Went to the Farmer's Market this weekend. It was approximately a bazillion degrees and all the humidities, and every single person who lives in Kansas City was also there, and maybe some tourists too, I'm not sure. We actually don't buy much produce there, since we grow most of what we want at Grandpa's - tomatoes, green beans, zucchini, cucumbers, bell peppers, cubanelles, jalapenos, pumpkins, and watermelons; garlic, thyme, tarragon, mint, basil, sage. So we just picked up some limes and avocados, and then made our way to the spice and herb store, which is amazing. We buy a lot of their seasoning blends and such, stuff like Garlic Herb and Creole and Orange Pepper, but our favorite item is their Mexican Dip Mix.

It's great, because you can use it for just about anything. Grilling some chicken? Mexican Dip Mix! Making rice? Mexican Dip Mix! Spicy cheese for nachos? Mexican Dip Mix! Compound butter for roasted corn? Mexican Dip Mix! Mexican dip? Mexican Dip Mix!

Also, my dad finally managed to get us to watch the first episode of Castle with him, which Laura had been resisting, but it actually wasn't that bad. I mean, 90% of the charm is Fillion, but Rob Bowman directed the pilot so the visual style is nice, and there were a few laughs.

Wrote another short story; this one took me about two weeks. Some of the details, though not the main plot, are based on stories Gamps has told us over the years, so it was a little more personal than I usually write.

Yesterday was a pretty full day. I woke up early, and it was lovely and blustery outside, so I decided to go for a walk. And as I was walking, I was having such a good time I decided to keep going. And it was windy and a little overcast, just warm enough that I wasn't cold but just cool enough that I didn't get hot, and it felt so refreshing just to be outside doing something for a change.

Then I turned around to come home, and realized my great error. I had walked too far away from my house, I didn't have my cell phone with me, and the wind, which had been blowing at my back as I walked gently downhill was now blowing straight into my face, as I walked uphill.

Have you ever walked in the pool? About a quarter to a third of that resistance, I'd wager, was what walking into a 20-30 mph wind uphill felt like. I started thinking that maybe someone would miss me at home, realize I'd been gone for a long time, and then come get me. I idly hoped someone I knew would drive by and I could ask to use their phone or even for them to give me a lift. And just as I was giving up hope, I saw my mom's car come up over the hill. Granted, I think I was picked up more because Laura wanted to go in to Grandpa's than because they actually worried (although knowing my mom...), but the reason didn't really matter. One hour and fifty minutes of walking and five and a half miles is a little extreme for one's first day doing actual outside exercise, and trust me, I felt it the rest of the day.

Came home, took an immediate shower, drove in to Grandpa's. His kitchen sink was leaking, so true to form he pulled the entire thing out - unfortunately, he couldn't get his shut-off valve to turn, after he'd already pulled out his refrigerator to get to it, so he turned off the water at the water main. We arrived, sat for about two minutes, then ran to Lowe's to pick up a new faucet and handles and assorted other plumbing needs. Then back to install! This is around when I stiffened up, and it was a good thing I had a cart to lean over because I'm pretty sure I looked like a little old woman.

Then we went to the greenhouse to buy his tomato plants, pepper plants, cucumber plants, and our herbs - the mint, rosemary, and garlic came back, and we buy dill seeds someplace else, so this year we're trying tarragon, thyme and basil.

After dinner, we went to sit on his glider. A storm was coming in, but at the time it was just cool and windy, with only a few distant rumbles. We sat and talked for around fifteen minutes, and then out of the blue, Jack jumped up and started barking at us like crazy. We were like, oh, you silly dog...and then the sky opened up. We ran inside just before the real edge of the storm hit, and then it was like the other morning, with the huge winds and hail and buckets of rain. We said our goodbyes the first break in the rain, which meant we got caught in it on our drive home and nearly had to pull over to the side of the road to wait.

And then I got to come home and rest! I was so tired! I think I started getting ready for bed around 8:30.

Winter is finally over. I know this because we've started doing yard work at my Grandpa's. Mowing grass, planting, moving rocks, raking, even installing a new post on his porch railing. One of his buddies called him to tell him that the power company had cut down some Osage orange trees that were under some lines, so we hooked up the trailer and picked it up, cut it down with a chainsaw, and stacked it in the already foreboding "to be split" pile. I love that he was burning wood in his fireplace not three weeks ago and we're already back to stockpiling it for next winter.

Today's his 85th birthday. He's tough to buy for; he's pretty frugal, so a lot of the things he wants or needs he picks up for himself at thrift stores and the like, and he's just not that into material possessions. We've finally run out of things we can get him for his barn; two years ago we got him a new chainsaw, and now we're pretty stumped. My mom suggested a little chainsaw on a pole, to be used for cutting down high branches, but I don't think anyone needs a chainsaw on a pole, least of all my Grandpa. We ended up getting him some movies, including a Chet Atkins DVD, some new pens and stationary, new shirts, and candy. Laura and I spent what felt like days wandering through WalMart, trying to find something else, but everything was either, like, "Oh, he uses an old margarine container for that, he won't want something new," or, "He doesn't have the space." Of course, when we ask him what he wants, his response is, "I don't want anything! Stop buying me shit I don't need!" Very helpful.

We're hosting the Christmas get-together this year, so the past few days have been biz-zay. We're doing the serious kind of cleaning, you know, washing curtains and dusting mini-blinds and polishing hardwood and vacuuming couches. Yesterday Mom and I made all the desserts: chocolate toffee cheesecake, carrot cake, fudge, and sugar cookies. Ugh, the sugar cookies; I used pretty holiday cookie cutters, except that I can never get the thickness of the dough, its temperature, and the oven's temperature right, so they either were crispy little burnt things, or they puffed out so much you couldn't tell what they were. I ended up taking, like, almost two hours decorating them so you could tell that the bows were bows and the presents were presents.

Today we're making the barbeque brisket and ham, and putting together everything else, besides cleaning up again because cleaning in advance never actually works. We're having my dad's brother and his wife, my Uncle Paul and Aunt Debbie, over, along with my cousins Duncan and Elliot and their wives (my other cousins, Angela and Kaitie, can't make it). And Gamps, of course. We're going to have...twelve people in the house? We don't have room for twelve people in the house.

Speaking of my cousin Duncan, I had forgotten to post some of the pictures they took with his baby daughter Ashlyn, who happens to be my grandpa's first great-grandchild. Kindly check out the happiest baby in the entire world.





You can kind of see Heather, Duncan's wife, there. Hee.





Four generations! I love how my grandpa is not actually looking at the camera. There was not a single picture where all three men were; if my grandpa did, then my Uncle Paul wasn't. I don't know.

Today was just about the perfect day to play a round of golf. My grandpa called out this morning, and he wasn't going to play because his usual group - his brother and a retired firefighter - decided to play at a different club at $50 a round. He asked if I wanted to go with him to his usual club, and since I haven't played in about a year, I happily accepted.

It was about 70 degrees outside, sunny, just windy enough to feel delightful without overly affecting the flight of the ball. Grandpa plays at a course right next to the Kansas River - literally right next, as one of the tee boxes has one side roped off because it ends with a 100 foot cliff going straight down to the water. We took our time and didn't stress about it too much. I was fairly awful on the front nine, but took 13 strokes off the back nine, so I was pretty happy. Grandpa shot the exact same score front and back, because he is very consistent. I wish I could play more often, because I wasn't that bad when I played golf in high school, but unless you get a membership and actually use it on a regular basis, paying for individual rounds can be pretty pricy. It was just frustrating, that no matter how well I actually hit the ball, I couldn't get it much more than 100 yards out. I used to be able to drive it farther, and it's not really a strength issue; I just don't have as much ease with my swing anymore.

My Grandpa can be kind of a bastard, though. I had this one really excellent shot - I chipped it in from about thirty feet away, screamed like Lucille, etc. Once I collected the ball, and we walked back to the cart, he just said, "Accidents happen." He would also helpfully point out the direction of the flag when I invariably sliced off in the direction of the rough. I feel it important to point out, however, how delighted I always am any time my Grandpa does something like that; he's such a nice person, and so generous, that I just find it hilarious. (Much like how the time he told Laura, "Hey, shut up," made me laugh forever.)

Highlight of the day: seeing a blue heron fly in off the river and over the course to drink at the pond in the middle, by the clubhouse. Beautiful.

As I've mentioned before, we've been working since this spring on an extension to our old playhouse, which will become my dad's new woodworking shed. It's a pretty big project, and it's occupied most of our weekends this summer. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take pictures at the beginning of the project, when Laura and my dad dug a hole three to four feet deep at the back of the yard, when we put in a concrete block retaining wall, and when we started to put up the walls. Here's our progress since then, however.



Grandpa arrives for a day of work. Phoenix awaits him.





My dad says to stop taking pictures of him while he works, as it makes him nervous.



Ahaha!



Sometimes Grandpa works.



Sometimes he watches.



Always watching: the cats.



AS CHIEF SUPERVISOR, I'M GOING TO HAVE TO ASK ABOUT THESE PICTURES YOU'RE TAKING.



This was the death rafter, here on the corner. My dad came up underneath it twice in one hour, scraping his shoulder. Then I jogged up the hill and ran straight into it with my head; Laura said she heard the entire structure shake. So she painted blue warning stripes on it.

Two hours later, she smacked into it with her own head.







Making a roof!



A window will go here.



Here you can see the retaining wall, as well as how much dirt had to be moved before we could pour the concrete foundation.



Sasha likes to hang off the pool deck to watch from above.



He also kept track that we were using the right materials.




Supervising is hard!

Today was my grandpa's birthday; he turned 84. We did what most grandkids do on such an occasion, and accompanied him to the metal recycling yard to haul in his cans, copper wire, and scrap brass and aluminum. (We made about a hundred bucks.) Then, we went back to his house to play rummy for about eight hours, before heading out for tacos.

I'm sure most people celebrating their 84th birthday this year got similar presents: a new shop light for a barn, a step stool, yard lights, and war movies. When we tried to sing "Happy Birthday" to him over pineapple upside-down cake, he sang along to the same melody, but his words were, "No no-no no no no."

Last week, we were hanging out at his house, and saw that he had about a dozen very heavy railroad ties in his barn. Laura started interrogating him: where did you get these? How did you get them up in your car? How did you get them down here to the barn? These are heavy! And he finally put a finger up and said, and I quote exactly: "HEY. SHUT UP."

Things that have made me happy this past week:

-Christmas music! We have an entire music channel that's just traditional holiday music; none of this awful contemporary pop crap.

-Grilling outside at 6:00pm, already pitch-black, hands and face numb; there is nothing that tastes better once you come in to eat.

-Hot cocoa from scratch.



-Playing with Jack in my Grandpa's backyard, as he runs through the piles of leaves that come up to his head; at one point, he ran so fast he fell down and rolled completely over, then jumped up and barked at me with such great insistence I too became convinced the fall was somehow my fault.

-Putting a quilt and a comforter on my bed. At the same time.

-My first peppermint mocha at Starbucks this year.

-Making the banner up above, starting The Silmarillion, realizing they start principal photography on The Hobbit next year, exactly ten years after they began photography on The Lord of the Rings.

My life has been SO BORING lately, which is why I haven't posted. Because there is nothing to post. My grandpa has eight or ten apple trees, and a couple-three pear trees, and Laura and I decided this year that letting most of the fruit rot on the ground is a horrible waste; we've been cooking and canning every weekend. Pear sauce, pear halves, applesauce, apple butter, sliced apples in freezer bags, et cetera. We both feel very Baby Boom about the whole thing.

Sasha, the kitten we found in the middle of the road, is now a sleek little cat, who incidentally just got fixed. My previous experience with male animals post-neuter is that they come home and whine and mope for a day, lamenting their poor, lost balls. Sasha seems to not have noticed their absence, for his behavior changed not at all, which is not what we were hoping for. Because he's a very bad cat that is determined to use the entire house as his litter box, except for his actual litter box. Sigh.

I've hit a roadblock in the script. I know exactly what happens next, and how the scenes play out; it's one of those where I know how long it will take to write it out, and it's already there in my head, and it just kind of...makes me not want to write. I don't really know how else to explain it.

I watched the first two episodes of Big Love this weekend, and I think Bill Paxton's magic age is whatever age he is right now. Although, seriously, HBO. We get it. You're premium, so you don't have to censor yourselves. Think about what you actually need for your storytelling, and what you're just throwing in there because you can. Seriously, HBO. HBO, seriously.

This past week I saw two different commercials, for shows on two different networks, that used an apostrophe in making a plural. I weep for the future of the English language, I really do. (Goddamn it, TLC! It's: "I dos," not, "I do's." I don't care that it looks like the Spanish word for two without the apostrophe! You don't use an apostrophe to make a plural! Ever! That goes for you, too, History Channel, with your "UFO's.")

String Quartet No. 2 in G Major, I. Allegro non troppo, ma con brio, Johannes Brahms. Isaac Stern, violin.

Okay, so I was waiting until the story came to its conclusion before I posted about it, and that happened on Monday, so: Remember the stray dog my grandpa took in? We think now he wasn't a stray, but belonged to someone in the general area and was just a wanderer. My grandpa had him about a week before he managed to find a hole in the fence and run away. The dog had run away twice before that (before we'd managed to fill in all the gaps in the fence, so we had thought) but had always come back after an hour or two. My grandpa drove around, and we drove around, and after two days we finally accepted that either he had found his original home or someone else had taken him in.

My grandpa had bought a bed, dog food, two different kinds of treats, a collar and leash. And he didn't get rid of any of it. Everything stayed exactly where it was. And we were all very sad, while he seemed to be quite stoic and "oh, well" about the whole thing.

And then...he brings up maybe getting another one? He reads Boston Terrier books from the library. He checks the classifieds. Another week goes by.

Monday we drove to Garden City, Missouri (about an hour and fifteen minute drive each way) to pick up a puppy. He is eight weeks old, not even all the way through his shots, and terminally adorable. My grandpa named him Jack, and he's settled in really well. It's kind of amazing; a few months ago we were worried Grandpa wouldn't be able to live on his own anymore, would either have to move in with my aunt or uncle or even go into a place. And now he's back to projects in his back yard, and has adopted a puppy.

Well, my Grandpa seems to be fully back in the swing of things, and it wasn't until the last few weeks when he's been bustling about that we've realized how depressed he got this spring. Saturday we went with him to the City Market, to which I had never been, even though it's less than a half hour drive and I love little farmer's markets and shops and stalls. There was a fabulous kind of farmer's general store, with gardening paraphernalia and such, but the real prize was the nook of freshly ground herbs and spices, where Grandpa finally, after much temptation, bought a gigantic bag of taco seasoning. He would pick it up, examine it, then move on. Then drift back, study it again, sniff it. Move on. What you need to know about my Grandpa is he will buy us anything if we so much as look askance, but tends not to spend money on himself, so we could tell he REALLY wanted it.

Driving back, there was an oldtimer on the side of the road with a table set up in front of him, which you see all the time around here. We stopped to see what he was selling: fresh, local raw honey, from his own personal hives. We got a jar, and it is the most delicious honey I have ever had. We did blind taste tests when we got home with the regular store-bought honey, and there's no contest. It's kind of sad how exciting that day was, especially as we're going without a vacation this summer; just getting out, doing something different.

Yesterday we just happened to stop by, and he apparently found some water in his storm cellar, so rather than call someone, or call us, he decided to just take care of it himself. Which meant that he went out, pulled the old wooden door of the hinges to the cellar to replace it (this is a four foot by...oh, six foot door; a big piece of heavy plywood), and then dug a ten foot long, three foot deep trench in front to pull out the old drainage pipe to replace that. If we hadn't stopped by, he would have finished it himself today; as it was, my dad helped him and it took four hours, so it would have taken my Grandpa, well...probably five hours to do it himself. He's very efficient.