3/26/20

I suppose if I were to go back in time and write a science fiction novel I might date it in the year 2020.  It has a nice ring to it and I think it's a year that nobody thought would ever actually arrive.  But here we are.  It came, and other than a bunch of technological advances that we tend to take for granted these days, it came without much incident.  As it turns out, the calm stillness with which it arrived was a mere facade.  Who knew that 2020, in a few short months, would change the world in a way that has literally never been experienced by mankind?

As I write this, we are in the middle of what can be defined as organized chaos.  The bustling world that we are used to being a part of has literally shut down due to a seemingly insignificant mammal that we refer to as a bat.  I'll leave the rest of the story there to the experts because it's all very scientific and I don't want to pretend that I am qualified to give any sort of detailed explanation about it.  I'll  just leave it at "bat".  It is interesting to think about how humans usually determine power by money and weaponry but the Covid-19 virus isn't something we can throw these things at and win.  That doesn't mean we are completely powerless but definitely more vulnerable than the majority of us had imagined.

It happened gradually.  It first came out in the news that there was a new virus we needed to concern ourselves with.  I remember kind of rolling my eyes and thinking, "Not again!".  I recalled all the other viruses from the past that amounted to very little.  Swine flu.  Bird flu.  SARS.  Mad Cow Disease.  West Nile.  These had all come, instilled fear, and left.  I figured the media was hyping it because if they don't have anything to hype, they don't have a job.  I also suspected it could be a political scam used to try to get people not to vote for Donald Trump in the upcoming election.  I didn't take it too seriously.  Then things started happening.  Public closures started to spread faster than the virus itself.  Church was one of the first thing to be canceled.  President Nelson knows some things about medicine and took the World Health Organization seriously.  No more church meetings of any sort and nobody would be attending the upcoming General Conference that we'd been told at the previous conference would be different than all others and one we would not soon forget.  We knew it was going to be a commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the first vision of Joseph Smith.  We didn't know that wasn't the only reason it would be unforgettable.  No more church meetings also means no more seminary teaching in person for me.  I've had to get trained on how to teach class online.  This type of instruction will begin on Monday, March 30th.  I am terrible with technology but hopefully I'll get the hang of it soon.

When Disneyland closed down, I knew the government meant business.  No public gatherings of over 250 people could be held. Good thing I had gotten my Disney fix on a ladies trip just two weeks prior to them closing.  It was fun but we were extremely careful and paranoid.  We each had our own bottle of hand sanitizer that we applied after every ride and as often as we could remember to apply it, we did.  I remember someone from home calling me as we were in line for Pirates of the Caribbean.  When I told him where I was, the first thing out of his mouth was, "You're gonna get the Corona Virus."

Right after these closures, schools got canceled.  It had started with after school activities.  Eventually kids away at college were told to go home and finish their studies online.  Local schools announced that they would not be opening after spring break.  All classes would be carried out online for at least a month.  Teachers would have to scramble to figure out how to best accommodate students remotely.  My daughter Brooklyn is a senior and is very sad that she won't be able to accomplish her goal of lettering in track.  She is also worried now that they will not be able to hold a graduation ceremony.  She hadn't even wanted to attend until a chance arose that she might not have the option.  Funny how we take things for granted and don't appreciate them until they're gone.

With all of the craziness going on, we were unsure about whether or not to carry out our spring break plans to go to Costa Rica last week.  On the one hand, the world was shutting down and there was a dangerous virus on the prowl waiting to pounce.  But on the other hand, monkeys. I admit that choosing to go to Costa Rica was probably not one of our finest decision making moments.  When we were weighing out the pros and cons we decided that the virus was out there and we could get it pretty much anywhere.  We also decided to wear extremely uncomfortable heavy duty masks through the airports and on the planes.  We used hand sanitizer tirelessly and wiped our surroundings down with lysol every chance we got.   I did feel a sense of hostility coming towards us from the many people who chose not to do these things.  This sensation was justified as a lady told us exactly what she thought of us and our masks as soon as the plane touched down in LAX.  After I explained to her that we had every right to protect ourselves I think some people on that particular plane understood the inappropriateness of what that lady had done and felt a newborn sense of compassion for us.  I started receiving warm, knowing smiles.  However, on other planes and through the airports, looks of hostility seemed magnified.  That is, until we found a mostly vacant hallway with a nice breeze blowing through from the outside.  There, we removed our masks and laid down a blanket to play Skipbo.  As people walked by and saw us, all they could do was give us a big smile.  It was a stark contrast and enlightening to me as I had never known that simply wearing a protective mask would make people so angry.  Looking back, I think the masks were just an unwelcome reminder of what was coming and for this reason, made people cranky.

We were mostly secluded once we got to Costa Rica.  People had already started hiding away.  None of our flights or hotels were full.  We were pretty secluded despite visiting national parks and famous beaches.  We were the last people to be taken on a zip line tour until further notice.  People there were being educated by government workers. You couldn't walk into a restaurant or grocery store without being doused with alcohol.  Mid way through our week there, things started shutting down.  When they announced that their border would be closing we decided it might be smart to go home early.  There was no getting through to the airlines so we ended keeping our original flight schedule.  Though we had fun in Costa Rica, the trip was tainted by fear and seemed to last much longer than 1 week.  When it finally came to an end, we arrived at the airport to find the line to security was out the door, down the street and around the corner.  Multiple security guards and taxi drivers were making videos of us as they drove by.  It was unlike anything they'd seen before and they wanted to document the chaos.  I'm sure if we looked hard enough, we could find ourselves on youtube standing in the airport lines dawning face masks and madly applying and reapplying hand sanitizer in San Jose, Costa Rica.  Luckily, despite stopping to feed the crocodiles along the way and a crazy detour to McDonalds, we still arrived at the airport 3 hours early so the line was no sweat off our backs.

4/2/20
Now that we're home, all the missionaries are being sent back to their home countries. National parks have closed and  last night we were awoken by an alarm on our phones that we did not set from the Larimer County Public Health Director stating that we are all ordered to stay home unless seeking medical treatment or getting supplies.  We are allowed to go outside but we must stay 6 feet away from other people.  New rules and laws about social distancing and self quarantine are developing daily.  (Inserted later that day: For example, by the time I finished this writing today, the school had called to inform us it wouldn't be opening again for this academic school year.) I look at my Covid-19 app several times a day to see how many have been reported as infected, how many have died and how many have recovered.  Just less than two weeks ago while we were in Costa Rica, there were less than 100,000 cases.  Now there are over 1 million.  I am always doing the math to see what percentage of lives are being taken out of those infected.  Right now it looks to be about 5% but only about 20% have actually recovered so that number isn't accurate.  Brooklyn's English teacher's husband just died 2 nights ago.  He was 45.  John's nephew Parker has been infected.  Symptoms are starting to take hold now but he's young so he should be okay.

The night before last we got up the courage to order take out for the first time since arriving home from Costa Rica.  We ordered online from Cafe Rio for Taco Tuesday night.  We had to wait outside the restaurant for a worker to bring it out to us.  We weren't allowed to set foot inside.  We expected that.  What we didn't expect was the wait.  When we arrived, there were people standing outside the door waiting for their food so we knew our food wouldn't come immediately.  What we failed to notice was the full parking lot and the people sitting in their cars who were also waiting for their food.  Since restaurants have had to cut employment by about 50% they were under staffed and we ended up waiting for our "fast food" order for an hour.  We are not likely to do that again any time soon.  By the time we got home I wasn't even hungry anymore.

Besides toilet paper and cleaning products, there's been a run on a few other essential items.  One of them being eggs.  Don't ask me why.  Nothing has happened to the chickens.  I've never been in want of eggs until now.   Of course, I'll consider myself lucky if this is the extent of deprivation I experience. We do have two bantam chickens out back that did their absolute best to cover (bless their chicken hearts) but they fell short.  So John and I went to Costco Tuesday night and were given 2 options. We could buy either 12 eggs or 150 eggs.  I talked John into going with the 150 option because the less we go to the store the better.  We had fun playing Easter bunny (especially fun since Easter is 1 week from Sunday) and leaving eggs on neighbors' doorsteps.  I even got to have short conversations with some of them which was a special treat during this time of social distancing.  I struck a conversation with one neighbor who has been particularly flippant about this whole quarantine thing.  It surprised me because he works in the medical field but I guess he thinks Covid-19 is some sort of conspiracy.  As he spoke he kept coming closer and closer to me which is a breach of quarantine etiquette.  He told me that he probably has it but, "So what?  I''ll get sick and then I'll get better.  So what?  Life goes on."  He said the only people who really need to worry are the elderly and people with preexisting conditions.  I told him that I didn't want it because I have Asthma and he said, "Oh.  Then I'll back away from you.  You're right, you don't want it." Eye roll.

On the upside of quarantine, I am getting projects done.  I finally painted my bedroom which had been on my to do list for around a decade.  And look at this!  I've started writing in my blog again after a 5 year hiatus! Brooklyn and I are finally finishing a quilt we started a few years ago.  I'm sure I will finally get Bryton's mission scrap book done.  The kids have taken up jogging.  Whitney is trying to learn to eyebrow thread.  Family Tic Toc videos are one of our new specialties.  I've taken up at home yoga classes.  There's been lots of art work going on in the dining room.  Ward members have taken to doing drive by parades to welcome home missionaries sent home early due to the virus.  Of course, the kids have online homework and John works from home.  My job as a health educator has been temporarily canceled for the last couple of weeks.  However, I did teach my first seminary lesson today via Zoom and besides a few glitches it went okay.  This morning, Brooklyn expressed desires to dye her hair pink.  I'm inclined to let her just to break up the monotony of things.  (Insert from later that day: Just finished dying it.) We do what we can to thrive while passing the time.  But more than anything, we use our phones and computers to distract us.  It's interesting that the technological advances that we didn't really flinch at in the beginning of 2020 are the things that are really getting us through this mess.  Facetime, Zoom, Skype, Amazon, online groceries orders, fast food deliveries.  Some are newer than others but they are all relatively new.  I've always had a love/hate relationship with technology but I must admit that in the situation that we're in right now, technology which we largely take for granted in this era has saved us spiritually, emotionally, mentally and financially.  Thank you technology!  I hope we can let bygones be bygones.

First Day of School

I made it through another first day of school.  I'd like to think that every year I am a little more savvy about my kids' schools and have the routine down to a science.  This year, just as in previous years, I was surprised at how much this was not actually the case.  I've always strived to get my kids to school on time.  Especially on the first day.  I was shocked 2 years ago when Sydney reported back to me on the first day of school and told me that she was the last one to class and that everyone was working on an assignment when she walked in and got stared down.  Wait a minute.  I watched her walk into her class 5 minutes before the bell.  How can they start school before the bell even rings?  This year, I inadvertently found out.  After a peaceful morning including a pancake breakfast, John left to take the older kids to school at 7:15.  At 7:25 it just felt like it was time to go, so I left with Whitney.  As soon as I got out of my neighborhood I realized how early we were.  School didn't start until 8:00.  That's when I made a  u-turn and started heading home.  That's when I decided that it wouldn't hurt me to be early and that I would get an awesome parking spot if I went now.  That's when I did another u-turn and headed to school after all.  I was bewildered when I arrived at school only to realize that I was the last one to get there.  It was 7:35.  Are these people crazy?  They don't even open the doors to let kids in until 7:50 and the bell doesn't ring until 8:00.  I know that people are excited because it's the first day of school.  So are we.  But not  typically excited enough to stand and stare at it for 15 minutes before it even opens.  I now see why school starts before the bell rings on the first day.

 As I stood outside the entrance feeling a little smug about my responsibly prepared beginning of the school year papers that I had ready to turn in, I chatted amicably with fellow parents until we ran out of things to say.  That left us with about 14 minutes to kill.  I am not an engineer but sometimes I act like one.  I'm not always in the mood to converse.  I looked around the school and remembered that taking pictures of your child on the first day is a worthwhile tradition so we walked over to take one in front of the sign. The line was not short but there were two sides of the sign so you could go on either side to take a picture, kind of like a buffet table.  One side had about 10 people in line and the other side had 2.  I chose the obvious side not realizing that this was also the side that most lacked picture in front of sign taking etiquette.  You would have thought that they were taking wedding pictures.  The family in front of me had 3 different cameras and sported several different poses.  "Now one with just me."  Now one with all of us." "Let's try that other pose again." All the while I kept my eye on that other line kind of like you do in a grocery store to see whether or not you chose correctly.  Yes, it would have been faster to go in the long line.  This was no big deal.  Just a bit of a let down.  Nobody likes to lose a bet.  Despite choosing the wrong side,  I still had 10 minutes to wait until the bell rang.

After what seemed like forever, the bell finally rang and the office staff unlocked the front doors. Ignoring Liberty's new "hug and go" policy implemented to keep parents out of the school and the halls less congested,  I walked Whitney into her class.  I wasn't going to until other parents started talking about how they couldn't possibly mean for the policy to start on the first day of school.  That's when it occurred to me, "Yeah, they couldn't possibly mean that."  To my discredit, it is easy to rally me up for rebellion.  Only about 15% of the parents stood together in the cause but I am used to being in that percentile range.  Here she is with her new 4th grade teacher.  He is a good guy.  (When her 3rd grade teacher asked for help with her daughter's wedding I said, "Absolutely!  Oh and by the way, we'd really like to get Mr. Ronen next year."  [wink, wink] Maybe she would have ended up with him anyway.  But I will say that if she hadn't gotten him I still would have been glad I helped with the wedding.  It was fun.)

Whitney was one of only a few students that got a first day of school picture with her new teacher. Sometimes it pays to have an outlaw for a parent. 

I stopped by the office on my way to exit the school in order to turn my papers into the office.  That's when I found out that they had been due 3 days ago at back to school night.  Three days late is not bad though and no harm was done so I still left the school with a sense of pride at my accomplishment.  I know what you're thinking.  How difficult can it be to fill out and turn in papers on time?  Apparently it's pretty close to impossible for me because on the way home when I stopped off at the older kids'  school to drop off the preselected lunch menus that must be filled out and paid for by the 10th of each month that school is in session if you want to eat school lunches, they told me I was too late and it had been due last week.  That's when my good humor left me and all I could do was stare blankly at the receptionist.  My only response was, "Wow."  And I turned around and walked out feeling defeated. Who is excited enough about school to consider when your kids are going to eat this semester, record it on your calendar, add up the cost, and write out a check a week before school even starts?  Ummm, apparently everyone except me.  I'm only awesome enough to do that the night before so that I can come home and erase everything from my calendar and rip up my check.

Tender Mercies

I am currently serving as a Sunday School teacher for some of the youth in my church (13-14 year olds) and I have recently been harping on them about keeping a journal.  We've talked about the importance of remembering Christ not just on Sunday but every day.  One way to do that is to write in a journal daily and reflect upon the tender mercies that God grants you each day.  It's easy to overlook these tender mercies unless we sit and really take time to think about them.  I have been a little hypocritical because I haven't been doing the very thing that I keep telling them is so important to do.  If I don't even do it, how can I expect them to?  So here I've decided to keep track of some of the blessings in my life that would so easily be forgotten or go unnoticed unless I had written them down.  Maybe taking a few moments to write the small things will even get me to write the longer stories while I'm at it.  Since I'm on here now I feel like writing the whole cousin camp story but I'm going to skip that momentarily, especially since no photos have been down loaded yet, and get to that later.

1. Today Brooklyn remembered that there was a fireside that she wanted to go to at church.  When it was over, she called for a ride home, but nobody answered the phone.  I was talking to my dad because it was his 70th birthday and I didn't recognize her number on caller ID so I ignored it.  (It's a fairly new phone.)  She called all 4 cell phones twice, and the home home phone 3 times, and nobody answered even though we were all home.  After the conversation I was having with my dad was interrupted for the 3rd time,  I realized who that might be beeping in, and felt bad for keeping her waiting at the church for so long.  I quickly sent John off to go pick her up.  Because the 4 Runner decided to stop working today and the Sequoia was hooked up to a trailer, John hopped into the Mini Cooper and went to the church which is a 7 minute ride there and back.  Some time within those 14 minutes of being gone,  the rope that has held our canoe up on the ceiling of the garage over our Mini Cooper for 6 years, snapped, and the canoe came crashing down. The timing couldn't have been more perfect.  The impact of the heavy canoe would have crushed our little Mini that we have grown to adore.  

2. We had cousin camp last weekend and John and I prepared a 3 day get away for 30 family members. We brought up all the food ourselves.  On the 2nd day we realized we were completely out of forks and almost out of spoons and there were no stores around for miles.  This was a problem because our next 2 meals were going to be spaghetti and oatmeal.  I kept waiting for some sort of tender mercy to get us out of the pickle we were in.  I just knew I'd miraculously find utensils in our trailer that we had brought with us.  I looked and there were none.  I looked through all the drawers and cabinets in the kitchen of the lodge we were staying in, twice over, and was disappointed when I found nothing. We toyed with the idea of eating it with our hands and making it a fun memory but with no showers and 15+ kids it was really a terrible option.  We decided to go dumpster diving for previous forks we had used as a last resort.  Gross.  I know.  But we were desperate.  John's brother Sterling was sympathetic to our dilemma and volunteered willingly to do the deed.  I felt terrible that he had to do this but he took it like a man.  I got back to the lodge minutes before him and he walked in with 3 bags of brand new plastic utensils.  I still am unclear about where he found them.  But he said he saw a little hut with a flag on it and wondered if maybe he could get them there.  I have no idea where he found it or how he thought to go there but there was my (and his, since he got out of going through the trash) tender mercy that I'd been waiting for.

3. We took our dog with us during cousin camp and brought him on a 4 mile round trip hike to a really neat water fall.  He's had trouble with his knees in the past and the fact that he could walk this hike was a tender mercy in itself.  The kids all like to hold the leash and they got ahead of me a ways so that I couldn't see them.  When I rounded the corner I saw him in the creek below with a man that we didn't know.  Captain, water dog that he is, had gotten away from the cousin who had been holding him and ran down to the creek.  Going in was one thing but getting back up on those slippery rocks with those imperfect knees was another.  There happened to be a bystander there who had such a tender heart for animals that he worked in an animal shelter. He jumped into the creek after him, soaking his pants in the process and helped him back out.  

4. The weather was absolutely beautiful for cousin camp.  

5. Because Bryton has had to miss work (at the golf course) for various reasons, he wanted to come  separate to the lodge, which was about an hour from our house, in the 4Runner.  He got up there with no problems and then he took Sydney and his cousin Morgan to our regional youth dance in Laramie the next night.  Around 11:00 we started to get worried because we expected them back by 10:30.  We had no way to reach them because there was no cell service where we were.  John got up out of bed to go looking for them just as we saw, with great relief, headlights coming down the hill toward the lodge, much faster than we would have condoned.  The next day, we returned home long enough to unload the trailer, get ready for church and have lunch with Brandon and April (John's siblings) and their families.  Since the Sequoia was hooked up to the trailer and the Mini was too small to accomodate us, we decided to squeeze into the 4Runner and take it to church.  We hadn't even made it out of our neighborhood when the clutch went kaput and stopped working.  It made it all the way to Curt Gowdy in Wyoming, to the regional dance in Laramie and back, and all the way home and then it was done.  Thank you, 4Runner, for waiting to get Bryton home safely before you gave out. And also, thank you for giving out so our little Mini could be protected. 

6.  John's brother Brandon just recently lost his job.  Which sucks really, really, really bad.  The tender mercy here is that just before cousin camp, John's dad went into the hospital because he was having heart issues.  He's never been to the hospital in the 18 years that I've known him.  Since Brandon came out for cousin camp and doesn't need to go back for work, he's able to stay with John's parents for a week to help out as they go through this difficult bump in the road.

7. Lastly, I just wanted to give a shout out to Sydney for following a prompting and providing a tender mercy for us while we were on our waterfall hike. One of the cool things about the hike was that some of us got to ride in a canoe for part of it.  It came as a relief especially to some of the younger kids on the way back.  The group that was ahead got to the canoes first and paddled back to the cars leaving behind just one for a few of us to take back. As the rest of us trudged on, we spotted Sydney in a canoe coming toward us by herself.  We waved her over and we loaded the canoe up with young, weary hikers.  She even gave up her own spot and jogged back to the car without complaining.  When we got back we found out that the group she had been with had thought she was crazy for even trying to go back out and find us.  They had returned to the lodge without her.  Kudos to her for following a prompting and providing relief to her cousins. 

I want to point out that I didn't even think of most of these things until after I decided to write tonight. So many things would have gone unnoticed if I hadn't taken the time to sit and ponder.  Yes, things definitely go wrong in our lives.  The canoe came crashing down, our dog almost drown, our car broke down, we didn't bring enough utensils, Brandon lost his job, and Sydney went canoeing by herself. But it would be short sighted to notice these things and stop there.  I picture angels all around us busting their backs to make our lives just a little easier.  Things go wrong, but much more often, they go right.  We just need to take a moment each day out of our distracted lives to notice and thank God for all of life's little miracles.

Birthday Bash

As a mother of four I have lost a lot of my enthusiasm for birthday parties. Somehow, Whitney just keeps lucking out. Last year, Disney Cruise/Pirate Night. This year, petting zoo brought to the backyard and a horse and carriage. All for the low, low price of $97. Thank you Colorado Carriage. You make me seem like an awesome mom. Here are some pictures from the shin dig. Since her birthday fell on the day after school got out for summer break, we had the party as soon as school got out at 11:30. This made it so that her friends in the district whose schools let out later weren't able to come but it was fun celebrating with mostly just her Liberty friends.

Captain was way too interested in the rabbit as they were setting up.

The "Escape Goat" Milk Chocolate. MC for short. He kept jumping over the fence and trying to eat our tomato plants. He also jumped onto our hot tub and then onto our patio table looking for food.

Thomas Russell Schuck 1913-1991

My grandfather, Thomas Russell Schuck would have been 100 years old last October.  When that fact was first brought to my attention it didn’t sound right to me.  But after some figuring I did in my brain I had to accept the fact that I had a close relative that was over a century old.   That doesn’t really bode too well for my own mortality but I am no worse off now than I was before I found out so I won’t dwell on it.  I think that anyone that was born 100 years ago deserves some  recognition, weather deceased or living.  So, though I may not have known him as well as others of his friends and family, I’m going to write some of the things that I do remember about him.  Some of these things may only be my own interpretation of him seen through the eyes of a child.  Others may have seen him completely differently.  If that’s the case then they can write their own personal tribute to him and maybe we can compare notes.  If enough people were to write their perspectives on his life, maybe we could compile them together and write a book.  That would be the ultimate tribute.

When I think of my grandfather I think of a loud man who liked to watch TV while drinking wine with his shirt off.  It’s too bad I couldn’t just leave it at “he liked to drink wine”.  That might make him seem refined.  However, I do think that his missing shirt and over audible orator skills add an interesting twist to his story. Throw in a belly that looked like it was about 9 months pregnant and hair that was slicked back with baby oil and then I really think we’ve got something started.  No doubt there was a lot more to him than these attributes but these are the first things that pop into my head when I think about him.  I believe this memory comes post retirement and carries the message that he had worked hard his whole life and by that time was done caring about what other people thought.   Of course he wore a shirt and quieted down when he went out.  But in his castle, cultural etiquette was not going to stand in his way of doing exactly as he pleased.  You go grandpa!  I mentioned he was loud.  To me, back then, he was yelling.   But now I really think he was just loud.  He wore a hearing aid, and now that I’m an adult I can put two and two together and figure out that his yelling was probably less that he was yelling and more that he was trying to hear himself talk.  I’m not saying that he was never yelling.  Just that he probably wasn’t yelling as much as I thought.   I spent many days at his house quietly observing him while drawing on the scrap pieces of paper my grandmother would pass out to entertain my brother and me.  I could sit at their house and draw for what seemed like hours.  My brother and I would send countless picture messages back and forth to each other.   I don’t know why this trick worked so well at my grandparents’ house.  If my mom had handed me a paper and pencil to entertain myself at home I would have looked at her like she was crazy.  Grandparents get away with stuff that parents can’t get away with.  Anyway, as I said before, while I was over there I would mostly just draw and watch him from afar until it was time to go home.  At this point he would call my brother and I over and plant a sloppy kiss on each of us right on the mouth.  I never looked forward to leaving for this reason.  However, he loved his grand kids and those kisses were the tools he used to express it.  

Since I want to be as accurate as I can I need to mention that he could be benignly cantankerous.  I say benignly because it seemed like most of his outbursts were directed at the television.  Not all of them, but most of them. I don’t blame him for being angry at the TV either.  This is before you had the option of TiVo.  Since television was usually his past time of choice, that meant he had to sit through a lot of stupid commercials.  They irritate me too – must be genetic- but I choose to handle them differently.  I turn the radio/TV off and find something different to busy myself with.  Like most men, turning it off was not a viable option for him so he released his frustrations by yelling back at them.  If they told him he should buy a power tool, he might respond by telling them where they could stick that power tool.  If they wanted him to start a weight loss program he might tell them to go to hell.  He always had the perfect come back.  Interestingly, if you could tear him away from that little square box you could potentially turn that lion’s roar into a kitten’s meow.  I remember as a kid I had been going through one of those sicknesses that it seems like kids are destined to acquire.  I guess it’s all part of building up that old  immune system.  Anyway, I had a temperature of 104°.  My head ached ferociously and I wasn’t eating.  I got up only to use the restroom, which was not something I looked forward to doing.  My parents, having been doctoring me for days were out by the pool, coming in to check on me intermittently.  My grandma and grandpa came over for a visit in the middle of this scenario and while the adults were out by the pool, my grandfather came in, kneeled by my side, took an icepack and started massaging my head with it while he spoke soothing words to me.  He stayed for a long time and as long as he was there, I felt better.  I didn’t want him to leave. 

While we had a typical California style back yard equipped with a pool, my grandparents had a large back yard equipped with adventure.  It was quite large and the view to any back neighbors they had was completely obstructed by a hedge of thick oleanders that my cousins, brother and I used to like to play in.  To us, it was like a jungle and we would never tire of exploring in the oleanders.  We once heard a catfight somewhere in the hedges and we ran inside and told our parents that there was an angry mountain lion creeping around back there.  We really thought that.  Besides the oleanders, there was a b-b-q grill that my grandmother had converted to a planter.  At the right time of year you could wander back there, open up the grill and pick fresh strawberries.  Does life get better?  They also had some interesting pets at times.  I remember they had a dog for a while.  A very short while.  Presently, I’m really interested in what happened to that dog.  It just kind of disappeared and I guess as a kid I just rolled with it and didn’t ask questions.  Not asking questions doesn’t really sound like me as a kid though so more likely I’ve just forgotten.  That sounds a lot like me.  I remember teaching the dog the trick of jumping up on me.  I proudly showed my grandmother my accomplishment and she just looked at my mom and rolled her eyes.  Too proud for words, I guess.   The dog was short lived so I’ll move on to the duck.   I remember going to my grandparents house one day and my grandmother rather nonchalantly informed my father that they had a duck.  We ran to the back yard and sure enough, there was a duck.  He was waddling around the back yard like he owned the place.  He wasn’t fenced in so I know that the back yard was chosen by him because there was nothing binding him to it.  I’m not sure what drew him to that yard but since he chose it, my grandmother was hospitable to it and fed him.  That lasted maybe a few weeks until the neighbor’s dog got out.  That’s when the duck ended up becoming the benefactor rather than the beneficiary.  

All said and done about the dog and the duck, we move on to my grandpa’s cat, “Meow”.  My brother and I liked animals.  We still do.  And when we were taken to my grandparents’ house, besides sitting and drawing, we often busied ourselves with trying to catch, touch or even take a glimpse of my grandpa’s cat.  It did everything in its power to avoid us.  It was elusive.  I remember one day I actually cornered it in a bedroom.  It was trapped between the bed and the dresser and nothing was going to stand between me and snatching up that cat.  That’s when it hissed at me with glowing eyes like the devil’s spawn to let me know that if I so much as touched him he would shoot darts out of his eyes and turn me into a garden gnome.  Gradually I backed away, realizing that any future attempts at catching him would be futile.  I gave up on my game of “catch the cat”.  It would drive me crazy when I saw my grandfather sitting with it curled up in his lap.  All he had to do was pat the chair and it would jump up in his lap, do a few circles and lay down contentedly for as long as my grandfather allowed.  What did my grandfather have to offer that I didn’t?  As I mentioned earlier, he secretly spoke kitten.

He often used to tell me in his “kittenese” that he only cared to live long enough to see his grandkids graduate from high school.   I guess he felt like once that happened, he could rest knowing that he wouldn’t need to worry about us anymore.   He was fortunate to be around for the graduations of two of his 4 grand kids.  And I’m sure that by the time he passed away he was comforted knowing that the other two were trending in the same direction. 

By the time he reached his 70’s, he rarely left the house.  I read something recently that talked about how introverts have to spend energy to be social while extroverts have the advantage of gaining energy when they are social.  Having acquired emphysema caused by too many years of smoking cigarettes, I doubt he had a lot of energy to expend.  

I wish I could expand on his life outside the home and preretirement, but I only knew him for 20 years and I was a child for most of it.  I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to things that mattered.  I really don’t know a whole lot about his childhood or education.  I know that he was adopted as an only child.  I know almost nothing about his parents or how he was raised.  I have a feeling that life wasn’t easy for him but that’s all I can really say about it.   I know that he met my grandmother through a friend (Chuck Abbott) who was married to my grandmother’s sister (Mary) and that he worked as a butcher until he retired.  (I do need to mention that being a butcher had it's benefits.  I've never tasted beef jerky anywhere near as yummy as the jerky he used to make by laying out meat on the roof of his house in the hot Bakersfield sun.  Soooo good.)  Any more information anyone wants to share on these matters will happily be inserted here on a future date.

What I do know, is that as of today he has 13 direct descendants who are bustling about making their marks on the world and every time they make a mark, so is he.  His surname, Schuck, connected to him, has been snuffed out but his posterity will continue to flourish.  He lived a humble life but he did what needed to be done.  He got up and went to work every day to provide for his family.  He fulfilled all of the basic duties of a good husband and father and if it weren’t for him, I would not be here.  So as rough around the edges as he might have been, I owe him a debt of gratitude for doing the best that he could amid all of the unspoken trials that life threw at him. 

Cute Chicks

These are pictures of our new chicks.  They are bantam blue silkies and they are adorable.  Even though we only have room for 3 we had to get 5 because they are too little to tell which are hens and which are roosters.  I guess now the boys should be motivated to get that chicken coop finished once and for all.  We ordered them thinking they wouldn't be here for a few weeks.  It only took a week for them to come in.  They are not the best laying hens but because we are doing it for the experience rather than self sustainment we decided to forgo practicality with cuteness.  They are really pretty chickens when they are adults.

Peep, peep, peep

Peep

Peep, peep.

Peepity peep

Peep peeper peep peeper peepen

Even Captain thinks they are cute.  He is probably a little too interested in them but we're trying to get him used to them and train him to leave them alone.  I am more concerned about the foxes and raccoons that roam around our yard at night than I am about Captain.  Hopefully he won't prove me wrong on that.

PEEP, PEEP, PEEP, PEEEEEEEEEP!!!!!

The first day we got them we had to leave for several hours.  We put Captain outside so that we didn't come home to the appearance of a pillow fight at a slumber party.  I had turned off the A/C so I figured the 80 degrees our house was at would keep them warm enough.  We filled a small lid with water so they could get drinks if they were thirsty.  When we came home we realized our huge mistake which was equal to putting a wading pool in a room full of babies.  They were all completely soaked and shivering having gone for several swims in their drinking water.  Bryton rushed them up to his room to get the heat lamp on them.  They all huddled under the lamp and reached their little necks as far to the light as they could get them.  I picked one of them up and turned it over so that its belly could warm up and it immediately fell asleep.  My kids kept telling me I was killing it and that I wasn't supposed to hold them upside down.  

A.  It wasn't upside down. 

B. Where they got this knowledge (unfounded) I'll never know but suddenly they are experts in all things chicken.

If I were a chick with a wet belly I would want someone to do that to me but I eventually relented to their admonitions and put it down.  It didn't take them long to warm up but they were not nearly as cute as they had been when we got them home.  Wet chicks are just not attractive.  Fortunately by the next day they were back to their cute selves.  Fresh eggs should be here by Christmas.  Maybe instead of our annual hand dipped pretzels our neighbors will be receiving eggs this year.

YMCA

There is a first time for everything and this summer I seem to be checking a lot of those first times off of my list.  This week I took the camper and the girls up to the YMCA without John.  It was a little scary since I am used to letting John take care of all the outside details on the camper.  Besides some beeping and buzzing noises that had me stumped for a while and the unpleasantness of dumping the sewer, it all worked out okay and the kids had a ball.  I met a friend who was also flying solo in her RV and who also happened to have one of my daughters with her.  It was an all ladies adventure.

One of my personal favorite activities was the tricycle track

We had fun playing roller tag

They all were impressive marksmen

And courageous zip liners

I remember having a family reunion at this place several years ago but I think they've added a lot to it since then.  Right now they're working on building a summer tubing hill.  Apparently they're going to make fake snow for it.  Definitely a place worth visiting if you've got kids.