Annual mouse invasion scoreboard, October month-to-date:

Route66 =2        update as of this morning = 3

Mousies=0

Long silver hairs found and yanked=2

Where did all this silver come from?  The texture of all the hair on my head has changed overnight.  Yes, I need a haircut, but I only trust one person to cut it and it’s 50 bucks and I just can’t justify it.  I think no haircut is better than a bad one.  That’s just me.  I am cutting my kids’ hair again.  I’d say I’m doing an average job.  Or pretty good, even. 

Report card time was enlightening.  Ollie’s a wiggly genius and Stan is still only doing the homework he wants to do.  The difference this year is that his core classes are in a special program (for kids who didn’t do homework in 7^th grade) that is extremely structured and takes a baby-step approach to homework.  Meaning= there almost always isn’t any.

Core classes = A, A, B, B

The other 3 classes?  C, D, D.

Shit.

Ollie makes the teacher talk with her eyes super wide.  Ollie took over my Hiking Merit Badge class with the Boy Scouts yesterday afternoon, lecturing them about first aid and reminding me not to forget to talk about dehydration.  I had to send him from the room to shut him up; he had a comment about every sentence I uttered.  (I bet he drives that wide-eyed teacher nuts.)  The older kids were just amazed.  “How does he know all that stuff?”  a 13-y-o asked.  “I don’t even know all that stuff and my family hikes all the time!”  I just shrugged.  I should have told them to ask Ollie his feelings for George W. Bush.  You want an eye-opener….

Sarah Beth lost her baby at 38 weeks.  They induced labor and she had to deliver him, a perfect 8-pound baby boy with the cord wrapped and kinked around his neck.  He’d been moving around the day before, and then he wasn’t.  She had the kids with her at the sonogram because nobody believed this was anything other than a baby out of room in the womb and getting ready to be born.  The boys were there, eager eyes on the screen, when everyone realized their little brother was gone.  Her husband was in the car on his way there and had to walk into the anguish, sudden devastation, all over, all at once.

This kind of violence, strangling a baby!  This violence done after birth, would enrage a community and call for the harshest of punishments.  When there is no one to blame, we raise our empty hands and there they hang.  No finger to point, no baby to hold, empty hands. 

Her milk came in the morning they buried little Joshua.  “It’s like my whole body was crying,” she said, breaking down again.  She hasn’t left the house much.  She runs into people she knows who ask, full of expectant joy, “now where’s that new baby!”  She can’t bear to take down the crib, but she can’t believe that new baby’s not in it.  She wakes up in the middle of the night and for a moment has forgotten, then remembers. 

She and her family are very religious.  She tells herself and everyone that God was sparing the baby from perhaps something worse.  I’m glad she has her faith and, more importantly, a strong community of friends, but it’s a goddamned shitty deal and at the end of the conversation, I wanted her to know, she can be brave and faithful and accepting of God’s will to her church friends but she and I can agree, it’s a shitty deal.  “Yes,” she said.  “It is.”

Not fucking fair.  So, so not fucking fair.

Yes I let him go back to Little Sioux this weekend for the Fall Camporee.  And I was a stupid wreck until he called to say he was on his way home.  I cheated a little.  (A lot.)  I asked my dad to go with him.  I'm sure Stan would have been fine on his own.  I wasn't.  The mom of the other Little Sioux Scout from Stan's troop - she would not let her son go.  "Out of the question," she said.  She and I didn't talk about it.  We probably would have if we hadn't been in such a big group.  She and I are bonded in this. 

The weather was supposed to be clear, and then it wasn't, and I had it up on the Internet at work and checked it constantly.  I bless my dad forever for hiking to a high point above the trees... the only place he could get a signal... and calling me on Saturday.  "Everything's fine," he said.  "The boys are having a great time."  He was calling to check the weather, since it had showered lightly off and on.  Stan had heard a little thunder, but was okay.  Bless the weather for holding off until Sunday night.  It started raining about midnight I guess, and hasn't stopped since.  No thunder, just lovely fall rain.  Frank and I had lunch at a swanky place in Dundee where no fewer than 3 waitresses admired my shiny green boots.  He teased my vanity over our smoked salmon tart and french onion soup.  I'd taken my umbrella with us when we left my house.  He drove back to work and I walked home in the rain.  It is 46 degrees and that's as warm as it's going to get today.  I got warm enough on the walk home to switch my sweater for a T-shirt, and here I sit, toasty and rosy-cheeked, well-fed and well-f##kd, children returned safe, and almost 3 hours to myself ahead. 

I love Mondays off.

Naturally.............

My Dad and the boys on the Eldon Pueblo trail in Flagstaff

Norway looking at the window of the Grand Canyon Railway

On the South Rim of the Grand Canyon

Hiking down the Bright Angel Trail (can you see the arch we will walk through?)

I love this shot.  The trail ahead is visible on the right - a cut through the trees.

More to come!

Back!  Vacation was awesome.  We hiked in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah.  We climbed down into the Painted Desert and down the Grand Canyon Bright Angel trail and down underground into the Lava River Cave,  we climbed up the Eldon Pueblo Lookout trail and up the Arizona Snowbowl ski run and fucking up Humphrey’s Peak.  Oh yes we did.

Got on the scale yesterday morning and was delighted to find I’d lost 8 pounds on vacation.  Later the same day, felt overwhelmed with disgust.  Some asshole brought homemade peach cobbler.  Warm.  Goddamned jerk got up at 6am to cook it and bring it hot to work.  From the peaches he grew in his backyard.  Who in blessed Nebraska grows peaches?  And he brought whipped cream.  Fucker.  I hate him.

Had one water bottle left of Colorado water, so I brought it to work this morning.  I’d filled a few containers at Grandma’s house in Denver before we left.  Plus a gallon for my sister, who actually squealed when she got it.  I’m drinking my bottle now and is it ever good.  I don’t care what you say about treatment plants, big city pollution, chemical treatments… Colorado water is cold and sweet and delicious and good and so am I for resisting that #$%^@!& peach cobbler yesterday.

Vaca pix & more to come.

Lousy day at work, stellar day at home.  Frank and the kids greeted me with dinner, gifts, and handmade cards that were so, so sweet.  Stan and Ollie were dressed up – with ties no less.  Ollie had his First Communion suit on; Stan wore his guitar tie from New Orleans.  Norway at least had no food on his shirt.

Birthdays suck, but some suck less than others.

Stan was a football player for exactly 8 days.  Hopefully, he will follow all medical (and motherly) advice and be able to return.  Yeah.  The dreaded phone call.  “Mrs. Route, your son was hurt during football practice and needs medical attention.  Can you come pick him up?”  Of course I’m thinking concussion, snapped tibia, shattered elbow… nope.  He pulled a ligament – outer knee – guess it’s pretty common.  No bone chips, no evident damage to the meniscus, should be a quick fix.  It scared him, but he wants to go back.  He totally gets how romantic footballism is around here.  8^th grade girls go ga-ga and he likey likey.  He wants to play.  I want him to play!  What great physical conditioning!  What a great activity for a kid who has been bigger all his life, told to be careful with smaller people all his life, felt awkward for his size all his life, never been part of the popular crowd all his life … he was literally made for football.  He comes home from practice, makes it through a shower and his homework, and crashes.  Yes, he’s doing his homework this year (huzzah!).  But dudes, I don’t want him to be hurt.  I don’t want him to play scared that he might get hurt.  His injury, minor as it is, is critical.

Plus there’s this fucking mountain we’re climbing in two weeks.  Two weeks!  Humphrey’s Peak, the Arizona state Highpoint, at 12,600’.  It’s already such a huge deal, the kids missing school, Stan missing the big Little Sioux heroism award ceremony, the reservations made and paid for the rooms in Flagstaff, the Convention, the Grand Canyon train ride, the Lava River Cave tour, the substitutes found for my class, Stan’s Mass serving, and on and on.  We need to continue the aggressive training we started (too late) about 45 days ago, but we can’t risk injury!  Not any of us. 

I mean, how lame. 

“How’d you get hurt?” 

“Football practice”

(Cool.)

How’d you get hurt?

Mountain climbing.

(Cool.)

How’d you get hurt?

Elliptical trainer.

(Ummmm.)

No, really, I was on a 10% incline with a 40-pound pack….

(Ummmm)

See?  Lame.

Route66.  The Annotated Update.

Hello, sings Lionel Richie.

At Last.  Is possibly my all-time favorite song, and I really dig the version sung by Stevie Nicks.

I’ll be back.  Arnold said, memorably.

Thinking of you. The generic card with some flowers.  Not roses. Roses deserve a better card.

You Were Always On My Mind, sings Willie, in the ring-tone that I assigned to Frank.

The Courage to Write, a book by Ralph Keyes.

The Kids Are Alright.  1979 documentary about who?  That’s right.

Closer to Fine, sing I, along with the Indigo Girls.

Parting is such sweet sorrow. I promise to write again tomorrow. With apologies to the other Willie. 

There is just something about baseball.  And kids.

Omaha Royals games are perfect for kids.  Unfortunately for the club, the games are not crowded unless it’s a 4^th of July game, so it’s hard to get a bad seat.  You’ve almost always got room to move around.  They have a ton of games and activities and orchestrated events to keep the viewers entertained.  Some of the games are really stupid.  I could do with out the dizzy bat contest.  One thing we really like is the music played for every Royals run.  You know it (so if you like to party, get up and move your body!) and you can’t sit still for it.  The game we attended was full of runs.  Royals runs, for a change…13 to be exact.  There’s nothing more exciting than a game full of runs… some doubles, even a triple.  The kids were going nuts – they even had Norway excited. 

I was so nervous about going.  I back out of a lot of things because I don’t think I’ll be able to do it.  This day involved keeping Norway entertained while Stan and Ollie participated in a baseball clinic, then keeping all three entertained during a baseball game, then keeping my sanity and managing some sleep during a sleepover on the field.  Scout night.  What a blast.  It was 100 degrees outside and water was 4 bucks a bottle.  It was fantastic.

And there was a robot.  (or air-conditioning superhero, you pick...)

hot n happy

I am selling my soul to pay off the fuel charges I incurred driving all over Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas.

I think I should be able to cover the cost.  If my soul don’t fetch enough, there’s always this….

You knew it was only a matter of time. 

I’d call it “Gas ‘n Loan” but it doesn’t have that catchy convenient store misspelling thing going.  What’s next?  The combination gas station and 2^nd mortgage center….