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We Haven’t Outgrown Pumpkin Patches

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We discovered this farm, ironically, in spring, back when Kyla was a kindergartner on her first field trip.  The dream pumpkin patch became a nightmare because of it’s popularity; we showed up last year on a Saturday afternoon and turned around immediately in the face of large crowds and long lines.  So this year we went on a Wednesday afternoon and were pleasantly surprised with cheaper admission and few people.

We started immediately with a cider donut and, with the extra sugar energy, played.  Being outdoor and open, it is pretty easy to social distance and everyone wore masks.  Piper and Wes panned for marbles (I thought that was brilliant), we raced rubber duckies, and proved ourselves woefully inadequate throwers of baseballs, basketballs, and football.

I was a big fan of the duck race. Wes got to ref the finish line, and I cheered on the winner, Afleck, the whole way.
Muddy shoes. Muddy butts. Muddy hands. Mud, mud, mud….FUN!

Piper and I needed to repair our relationship after several missing assignments, late nights, and fire-and-ice arguments.  We were both in better moods already, so when we decided to split up in the Washington-themed corn maze, Piper and I teamed up against the other three. The mud was indecently….muddy….and we laughed ourselves silly as we searched for the infamous contest of Kettle Falls and found the Space Needle and Gum Wall.  [Piper actually had ABC gum in her pocket, so added it to the décor.]  I got a kick out of the DC Cooper debris, and Piper and I wove our way all over our beautiful, quirky state.

After almost four hours at the farm, it was time to choose our pumpkins for future slaughter.  The Pumpkin Patch doesn’t solve problems, but what a great way of putting them on hold for an afternoon!

We Voted!

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Further note, I was proud of myself last August when I read through the primary voter’s pamphlet in its entirety, particularly making it through the 32 (or was it 36?) gubernatorial candidate statements. This year, I came across The Stranger’s endorsements, in addition to the published guide and the Seattle Times editorials. I have read over a hundred books thus far in 2020. I’ve read funny books, serious books, well-written books, thoughtful books, profane books, interesting, well-reasoned and well-researched books. This is on par with all of them. And the editors were down right meta-philosophical on the advisory votes! I am going to keep The Stranger in my repertoire for next voting season…and anytime I need a good f***-ing liberal read.

(The Best!) Wenatchee Weekend

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We haven’t gone camping (okay, “camping”) since returning from our 3-week road trip in August. It was a week in the shop getting jacks installed, and then The Construction Project began, making it really difficult to leave for the weekend, and even get the RV in the driveway enough to pack it.

But I have been working really hard for weeks now and I was ready to play just as hard!

The crew was supposed to get rid of the last dirt pile in the driveway on Saturday and bring in gravel to mitigate the The Great Mud Pit, and we didn’t need to be around, so we picked up the RV Friday afternoon, packed in hurry, failed to fix the latest break (but rolled it out of the way for now), and left a hour and a half later than I hoped.

Oh, but it was good to be going down the road again! The state parks stopped taking reservations earlier this month but Plan A was Wenatchee Confluence State Park and Plan B was Lincoln Rock State Park. We had to form Plan C, which was Daroga State Park, but ended up with Plan D, a Walmart Parking lot at 10:30pm.

It was good for us to have to scramble. Kyla once again got to witness that her parents will come up with something even when our plans go sideways. We had filled up the water tank earlier, and everyone was tired enough to go to bed straightaway. And the next morning, I was able to bring back the bacon, literally, before everyone else was out of bed.

By 9am Saturday, we were back to Plan A, and got a great spot at Wenatchee Confluence with breakfast cooking. Phew!

And, so, the adventure where things go wrong had concluded, and the part where the adventures go even better than planned began.

After breakfast, we went for about a four mile walk with all the kids without maximum whining.

There was a little laying around in the sun (sun! 71 F!) and chatting with fellow campers before we took Wes down to the water to freeze.

Then Piper and Abs joined us on a 12 mile bike ride (10 miles for the Apple Loop + 2 miles to and from the FroYo store as a reward).

Kyla missed the bike ride, so she and I did another 6 miles to see the beautiful demonstration gardens and outdoor sculpture scene along the route.

Dwayne made nachos for dinner while I did more Airbnb work, as I’m on all 24/7. We are adjusting to a much earlier sunset but all the better for campfires and smores. I still got to join a Zoom birthday party while the kids watched 3 Idiots for the 4th time.

The next morning was amazing. I read an entire novel while Dwayne snored and snuggled until almost 11am. Then a stop by Leavenworth for bratwurst and gingerbread (oh, the lines! I’m so over Leavenworth lines!) before a beautiful, if wet, autumn drive home.

Reality hit home when we came home, not to a graveled drive, but the same mud pit as we left. Sigh. Back to regular life.

Work Week #2 at the Cabin: Interior

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Last month, the kids and I spent a week at the cabin 1) to celebrate Kyla’s birthday, 2) to kick off our lifetime’s most unusual school year, and 3) so I could do heaps and mounds of exterior maintenance. This time, I was ready to tackle the inside.

Guests do all sorts of head-scratching damage. There were large dents in some bedroom walls in really usual places. The boogers dried onto the bedrooms walls weren’t all Wes’s, and the dirty footprints in the same places weren’t all Kyla’s. We got there Saturday afternoon, and by midnight, I had the kids’ room repainted. [Since I had been there a little earlier to meet the exterminator, I had washed and patched the room then.]

I got 3 gallons of the same paint* and painted all three bedrooms and the landing over the week.

*Calming Cream, from the Joanna Gaines collection at Ace, satin, $50/gallon, for my own records.

This was the most time-consuming project, but not the worst. Tuesday was my day to use a wrist-torquing high-powered drill and hole saw to drill a 4″ hole behind the dryer. The original dryer vent went through the floor, kinking through the crawl space, and out a perpendicular wall. When we had the new dryer installed about 5 years ago, I never noticed they used a non-standard (read: COMPLETELY WRONG!) hose. That, combined with the long, winding venting path led to longer and longer drying times, which is pretty much the bottleneck in turning over a short-term rental quickly for new guests. It took hours, and lots of “Ouch, ouch, DAMN!’s”, and even when I tunneled all the way through, the pipe didn’t quite fit. Fortunately, my parents came over the next day and Dad has quite the useful and esoteric tool collection. He had just the right sort of power tool to smooth out the few ridges preventing the tube to go through. In just minutes, we had the new vent installed. Thank you, Dad!!

The final task was to get rid of the mice, the mouse poop, and, completely related, thoroughly disinfect the entire downstairs. We have owned the cabin for 8 years, almost to the day, before our first signs of mice. One guest canceled because of the mice, and another postponed their trip, but after the joint efforts of pest control and myself, we have not found any new evidence and hope to button up this problem soon.

On our very last evening before finally getting to go back home to Dwayne, I built a bonfire fueled with the pruned cherry tree branches I had piled up last time I was here. The kids had their sausage roast and s’mores. Our fav kids (and parents!) joined us. There are few more delightful moments than kids just playing–jumping, hiding, running, and doing the Penguins Drinking Tea camp song. It was a delightful way to end the week, even if not quite as good as a solo paddleboard hour.

Once again, Mischief Managed!

A Bright Spot in the Middle of a Work Week

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One day soon, I will go to the cabin and enjoy it. In the meantime, I settle for enjoying getting needed work done. And this.

The kids were done with school (aka tantrums) for the day, the rains were imminently forecasted, I had reached daylight in my tunneling, and had plenty of dark coming to paint after the kids went to bed, so I took off with my paddleboard.

An almost-deserted Goss Lake

+ almost too warm with the sun on my sweatshirt as the sun slanted down into evening

+ waterproof sleeve for my phone with an audible Robert Galbraith mystery

+ me, myself, and I (my best friends)

= best paddleboard evening I’ve ever had

The Garage

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I was able to ignore the garage even 6 months into the pandemic. But when the air quality forces us indoors, I started to crack. And then RBG died, and I got mad— mad enough to start cleaning (sorting, scrubbing, painting, organizing) the garage. At least the messier half.

We never properly cleaned out this space when we moved in; it still had some house-related debris on shelves. It had all been painted at some point, but it was old and there was not a storage shelf that did not have evidence of mice on it. And the rodents were nothing compared to the spiders!

The bleach came out as did my fancy painting duds.

I’m not ashamed. I’m 45 and if I’m not actually a ringer for Rosie the Riveter, I’m close enough for my own happiness.

Luckily, on my list to get rid of were cans of paint of colors we have long since abandoned, so I had plenty of color to put a shine on the space.

I can’t finish the project until The Great Construction Project of 2020 is completed, but I’m pretty happy with it so far. And I’d rather be angry and organized than mad and messy. How’s that for a life motto?

RIP: RBG & Inaugural Paddleboard Outing

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To cap a particularly crappy week in a crappy year, Ruth Bader Ginsberg died Friday.

I has started the day hoping to complete this week by breathing air outside today, preferably on a paddle board at the local lake, now that the air advisory had gone from purple to orange, and was forecasted green soon. But how can one enjoy that in a world without the notorious RBG?

As Dwayne often points out, life can be more “ands” than “ors”.

Ruth has certainly more than earned a rest, and if the wrong person died (#NotWishingMcConnellManyHappyReturns), then Goddess needs to deal with it. But for now, all I could do was wear my “You Can’t Spell Truth without RUTH” t-shirt, and take her paddleboarding with me 4 times in 3 days.

Dwayne and Wes joined me for our inaugural paddling–a HUGE gift from Dwayne to celebrate his birthday. I have been longing for a SUP (Stand Up Paddleboard) even before my first rental of one, and even more this summer when we found ourselves camping my beautiful, paddle-worthy lakes.

Kyla joined Dwayne and I later that weekend on the slough for a very late evening adventure, and I also went another time with Dwayne, and a separate time with two good friends that weekend. And with Ruth. Ruth, not even smelling too bad by Sunday joined me each time.

RIP RBG

Not That This Will Solve Anything….

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I bought the kids each their own laundry basket this week. Kyla already had one she uses with some skill, but Rosie “Not Dead Yet” Whitefoot peed in it, which inspired my basket spree. The idea was to get rid of the hamper in the kids’ bathroom that was just as likely to have clothes around it than it was in it…was a preposition between family anyway?

But of course my kids were ecstatic to receive their new baskets! They didn’t see them as hampers but as an excuse to play their old game, Bucket Head.

For any of you relic readers, you may remember earlier bucket head sightings, here and here and here.