shoveling out

For the record, I wanted to go for a hike today since it's Black Friday, we all have the day off, and the weather is good. The boys, however, decided they would rather fight, so instead of hitting up a state park, we all trudged out to the barn to start making some kind of sense of what's out there. We found lots of shit (literal) that the boys hauled out to the back of the pasture, where Max also found a whole bunch of spiky brambles. We also found a truly astounding number of empty alcohol bottles, and one full bottle of schnapps. I'm going to assume it was some kind of teenage rebellion in the family of the former owners, otherwise we might have the first archaeological evidence of horses with drinking problems.

There's still a loooong way to go, but two of the four stalls are now cleared out (well, one of them is holding my collection of blow molds, but at least they're neat and organized). The rest might have to wait for spring, because there is a ton of trash out there, and we only have so much room in the bin each week. It's a start, though!

random pics from my phone, volume 2

many moons have passed since the last time i dumped a bunch of pics from my phone (over a year, actually), and since then, not much has changed. we only moved to a new house with a huge yard, rescued a dog, fought against militaristic aliens in a post-apocalyptic war zone, and had a kid enter high school (liam is 2" taller than me now. how did that happen?). so without further ado, some random pics.

here's a sunset from the skyland lodge in shenandoah national park. wonderful park, but the wifi was spotty at best, so despite all the bears we saw everywhere we looked, the kids hated it. sigh.

shortly after that, we were on ocracoke, and we ordered thai food for dinner one evening. the restaurant (thai moon) had some options regarding spicyness, and i thought the sign explaining said options was amusing.

back at home, finally. turns out we had a huge garden spider (other names: banana spider, writing spider, zigzag spider, corn spider, mckinley spider) living in a hosta in the front yard. after further review, there were garden spiders all over the place. i've never seen them around here, although they were plentiful in the south when my folks went on vacation to North and South Carolina, back in the day.

while henry and i were picking tomatoes, i spotted a walking stick. it took a lot of convincing to make H believe that a walking stick was a real thing, despite all the evidence in front of him. he became a fan (sorta?) once i set it loose on him (with his permission, of course) and it crawled up his face. the horror! also, i am very freckled.

 H fed the neighbor's cows.

we got a new dog. his name is thunder, and he's a good boy. T and P are best friends. go rescue a dog. right now.

i saw this car here in plymouth. it's a right-hand drive, R32 Nissan Skyline. kinda a legend in american automotive circles, especially due to the 25-year import rule. whatever, when i win the lottery, i'm gonna think about importing one of these, then buy a new GT-R or Supra instead.

in the florida keys, we fed some tarpon (holli wrote about it in a previous post). i took some pics of the tarpons up close, and they were all thinking about eating my phone. THESE FISH HAVE NO SOULS.

and finally, in everglades national park, beware of the vultures.

adventures in furniture assembly

I was putting this table together today, and one of the legs fell down and made a clatter that scared poor Thunder, who leaped like a cat up onto the couch and then couldn't figure out how to get down. I eventually got him down and finished up with the table, which I think looks good although I will probably see if I can get Mike to shorten the legs for me.

Of note: The typewriter came from Gramps's house. It was the typewriter they used at Jeffirs Motor Company, so it was used by Gramps, Gram, Grandpa Jeff, and even my mom (who remembers helping type up invoices on it). It doesn't work anymore, but it means so much to me to have it.