Monthly Archives: December 2007

Dec31

Home Again, Home Again

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Home Again, Home Again

We made ridiculously good time last night driving back from Iowa. After Sister and I sang at my parents’ church (they need to hire Joey in about 3 years…hint, hint) we all headed back to Mom and Dad’s to have a delicious lunch of Christmas Dinner leftovers. Pops got out all the Boundary Waters maps and showed us the potential routes and lakes for our big adventure in August. We’re getting excited.

“We need to leave in 15 minutes,” Joey said as the time for departure grew near.

I continued looking at Boundary Waters maps until Joey said, “Um, it’s past 12:00 and you’re the one making us late this time.” (I usually harass him about being the one to make us late…the tables have turned.) I made a whiny sort of noise in protest, but got up and put my shoes on. Hugs all around and then, with very little incident (aside from running back in the house to steal a box of Mom’s Kleenexes because we’re both sick), we were on our way.

I did not even cry.

“You’re making progress!” Joey praised me as we drove down Center Point Road while Henry tried to climb over the back seat into my lap.

And thus we were drove, very speedily, I might add, down I-35 to Texas. We had calculated at 14 hour drive and figured that if we left at noon on Sunday we’d get there at 2:00 a.m. on Monday. Joey set the cruise at a very high number (which I won’t divulge here) and we drove and drove…and drove and drove.

Because driving through Kansas is my responsibility, I took over at Lawrence when we filled up our tank and didn’t stop until Oklahoma City when the gas light came on. Between the cold air and bright lights, I got a tremendous headache and, since it was Joey’s turn to drive next, I climbed into the back seat to sleep. I am terrible at sleeping in the car.

I woke with a start what seemed to be about 20 minutes later, and I sat up quickly. We were in some kind of city because there were street lights and road signs.

Ardmore? I thought to myself, figuring I’d only been asleep for a little while.

“Where are we?” I asked sleepily.

“Dallas,” Joey replied.

“WHAT?” I gasped, shocked. I glanced at the clock, it read 12:01. “How is that even possible? We’re not supposed to be here until 2:00 a.m.”

“Well…” said Joey, “That’s what happens when you only stop for gas.” I could tell he was relishing his victory in proving to me that, yes, trips go faster when you stop only the bare minimum amount of times.

“Yeah, well, I probably have some kind of infection now because you barely let me go to the bathroom.” I said. I might be sleepy but that really doesn’t make me less feisty.

“Do you actually have to go to the bathroom?” Joey asked me.

“Um, no.” I confessed. “But I hardly drank any water so if I get sick it’s your fault.”

Ten short minutes later, we were home. I have to tell you that it’s dreadful business to unload a car laden with heavy things when all you want to do is go to sleep because you’re tired and sick. As it was we only unloaded the visible things, everything else is still in the trunk. But, we made it the 850 miles from Cedar Rapids to Dallas in a record time of 12 hours and 15 minutes, with only 3 stops for gas and otherwise.

I believe that’s why I’m sitting here with a sinus migraine, fever, and shaky hands. It’s unlikely that I will live to ring in the New Year tonight and, if I actually do, I’ll probably be asleep by 8:30 so it doesn’t really count.

Dec28

Snowy Day…

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Snowy Day…

I love my parents’ house in every season of the year (they have a fantastic acreage) but especially in the winter. The white snow looks so crisp up against their red house. This morning when we woke up there was a lovely blanket of powdery white snow, at least 2 inches deep. Just what the doctor ordered.

In the garage door you can see Sister standing next to the toboggan that is leaning up against the house. The toboggan is taller.

Perhaps you can see that the snow is so deep that it has covered the seat part of this bench. VERY impressive, at least to my Sister.

According to Tradition, Sister and I took bottles out to feed the babies. They were very happy to see us and only rammed us five or six times.

Little Brown, the calf Sister is feeding, is much more polite than the rowdy black and white calf that I was trying to feed. He kept knocking the wind out of me by ramming his head into my stomach. Hard.

This angry looking cow is outside eating hay and getting snowed on.

We found a mound of snow and climbed upon it to be Queens of the Mountain. Unfortunately since there is so much snow you really can’t tell what is snow and what is mound. And…I’m all covered in snow because I wiped out really badly right before this picture was taken. Apparently there’s a real thick layer of ice under the nice powdery snow…

We found a really old, rickety bench that was covered in snow, so we sat on it to see if it would break. It did not break, which makes Sister and I feel very light and svelte.

I am having so much fun in Iowa! We’re about to go to a French place for lunch, just us girls, why the boys go to the cow store and out to some manly place like Maid Rite or pizza or whatever. And the snow isn’t even supposed to stop until 3:00 in the afternoon!

Dec27

Holy Cows

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Holy Cows

This morning The Kid said, “Lady, I’m going to go feed the calves.”

I was all ready for the day and had my jeans and stilletos on but I said, “I’m coming too, Man.” I really like feeding calves.

“GOSH, fine.” He replied. “But you’re not going looking like that.” (We have a strange sort of interaction with each other, but it works.)

“Obviously.”

So I went downstairs and found my old coveralls and put them on over my brand new Gap jeans. I took off my heels, grabbed a pair of The Kid’s socks (when he found out I was wearing his socks he got all bent out of shape, but I don’t care) and went out to the garage to find my old mud boots.

I think Pops has downsized the boots collection in recent months, because all I could find was the ginormous ones. So I grabbed two huge boots and stuffed my feet and jeans inside them, pulling the coverall part down over the boot for optimal protection of my new jeans.

“You’re going to smell terrible now,” said The Kid as he came outside and realized I was still wearing my earlier outfit, just with the coveralls over it.

“I don’t even care what you say,” I said.

The Kid shoved a baby calf bottle into my hands. “Hold that.”(In my defense, the coveralls add 50 pounds. At least.)

So we tromped out to the barn exchanging insults along the way like “your boots have more poo in the treads than mine do” and “obviously you don’t know anything about walking on ice” and “it’s unlikely that you’ll succeed in life”.

“Are these new calves?” I asked The Kid.

“Yes, they’re a month old. Dad got them on Christmas day.” The Kid replied. Earlier he had complained and carried on that Pops had made him do that thing on a holiday. See, the thing is Pops isn’t actually a farmer, he just really wishes that he was so he has some cows and chickens that he keeps around for fun.

We entered the baby calves’ stall and the calves ran up to us and slammed their little heads into our tummies.

The Kid’s calf finished his milk first and decided he wanted to get in on some of my calves’ action so he came over and stomped on my foot and shoved his head right into my stomach in the diaphragm area. It was very shocking.
Pops had a nice teenager-sized calf in the next stall who was real furry and apathetic looking.

“You can pet that one if you want, but he’s not real social,” The Kid said as he threw hay at the bigger, furrier calf.

Like I’m going to turn down an opportunity to pet a big furry calf, so I ran into the stall (stepped in some cow business on the way, too, which was kind of fragrant and disgusting) and tried to pet the cow. He wasn’t interested in me.And…that’s about the extent of the excitement at the Laird house today. We’re supposed to get some kind of snowstorm tomorrow so Pops and I went to get Diesel fuel so he can run the “tractor” to plow us out if necessary.

Dec27

My New Piercing

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My New Piercing

If you look real close, you can see a little diamondy stud in my cartilage. Most people do this kind of thing in high school or college but…I didn’t get around to it in high school and my college had rules about how many piercings girls were allowed to have. (Two piercings total, in the lobe only. And I’m serious about this.)

So now, several years late, I finally pierce my cartilage.

Dec25

To Jenna, From Santa

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To Jenna, From Santa

I grew up knowing that Santa did not exist, and that was just fine with me. Didn’t bother me a bit. We always did the Christmas play as our tradition anyway, and usually I got to be Mary, an angel with a glittery halo, or the sheep if I was lucky. Way cool.

This Christmas morning I’m at Joey’s parent’s house. There are presents under the tree (lots), the stockings have been opened (I got a pretty bracelet, 2 movies, and some grippies for pulling hot stuff out of the oven, among other things).

When I woke up and saw all the presents under the tree I was told, in No Uncertain Terms by the Brothers that I was not to touch any of the presents under it. So I looked very carefully but did not touch.

Until…

“WOAH! One of these says it’s to Jenna from Santa!” I grabbed the gift and picked it up to have a closer look.
The Brothers yelled, “You’re not supposed to touch that!” “Put that down!” and “MOM, Jenna touched a present!”
I looked at them smugly. “I don’t count because I’m a girl, I can touch my presents if I want to.” And I carried my present over to Joey, who took a picture of it for me to post here.

I’m not sure if you can read that label, but it totally says To Jenna, From Santa. It’s my first present from Santa in my entire 25 year lifespan.
Dec23

Welcome to Iowa

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Welcome to Iowa

We got the OK from my office to leave at noon on Friday because we’d heard scuttle that a blizzard was blowing in on Saturday, the day we’d previously planned to drive north.

Good thing we left early.

Aside from thick fog once we hit the Iowa border, we made excellent time on our drive up; 11 and a half hours, a new record! There wasn’t even much snow on the ground and I spent several miles lamenting that fact to Joey who replied, “What did you just think there’d be a fresh, pristine blanket of snow on the ground just for you?”

Yes, I had thought that.

We made it to Joey’s parent’s house by 12:00 p.m. on Friday and fell asleep about 2:00 because we all sat up talking about nothing for an hour and a half, which is really a lot of fun to do. On Saturday morning I woke up bright and early thanks to our puppy who has ADHSD (attention deficit, super hyperactivity disorder) and who couldn’t understand why in the world no one else was up but him. I got fed up and took him on a walk.

Henry’s initial reactions to his first snow and ice:

  • What is that white stuff and where am I supposed to go to the bathroom now? (It took a full 12 hours before we could convince him that yes, it was OK to use the snow for his business. He kept looking for grass which is buried ice covered snow.)
  • It’s cold and I don’t like it.
  • Why do my paws slip when I walk on the shiny stuff?
  • When I try to jump on a snow drift, why do I fall?

Once we got back from our walk, Joey finally woke up and we I hauled tree limbs down to the burn pile that had broken off during the ice storm last week. I can’t believe how many branches fell down, or how far it is to the burn pile from the house. Holy cows.

And, after all that work, we headed up to Ankeny to hang out with our friends. Rumor had it that a blizzard was coming, but there wasn’t any snow and we figured we were fine.

It started snowing at 2:00. Hard. We moved up our dinner plans an hour (had a great time, too, thanks Joel & Amber!) and finally started the 45 minute drive from Ankeny back to Monroe.

It had snowed a lot more than we thought it had. A lot more. The freeways were 100% snow covered in places which made it very difficult to tell which lane you were in, or even how many lanes there were. Joey spent most of his time in the center of what we thought was the middle of the road.

About halfway back to Joey’s parents house, we hit a whiteout. For those of you who are from down South and don’t know what a whiteout is, it’s when the snow is blowing across the plains so hard and fast that all you can see is white in front of you and around you. We couldn’t see more than 8 feet in front of us and nothing out the side windows.

I started getting really, really scared.

“What should we do?” I wimpered.

“We’ll be fine,” assured Joey, my excellent driving husband who had both hands on the wheel, white-knuckle style.

So, since there wasn’t anything else to do, we prayed and prayed and prayed. The whiteout lasted about 20 minutes and then abated to just blowing snow. Under normal circumstances blowing snow is pretty bad but, after whiteout conditions, blowing snow is a walk in the park.

It is now 19 degrees outside (it was 71 when we left TX on Friday) and I am freezing cold but am quite satisfied that I will have experienced all of Iowa’s winter weather gamut by the time we go back to Dallas.

Dec21

Wonder Woman

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Wonder Woman

This is what I have done in the last 14 hours. I am very exhausted.

  • I took down Christmas and redecorated the house back to the way it used to be. This, unfortunately, involved Joey throwing our very dead Christmas tree over the balcony (we’d have had a major needle disaster on our hands if we tried to take it out the conventional way through the front door) and me dragging it out to the Dumpster and launching it in one-handed. It also involved finding dead pine needles in strange places on my person for the next several hours.
  • We (mostly me) cleaned the entire house. It was more than necessary because of the dead pine needles that were all over the place…
  • Joey studied while I cleaned and then took a final at DTS while I ran to the hospital to drop off a gift for a friend
  • We packed to go out of town for a week – to Iowa! – because we have to leave today at noon instead of Saturday morning because of some ice storm they’re getting up there. Hooray!
  • I got up at 5:00 a.m . so I could get to the office by 6:00 a.m. That is too early for anyone to be thinking logically about anything, if you ask me.

I’m ready to hit the road, Jack, get outta Dodge, and blow this Popsicle stand, and however many other expressions there are…because I need a nap!

Dec19

Truffles?

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Truffles?

Has anyone but me every wondered why those things that wild boars root around for in the ground are called truffles? I mean, they’re not anything like the chocolate truffles I’m eating right now (Harry and David ones, courtesy of some Fund).

Truffles that are not made of chocolate look like little poos. Why would anyone want to eat that, much less pay $75 for a dish of them at some restaurant?

This is something that has always bothered me. If anyone knows the answer, please enlighten.

Dec19

The Case of the Multiplying Tool Caddys

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The Case of the Multiplying Tool Caddys

Several weeks ago we went with our friends to Fair Park in Lights. Home Depot had a booth for children under the age of 12 or 13 to make free crafts.

“You look like you’re under 12,” Joey goaded me.

I took off my wedding ring and handed it to him. Then I marched off after Danny Stiller who also thought he could pass for under 12 or 13.

The lady didn’t even bat an eye. She handed me a kit to make a wooden tool caddy and I proudly displayed my catch to Joey, who gave me back my wedding ring. Then he helped me put it together because I did it completely wrong the first time. You cannot glue the entire thing together before putting nails in it and expect it to hold, I discovered. Glue gets everywhere and nothing sticks together. What a mess.

Anyway, I got very frustrated and made Joey come finish my tool caddy, and he did a wonderful job. He barely even got any glue on himself.

This is what our tool caddies looked like once we finished them. And, yes, those are safety goggles you see on my face.

My tool caddy, unfortunately, has sat in the backseat of our car since then. It’s not really useful but I couldn’t bear to throw it away.

Last Saturday Joey and I switched cars with Danny and Laura so we could take their Jeep up to Ikea to bring back our NEW BEDROOM FURNITURE! (It’s amazing, our dresser drawers open smoothly and don’t fall out anymore!) I hurriedly cleaned out the grodies in our car and stuffed the tool caddy under the passenger seat. And we were off.

Joey traded our cars back later that evening and on Sunday, as we drove to church, I noticed our tool caddy was sitting in the passenger’s seat. That’s weird, maybe they wanted to look at it or something? I thought to myself. I threw it in the back seat without a second glance.

We girls had a cookie exchange on Sunday afternoon, and the boys went to see a movie at the cheap theater. As we were leaving Laura #1′s house (not to be confused with Laura Stiller, Jeep owner) Danny mentioned that he’d put his tool caddy in our car for us to burn in our fireplace.

“OH! That’s how we got two!” Joey said. He must have noticed that we had two in the back seat. He’s more observant than me.

I considered protesting, just to be difficult, that maybe we didn’t want to burn their tool caddy when Danny trumped me. “It’s better for the environment than throwing it away…”

My budding environmentalism is being used against me. Anyway, we burned their tool caddy. It made a nice, hot fire…lots hotter than the regular wood we got from the woodman. And here, taken by Joey, is a picture of the poor little tool caddy going up in flame.

Dec17

Reindeer

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Reindeer

Pops,

I think I have come up with a brilliant new business proposition for you. It involves reindeer, which I know you don’t want to purchase because they’re not beef, but I am hoping to convince you to open your mind or something. I’d probably be the happiest girl in the entire world if you bought a reindeer, and I’d try to convince all my Texas friends to come up North to see you and your reindeer. What would be cooler?

Please see Exhibit A: the Wiki on Reindeer

Reindeer are very versatile and cute. Also I guess some people eat them, but I don’t know why you’d want to.

Also, having a reindeer would be a good extra source of income. About August of every year you could start eating lots of doughnuts and brownies and grow your beard out real long and fluffy. Mom could help you dye it gray. You could get a nice big red Santa suit and stand outside with your reindeer and then children could come by and pay money to see Santa and his reindeer. (If you wanted to make it more authentic you could get 8 reindeer…)

Some Important Reindeer Facts compiled by 2nd graders:

  • A full grown reindeer can run between 12 and 15 miles an hour pulling a loaded sleigh. They can do this for many hours. (very useful, I’d say)
  • Caribou and reindeer are not the same animal they are cousins. They are not the same because reindeer are smaller.
  • Reindeer can be found in northern parts of North America, Asia, and Europe. It is very cold where they live.
  • Reindeer eat reindeer moss called lichen. It grows on the ground and is good for them to eat. (It would be valuable to take one to the Boundary Waters so it could eat the lichen in front of us and then we wouldn’t slip.)
  • Reindeer owners cut a notch in the ears to tell who the reindeer belongs to.
  • Reindeer can carry up to 300 pounds. This is the same as they weigh.

Cows are cool and all, Pops, but I think you should reconsider your aversion to reindeer. Think of all the joy a reindeer would bring to your future grandchild someday. (In a long time, I mean. Not immediately or anything)

I leave you with a cute picture of a baby reindeer to sway your opinions.

Love,
Jenna, your oldest and most persuasive daughter