what I did at summer camp

It's probably been around 30 years since I was last in Winter Park, Colorado.   Well, before this week anyways.  We just got back from a few days in the mountains, and I didn't turn on a computer the whole time.  Miss me?  Even notice I was gone?

We planned a family trip several weeks ago, and the stars actually aligned so that all five of us could hang out.  So I've been in and out of a mountain cabin for the last few days.  I'd like to say we enjoyed fresh air and sunshine, but various big wildfires out-performed the fresh air part.  Plenty of sunshine, though!

Obligatory sitting-around-on-vacation pic:

Don't mind the small blemish on my left shin.  I did a much better job on the right shin when we spent the day at Trestle Bike Park.  Trestle is a mountain bike resort with miles and miles of mountain bike trails.  The nice part is, you can ride a gondola to the top, so you're mostly riding your bike DOWNhill.  Weeeeeeeeeee!

Wolfgang is the most experienced mountain biker of the bunch and has been to Trestle before.  The rest of us noobs got to experience it for the first time.  

Meego and whatsherface.  Who wore it better?

It's one thing to snap a pic at the base of the gondola, another thing to get back down the mountain.  Just call me "hashtag slow and awkward"!  Nonetheless, I've got to say, it was fun!  Magnum and I stuck with repeatedly riding on one green trail in particular, aptly named "Green World".  It was great because it went for miles and miles without getting too technical.   

One of Wolfgang's friends joined us on Trestle day, so those two did their thing on the more advanced trails.  Meego and Chaco hung out with Magnum and me for a bit, but pretty much left us in the dust and did their own thing.  

And it wouldn't be a noteworthy day at the bike park without some body damage, right?  Meego was the first of us to do an over-the-handlebars move resulting in a bit of road hash and some bike blemishes.  But he was back to it in true 20-year-old fashion.  

Later on, Magnum hit a highly technical berm and ended up flying off the bike (translation:  he tripped exiting the gondola)

Finally, I attempted a particularly gnarly feature, and ended up sending it off the trail and into the foliage (translation:  I pulled my slow @ss over to let an adolescent pass me, and ended up dumping my bike).

Successful first trip to the bike park!

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Linking up this week with Mama Kat for the prompt:

4. Write a blog post inspired by the word: damage

hot mess

There is an ironing board with an iron atop it in what is sort of our living room.  There are three piles of folded laundry on the coffee table.  A corrugated cardboard box rests up against a wall. China's bed is disgusting.

As I type this and look around my desk, I see a small sketchpad, a couple of ultra fine sharpies, a roll of duct tape, some ASVAB flash cards, a stray rubber band, a receipt for flour...

Then there are the various piles that Chaco brought home last week.  They've been somewhat rearranged, but the net effect is still the same.  And there are all these shoes laying around.  What is up with all these shoes?  Where the heck did they come from?

In short, the house is messy.  But then I look at what's going on in tornado ravaged Oklahoma, and I am NOT complaining.  We had a brush with a tornado once.  It was eerie scary, but a sneeze puff in comparison with what moved through Oklahoma.

No, our mess is a result of a positively busy week, mainly from Wolfgang's high school graduation.  You know the high-falutin' jobs that require "high school diploma or GED?"  Well, he's eligible now.

My in-laws - both sets -  have been in and out since Sunday.  Commencement was last night. In between that stuff, life goes on and messes pile up.

I also attended Meego's 7th grade end-of-year shindig.  He got a silver medal.  It was a nice little bash in the school library - nice to see kids taking pride in receiving academic awards, and cheering for their classmates.

Then last night's commencement ceremony wasn't too uppity as these things can sometimes be.  Only a couple of the speeches went too long-winded IMHO.  And it turns out that the Valedictorian was a kid I'd tutored.  I'm SO taking credit for that.

Well, no.

I actually spent about two hours with him last spring to share some "boot camp" strategies for his ACT.  I remember him as bright, but not at all arrogant about it (some are obnoxiously so).  He was the type of kid where a 2-hour strategy session with a tutor was enough to get him where he wanted to be.   His was not one of the too long-winded speeches either.  WOOT for him.

So now, the dust will literally begin to settle, hopefully.  But still, it's a good mess.
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evacuated!

"There.  Right there!  TAKE  IT... TAKE  IT!!"  He gestured, pointing maniacally as I steered.

I pinched the vehicle perfectly into the squeeze, secured it, and we were off.  Mayhem surrounded us as we dove into the nearest building.  We made our way up the stairwell among a cacophony of popping, scraping, ripping noises.

As we climbed the endless stairway, I took in the sights.  Discarded food, clothing, and what could only be described as shrapnel.  What was that odor?  I decided I didn't want to know as I chastised myself for forgetting the gas masks.  We would have to work quickly to get out in one piece.

When we finally made it to the top, we emerged into a tight hallway of more noises, smells, and indeterminate matter.  Moving quickly, we passed several small openings off of the main pathway.  I glanced in a few of these chambers and saw various stages of disarray.  I saw human forms in slumped positions, barely moving.

We entered a room at the end of the hall.  I vaguely remembered being there before.  Before the collapse.

We began grabbing anything we could carry.  Anything that looked familiar and useful.  Once our arms were full, we headed back out into the fray, pushing our way back to the stairwell.  More popping sounds, more ripping, more scraping.  A blur of bodies moved against us, issuing intermittent incoherent screams.  And the smells, oh the smells.

We carefully but swiftly moved back down the littered, contaminated stairwell.  I tried not to breathe... I tried...

How many trips did we make in total?  I can't remember.  The heat, the adrenaline, the chaos made the entire episode blend into one.  We were halfway down the stairwell on our last trip.

"The burn!  THE  BURN!!"  I shouted to him.  "My left arm!  It  BURNS!!"

He urged me to just keep going, be tough.  His load was heavier.  But then, he wasn't a 48-year-old woman, I reminded him.  The banter helped me make it all the way to the now stuffed vehicle.   I checked my watch. The pilaging had taken us just about an hour.  Now for the getaway!

Traffic back to the compound was thankfully light.  I backed into the docking bay where some of the others came out to help retrieve the goods and secure them into the hideout.  I pulled on the hideous vest and dashed to the crosswalk just in time, to keep up the suburban housewife deception.

Within a relatively short period, the Command Center was up and functioning.

Operation CHC (Chaco Home from College) accomplished.  

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life begins at 65

Or at least it seems that way today.  It was sunny and 65 degrees.  January?!

I don't want to go all Weather Channel, but really it was just too nice to not mention.  For one, I get a lot more company at the crosswalk.  Wasn't I just all alone and freezing my butt off last week?  These last couple of days, it seems that literally everyone and their grandma is walking to and from school.

And today, I noticed how much easier things are when it's nice out.  Not having to bundle up, not having to work so hard to keep breathing while not freezing a lung, not having to keep moving or die.  Is there a way to keep this and still have water next summer?

And with spring in the air, you know what that means!  *wink*wink*nudge*nudge  Oh yeah you betcha... cleaning!

Monday was a day off school, so I had some extra time and just couldn't stop myself.  Wolfgang even came in and asked, "What's that smell?".

That would be the smell of clean.

Even Magnum, in all his Aspergerness, noticed in just a few seconds.  Amazing!

... or maybe I should do that more often.
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taking a day

I'm not really here (thanks to blogger prescheduling).  Not even in the physical this time.

I'm taking a day.  Seizing a day?

A little while ago, a friend invited me to go along on a bit of a getaway weekend.  And I jumped on it!

So I'm away from the blog today.  I'm getting back to my roots, reconnecting with Mother Earth...

I expect it to be strangely cleansing.  In a dirty kind of way.

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does it make a sound?

I remember Tree Man.

He showed up at my front door one afternoon a couple of summers ago. We had a dying tree in the yard, and I'd called him, among others, to come and give me an estimate for its removal.

He had a sort of hippyish look to him. Longish fuzzy hair in a ponytail, full beard, John Lennon glasses. He had a sort of hippyish personality too. Very mellow and friendly. I soon learned that he and his tree service business were from the local hippie place just outside the city.

So I liked him, this hippie Tree Man, and I hired him to remove the tree. It almost seemed incongruent when he showed up a few days later, in his usual granola aura, driving a big diesel pickup pulling a trailer of power equipment.

And he made impressive short work of that tree. Several of the neighbor kids, in addition to our own kids, showed up to watch. All took delight in shouting "TIMBER!!" when the magic moment happened.

"Those all yer kids?", he asked in his hippie way.

"Nope, just three of 'em", I replied in a, hopefully, not too mother-from-suburbia way.

"Mmmm.... I've got 5 kids...", he countered in a rather conversation-while-sharing-marijuana way.

Good ol' Tree Man.

This summer, we discovered that another tree in the yard was needing last rites. It's a smaller tree than the last, so Chaco, Wolfgang, and I took it upon ourselves to put it out of its misery.

We hacked and sawed and pushed and pulled and hacked some more and sawed some more and pushed.... well, y'know. All that work reminded me of the ease with which Tree Man had removed the previous tree. But then, he did have all that equipment, and here we were, me and my two scrawny teenagers.

But we got it. It fell precisely where we'd hoped it would, and then we set about making little pieces of wood out of it.

That was a week ago today.

This morning, Magnum asked, "So'd you cut that tree down yesterday?" (We hadn't told him - remember that little Asperger's game we like to play?).

"Uhm, actually, it was last week", I revealed.

SO it only took him one week to notice. Never mind the fact that he had worked in the yard over the weekend. Never mind that it's a freakin' TREE! that's no longer THERE. One week only. That's pretty good, I'd say.

If a tree falls in the yard... ?
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now we're cookin'!

AAaaaaaaaaah.... Woke up to the smell of cooking flesh this morning.

Got my turkey S-L-O-W cooking, put it in at bedtime last night. So now it's officially Thanksgiving and I'm in more of a cooking mood. We went out yesterday, got some fresh air at a local park and got rid of the domestic doldrums, so now I'm ready for some culinary adventures.

Chaco and Wolfgang cut up the park sidewalks with their rollerblades while Meego terrorized some ducks and geese for a while before hitting the playground aparati.

It was a nice day to get out. I'd been feeling a little caged with Magnum and the kids all home from work and school this week. Causing ruckuses and making messes and talking about the food they're going to eat - that just magically appears in that fantasy land of theirs. I was feeling a bit abused.


So the fresh air and people watching the park provided was a good thing. Got outside the box.

Meego successfully

and unsuccessfully hiding

from the camera.

So Happy Thanksgiving to all of my blog friends! I'm truly thankful for all of ya's!

Love and kisses,

Abby<--------- (That's webdings for "Abby". Cool that it's got 2 bicycles, no??)

Abby
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pile up

We noticed the first one a couple of weeks ago or so. A deposit of dark, rich, fertile soil plopped right outside our back gate. Maybe a foot or so in diameter, with a short conical shape.

It was like a crop circle in its mystery, this pile of dirt. And even more mysterious was that, every other day or so, it would grow. The pile was made bigger by another layer of dark soil. And other piles began to sprout up, seemingly while we were all asleep.

We pondered this pondersome puzzling pile. Was someone doing some landscaping and depositing shovelfulls of dirt outside our fence at night? (Magnum's paranoid thought). That's nutty, why would anyone do such a weird thing? (My put-yourself-in-those-shoes thought).

And I know I've seen such piles strewn about during my wanderings around the wild places of the neighborhood. Just never right at the threshold of our gate. I figured some sort of creature from the family of rodentia was making them.

A little detective work later, and I think I know the culprit. MOLES! AHA! They are molehills. I'm pretty sure.

Then I was curious. I don't think I've ever seen an actual mole. I did some more detective work to learn more about them.

I learned that if a mole changes size, shape or color, or a new one develops in adult life it should be evaluated by a doctor or preferably by a dermatologist.

I learned that the mole is defined as the amount of substance of a system which contains as many "elemental entities" as there are atoms in 12 g of carbon-12.

From that, I vaguely remembered that Avogadro's number, or 6.02214179(30)×10^23, is the number of "elementary entities" in one mole.

And that adult moles are about the size of a chipmunk.

So much knowledge from a pile of dirt.
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