Tag Archives: iowa

Jun5

The Last Word

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The Last Word

As we were sitting in the den last night after launching those rockets, Joey’s Lemur Approach method of rocket retrieval came back up as a topic of conversation.

“If we hadn’t done that,” Pops said, “I was just going to go get the chainsaw and cut the tree down.”

Silence.

“‘Cause we’re not losing that rocket.  It’s been a great machine, we’ve done the more launches with it than any other rocket.”

You may think that my pops was merely joking about the chainsaw method.  Internet, I assure you that he was not.  Our neighbor ought to be very glad that the Lemur Approach worked, otherwise he’d have one less tree today.

Jun4

Why can’t we just launch rockets like normal people???

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Why can’t we just launch rockets like normal people???

We’ve been in the Iowa for something like a week now.  Last night and tonight, we launched rockets.

Last night, I wore my bermuda khakis, a shirt from LOFT and some of the barn boots (a pair which was only slightly too big) to haul about a half mile out into the recently planted soybean field (uh, sorry Randy) with The Kid and The Brother on Launch Recovery Team.

They’d have been a lot more efficient if I didn’t go along.  But I insisted.

At the point where we retrieved the rocket, I realized the barn boots had rubbed my ankles and heels raw, and I now had to walk all the way back up to the house with bleeding feet in boots that’s sanitary qualities were more than questionable.

I was even slower going back up to the house.

(Incidentally, I just looked at my heels and noticed they’re oozing and about to drip on the carpet.  That is just a delightful sight, I tell you.  Appetizing, even.  Somebody pass the cupcakes.)

So tonight, I wasn’t going to repeat the same horrible experience.  I dug up Joey’s athletic shorts, a t-shirt with a hole in it, some of Pops’ socks calf-length socks, and Mom’s gardening shoes.

Y’all.  I looked smokin’.

But I was much more comfortable and that’s what counts.

When The Kid saw me, he said something to the effect of “Lady, you look like a complete idiot”.  And he took a picture.

We loaded the rocket with bigger engines today than we used yesterday.  There seemed to be barely any wind, so we thought we were golden; the Launch Recovery Team (LRT) expected an easy recovery in the middle of the soybean field.  Unfortunately, when the rocket went up (WAAAAAAY UP) we realized immediately that we were way off.  The rocket blew south, right into our old neighborhood and a bunch of trees.

The LRT burst forth with shouts of “I THINK I’VE GOT IT!” and “IT’S IN THE TREES!” and suchlike.  The Kid, The Brother, Jess and I took off running down the front yard and across the street (which is further than it sounds to you city people) and were puzzling our next steps when we noticed Pops whizzing up the street in the van, packed with Laura and Joey.  Pops was all, GET IN!  GET IN! and we drove down the street we thought it had landed on, yelling out the windows to people in their yards, asking if they’d seen our rocket.

Everyone just looked at us super weird.

I’ll fast forward to the part where we did find the rocket, about 8 inches from our neighbor’s house.  The same neighbor who made us get rid of our dog growing up.  (Not that it was any skin off our nose, we didn’t like the dog.  But the point is: they don’t like things messing with their house.)  Joey’s hypothesis was that the rocket had hit their roof and bounced off into the grass.

Good thing we were in and out like assassins, our neighbors never saw us (actually it was Joey) coming or going.  Unless if they randomly read this blog.  Then, hi unnamed neighbors: I just ‘fessed.

After our first launch, and its questionable success, we re-aimed the launch pad and tried again.

There was a serious delay between the pushing of the button and the ignition of the engines, because just as Pops was about to go inspect the problem, the rocket went WOOOOOOSH! and took off into the sky.  It scared us all half to death because it had been so long since the launch button was pushed that we all thought this attempt was a scrub.

We were wrong.  The thing went up in the sky and pretty much everyone screamed and/or jumped a mile.  Good thing Pops didn’t get his face blown off.  That’s why it’s important to practice launch safety techniques.

The rocket went up, up, up and was looking PERFECT…until the wind stopped blowing.  Pops, Joey, The Brother and I all ran pell-mell across our side yard down to the barn (which, again, is further away than it sounds to you city folk), across the street, and into Pops’ uncut alfalfa field.  Joey was a few dozen yards ahead of us and suddenly we heard, “I GOT IT!”

Normally we yell I GOT IT if we actually hold the rocket in our hands.  Joey yelled that because he saw the rocket.  In the tree.  ”Four feet” off the ground.

May I just say it was many more than four feet off the ground.

I saw that rocket in the tree and I immediately flashed back to the events of the last month: a tennis ball to Joey’s eye, a volleyball to his left cheek, a water bottle to his mouth.  The rocket in the tree is immediately flashing DANGER! DANGER! in my wife brain.

The next thing I know, Joey has climbed up into the tree as Pops, The Brother and I look on.  The tree looked like a mulberry tree, so it has spindly, thin branches that sprawl out over a large area.  The rocket was at the edge of the tree’s plumage, so Joey had quite a ways to go before he could actually reach it.  Within no time at all he was as high as the rocket, and inching out on the tiny little tree branch.

“PLEASE think carefully about what you are going to do!” I yelled.  What I meant was: please, please don’t do anything stupid.

The tree branches rustled.  Dollar signs flashed before my eyes.  They rustled some more.

“Uhhhhhh, I think this branch isn’t sturdy enough to support my weight,” Joey said.  ”So I’m going to try the Lemur Approach.”

I wasn’t sure what the Lemur Approach was, but I was positive I wouldn’t like it.  Suddenly, Joey swung down from the branch and hung from it by his hands.  The leaves rustled and bent toward the ground, Pops and The Brother scrambled to get the rocket as Joey bounced gently on the branch.

Then, I heard wood splitting.

“HONEY!” I screamed.  The dollar signs in front of my eyes grew much, much larger.

“I’m OK,” he yelled.  ”Another tree branch caught me.”

As if that was reassuring.

Fortunately I couldn’t see what was going on, but I did hear a few more smaller branches break and then Joey emerged from the woods, sticks stuck to his hair and leaves on his shirt.  But he was alive, intact, and it didn’t even look like he’d torn or stained any clothes.

The dollar signs I had been seeing disappeared.

All’s well that ends well, because as soon as we got to the house Pops and The Brother started stuffing toilet paper in the rocket again so they could relaunch it.  (What.  Don’t you stuff toilet paper in your rockets before you launch them?)

And now I realize I should go work on my feet.  They’re still oozing.

 

Jun2

Pass the remote, she says. And the popcorn.

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Pass the remote, she says. And the popcorn.

Analie’s getting to be a professional sitter-upper.  Whilst sitting up, she blew out the ADORABLE Panda outfit that my cousin Christie gave her.  I was so excited that it was cold enough that she could wear it, and then KAPOW.  Blown out three hours later.  But at least she wore it for a little while.

All this to say, that’s why my kid is only wearing a onesie in the video.

And her Papa had better watch out – she may have laid claim to his lazy chair.  It’s SO! EXCITING!

Feb19

Resemblance Much?

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Resemblance Much?

Analie and I arrived in The Iowa yesterday afternoon about 3;00.  It was a long, arduous journey that began way too early en la mañana for my preference.  But since I was the one who chose to leave at that time of day, I had no one but myself to blame as I whizzed across eastern Illinois before the sun was even up.

Then when I arrived, my evil Brother giggled his sinister giggle and said, ” I have to show you something.”

First of all, The Kid is getting married.  I guess he’s old enough.  Anyway, after his marriage to his Lady (also known as Jess) in Ohio in May, they will be moving to Iowa.  My parents are having a reception for them here, complete with more cake so I am totally on board.  Well, as long as it’s good cake.

Actually, I just realized that I never confirmed there would be cake.

MOM. WILL THERE BE CAKE??  THIS IS IMPORTANT.  PLEASE ADVISE.

I feel better now that that’s off my chest.  Anyway, The Brother showed up with a large stack of old family pictures and said, while grinning his Cheshier Cat grin and gigling his sinister giggle, “I have to find it, hold on.”

flip, flip, flip, flip

mumble, mumble, mumble…no this one’s not it, it should be right after this one…mumble, mumble, mumble

AHA!

“Look, who does this remind you of?” He said, shoving the photo in my face.

And I just burst out laughing.

It’s The Kid as a rather obnoxious looking baby sitting in his high chair probably begging for more food….but his expression looks just like Analie, and it cracks me up every single time.

Feb1

A Federal Offense

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A Federal Offense

It is a federal offense to tamper with someone’s mailbox.

At least twice a winter, if not more than three times, my parent’s mailbox gets hit by a car, or snowplow, or a cyclist.  (And I’m not kidding about the cyclist either, we saw it happen.  It looked really painful.)  Sometimes the idiot driver misses the mailbox and winds up going through the electric fence and into the pasture, but nine times out of ten it’s the mailbox.  I think the official number of times the mailbox has has experienced some kind of destruction is around 10, but I will have to call my Pops and fact-check that.

There’s nothing out of the ordinary about dad’s mailbox, either. It’s black, nondescript and, most importantly, it’s plenty far enough back from the road so as to not be hit every time one turns around.

My personal favorite was a mailbox near-miss. Some stupid teenager (ahem, NOT THAT TEENAGERS ARE STUPID AS A RULE) was driving around the corner too fast and lost control of her car.  She wound up driving in our ditch for awhile, which wouldn’t have ended badly for her if she’d have had the forethought to apply the brakes instead of the gas.  This ditch-driving culminated in her ramping up over our driveway and ripping the undercarriage of her car out on the culvert (which, naturally, is in the ditch and goes under the driveway) and somehow managed to wind up in the middle of our front yard.

The best part is that a bunch of us were mowing the lawn at the time and got to see it.  I’m pretty sure The Kid was mowing the section of yard that her car landed in, too.  Lucky guy.

Anyway, all this to say, she barely missed the mailbox when she went up and over the driveway, but since she did destroy her car in the process I’d say it’s still a story that’s worth telling.

But I digress, as this is not a blog post about bad drivers.  Well, actually it is.  Just not that kind of bad drivers.

Every time there is an ice storm, or a snow storm, or if maybe the gravitational pull of the moon is a little bit stronger in the East, my dad’s mailbox gets taken out.  I’m not sure if Pops has gone to such lengths as to anchor it on a 16 foot steel post set in concrete but, frankly, it would probably still get hit.  Poor dad.  I’m pretty sure he has spent more money on replacing mailboxes than the average American annually transfers to their savings account.  (It bears noting that Americans stink at saving money, but the point is that Pops has to buy a lot of mailboxes.)

I’m going somewhere with all this, I promise.

When Joey braved the elements to run to church and pick up some books for studying over the next day or two (in case the Snowpocalypse has us housebound for ages and ages), he noticed something black and shiny in our ditch.

Someone had hit our mailbox.

Apparently this is a condition that is hereditary.

Dec5

Sunday, Sunday, Someday

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Sunday, Sunday, Someday

After a passably good night of sleep (we got in a REM cycle!), Analie and I woke up about 6:30.  My mom has been here this week helping us out (and what a help she was!) but was leaving this morning at 9:00 when my grandparents would stop by to pick her up on their way to Iowa.

Analie ate her breakfast and then I delivered her to her Nana, who happily kept an eye on her while I ran through the shower.  My goal was to get out and have my hair dried before my mom left, and miraculously I was successful.

An hour later, my mom was in the car and driving out of the driveway.  Analie and I stood inside the house and watched out the window as they drove away.  I realized that it was just the two of us.  Well, three of us when Joey’s home.  But if we were going to make it to church, it really would be just the two of us.

I took a deep breath, put Analie in her cow bouncer and set it right outside the bathroom door while I finished getting ready.  She happily watched me flat-iron my hair and finish putting on makeup.  Then, just as I was about to sit down and eat something (because I was so hungry I felt I could pass out), she began to fuss.

Hungry again.

I plugged her with her binkie (I know, I know…) and inhaled my blueberry muffin, orange juice, and vitamins.  Not exactly high nutrition, but it’s what I could find in a hurry.

Then I fed her, again, thankful that I had thought to pack up her diaper bag an hour earlier, because as soon as she was finished we needed to roll or we’d be late.  Joey wanted us to come for the last few minutes of Sunday School, and we were cutting it pretty close.

I stopped taking the painkillers prescribed for me after my C-section several days ago, and this morning was going to be my first morning to drive.  Despite the fact that I’d been trying to get Mom to let me drive all week.  I even jumped around the kitchen last Wednesday to prove to her that I was ready to drive.  (I had heard that once you could jump following a C-section, you could drive.  Mom was NOT having it.  She didn’t let me drive.)  My blood pressure medication still makes me a touch dizzy outside the house, but not so dizzy that I’m a hazard on the roads.  At least I don’t think so.

It doesn’t say on the bottle not to drive while taking it.  So…yeah.

One more month and then it’s no more medicine for meeee!!  I hate taking medicine.

I carried Analie’s carseat out to the car and snapped it into place.  I moved the seat back up into position for a non-pregnant me, and then backed out of the driveway, feeling a little bit apprehensive about driving my daughter around on snowy, potentially icy roads.

I may have grown up in Iowa, but I forgot all that bad weather driving stuff in Texas.  Especially with a newborn in the car.

Fortunately, the road conditions were safe and we made it to church in one piece.

I took the best parking spot in the entire church parking lot, and only felt marginally guilty doing so.  The guilt I did feel evaporated the minute I tried to carry Analie in her carseat across the parking lot into the front door.  The girl is HEAVY in that thing.  Halfway to the door I considered turning around and going back for the stroller frame, but reconsidered because the door was getting closer.  I figured we’d just take her out of her carrier when we got inside.

That turned out to be a super bad idea.  While the carrier is heavy, actually holding a 7 lb cutie pie for an entire church service is even heavier.  Joey and I shared her back and forth, but I am pretty sure we were both sore by the end, and I even ducked out early thinking Analie needed to eat.

We probably overdid it by trying to go to church when Analie was only 12 days old…by the end of the morning I was cantankerous, to put it mildly.  Analie was fussy because she didn’t eat well in Daddy’s office. (Daddy got rid of his couch last week, so Mommy had to try to finagle his awkward desk chair for feeding time, which did not work so well.  Mommy has requested that Daddy get a new couch for his office or he won’t be seeing much of his little girl around feeding times.)

This evening, we’ve been camped out in the den watching the Return of the King.  Gag.  I wanted to watch the Fellowship of the Ring, but Joey had a hankering for violence and battle scenes.  I quit paying attention about an hour into it, but Analie has been awake the entire time.

It occurs to me that it’s perhaps too much violence for her, but considering her eyes can barely focus on my face much less an Orc getting his head chopped off on a small screen across the room, I don’t think I’ll worry too much about her just yet.  Maybe next month.

And now…it’s time for bed.

Nov7

Vignette 7: Catastrophe

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Vignette 7: Catastrophe

When I was a junior in high school, I got a job working as a receptionist for a retirement community in Cedar Rapids. I loved it. I’d work from 4-8 in the evenings, and when the Members would come downstairs for dinner, they’d stop by my desk and harass me, or ask me how many boyfriends I had. (Don’t worry, I never had more than one at a time. I’m not that kind of girl.)

It made a perfect summer job, too, because I gave me the mornings to do slave work around the house for my parents. Usually it was just mowing, but every now and then Pops would want me to do something else because I was the only child that had a driver’s license.

One morning, he asked me to drive up to the John Deere dealership in Waterloo and pick up a part for one of his old-timey tractors. I said sure, fine, no problem because no matter how you slice it, driving to Waterloo is a sight better than spending another morning mowing the lawn.

At 1:00, I was dressed in my favorite outfit. (It’s sad that I even remember what I was wearing.) In true 1999 fashion, I had on a white button down shirt under a brown sleeveless sweater, a khaki colored skirt, brown stockings, and light brown chunky suede shoes.

Y’all. I was looking good.

And that outfit may seem kind of ridiculous for the middle of the summer, but let’s bear in mind that I worked at a retirement community. Almost everyone inside was complaining how hot it was outside, so the air conditioner was blasting. If I didn’t layer up I’d freeze to death.

Because I had to drive so far, Mom let me take her van instead of my truck, which was affectionately named the J2K. Why was it named that, you ask? WELL. Considering that it was 1999, everyone was all freaking out about Y2K, and I’d paid about $2k for my truck. Also, my name starts with J. Hence, the J2K.

Wow, that was a useless tangent.

The trip up to Waterloo was pretty uneventful. On the way back, I realized I had plenty of time to spare before getting to work because it was only 2:00 by this time. I still had about two hours, and my best friend’s house was just a few miles off where I currently was on the freeway.

I decided to stop by, so I pulled off 380 at the Urbana exit.

And that’s where everything went wrong.

When I got to my friend’s farm, I was disappointed to find no one at home. But the house was unlocked and as I glanced around at the barns and outbuildings, I could tell that the boys were probably in the fields. It didn’t make any sense to come all this way and not leave a note saying I’d stopped by, so I hopped back in the van and dug up some paper and a pen.

DK (short for Donkey Kong), who my friend’s favorite cat, was climbing around my ankles, purring and shedding his fur all over my brown stockings. As I wrote, he jumped up on the hood of the van and started batting at the antenna. It didn’t take me long to finish the note, and when I was done I jumped out of the car and slammed the door.

The sound that came from DK’s feline mouth was not unlike what you would hear if you trapped five screaming banshees in a room with Ernest Hemmingway for an hour. Horrific. The stuff of terror movies.

I was halfway to the house when I realized this strange and horrible sound was not stopping, neither was it moving anywhere. I turned around, looked at my mom’s van, and screamed.

DK had somehow gotten his right paw stuck in the van door, in the small joint between the radio antenna and the sideview mirror, and he was howling in pain. I tripped my way down the stairs, down the sidewalk, around the retaining wall, and threw myself into opening the van door.

But it was locked.

And there sat my keys, in the middle of the driver’s seat.

DK howled.

“OH MY GOSH!” I screamed. DK was sliding off the hood of the car as he struggled to free his paw. I hesitantly tried to push him back on so he wouldn’t be hanging from his trapped paw, but it didn’t work. He slid all the way off and was now hanging from the door.

Howling, howling, howling.

The other cats, five or six of them, came sniffing around to see what the problem was. A few of them took pot shots at DK, swiping at him with their paws.

“THIS IS NOT HAPPENING!” I screamed again, to the empty yard, empty house, empty barns.

Oh, and this was before I had a cell phone, too. So I just stood there, whipping my head around frantically, trying to decide What To Do. I was clearly not thinking straight, because I thought the best idea would be to run down to the nearest neighbors’ house, probably ¼ of a mile down a gravel road. In suede heels, stockings, and a skirt, mind you.

And off I ran.

I soon learned that it is ill advised to run in suede heels, stockings, and a skirt. But DK was hanging from my van door, darn it, and it was my fault.

Well, I got to the neighbors’ house and realized why we never came this way when we rode horse. The neighbors had two very wicked, ferocious dogs that growled and bared their teeth at me as though they wanted to eat and/or kill me for disturbing their peace. And since I wouldn’t be able to save poor DK if I was dead, I turned around and ran back up the gravel road the way I’d come.

My brown stockings were a bit on the gray side now, from all the gravel dust, and I was panting hard. It was a hot day and I was wearing a lot of clothes to be running around like an idiot.

I checked the outbuildings once more when I got back to the farm. I yelled and yelled, hoping someone had run out of gas and was back to fill up, or needed to refill their spray tanks. Really I didn’t care what brought them back to the house, I just wanted SOMEONE.

Nobody. Anywhere.

I remembered the house was unlocked and perhaps I could get ahold of someone on the phone, so I barreled inside and yelled, once more, “IS ANYONE HOME?”

No answer.

I called Mom. No answer.

I called Dad. He was at work. He answered his phone. And, after a very long pause, he said, “Wait a second, you did WHAT?”

And I was all, I know, I know, I know. I’m not even sure how it happened, but DK is hanging from the side of the van right now, there are claw scratches all over the paint finish, and the keys are locked in there, and no one is home here.

Poor Dad.

He told me he was on his way with some keys.

By this time, I had started crying like a girl. DK was still dangling, the other cats were still batting at him with their claws, and I was going to be SO late for work.

Just then, my friend’s brother drove up the lane with his tractor. I burst out of the house like my skirt was on fire and started screaming and waving. He looked extremely shocked to see me, stopped his tractor, and jumped out. As I explained to him what I had done, his eyes got larger, larger, larger and larger until I finally thought they might explode out of his head.

He held in a snicker or two. Then we went over to examine the cat. “Wow,” he said. “That is…well, what I mean to say is…I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“I think I’ve killed him,” I wailed. DK had stopped flailing and was just hanging there, a foot from the ground.

“No, no, you haven’t killed him. Let’s see if we can take one of these windows off,” he said.

Fortunately, I had cracked the back windows for some reason, and they were open an inch. It was just about enough room to reach the screws and remove them, and the plan was once they were taken off, I’d get shoved through the window and unlock the door.

Not a fun plan, but if anyone deserved to get shoved through a window right then, it was probably me.

The window was nearly off when I saw dust kicking up on the gravel road. It was my dad, come to save me and hopefully the cat as well.

“Quick, put the window back together,” I told my friend’s brother. “I don’t want my poor dad to have come out here for nothing.”

My friend’s brother looked at me like I fully insane, but he obliged and screwed the few pieces he had managed to remove back on.

Dad drove up and jumped out of his truck. He walked over to inspect my destruction and all he could say was, “Wow. How did you do this again?”

I sighed. I felt like a terrible person, and I pretty much was.

Dad unlocked the van and we opened the driver’s side door. Poor DK fell to the ground, and then took off running across the yard as far away from me as he could get, despite his smashed paw.

“At least he’s still alive,” I said.

My friend’s brother laughed. My dad shook his head at me. Poor guy, he had just driven 30 minutes one way to unlock a van and release a trapped and now-damaged cat.

“I’m late for work,” I moaned.

“I told them you were on your way,” Dad said.

I jumped in the van, dusted off my brown stockings and suede shoes, and carefully drove out of the driveway, so as not to accidentally run over one of the other cats or something equally catastrophic.

HA. Catastrophic. GET IT?

Somehow, DK managed to live many more years after I smashed him. His paw swelled to the size of a golf ball that evening and the next day, but soon the swelling went down and he went about his life just as though nothing ever happened.

He never seemed to have much time for me anymore, though.

Oct29

Freeze Warning!

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Freeze Warning!

All day yesterday, I heard on the radio that we were going to have a freeze warning overnight.  Every time they’d say it, I’d get all stressed and wonder if I needed to drip the faucets and open the cabinets, and WHY hadn’t I seen any FREEZE WARNING signs out in yards while I was driving around?

And then I remembered that, duh, I grew up in the Iowa and we never dripped our faucets, opened all our cabinet doors, and we certainly never put out warning signs when it froze in the winter.

Let’s be honest, that happened, like, every single night all winter, too.

It’s creepy how fast your brain forgets things, especially things that used to be familiar and normal and you never had to think about them.  (Hmm, maybe that’s why I forgot.)

The closest thing I can figure is that up here in the Midwest is that maybe they put something nice and warm around the pipes so they don’t freeze?  And…maybe they insulate the walls in the houses better so we don’t have to open our cabinets?  I DON’T KNOW.

All I know is that when I woke up and heard on the radio that it had indeed frozen last night, I totally freaked out again that we didn’t drip our faucets.

Sep5

“Before it fell in the toilet…”

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“Before it fell in the toilet…”

This afternoon’s agenda included taking the pictures off my Pops’ camera and uploading them to my lappy, because I was going to post some birthday and Old Threshers pictures.  I couldn’t find his camera anywhere, though, until Sister said it was being charged because the battery was dead.

I checked all the outlets I could find and never turned up the camera.  So I checked with Mom, who said it might be up in their room.

I dragged myself up the stairs (because my morale and energy level were down the tubes due to the maaaaajor head and chest cold I contracted) and shuffled all over my parents’ bedroom looking for the camera.  I was about to give up when I glanced in their bathroom.  There, resting on the top of the toilet bowl and plugged into the outlet Mom uses for her curling iron, was the camera.

Score.

Since it was out of battery, I thought it would be wiser to leave it plugged in while I extracted the SD card.  I fiddled with the latch and finally got it to pop open.  Dad’s camera was a little trickier than ours, and the only thing I could get out for the longest time was the battery.  The stupid SD card would NOT come out.  Then I thought maybe I should try pushing on it instead of tugging…so I did.

I pushed down on that stupid thing, and as I lifted my finger off it it was like my whole life flashed before my eyes and all the colors got real bright and time started going really slowly.  The SD card went flying out of the camera, FLYING!, and soaring through the air.

And as it flew through the air, I realized where it was going to land.  And then I started screaming.  ”NO!  NO!  NO!  NOOOOOO!”

With a plop, the card slid right down into the toilet bowl and started swishing its way deeper, and deeper into the water.

I screamed, loudly.  And I dove right in after that thing, carefully holding Pops’ camera far from the water with my right hand.

The bad part is, just yesterday at Old Threshers, Pops and his boys and in-law boys had been having a hypothetical discussion about what would happen to an SD card if it got wet.  I stood there with a drippy, germy hand holding a drippier, germier SD card and hoped that one of my brothers would be able to solve this problem for me (since Joey was down at the barn changing oil) since the hypothetical situation just became reality.

I shuffled out into the hallway, still dripping, where I found Brother standing there.  I don’t really know why he was there.  But I said, “Um, remember that conversation we had about an SD card getting wet?”

And Brother just looked at me like, please stop talking because I have a feeling I can see where this is going, and I am not going to like it.

“Well, Dad’s SD card just fell in the toilet.  I mean, I tried to get it out of the camera and it went flying through the air and landed in the toilet.”

Brother crossed his eyes, sighed, and wilted all at once.  ”Let me see it…” he said.

I handed it to him.

“Let’s go put this in the sun,” he said.  ”It looks fine to me, you can’t even tell it was wet.”

So the SD card sat on the porch table all afternoon and dried out.  I confessed to Pops that I toileted his SD card, and he said I probably am not allowed to touch cameras ever again.  He has a point.  All around I feel like Pops handled the desecration of his SD card pretty well.

A few hours later, we were all sitting around the table eating dinner, and Joey happened to ask if anyone had uploaded the pictures from the SD card before it fell in the toilet.

And then there was a pause.

“The phrase ‘before it fell in the toilet’ unfortunately gets used way too much around this house,” he said.

And everyone laughed, because it’s true.

The answer is no, the pictures were not captured before the SD card fell in the toilet.  We’re hoping it dries off just fine, but we won’t know until tomorrow.