'm pretty sure that super glue wasn't made with repairing crumbling weather stripping in mind.
(Haha, he just walked by me muttering, "Ok, before I glue myself to myself, I should throw this away..." It's the little things.)

So here we are, cooling our heels for another ten days, and we're both going a little stir crazy. Thus the fixing of the weather stripping. It's funny, when your house is suddenly very empty, but you're still living in it, you really really start seeing all those little things that you meant to fix last year but got really busy and forgot about.
There are lots of those things in our house. Like, lots. Lots and lots and lots.
They're all smallish things, like the weather stripping coming unstuck on the back door because I am not qualified to install things like weather stripping. Like the chipped paint on the bathroom window sill from where I set an apparently wet rubber ducky that then sealed itself to the sill and pulled up paint when I removed it two months later. Like the rust stains in the bottom of one of the crisper drawers in the fridge (you store your fruit and veggies there, I store my beer. Don't judge me.) Like the screen on the window over the kitchen sink that I removed (broke) trying to get back into the house when I locked myself out one day when I was like 6 months pregnant and Tim was at work and my phone was locked in the house.

Anyway, in theory we're going to try to get some of that stuff taken care of. In reality though, I love those little "defects", because they're all the marks we've left on this house while we were making it our home. I don't know for sure that I'll exactly treasure the little discolored spot on Havoc's bedroom floor from the first time he copped a squat during Naked Baby Booty time, but I might. I want to come home to all of those flaws this fall. I want those little things to remind me that it's still home, even if I've been away. So I have to figure out ways to distract Tim from going apeshit and fixing everything.

Want a beer, honey?

Happy Mother's Day!

Every time I say "I love you" to my mom, she says "I love you more". My whole life, we've had that exchange. I usually reply with something smart assed, or at least just the standard "No, I love you more!"
Shortly after Havoc was born, I was on the phone with my mom, probably oohing and aahing over my precious little son, and when we said our goodbyes, we had the usual exchange, only this time, after she said "I love you more", she added, "and I bet you believe me this time." For the first time in my life, I did. I really really did.

It's funny, before that moment, it hadn't occurred to me to think about just how much my parents really loved me. It was just one of those things, you know, like that the sun rises every day. But after I hung up the phone, I just sat and stared at my newborn son, and thought about how much I loved him, and tried to really grasp that my mom loved me the same way, maybe even more. It was, I think, one of the more significant moments of my life.

Happy mother's day! Not just to my mom Kelley, but to my awesome mother in law Esty, my grandmothers Kay and Jeanette (who are pretty much the coolest grandmothers ever, by the way), my sister Cedar (who has a little girl of her own, who turns a year this summer), and all of my friends who are mothers or mothers to be. I've been lucky to have so many great women (Mom, Mom T, Sandy, Melissa, Cindy, Carolyn, Jacquie, you guys especially!) in my life without whom this first year of motherhood would've been a very different and much harder thing! Thank you for all the support, advice, and hand me downs! I love every one of you dearly.

Have a very happy mother's day!

Since it's almost Mother's Day...

I realize that this is a crappy cell phone picture, and that it's blurry, and that it's flat out just not that great. But I really love it. I took it the other day at Zilker Botanical Gardens. To me, it really captures what being a parent feels like. It's blurry and fast, speeding by you too quickly to really focus on.

I also feel like it captures being a kid, though, even more so. Also blurry and fast, but joyful and bright and colorful.

It just makes me happy, and I felt like sharing it.

ongoing

You know what the real kicker to me is about the whole tenant bs is? First, she's moving in, only a day late. Then, "Oh, oops, not moving in!" Then the next morning, "Oh, well, I guess I'll move in after all". Then a few hours later, "Yeah, sorry, not moving in." So, we have moved out, then back in, then out, and then back in again, all in two days time. You can't explain that kind of upheaval to a one year old. He doesn't understand. He just knows his world is getting shaken up something fierce, and he doesn't like it, and he's going to make sure we know it. Poor kid.
He's actually handling it very well, because he's the best damn baby ever, but I hate the fact that what should have been a moderately stressful event (for him) has turned into something much much worse.

The other possible tenant turned out to have warrants out for check fraud, doesn't actually work for who he said he worked for, and apparently moves around every few months to avoid getting found by his creditors. Yay for background checks! Seriously, did he not think we'd check? What a dipshit.

So, now I'm back to trying to find a tenant. Hopefully something will work out soon, and in the meantime we're going to take advantage of the very empty house to get some serious deep cleaning in, and maybe even do a few little improvement projects we've been thinking about for a while.

Wish us luck, kids.

Oh, well that just sucks.

I very nearly made this post last night, but I realized how unwise that was when the first sentence was basically just me saying "fuck" a dozen or so times.

Yesterday was spent in a frenzy of packing and cleaning. I will eternally be impressed with myself for how much I got done with a bitching one year old pulling on my legs the whole time. I got the job about 90% or so done, and Tim ran to get me some boxes so I could wrap it up, because we were hitting the road the next day (which of course now, is today).

Tim got home and said, "The good news is, boxes are really cheap at Home Depot. The bad news is, our tenant just backed out on us."

Here's where all those "fuck"s came in, more or less.

So the trailer was packed, the house was more or less cleaned up, and we had no tenant. Which meant we couldn't go. Which meant we had just spent a large amount of money on a trailer for no real reason. Which meant I sold my beloved car for no reason.
We handled it by getting drunk.

Today things look better, we hopefully already have a new tenant lined up and we'll be able to leave this weekend. Still though, we are in limbo. Everything is on hold for the time being. Neither Tim or I are known for our ability to wait quietly, so the tension level in the house if pretty high right now.

Wish us luck. I need mountains, or I might literally lose my mind this summer.

The packrat lifestyle

We've lived in this house for three years now, and as can be expected, have accumulated a lot of stuff. Especially after that baby thing happened. We have so much baby stuff, holy hell. He only plays with like twenty five things, yet he has seven hundred toys. I only wear three pairs of shoes but own I think twenty. (In all fairness, though, most of those currently unused shoes were worn a lot when I worked in a law office and had to be all presentable and stuff all the time. Not a lot of use for six inch heels in the stay at home mommy business, it seems.)

It's insane the crap I keep around. Why the hell do I need two blow dryers, three curling irons, hot rollers, foam rollers, a straightening iron, and a huge box of products when the only hairstyle I ever rock is a ponytail?! Why do I need an entire drawer of baking tins, cookie sheets, and pizza pans when Erin (god bless her) does all of my baking for me? How many nearly empty bottles of Dayquil does one family need (answer: 4)? It's stupid.

So now I'm going through the toys, shoes, clothes, kitchen utensils, blah blah blah, and purging stuff like a madwoman. I think I've donated enough to Goodwill at this point to outfit an entire small single person apartment. I've thrown out enough to clog up our trash can so badly that when the trash truck came and picked it up, stuff was wedged into the bottom and it stayed for an extra week (Tim had to go out and ask the garbage men to shake it extra hard, and wouldn't let them leave until he saw it empty). That sucked.

We are now just a few shorts days away from our great departure! The trailer is mostly packed, and the house is mostly cleaned out. It's going to be weird, knowing that someone else is living in my house for the summer, but I'm pretty sure the perfect temps and awesome climbing will help alleviate that some.

I guess I should take some pictures of the trailer or something, at some point...