Things I'll never understand

Sorry...I HAVE t get better about updating this. My bad. Anyway, here's my column from this week.

It’s finally happened: I’ve run out of interesting things to say. I didn’t do anything very stimulating last weekend, nor did I stumble across any intriguing dilemmas throughout the week. My bank of useless knowledge has been tapped out, and I don’t much feel like boring you with a few childhood memories.

Instead, I’ve come up with a new list of random thoughts. If successful, I might make this an annual event. It’s called: “25 things I’ll never understand.” It’s dedicated to the failure of all the teachers, my parents, family and friends who may have attempted to teach me these things. And these are in no particular order.

1. Matrices in Algebra II. Sorry Mrs. Lins, it went right over my head.
2. The Kreb’s Cycle.
3. Why the gas price in Medford is $3.03, in Abbotsford it’s $3.05-3.07, and in Athens it’s $3.11.
4. Free verse poetry.
5.HTML computer language. Dreamweaver, however, I do get for the most part.
6. The Monty Python movies. A history teacher, my sister and a former co-worker tried to teach me about those, first with The Holy Grail, then with The Life of Brian. I still don’t find them that funny.
7.Nose and tongue piercings. Seriously, how do you eat spaghetti with a bar through your tongue?
8. Why storm clouds come rolling in, then break up before it can give our poor corn a drink.
9. Calculus.
10. How to get little boys to go to sleep at night.
11. Knitting. My mom tried to teach me once, but being a lefty, I failed at it miserably.
12. Cricket.
13. Risk (the board game). My sisters tried to teach me that one, and I did learn the rules, I think. I just don’t get how people enjoy it.
13. The book, Don Quixote. I attempted to read it for a world history project when I was a junior in high school. Don’t tell Mr. Kettner, but I ended up relying mostly on cliff notes.
14. How to politely tell a person they have something stuck in their teeth.
15. How to get a man to do the dishes or laundry without bribing them.
16. Nuclear fusion.
17. Feminists.
18. Why I can never find pants in “tall” at any store I go to.
19. How to tell my left from my right without needing to think about it.
20. Bar codes. You’d think they would run out of different ones after a while.
21. European comedy in general.
22. Star Trek.
23. Murphy’s laws. Who is this Murphy and why is he such a pessimist?
24. Keno.
25. Why people are so amused by waiting for a barrel to fall through the ice on a pond.

Sorry about that. Next week I should have something interesting to tell you about. I’m heading to the Nelson Zoo for the weekend.

A big dose of Dorchester Days

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been kind of crabby lately. Not just in my columns, but in real life, too. It’s just been one of those months. It’s been one frustration after another lately: Jacob being sick, Nate being sick, trying to save money for the Las Vegas trip, and fighting a terrible case of cabin fever on these beautiful days. But I feel much better after this weekend. I guess I just needed a good, healthy dose of Dorchester Days.

There’s something about that little village I’ve always liked since I moved here. The first summer Nate and I were dating, he took me to the park for one of his softball games. That park is such a gem in the community. So after a couple long weeks, it was nice to get outside and spend some time in the sun among people.

Jacob and I went down Friday night to check out the carnival, car show and other happenings on the ground. Even though he’s too little for the rides, he sure likes watching them. He also liked all the shiny old cars, and even got a kick out of the lawn mower pulls. Since he just got his hearing back, we left the pulls as the mini-rodders started to rev up. After snapping some more photos of the carnival, we met up with Nate before his 11 p.m. game. It was a nice surprise to find other friends there, including Jacob’s godfather and two other friends who babysit him a few times a month.

It wasn’t a very exciting softball game. Nate’s team really got steamrolled, and by about the fourth inning, Jacob fell asleep for the night. Saturday was more of the same: softball and photos. Thank you to the nice people at the gate who let Nate and Jacob sneak in to the tractor pulls with me for a little while so I could snap a few pictures.

After I’d had my fill of tractors for the day, we headed back to the park for softball. This game ended much better. Nate and the Greg’s Towing boys were pretty far ahead when Jacob started to get restless. We made a lap around the park, then tested out the swings and wooden train. By the time we finished our walk, the guys had won. After an intermission from the park to milk cows, we came back later that night so the guys could win another game.

The win meant a fourth game, but it was against the team they already lost to because of the way the brackets played out. So Sunday afternoon, we plodded back to the park for the final game. Although Nate’s team kept pace until about the fifth inning, the other team rallied and put the game out of reach. After some deep fried happiness from the Dorchester Days food stand to cheer us up, we ran into some college friends at the nearby beer garden. Then it was time to head home and end the relaxing weekend.

Re-energized, I got quite a bit done around the house that evening: repotting plants, laundry and rounding up toys scattered through the house. I later drifted off into a peaceful slumber only for an abrupt awakening at 3:30 a.m. A little boy was throwing up on the clean sheets I put on his bed that evening.

I guess it was too good to last.

I want to move!

Thanks to some good fortune and medical intervention, Jacob’s now on his way to recovery with the latest ear drama. We arrived bright and early Monday morning for the procedure. After a bit of waiting, Jacob was in and out of surgery. The actual procedure took only about 10 minutes, barely enough time to get a good start on our reading materials.

The good news is everything went well. The bad news is they found a large pocket of infection (about the size of a strawberry) in his ear canal. But back to the good news, they got it all out and the newly placed tubes should allow it to heal.

These past few weeks have been quite a whirlwind of medical drama. First the ear infection, then stomach flu, then ear tubes. At least the ear infections weren’t catching. The stomach flu got passed around enough, although I happily skipped that part.

About the same time, the odometer on my car added an extra zero. Now 100,000 miles new, the not so old girl has really been racking up a lot of miles lately.

All this gives me more reason to seethe about not being able to move to the farm on a timely basis. It sure would have come in handy these past few weeks when Nate had to be at the farm and I had to take care of a sick child barred from daycare.

Instead, the house that was supposed to be undergoing renovation so we could move in by August has been at a standstill for several weeks now. The owner is the type of person where it doesn’t pay to argue. Nate worked with him when they built the freestall barn a few years ago and pushing him does nothing. In fact, it seems make him go even slower.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t be mad and frustrated quietly. We do have other options. We could put a mobile home in for now, but we’d still have to install a septic system and drill a well. And I’d really like something more permanent. Another option would be to build new. We’d spend a lot more money that way, but at least we’d be set for awhile. Nate says he only wants to move twice more in his life: to the farm and to the nursing home.

A third option, and probably the most logical, would be to buy the house as is and finish it ourselves. It would be a lot of work, but a lot of fun, too. I’ve been itching for some good hands-on labor for a while now. So much so that while home at my parents for the weekend I mowed their lawn and helped seal the deck. But that option would only work if he agreed to sell it to us now, which is doubtful.

It’s just not a good situation to be in. My patience is wearing thinner every time I drive past and see the bare walls void of siding and soffit-less roof. The knee-high grass he allowed to grow around it almost pushed me to my breaking point recently until he chopped through it last week. But as I drove past yesterday once more I had a breakthrough idea. Maybe that electric cattle prod hanging on the wall inside the barn would do him some good.