Daily Adventures

I spent nearly all of today with a drill in my hand, when I wasn't feeding Jet, playing with Jet, watching a movie with Jet, or playing video games for Jet. Whenever I had the drill in my hand, Jet was playing outside, either on his playset or with all the neighborhood kids, so it wasn't all watching things. But it was fun to see The Incredibles again.

Mostly I worked on screwing down the boards for the new deck John is making. He's doing all the base work, setting the boards onto the base, and then letting me fill in all the gaps. Repeative, mindless, fun work for me. Just getting into the rhythm of getting the things in, one by one by one. A bit like knitting, really, and I can see my progress, row by row.

I did take some time to go to the OUR Center to water the plots I'd seeded. I also fed the plants that were growing so well in the warm spring sun. There will be snow sometime again in the the next few weeks, or else Colorado just isn't what it should be. March and April are the snowiest months for the region. Given the tremendous amount of snow we had in January and February, everyone was expecting us to get buried, but no such luck, yet.

Still, the peas are out and some of the oniony things and spinach, all of which don't mind the cold. The beets, carrots, and the like should go out soon, too.

I also took the time to get Jet some lunch and then we rode the three-wheeler to school. We met up with a bunch of the parents and other kids in Jet's class, and they admired his wheels. Hee. We rode up to the door, and I stayed while Jet played a bit, and then he charged in when the other kids were mostly in already.

I get to volunteer tomorrow! Yay!

John and I did stop off to get a new guiding sleeve for the long decking screws, and I got more lure for the wasp trap. I also managed to cook a nice tomato sauce from the oven roasted tomatoes from last fall, which I could finally face, and some canned tomatoes, onion, garlic, and a ton of basil. It was great with the cheese ravioli from Costco. Quick, simple meal, with Rhodes yeasty rolls that were hot and soft from the oven. The frozen rolls seem to have no trans fats or preservatives, as the freezing does well enough. I'm glad of that.

The kids swarmed the backyards this afternoon, after the kids came home from school. They were just everywhere, having a great time outside, and enjoying the 75 degree weather. Feels like *summer* not still, officially, winter. :-)

They were talking about 10-20 inches of snow between last night and Thursday noon. It was bright and clear out at 10 last night, so I drove into work, got my laptop and headed home with it and a box of teas I'd wanted to take home for the holidays anyway. I also brought my cards home.

So I'm home, watching the snow come down on a very white world. John and George are at the OUR center. Isabel is about to join them. Jet is with the kids at the Rec. Center. And I have a few moments of quiet after a very chaotic morning between a meeting, folks trying to call when I was on the phone, and a chaos of cellphone activity. John's now driving Jet and Isabel to their places, and I'm finally working again.

Poor Jet, when he saw Dean drive off without having a phone call from him, Jet was about to cry as he really wanted to go to the Rec. Center and swim. I'm glad John could rescue him. And the volunteer shortage for making lunch wasn't as bad as John originally thought, so I have no guilt about working.

*grin*

My God. It was actually out and out and completely sunny today. Unexpectedly, gloriously, completely sunny today. Hot and amazing and beautifully sunny.

It even started that way after a pretty cuttingly cold night, the humidity in the air made it far colder than I thought it would be, but the blankets were enough to get by. But when I finally awakened, after ignoring my bladder for longer than I thought I could, I got dressed and put together and Waltr was out making cinnamon rolls for everyone. Wow. I trotted off on the long trip to the bathroom and then came back to orange flavored cinnamon rolls out of the Dutch oven and coffee. Coffee that John had made in the vacuum flask with our drip maker. Hee. Yay!

That was a fantastic way to start the day. I'll admit that the hard cushions of our van bed really made their impression on my hips and back, it wasn't that great, but with a bit of food and plenty of stretching I was okay for the day, which involved, mostly, going out to the beach and digging in the sand. :-)

Cathie had had to leave in the early pre-dawn morning to go to work. She wouldn't be back until Tuesday and we missed her.

Jet and John and I mostly just went out on the beach and dug all day. I built a bunch of stuff.

Jet found brine shrimp in the sand, thousands of them. There was a section of sand at the right depth or something, and when the waves came in the brine shrimp would leap up from the sand, swim around in the water while it lasted. Jet could see them all in the water and catch them on his hand and gently show them to me. When he or the waves deposited them high and dry on the sand, they would burrow in under the surface.

I found that if I stepped on the sand they were buried under, the sand would wiggle under my feet, and my feet would sink into the sand. When I lifted my foot, there would be a brief puddle, and the shrimp would come up into the water for the brief moment it was there, and then bury themselves back into the sand as the water drained away. It was odd to see them flash up like that and then down again. Jet loved seeing them and digging for them and picking them up only to put them back into the surf.

We stopped for lunch for a while and put lots of sunscreen on as half our crew was sunburnt from just the morning. Jet said he wasn't hungry but then devoured the food we put in front of him. Then we all went out again, picked a different spot and dug in deep.

I'd gotten braver and thought a bit about what I wanted to do and build a high tower with curved walls to either side circling in from the arched entry way. It was fun to see it happen. Then I remembered something in the book and wondered if it would work.

I swirled the sand and water until it was all flowing, got a double handful and started passing it from hand to hand. When it had drained a little, I added half handfuls of dry sand at a time to the outside of the handful and, eventually, I had a sand ball. It was dense, heavy and solid, and Jet yelled, "CANNONBALL!" when I handed him one and he launched it in the direction of the waves. I made several more, set some of them on the sand to dry and harden and drain a bit from its contact with the sand, and eventually I topped the tower with a series of sandballs that looked unnatural. :-) One doesn't think of sand staying in the shape of a snowball the way snow does.

A family with three girls came up to look at the castle and admire it, and Jet said it was the ice cream castle. I liked that name. I asked them if they wanted a sand ball and they nodded shyly. So I handed them one. John made another one and Jet another for them, so they had a set. Jet took to shaping them so naturally it surprised me, but he got good ones, too.

Jet happily put a bunch of balls into the sea, too. Ones that were set aside for him. He felt that he could knock over the castle too, but John did his level best to persuade him to not to while I went to get a camera before Hurricane Jet did it's destructive best.

I got pictures. But by then Jet was uninterested in knocking it down, he was far more interested in flinging handfuls of sand into the sea.

Eventually, I took Jet to the showers and got him cleaned up and all the uncomfortable sand washed away. That was very useful indeed. :-) He cleaned up nice and warm from the hot water, and I dried him off, dressed him and when we got back there was a taco dinner underway. Jet ate four shells with cream cheese and furikake. The rest of us had, essentially, taco salad in shells. There was lots of good salad and some refried beans and taco seasoned beef.

While dinner was being served, I thought I'd try out my Visor for journal entries, and when it complained about low batteries, I took out the old batteries and put in new and the darn thing spazzed on me. This new one keeps spazzing out whenever I replace the batteries, unlike my old, faithful, original Visor which never complained about a voltage change of any kind. So I may well just go back to my rubber baby buggy of a Visor and at least HAVE all my data when I need it.

I now have no contact data other than what was in my cellphone. I am unhappy about that.

When dinner was done and the hot chocolate came out the mosquitos came out, too. John slathered Jet while I slathered myself with the non-DEET stuff that's now out. But by the time Jet wanted to go to bed the stuff had decayed enough that it wasn't working anymore. So the mosquitoes, after the warm day, swarmed us. Jet got five big bites on his face, neck, behind the ears, and in the van one landed on his cheek while he was whimpering at it, and got him there. Thank goodness West Nile hasn't made it this far. Sigh. I was upset. Jet was upset. John tried to calm us down without making us more upset. We finally cleared the van of all the bugs and John read to Jet.

Then I nursed him and he fell asleep, but when we tried to put him up, even as tired as he was, he cried and cried. This time I explained to him that he had to help us put him into the sleeping bag when he was done, and that worked well enough in his near term memory that when he realized we were putting him in again, he tried to help and he fell deeply asleep in his sack.

This night was unbelievably cold for me, and I ended up on John's half of the van, nearly on top of him as he was actually a heat source. I was amazed that it got that cold even in our insulated space, and Jet didn't notice a thing and said that he slept really well, woke up once, turned over and went back to sleep. He said that the sleeping bag made it so that he could sleep all night long. Yay for all night!!

It is mildly disconcerting to get up and have it be 54° first thing in the morning. This is warmer than it has been for a while, though the downslope winds account for it, it's still disorienting after the cold of the last few weeks.