I am growing a glorious garden, resplendent with trumpets and flutes, I am pruning the euphonium bushes, I am watering the piccolo shoots, my tubas and tambourines flourish, surrounded by saxophone reeds, I am planting trombones and pianos, and sowing sweet sousaphone seeds. I have cymbals galore in my garden, staid oboes in orderly rows, there are flowering fifes and violas in the glade where the glockenspiel grows, there are gongs and guitars in abundance, there are violins high on the vine, and an arbor of harps by the bower where the cellos and clarinets twine. My bassoons are beginning to blossom, as my zithers and mandolins bloom, my castanets happily chatter, my kettledrums merrily boom, the banjos that branch by the bugles play counterpoint with a kazoo, come visit my glorious garden and hear it play music for you.
-by Shel Silverstein, in Something Big Has Been Here
(Side note: that's one of the poems I read to Liv when she stayed with Mike and me the night Ila was born.)
I'm not growing tubas and stuff, but I have planted these things:
5 kinds of tomatoes
4 kinds of peppers
pineapple sage
5 kinds of mint
wax and royal burgundy beans
snow peas
marigolds
spring onions
lettuces
arugula
yellow and zucchini squash
rainbow chard
japanese cucumbers
basil
parsley
tarragon
dill
rosemary
thyme
nasturtiums
Here's the garden now:
I'll take another picture in a few weeks, and hopefully it will be much greener!
Also, I built an Outdoor Play Area (OPA) for Badger the corn snake, so that he can enjoy the warm nights in a larger, more interesting enclosure.
Here it is:
And here he is, hiding under a turtle shell:
"Go away."
I'm pretty sure he's grumpy because he's in the middle of shedding and can't really see anything right now. Also, I imagine he must be very itchy.
...mostly because your parents have moved like a million times and they're no longer in the house you left to go to college.
But that's okay, because now they have an awesome cozy house on 6-ish acres in Charlotte, NC!
I had nothing much going on at work during the last few weeks of April, and I was tired of the weekly snow showers in CO, so I booked a flight to Charlotte to spend a few days with mom and dad. Hotwire was offering a 'Hot Deal' for about a hundred bucks less than the next cheapest fare, but the catch was that you only see the details of the trip after you book, and then you can't change anything or get a refund. I figured, how bad could it be?
Well, Hotwire put me on a 5:30pm flight out of DIA and only gave me a 30-minute layover in Atlanta. I hoped it would turn out okay, because I didn't recall ATL being a very large airport.
But then, of course, the weekly snow shower started in Denver and, though we boarded the plane on time, we had to spend an hour getting de-iced before taking off.
During the flight, I kept looking at the image of the little plane centimetering its way across the middle of the US, silently urging the pilot to put the pedal to the metal, because the estimated arrival time was only 5 minutes before the departure time of my connecting flight. Once we landed, the plane seemed to take FOREVER to taxi to the gate, and even though the flight attendants had requested that the people whose final destination was Atlanta stay in their seats so that the folks who had connections could attempt to sprint to their gates, as soon as they seat belt sign went off everyone stood up. I pulled my duffel from the overhead compartment, booked it down the aisle and up the tunnel (only sending four or five old ladies and small children flying), found my connecting gate on the departures screen, hauled ass the 50 yards or so, and rolled up to the gate just as the jetway was being pulled back from the airplane door...
A couple of douchey-looking middle-aged guys that were on my flight ran up after me and started waving frantically through the window at the pilot (like he was going to open the door back up for three random people) and then, when the gate agent came through the door to the jetway, immediately began berating her for not waiting for them before closing the door. I made a token attempt at standing up for her ("Guys, it's not her fault") but they appeared to be merely warming up, so I went to the Delta help desk to find out what to do next.
The gentleman at the desk seemed perfectly nice, but there were two problems: one, he was a low-talker, and I had just spent two hours mere feet away from a very very loud jet engine; and two, he had a completely indecipherable accent. I eventually gathered that I was already booked on the first flight out to Charlotte the next morning, but when I asked where Delta would be putting me up for the night, he said (I think) that they weren't getting me a hotel room because "the de-icing was out of our control." I said, in a sad but nonconfrontational tone, that the de-icing was not in my control either, but ultimately all I got was a voucher for a special rate of $50/night at whatever hotel I preferred.
The stay was uneventful, as was the flight, and at 8:30am I found myself in Charlotte! The warm weather was a very welcome change from stupid cold Denver, and we took advantage by heading over to the US National Whitewater Center, where we could do some rock climbing and rafting and biking and ziplining:
It was cloudy when we first arrived, so we saved the whitewater rafting for when it warmed up a little more. Everyone who signs up for the WWR has to sit through a little orientation thingie, and the particular raft guide leading ours looked like this guy:
but sounded like this guy:
It was an excellent combination.
Dad and I did four laps of the whitewater course while Mom spectated, and we both managed to stay inside the raft, but we got thoroughly soaked. After that I checked took out a bike which was much too big for me, because a middle school class happened to be visiting the center that day and they had already taken all the bikes for smaller people.
Besides being much too big, the bike also had an alarming rattling noise coming from the fork, so after doing a quick loop on a 'blue' trail, I decided to just cruise down some of the smooth, flat trails to the south of the center. Almost immediately, I ran over a big beautiful king snake that was doing its best imitation of a stick across the middle of the trail. I don't think it was mortally wounded, but I completely lost my motivation for biking and rode (carefully) back to the stable, relinquished the bike and walked over to the restaurant to meet my parents. I scared the bejesus out of them by bursting into tears--they thought I had hurt myself--but I eventually calmed down over a pint of some tasty Belgian trippel-style beer. I still feel bad about the snake. Freaking go figure, that it would happen to me, probably one of like ten people in the world who just wants to pick snakes up and make friends with them. Jeez.
On our way back to the house we picked up some Chinese take-out and a box of brownie mix, and had a pleasant evening of tofu and conversation before I zonked out on the La-Z-Boy 15 minutes into an episode of Project Runway.
The next morning, I was walking from the back yard to the front, and when I looked down, there was a nice conspicuous four-leaf in a patch of clover in the grass, and when I bent to pick it my eye caught another one, then another, and pretty soon I had a whole mess of them:
I've still got the mad four-leaf finding skillz!
Then I went for a walk around the property while Mom did something or other. I investigated an old falling-down shed on the edge of the neighbor's yard which had a big opening on one side of the foundation, and while I took an amateur-artsy picture of a raptor feather I found on the ground, I heard some scuffling coming from the shed. I took a step toward it, and all of a sudden a big old buzzard came running out of the foundation, took a look at me, and flew up to a branch of the big oak tree next to the shed:
I was so startled.
I also discovered a specimen of a very expensive fungus near the shed, and as I explored further I saw more of them here and there, so now Mom and Dad can sell morels by the road if they want some extra income:
They're real morels, not false ones, the internets told us so.
I also took some pictures of the wildflowers about the place, found a puddle of water with some tadpoles, and may have tracked down the nest that the hawks circling the area and generally being noisy had as their home base:
I also saw and heard lots of birds, but it's been long enough since Ornithology at UW that I couldn't identify all of them.
But in all my travels, I did not encounter a single snake! What a terrible disappointment.
The rest of the visit was terribly pleasant and relaxing. Mom and I got pedicures, saw a movie, and drove by the house that we lived in for a few years in Matthews:
It sounds very cliche, but the trees in the neighborhood were much taller than I remember them being.
We also visited some local breweries, and then had a really wonderful dinner at Mimosa in downtown Charlotte. It happened to be prom night, so we got to see (i.e., judge) the myriad styles of formal dresses that teenagers are into these days. Things haven't changed much in ten years, it seems: bright colors and satiny fabrics are still the rule, with one or two vintage or unusual styles sprinkled around. One girl looked like a cross between Barbie and Glinda the Good Witch, right down to the blond hair and the sparkles. I asked lots of questions, found out some very interesting things about Gmom and Gdad in their younger days, and enjoyed the decidedly non-vegetarian short ribs. I also had a glass of stupid-good pinot noir...if I'd been paying attention, I would have written down which one it was. Then, to top it off, when we couldn't decide which dessert to share, the waiter just went ahead and brought us both! The weird free-dessert streak continues! You're welcome, guys ;)
And then I returned to Denver, where it snowed the next day and I was very cross. But now it's finally warm here, so yay!
Well, I can finally relax now because Mike's surprise 30th birthday party has come and gone, with no major disasters. It is the first and last surprise party I will ever plan, because it was soooooo stressful. It turns out he figured I was up to something, but he thought it would happen on Sunday, not Saturday, so it was still like 68% real surprise.
Meg, Steve and I had come up with a plan to tell Mike that we were going to Curt Gowdy State Park in Wyoming to ride bikes on Saturday, and all the guests would arrive at Steve's house before us and then do the 'shout surprise!' thing. It went off without too much of a hitch, and the first order of business was to decorate Mike's bike with lots of small plastic pony toys, streamers, and a horn. We also put decorations on the van: streamers galore, and a Happy Birthday banner on each side.
A plastic Pegasus was zip-tied to Mike's helmet for a finishing touch.
I had everyone divide into teams, and their first task was to do a blind food identification challenge. The foods were: Cool Ranch doritos, Junior Mints, celery, strawberries, kiwi, cream cheese and hazelnuts. Once each team's chosen taster guessed 5 of the foods correctly, I told a different team member the name of the first brewery (Mountain Sun), and they had to act out the name for the rest of their team before taking off on their bikes. As an added incentive, I told them that the last team to arrive would have to do something embarrassing.
Not too terribly much later, we all arrived at the Sun and ordered some pitchers of beer and claimed a large table that had just been vacated. I handed out the tools of embarrassment (ridiculous t-shirts from the Salvation Army store) to the losing team, who donned them rather enthusiastically, considering. Someone informed the staff of the Sun that it was a birthday celebration, so Mike was given a beer on the house and a toast from the whole restaurant. Thanks Mountain Sun!
(forgot to raise the flash)
Our next stop was Fate Brewing, which is a relatively new Boulder establishment, having only opened this past winter. When we arrived, I handed out paper pirate hats, felt eye patches and plastic swords, as well as a pair of Groucho Marx glasses, a random wig and an Elmo visor.
Swordfights promptly ensued (sorry Fate).
Surprisingly, the place doesn't serve pitchers of beer, just pints, so we groused about that good-naturedly and then ordered some beer and food. I got a watermelon Kolsch, which tasted exactly like you would expect, but I was in the mood for something silly so I didn't mind. Mike, Tom, Steve and I played a round of beanbags on the patio, and it was a complete farce because we decided to keep our eye patches on for the game and therefore had no depth perception whatsoever.
Meanwhile, Joy made friends with one of the ponies that had fallen off of Mike's bike en route from the Sun:
Once everyone was close to finishing their beers, I gave them their next task: put on a Disney princess stick-on tattoo, ride to Twisted Pine Brewery, show the tattoo to the bartender and follow their instructions.
At Twisted Pine, I asked the bartender to give each person a glass of beer, but not tell them what it was. Once they guessed the kind of beer, they would receive a fake mustache to wear and their next clue. Unfortunately, when people started showing up it became clear that they were much too impatient in applying the princess tattoos, and most folks just had a smudge somewhere on their arm or neck (or, in Brian's case, a tramp smudge). The bartender was forgiving, however, and as we got our drinks we convened on the patio, where I gave out kazoos and the rest of the mustaches.
Brian led us in a rousing rendition of the Star Wars theme on the kazoos, and when the other patrons started giving us funny looks we finished our beers and set out for the fourth location: Boulder Beer.
And oh, happy day! Boulder Beer was serving $2 soft tacos, so several folks ordered food along with their beer, and then we set to work applying the remaining mustaches to everything that seemed appropriate: the kittens on Brian's kitten t-shirt, the pirate hats, the Brad Paisley embarrassment t-shirt, the Elmo visor, and also embellished some eyebrows and sideburns.
We sang happy birthday to Mike (for the third time), haggled over the check with the waiter (he never brought me my beer!), had another swordfight, and debated whether we wanted to go back to Steve's right then or take a lap at Valmont Bike Park and stop by 303 Distillery for some pickle vodka first. The latter plan won the day, so the flotilla rolled out of Boulder Beer and down the bike path. On the way, we found an extremely appropriately decorated food truck, and of course had to stop for a photo shoot:
So many mustaches!
Once at the bike park, we got separated, so I heard but did not see that Steve took his tandem bike (sans Meg) over some jumps on the dirt jump section, and amazingly did not end up with a concussion or broken limb.
We regrouped later at 303, which was conveniently right off the bike path on the way back to Steve's house. Some people had had enough by that point, and stumbled homeward, but those of us still proudly wearing mustaches and wigs and pirate hats rallied and ordered drinks. I also tried a taste of 303's beef jerky-infused vodka, which tasted exactly like it sounds.
At some point the grumbling of our tummies became too loud to ignore, so I called for a pizza delivery and we started pedaling back to Steve's. Halfway there, Jeff spotted a 2x6 lying across a small stream and decided to try and ride across it. It did not go well:
It's okay, he falls into ditches all the time. We think there's some sort of magnetic attraction.
We pulled up to Steve's house at exactly the same moment as the pizza guy (amazing!), stuffed our faces, and played a couple rounds of beer pong. I am just as terrible at it as I was in college, but Ashley and Arrelaine totally killed it!
Almost time for a re-rack!
Emma is either astounded or nonplussed, it's hard to tell.
I think they must secretly hang out at house parties on the weekend.
Brian and Diana found some of the surviving kazoos and provided us with a soundtrack. When they played the Indiana Jones theme music, Steve mistook it for the Star Wars theme and decided to show us all his (non)appropriate undercrackers:
That's Darth Vader, if you can't tell.
Meanwhile, Meg remembered that she had bought Mike a birthday card, and went to get it while Steve told us that Meg had bought the card with a bit of a buzz on, and that she had thought it absolutely the most hilarious card in the world ever at the time, but in the harsh light of day it was, well...see for yourself:
"Ummm...thanks?"
Yeah.
By then it was 8:30pm and we had put in a solid workday of drinking, so the rest of the troopers made their way home, and Mike and I passed out on a beanbag in Steve's living room for a few hours before getting kicked out and going home, where we were duly shouted at by Paddington and Ellie, put on Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, and passed out (again).
And thus did the surprise 30th birthday party come to pass. I will never plan another one again!
The next day I staved off a hangover by pruning the rose bushes in the front yard. I don't recommend it.
