Day 14: Jan. 14, 2009
I’m baffled at Moose’s inability to get warm in the winter. He’s a dog. With a fur coat. From Labrador. Ok, so Moose isn’t straight from the snowy north, but the breed did originate there. I guess dogs, like (most) people, adapt to whatever climate they’re in. Still – he seems to crave the warmth more than any of us, and you’ll often find him sunning himself outside, even in the dog days of summer. In the winter, he just tries to sit on top of the closest warm body – even if that body is perpetually cold due to a complete lack of body fat (see Exhibit A, below). As far as Moose is concerned, labby heads belong in laps, not computers, and there are many times when he rests his enormous head on my computer and I suddenly find myself typing in Swahili, or opening every file on my hard drive. I tried to capture this exact moment with Travis, but he shoved Moose’s head out of the way just before I took the picture because he is heartless and doesn’t care about frostbitten dog noses.
It sounds so cliché, but I truly can’t believe we’re in 2009 already. It seems like just yesterday that we were celebrating the new millennium in Park City with a 5 month old Abigail, and having a major freakout (me) / celebration (Neil) over the news that I was pregnant again.
I won’t be making any New Year’s resolutions, since those are pretty much guaranteed to be ignored after 2-3 weeks of rigorous stick-to-it-ness. But I would like to blog more, and scrapbook more, and play more games with the kids, and read more books.
One thing I would like to commit to is taking a photo a day in 2009 – Project 365. It’s not so much the number of pictures that’s intimidating (I took over 700 this past December – about 3 were decent), it’s the task of remembering to pick up the camera every day and photograph something of interest. Or something boring – whichever. I’m not picky when it’s 11:59 PM and the leftovers from dinner are the most exciting thing around.
I’ve done the photo-of-the-day thing before (back in October ‘07), and when I look back at those pictures now, I especially love all the little things I documented – Travis’ “sound survey” from school (where he noted that he heard me talking on the phone every day), the glistening spider web in the school parking lot, and Abby’s face paint from kids-eat-free night. It was a nice little slice of life. Of course, I would have documented the big events – Elaine’s wedding and Halloween – anyway, but I probably wouldn’t have bothered with all of the random pictures of naps and trips to the park. The spiderweb would have been appreciated in the moment, and forgotten about by the next morning. Now I’m really glad I made that trip back home to pick up the camera.
The nice thing about having kids, especially anal ones like Abby, is that they tend to remind you incessantly about your commitments. She asked every day what I was posting, and there were a few times where we were scrambling right before bed, looking for something to take a picture of. I haven’t told her about this project yet, because I’m hoping that I won’t need to be nagged at least for another week or two.
I definitely won’t be blogging every day, but my plan is to do a “catch-up” post every so often (weekly? maybe more?) and post the daily photos all at once. They may or may not have captions or explanations or apologies. And sometimes, if I feel like it, I might just post more than one photo a day. Something like this:
Day 1: Jan 1 2009
We spent the last week at Larry’s ranch in the middle of nowhere (about halfway between Del Rio and Rock Springs). There are thousands of acres of hills, rocks, cacti, mountain laurel, deer, and about 12 people. My dad would love it. Actually, we all love it.
Moose is a huge weenie and was less than thrilled with the fireworks (he climbed up into Larry’s lap at one point – the 100 lb. lap Lab), but he relaxed after we gave him some Tuaca.
On New Year’s Day we rode around the ranch, took the kids down into the cave, and extracted what surely must have been the world’s most painful cactus needle from Travis’ big toe. It took pliers to pull the thing out, and I think our ears are still ringing from the screams.
Needless to say, he recovered after a few minutes, and was happily bouncing along in the back of the Ranger.
Day 2: Jan 2, 2009
Our family plays a lot of games – board games, the dorky kind. We try to play something every night, but get sidetracked occasionally by school and sports. Lately the kids have been more interested in having me read to them (currently, The Mysterious Benedict Society), which is fun too, but I’ve been missing our game nights. We got Settlers of Catan for Christmas (To: Mom From: Mom), and cracked it open before we left for the ranch. It’s rather complicated to set up and to figure out the rules (Travis was standing on his head and running laps around the dining room at one point while I was reading the directions aloud), but fun to play once you get it all straightened out, since each player is involved for every roll of the dice. We had to stop mid-game when we left, and finished it up Friday night once we got home.
Day 3: Jan 3, 2009
Normally I’d say that it’s a bad idea to play on the trampoline with the sprinkler in early January, but it got the kids out of the house. Did I mention it was 83 degrees today? Jan. 3. Seriously.
Actual conversation from earlier this year.
Neil: ARGHHHH!!! WTH? Who left GLASS on the floor???? OW OW OW OW OOOOW!!!
Me: Um……?
Neil: OMG!!! I can’t believe someone would break glass and not clean it up? Now I have a HUGE sliver of glass stuck in my foot!!! OUCH!!!
My friend Sara: *stares in bewilderment while trying not to laugh*
Me: I don’t think there’s any broken glass in our bedroom.
Neil (hopping on one foot): This is ridiculous – if you BREAK GLASS, you CLEAN IT UP!! Don’t leave it where people can just STEP ON IT!!
Me: *blink blink*
Sara: *snickers*
Me: Do you need some, um, help? Or something? Vicodin perhaps?
Neil (trying to look at his foot, surprised to find all toes are indeed intact, and there is no blood): Yes. I can’t reach my foot. (note: flexibility is not strong suit)
Me (jumping at the chance to remove shards of glass with my Tweezerman tweezers): Ok, let’s take a look. Hmmm…I’m not seeing anything here. Where does it hurt?
Neil: Not there, no, no, THERE! OMG! Ouch!!! What is that?!!?
Me (inches away from foot): Huh…I really can’t see anything . There IS this piece of dog hair…*plucks dog hair off of foot*
Neil: ACKRGH!!! Ouch! What was that?
Me (holding up the dog hair as evidence): Killer dog hair. I guess I left some on the floor when it FELL OFF THE DOG.
Sara: *laughs hysterically from kitchen*
For months, Sara and I have cracked ourselves up about the GALL of some people to carelessly leave DOG HAIR lying around, where it could embed itself just ANYWHERE!! Imagine! Think of the consequences!!
And then yesterday, I got a splinter on my thumb. Of, um….dog hair. I plucked it out (ouch!) and it’s now infected (gross).
Someone is going to pay for this….
The main goal of neighborball is to kick a soccer ball back and forth over the fence until one or both players get sick of it. Hands are absolutely not allowed, and you foul if you hit the fence.
Our neighbors are moving in a few weeks – I’m sure we drove them out with our incessant all-night partying, wine boxes, and heathen children. We’ll be sad to see them go – we’re not close friends or anything, but they are the nicest family, and the kids play together pretty much every day (we even occasionally let them socialize without a fence between them). And they’re taking their basketball goal with them. Travis will miss that basketball goal.
Neil and I will miss the fence repairs, and the occasional freshly-raked lawn, courtesy of the kids next door (our kids usually return the favor).
Tanner approves of neighborball.
