Little Boys and Matches

It really was with the best of intentions that I set some piles of used animal bedding on fire last Wednesday. It was burning along quite nicely. Then along came the wind. No sweat though. I was ready with a shovel and the water hose. I actually spent a couple of hours dousing it. It seems that the pesky fire didn’t want to go out. Finally, it seemed to be out. However, to my surprise, it was smoldering again Thursday morning. No biggie. I doused it again for awhile. Then when The Wife got home from work, she turned the sprinkler on it.

She went to bed and asked the Older Daughter to keep an eye on things. In the mid-afternoon, the Older Daughter told The Wife that there were some flames. No problem. She was instructed to move the sprinkler over to water that hot spot. Well, thing starting going bad really fast from here. Now it seems that the Older Daughter simply had to take a shower as The Wife went back to sleep. Oh yeah, and Mr. Wind decided that this was a good time for him to blow.

The Wife was awakened to the kids screaming about the field being on fire. Looking out, she saw 5-foot-high flames and a racing fire. She called 911 and then headed out with the kids to do what they could while waiting for the fire department. She first stopped the flames heading toward the house. Then she raced over and put herself between the flames and the pasture fence to prevent it from spreading into the horse pasture.

Several hours and several fire trucks later, the fire was under control. Probably about 4 acres were charred. Here’s a small section of the burn:

Now I was at work when this all started. When I got the call from The Wife, she had some choice words for me that I really can’t repeat here. Also, I believe there was some sort of mention of homicide or something like that. Somehow, I survived and am able to report to you. (In other words, she didn’t break my fingers to prevent me from setting more fires.)

Hey, here’s something you don’t see everyday. Where else can you find a cow, a fire truck, and a fire fighter dousing flames…all in the same picture? This may by an Internet first.

By the way, thankfully no humans, animals, or property were harmed in the making of this fire.

Farmer Brown, at Your Service

As you may know, we have approximately 5 billion animals. Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration. I believe the Older Daughter took the time to count and found that the number was 26.

Anyway, since we have so much free time on our hands, we decided to start a small garden this year. A few weeks ago, I planted a couple of tomato starts courtesy of a friend who had way too many. Funny thing is, The Wife is the only one in the household that likes tomatoes. She even asked why I was planting them. My reply was, “can’t we do something nice just for you?”

The Younger Daughter and I went out this evening and planted a hill of cucumbers and 3 hills of pumpkins. So the tomatoes and cucumbers will be for our use and any we’ll give any extras to friends. With the pumpkins, we’ll keep a couple but hope to sell the rest. You know, another attempt to make this ranch pay its own way. It won’t be any sort of huge windfall, but every little bit helps.

We have talked about having a garden for years, but this is the first time we actually followed through. So I have no idea if this thing will actually work. I mean, I took a look at my thumb and it is not the least bit green. Good or bad, you’ll see and here the results right here. Stay tuned…

Bar Hopping Time?

The Older Daughter wraps up her Driver’s Ed course this week. She passed her written and behind-the-wheel tests with flying colors. She is extremely excited to move to the next step. Now she will need to rack up 50 hours behind the wheel with us before she gets her license.

The Wife had a fantastic idea: We’ll let her drive us from bar to bar. That’s right, no more playing rock-paper-scissors to determine who will be the designated driver. Heck, she might be able to complete her 50 hours in 1 weekend! And I can’t think of anything safer or more responsible than leaving our teenage daughter alone in a car outside of some seedy bar.

Dorky Humor

We had an enjoyable Saturday afternoon/evening. The Younger Daughter is over at a friend’s house for a sleepover and the Older Daughter didn’t have any plans. So, we convinced the Older Daughter to join us for dinner at the Olive Garden. We had a great time and enjoyed some great food (as always, too much, but hey…) and great conversation. It was a rare treat that we enjoyed. However, the Older Daughter quickly grew tired of the puns I kept throwing out. She finally said, “Mom, make him stop.” Sorry, I’ll never stop with my dorky humor. It is just a part of who I am.

Why I’ll Never Be President

Okay, I posted what might be considered an embarrassing picture of the Older Daughter. So, I’ll follow suite and share one of myself. We finally entered the digital photography age about 5 years ago. Shortly after buying our shiny new camera, the girls wanted to try it out. So, being the accommodating dad that I am, I hammed it up for them so that they could take this picture.

Crazy Hat

Okay, she’ll probably kill me for this (sorry that this might be my last post), but I wanted to post a picture of the Older Daughter that I took yesterday. The dichotomy is amazing. She’s wearing a crazy fuzzy winter hat that covers most of her head. Yeah, this while wearing sunglasses and a tanktop in 70-degree weather.

Get to Know Me Better

Rick tagged me on this meme. Thanks man. Let’s get ‘er done.

The rules are:

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

1) What was I doing 10 yrs ago?

10 years ago the Older Daughter was 5 and the Younger Daughter was just 5 months old. I remember attending the Older Daughter’s dance recital that year–very cute. We were just settling into our previous house. I also started a custom software development business with a buddy–it didn’t work out.

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

1. Post to my blog (check)
2. Get some laundry done (in progress)
3. Check on the status of a job application (check–no answer yet…grrr)
4. Do some more work on our business website (probably not going to happen)
5. Blog surfing (check)

3) Snacks I enjoy:

• Cheez-Its
• soybeans
• beef jerkey
• popcorn

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

• Build a nice new house on our ranch
• Buy a monster motor home and travel
• Do charity work

5) Three of my bad habits:

1. Staying up too late
2. Procrastinating
3. Not eating right

6) 5 places I have lived:

1. Lebanon, Oregon
2. Ontario, Oregon
3. Cheney, Washington
4. Boise, Idaho
5. Caldwell, Idaho

7) 5 jobs I have had:

1. Petroleum Transfer Technician (some people call it a Service Station Attendant)
2. Clerk-Typist
3. Computer Lab Consultant
4. Software Engineer
5. Database Administrator

8 ) 5 peeps I wanna know more about:

1. Bekki
2. Jon
3. Bonnie
4. Allison
5. smysore

Time for Drivers Ed

Well it’s another big milestone for the Older Daughter. Yes, she started drivers ed this week. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this. I’m basically one part proud, one part sad, and one part nervous. I’m excited and proud to see her grow up and accomplish things. I’m sad because this is one more step toward eventual independence. While independence is a good thing, there is still a part of me that doesn’t want to let go of childhood. Also, driving will soon be something that I’m not needed for, and dads like to be useful. Also, I now have one more thing to worry about. I have no doubt that she will be a great driver and I trust her. But I’m a parent–worrying is part of the job description.

She is understandably very excited. She has actually been driving up and down our driveway (about a quarter of mile long) for probably 2 years. So she has been chomping at the bit to drive ever since.

Hit or Miss

Despite being on vacation, there are a few things I miss about being home. Let’s take a look at what I miss and don’t miss. That way, we can determine if a prefer vacation or the daily grind.

What I Miss

• Easy access to a computer: I mean, it’s right here in the spare bedroom and they have high speed Internet access. But they don’t leave it on all the time, so I have to wait like 5 minutes for it to boot up. Plus I feel guilty about hiding away.
• Our best friends: We hang out with our best friends just about every weekend, and so we probably won’t see them for a couple weeks now.
• Traffic: It may sound strange, but it’s true. We live in the country, so there is no traffic compared to Portland. A traffic jam in the country is getting caught behind some slow-moving farm equipment.
• The Older Daughter: She went to Disneyland with her best friend and her family. I’m jealous, but miss her just the same.
• TiVo: I’ve come to a point where I don’t watch anything live. I record it with TiVo and watch it later so that I can skip past the commercials. Plus it’s nice to be able to skip back a few seconds to catch the dialogue I missed when all the dogs bark their heads off.

What I Don’t Miss

• Work
• The alarm clock
• Worry about looking for a new job
• The daily routine
• Having absolutely no free time
• Getting up early: I’m a night owl and love to stay up ridiculously late and sleep in
• Brown: I do love the green of western Oregon over the brown of southwestern Idaho.

So there we have it: I have 7 things I don’t miss and 5 that I do. So I think that I should just stay on vacation forever. What do you think?

Busy, Busy, Busy

As spring approaches, the kids’ activities really start revving up. The Older Daughter is in track and has practice after school everyday. In a few weeks, she’ll be starting up driver’s ed. She has to be there at 7am for classroom instruction. 7am!

The Younger Daughter has horse riding lessons 3 times a week and is participating in horse shows several times a month.

On top of that, both kids have 4-H meetings a couple of times per month.

Oh, and it looks like $4/gallon gas may be just around the corner. I’m going to contact our local gas station to see if I can arrange to direct deposit my paycheck into their account. They’re going to get all the money anyway…let’s simplify things.

Warming Parental Flashback

The Older Daughter was washing her comforter this evening, but it didn’t get dry before bedtime. She headed to bed, but asked me bring it in after it was dry, throw it over her, and tuck her in. I smiled. I was more than happy to oblige. This is something that I haven’t had the privilege of doing for a lot of years.

If you have followed me for awhile, you know that I sometimes miss having younger kids and some of the mundane rituals that went along with it. Just a few minutes ago, I took the nice, warm comforter out of the dryer, put it gently over her, and tucked it in around her. Then I gave her a kiss on the forehead and whispered “I love you” into her ear. It was priceless and made my day.

Dad: Now the Preferred Search Engine?

I received a call from the Older Daughter today, but was at work and could not take the call immediately. When I called her back, she answered with “Nevermind, I found what I needed on Google.”

You may remember in a previous post that I was lamenting being reduced to a taxi driver and banker. But now, I guess I’m a search engine also. Initially I was bothered that she didn’t want to take the time to go search on the computer. But maybe I should be flattered to be her search engine of choice–at least in this one instance. 

The Death of 24?

I discovered 24 about 3 years ago. I rented the DVDs and loved them. I watched the past couple of seasons pretty much live (instead of the usual TiVo I do with other shows) with the Older Daughter and loved it. Last season kind of sucked, but I had hopes that season 7 would turn things around. Then we had the writer’s strike, Kiefer Sutherland spent time in jail, then we found out that 24 would be delayed to 2009, and now we find out that co-creator/executive producer Joel Surnow has left 24. Is there any chance that 2009 isn’t 24’s last season?

Cute Valentine’s Story

Okay, cute is not a word I like to have associated with anything I do, have, say, etc. I think there may even be a Man Club rule against using the word. Let’s face it, it’s a pretty girly word. But there may be an exception on Valentine’s Day.

This evening was extremely busy. The Younger Daughter had a horse riding lesson and the Older Daughter had a soccer game. Romantic Valentine’s, huh? But hey, that’s life and we roll with it.

On the way home, we picked up a couple of heart-shaped pizzas from Papa Murphy’s. When we got home, I tried to cook them. Yes, I had some issues as always, but got some assistance and pulled it off.

I placed the pizza on the table and we all started loading up our plates. The Wife slid a piece onto her plate, then I slide a piece onto mine. We looked down and noticed a strand a cheese still connecting our two slices between the two plates. We simultaneously said “Awwwww”. Any other day of the year we probably would not have given it a second thought. But on Valentine’s day, it was pretty cool. How appropriate. Not only are our hearts connected, so are our heart-shaped slices of pizza. Cuuuute!

Memory Like an Elephant

When the Older Daughter was probably 5 years old, we were in a pet store one weekend. I was checking out the birds and thought that cockatiels were just the coolest. Actually, I liked some of the other birds better–you know those that can talk a little bit. But those were out of our price range. Cockatiels were affordable, yet still had loving personalities. I did a little research, read a book, etc. A few weeks later, we picked one up.

Things were going well initially. She would sing beautifully for us. We put her up on our shoulders and should would nuzzle our necks and “talk” to us. However, the good times didn’t last long enough–at least from my standpoint. We gave her lots of attention and let her out of the cage a lot when we were home. However, if she didn’t have constant attention (basically being on a shoulder or hand) she would screech. We are talking a loud, high pitched screech that made the loudest baby cry/scream sound like a cooing dove. I couldn’t take it. The constant screeching irritated the heck out of me. And then there was the pooping on the shoulder all the time. I reached a breaking point.

So The Wife asked around and finally found someone willing to take the bird off our hands. End of story, right? Not really. Somehow this whole thing came up in conversation recently, and it seems the Older Daughter still vividly remembers this and is still bitter about it. Apparently she was a lot more attached to the bird and a lot more broken up about giving it up than she let on at the time.

Not to mention what a heartless beast I am. Yes, this is the Miracle Bird a wrote about a few days ago. The poor thing survived 3 cold Idaho night outside, only to be sent packing her bags not too long after that.

The Dog Ate My Lift Pass

The Older Daughter has decided she wants to learn how to snowboard. Great. Let me just go ahead and drain out the remaining dollars I have in my bank account. Anyway, she wants to go this Saturday so we picked up some brochures on the lift ticket prices at Bogus Basin as well as a on renting snowboards. (We want her to rent to make sure she actually enjoys it before we invest in expensive gear.) The brochures were on the table next to the recliner. While we weren’t looking, her puppy jumped up on the recliner, grabbed the brochures, and shredded them. I don’t think her puppy is too keen on her being gone all day Saturday.

Brain Damage, Button Pusher, or Genius?

We’ve been having problems with our printer lately (stay tuned for my rant on how HP sucks, coming soon) so I had to go out and pick up a new one tonight. Somehow we got to talking about which colors cartridges are used the most and I commented that we probably use black the most since we print mostly boring text documents. The Older Daughter pipes up and says, “wait, don’t we mostly print out in white?” (Sigh) Hello, the paper is already white. The printer doesn’t spray out white ink. So tell me, is she brain damaged (referencing Bill Cosby’s awesome humor here), trying to push my buttons, or a genius? Technically she is correct…the documents are mostly white. However, my vote is for pushing my buttons.

Reduced To A Taxi Driver And A Banker

A father can serve many roles with his children throughout the years:

• Janitor when she makes a mess
• Teacher when helping her with homework
• Chef when preparing a lunch or dinner
• Doctor/nurse when she is sick
• Inventor when helping her dream up a play-time scenario
• Architect/Builder to make that scenario happen
• Mechanic when fixing that broken toy
• Counselor when she needs guidance on a problem

As the years wear on, she is often less and less interested in these roles. However, there are two roles that remain for me: Taxi Driver and Banker. Sometimes I feel like I spend my life in the car shuttling the kids all over creation. And of course, there’s nothing more expensive than raising kids. I will see the Taxi Driver role start to fade as the Older Daughter starts driving next year. It’s bittersweet. I want her to grow up and be independent, but dads like being useful.

Dumbest Person, Part II

You may recall from an earlier post (I’m The Dumbest Person On The Planet) that The Older Daughter apparently doesn’t think I have the brains to read a movie listing in the newspaper. And that because of this, I believe she now thinks that I have no more functioning brain cells.

Well, it is with deepest regret that I announce the death of The Wife’s last brain cell today. Let me explain. The Daughters have been in soccer for many years now–I think we figured out 10 years to be exact. The Older Daughter quit playing a few years back, but now wants to get back into it. Well, of course, all the gear (shin guards, shoes, etc.) is now too small.

So The Wife is talking with the Older Daughter and saying that they need to go gear shopping soon. You would have thought that The Wife had grown a third eye. The Older Daughter could not fathom that mom could know anything about what kind of items were needed to play soccer. Nope, The Wife has been doing this shopping for 10 years and even coached for a few years, but how could she possibly know what is needed? The Older Daughter thinks that a soccer-playing friend of hers is some sort of gear expert, so she wants to go with her. I get it, she’d rather go shopping with her friend than mom. Why not just say that rather than implying that mom could have no idea how to shop for these items? Oh well, such is parenting in the perilous teenage years.

Anyway honey, sorry about the loss of that last brain cell. You’re in good company with me now.

I’m The Dumbest Person On The Planet

I think my last brain cell just died…at least in the eyes of the Older Daughter.

A few weeks ago, The Older Daughter wanted to go to a movie with some friends on a Saturday night. They had some time constraints, so she needed to know the times the movie would be shown. I located the newspaper and found the movie listings. I showed her the listings and had this conversation:

Me: “Hey, I found the show times for that movie. It looks like it’s not showing at the time you wanted to go.”

Older Daughter: “Well those are not all the show times.”

Me: “Yes these are all the times. The want to sell movie tickets, so they list all of the show times.”

Older Daughter: “You don’t know that.”

I’ve been around for 39 years and thought I knew how to navigate a movie listing in the newspaper, but I guess not. I’m the dumbest dummy around.