Over the Mountains and Back

I've returned from the Crown tournament last weekend, held just south of Yakima, WA.  I headed out on Friday after meeting up with Kelly and the two littles at school during the field day for grades 1-3.  Four (or five?) schools get together and compete in running, relay races, soccer kick, sack races, and more.  It's a lot of fun!  The older kids (grades 4 to 8) help wrangle the younger ones, sell refreshments (hot dogs, soft drinks and sugar), and generally have a half-day of school running around outside with their friends.  The weather cooperated, which was a big relief, and Ben got through his events without incident.

Kelly was able to get away from work early enough to catch most of the events, but by the time I got there, they were all over.  I arrived late because I couldn't find my keys, which turned out to be one of those "there's a hole in the bucket" stories.  I had been packing the car that morning and had set my keys down on a chair in the garage.  I also set down some things I was going to load into the car...without realizing it, I put them on top of the keys.  So when I needed to unlock the car to begin loading, I couldn't find them.  Gahh!  It took more than an hour of tearing the house apart to realize that they might be in the garage, move the pile of stuff (soft things--nothing heavy to crush the keys), and uncover them.  I just about screamed.

After a quick visit at the school, hugs and kisses to the two littles and Kelly (Emma was still at her school), I got in the car and headed down the road.  Over several rivers, through the woods and over the passes--stopping at a view of the valley over Ellensburg to pick up a Geocache--I arrived at my destination!  I pulled up to my camp site with the Baron and Baroness of Aquaterra and several other friends, and began to assemble the 12' yurt.  I had help for the first ten minutes or so, but their services were needed elsewhere, so I set to work assembling it myself.  I was quite sure it could be done solo, and in about two hours, the chore was complete.

That night, however, I discovered muscle pains I never knew I could have...my arms were killing me! All that lifting and adjusting and shifting....ooof!  I hurt from my shoulders to my palms.  Sleep was difficult that night, mostly due to the arm discomfort.  I was too tired to think, "Maybe I should get some Tylenol..." but I did take some the next morning.  I also have determined that I need to invest in a foam pad for the cot--it's just too firm.  Neighbors Lord Nigel and Lady Emma recommended the kind they sell at REI.  She says that it's more comfortable than their bed at home and she sleeps like a baby.

On Saturday, I wandered over to the Arts & Sciences pavilion where I signed up for the sock knitting contest.  They didn't provide anything for the contest except for the directions, so you had to bring your own Cascade 220 and needles.  They recommended size 5-7, which seemed enormous.  I brought size 4, and wondered if Cascade 220 would be too bulky to wear.  But I thought it would be fun to participate anyway, and maybe I could wear them for my sleeping socks at events.  The nights get really cold in An Tir where the temperature can be in the 80s during the day and drop to 40 at night.  The sign up for the sock contest started at 9:00 but the knitting didn't start until noon, so I spend some time winding the yarn into a ball and visiting with some artisans at the 11:00 Artisan Geek-Out.  There was a woman turning sheepskins into vellum.  There was another making chain mail armor (which is a modern misnomer--back in the day, it was called "chain armor" or "mail armor", not "chain-mail"; it's like saying "chicken bird" or "beef hamburger"...or "tuna fish".)  Another gal was weaving velvet (sooooooo soft!), and yet another had large painted game boards.

After about 30 minutes hanging out there, I wandered off and found the Comune dei Pavone camp, where a lot of the artsy people are camped, and talked with HL Isabel (well, she squeaked and whispered--lost her voice from a laryngitis), who said that she had wrangled a couple of judges to help me finish my Journeyman rank for Costumer's Guild.  We compared schedules and decided that between 3:00 and 3:30 we could start.

In front of their camp, Ariel had set up the very small yurt she built for her little brother many years ago.  They called it the Squirt.  It's made with one of those round baby gates from a million years ago!  Now that her sons are reaching teenagerhood, they're too big to camp in it anymore, so it's for sale.  I thought briefly about getting it for Ben...

At noon, I watched some of the procession--the parade of fighters and their households who introduce themselves to their Majesties and request permission to be part of the tournament--as I cast on the first few stitches of my sock.  This part of the event would go on for a couple hours.  There were nearly 100 men and women signed into the lists to fight for crown.  That's the biggest I can recall ever seeing.  Usually it's around 60.  All too soon, and long before the line had significantly dwindled down, I had to go to the Ithra staff meeting.

The meeting for Ithra ran two hours and was largely productive.  I have a short list of things I need to do today--posting the old handbook online, for example--and I got a chance to meet a few people who are the upcoming movers-and-shakers in Ithra.  There was the Regent (I think we're only going to have one) and myself who were the only fully-licensed Chancellors, and Sarra, who was unable to make it to the event.  We all agreed that we need to train up a bunch of Chancellors, and right quick.  Baroness Stephania took notes, so hopefully those will be available on the Yahoo list soon.

Once the meeting ended, I headed back to camp to get the Journeyman stuff, and made my way back across the field to Comune dei Pavone present it to the Costumer's Guild judges, Mistress Isolde, Mistress Godytha and HL Isabel.  As I may have mentioned before, I didn't remember what things I had presented in the past for Junior and Senior ranks, and the records of what I had presented did not survive the database (although I received the gems for achieving it, the data was missing) so I started from scratch.  I had organized all the documentation in the binder, laid out the pieces as we went through them, and I presented my works.  They asked questions and challenged me on my choices ("Is this linen or cotton?  Why did you chose this fabric?"), and brought up some very interesting perspectives on a couple items.  They seemed to really enjoy the Bog Coat article I wrote...Isolde described it as a garment that is "peri-oid"; it has the correct silhouette, but not the right construction.  Mistress Ariel popped in and out during the presentation, and afterwards offered her congratulations.

I was able to catch the final couple of rounds of the Crown tournament where Count Ieuan ("Ian") was in the finals with Squire Leith.  Sir Octomasades was the third contender, but he lost to Leith, and Ieuan won best 2 of 3 against Leith.  Count Ieuan was king once before in January of last year, when he and his wife had a tiny baby.  Now their daughter is a toddler, and Her Royal Highness is expecting another baby.  Ieuan is pictured above wearing yellow, riding on the shoulders of the knights.  His wife is to his left, also in yellow.  Leith is riding on the shoulders ahead of him, wearing blue and black.  Carrying the final two fighters around on the shoulders after the tournament is a tradition in An Tir...I don't know about elsewhere in the SCA.  Generally speaking, when an "unbelted" fighter gets to the final rounds, knighthood is imminent...this happened once before that I recall when Duke Darius got Silver Rose at a May Crown tourney back in 1990 and was offered knighthood that day.  Leith, however, was not offered it that day...or the next--I have heard rumors why this might have been the case, and I hope that given his skill and time since accusations were laid, the knights' council will revisit the issue.  I've known Leith for a long time; he's a great musician and artist (he's a Laurel), but I don't know much about the fighting aspect.  It's not my battle however, so I will withhold further opinion.

Later that night, I went to visit with the Comune dei Pavone but they were just sitting down to dinner and waiting for the Royals to come join them.  It seemed I was not welcome to stay--the only person who shared pleasantries with me was a lady I'd never seen before, so I excused myself and wandered off.  Most of the group were busy in the kitchen, but I was not invited to stay and be social--I had already eaten--and clearly they were not ready for drop-in company.

The evening was spent with Tessa and her campmates while I knitted on the sock.  Later, I wandered around with Lianor and we ran into Duncan--a horse guy--and we had a great time chatting with him and his adult daughter.  Duncan offered to let me ride his horses, and we made some preliminary plans to make that happen.  Eventually I shuffled off to bed at around 2 a.m., when I checked my phone--and yes, Facebook--and discovered that HL Raffaella had been offered the Pelicanate.  Pelican?  Not Laurel?  Foodie, artisan, costumer's guild officer, organizer of the A&S Geek-Outs...  What the--?

I woke up in the morning with the camp behind me cooking bacon.  My entire tent smelled like bacon, and I think their kitchen was just two feet from my head.  I was starting to get a little nauseated.  I probably have bacon spatter on my canvas.  I got up, got a cuppa tea, and began knitting again.  Here's what I had done a couple hours before turn in.  I actually got the heel nearly complete, too, but sadly, the contest was not mine to win.  Due to my time spent in the meeting and presenting for Journeyman rank, I lost a lot of hours of knitting time.  Another competitor spent all night knitting and got BOTH socks done.  I came in third with another knitter getting up to the toe of the sock...just a few inches longer than mine.  In the end, I discovered that I put the heel on the wrong side of the sock, and it may be too small to fit me anyway.  I'm going to have to frog it all out and start again, but it was a fun experiment.

At about noon, I started packing up and was completely done by 3 pm--car packed, ready to hit the road.  Their Excellencies of Aquaterra had gone in to pack up the Baronial pavilion on the eric, and my Shittimwoode neighbors (not the Bacon-neighbors) were almost done with their camp and were going to assist at the eric, and I was headed that direction as well.  However, on my way, I saw that Tessa had a spare tire on her car.  Her right front tire was bald and pitted and had a bulge on one side...oh, it was a bad-lookin' tire...and her left front tire looked almost as bad.  I offered to follow her into town to make sure the other tire didn't blow out on the way.  We made it into town without incident, and while they were fixing the tires, we did a little Geocaching together!  The first was called Muggle Central--right on a busy street at a landmark feature--and the second was behind some newly-built barbed wire fencing.  We gave that one a miss.  We followed up with a couple more in Yakima and had dinner there at Bob's, then met up with a very tired Lianor and we caravaned home.  I arrived home at about 9:30 and Ben was still awake enough to need a big hug.

A Mountainous Adventure

St. Helens before...

We have wound down our tour of Western Washington's most magnificent mountain...Mt. St. Helens.  This famed peak blew its top on May 18, 1980 after a couple of months of earthquakes and a large bulge growing on its North face.  A massive landslide filled the bottom of the valley and raised the water table on the lake below, burying campsites and recreation areas in its wake. 

St. Helens after...

Our trip was much less turbulent, leaving town on Tuesday and traveling south to Olympia to visit with Kelly's sister and kids (her husband was out of town for work), and we let the kids run and play with the critters on the property.  Two llamas, three goats, and a small flock of chickens keep the family busy and give them a steady supply of eggs. 

In the morning, we packed up and headed south to our next destination, the grocery store in Chehalis!  We stocked up on supplies for lunches, dinners, and s'mores!  Then headed 70 miles to the camp site, just outside of Randle, WA at Iron Creek campground.  The sites were secluded and surrounded by lots of really big trees.  There were pit toilets but they kept them very clean and treated them to keep the smell at a minimum.  They also had water spigots and garbage cans nearby.

My tree huggers...

Unfortunately, there was no power outlets...at all.  This caused a minor inconvenience for our medical needs, which we had been able to prepare for, but we still fell short of our minimum for the night feeds.  We thought the battery for the night feed would last two nights--it lasted 1 1/2 nights (unless it wasn't plugged in the previous night at Crystal's, which means it actually lasted 2 1/2 nights, but it wasn't fully charged when we left).  Kelly ran his c-pap on a marine battery and Ben and Emma did their medications from an outlet plugged into the car's power source, although we had to run the car to provide enough power for the machines.  Medications for Ben include two nebulized medications and a vest therapy.  Luckily, it only took about 30 minutes to do all medications.

We set up our tents, moved the picnic table slightly to make a more comfortable setting, and settled in. Our first night started out pretty well--until a bit past midnight when I started to realize that the air mattress seemed to be sagging slightly.  Kelly pumped it up with his C-pap (running on a marine battery) and we settled back in.  About 30 minutes later, it was sagging again.  He thought maybe the cork in the end wasn't seated correctly, so he unscrewed it, and put it back together, pumped it back up, and we settled in.  Only 15 minutes later, I realized that this was a losing battle and we were going to have to come up with another plan.  Laying on the ground is not something that you can really do when you reach your 40s, but we were going to have to try.  It hurt.  I tried sleeping in the back seat of the van.  The bench seat was too short (even for me).  I tried the front seat...nope.  Went back into the tent and *luckily* the night was warm enough not to require sleeping in the sub-zero sleeping bag, so I folded it in half and tried sleeping on top of that.  Then folded another blanket and tried sleeping on top of that as well.  It still hurt.  Eventually, I got about four or five hours of sleep, which was as much as I was going to get that night.

After breakfast, Emma and I took a trip back into town (yep, 70 miles back to town) while Kelly took the other two kids fishing, and we got another air mattress.  $35 and a full tank of gas later, we headed back to the camp site.  Upon arrival, we ate a quick lunch and headed up to Mt. St. Helens to view the old girl.  We went up two years ago to Johnston Ridge, but it's been 24 years since I was at the Windy Ridge observation area.

May 17, 1980...



Photo I took in September 1988...

Photo I took in August 2012 in nearly the same spot...

The Forestry Service had people up there giving hourly talks about the history of the mountain and the activity of the volcano, told stories of some of the people who measured the movement of the bulge in the weeks prior to the eruption, photographers who circled the mountain in an airplane moments before it blew, and the natural recovery of the immediate six or eight mile radius--I don't remember the exact numbers--which they have designated as a scientific study area as to how nature recovers after a devastating event.  More information from a couple years ago can be found here.


We decided to take a hike up a neighboring hill, which was an established path up to a spot overlooking Spirit Lake, Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood, and Mt. St. Helens.  It was a long way up.  I asked Ben to count the steps, but he didn't.  I tried to count on the way down, but I lost track a couple times.  I know it was over 400.  Note how tiny the cars are...in the upper right corner area is the small amphitheater where the Forestry gal gave her talk.  Ben was more interested in finding out more about Harry Truman, the man who ran a group of cabins on the edge of the lake at the base of the mountain.  He knew things were moving and that an eruption was imminent, but he decided he didn't want to move.  He and his cabins are now buried under a couple hundred feet of dirt from the landslide that preceded the eruption.

Interestingly, the last major eruption was in the 1800s, and artist Paul Kane painted this in 1847, documenting the eruption.  Note it's not at the top, but to the side, near where the bulge presented itself in 1980...



How about this handsome guy?



Cute kids on the mountain...smiling, even!  Spirit Lake in the background still has logs floating in it, 32 years later.



Following our hike up this mountain, we headed back down the hill and cooked up some steaks and burgers and slept pretty soundly on a new air mattress.  The next day, we packed up the car and headed south around the mountain and took in some beautiful views on the winding roads.




We ended up at Beacon Rock, named by the famous Lewis & Clark on their 1804 expedition across the continent.  Initially, it was called "Beaten Rock" from its weathered look, but was later used as a beacon, being a very unique rock formation, and the name altered to Beacon Rock.  In 1915, Henry Biddle bought the rock for $1 and built some paths up to the top.  It's about 600 feet high, so it has a mile of switchbacks to get to the top.  After he finished building the paths, he donated the rock to the Washington State Parks.  I guess they have other hiking and camping areas in the neighborhood.  We didn't check it out, though.

In a word, exhausting.

After that hike, we went up the road a mile or so to take a look at the hydro dam and fish ladders (no fish climbing the ladders this late in the year), and then crossed the Bridge of the Gods and stopped at the fish hatchery, which really didn't have a lot of fish there.  They had some big rainbow trout that you can feed pellets to, but they were shipped in just for tourists.  Then there was a tank with a few salmon and a couple large sturgeon, but it's really murky.  We found one set of tanks that had little fry in it, but that was it.  Not terribly interesting this time of year.



Finally, back on the road...and remember, we've been camping for two days and nowhere near a shower we finally make it back to civilization and check into our hotel which turned out to be inexpensive, and not really worth what we paid.  The first bad sign is that we arrived and reminded them that we requested a rollaway online, and they said, "We don't have rollaways."
I'm sorry...What?  We have five people...how are we going to sleep all five of us in a room?
"You can have one person sleep on the floor."  WHAT?!
We should have left right then...but we didn't.  Then they say, "Is a second-floor room OK?"
I guess.... Oh. There aren't any elevators.  Remember all the medical equipment we've got?  Yeah.  Great.

We get in the room and we all need to take showers.  Desperately.  I turn on the light switch and I'm looking around for the bathroom fan.  There isn't one.  But I noticed there was some mold on the ceiling...ew.  And then I notice that there's only three towels.  It sleeps four in the room, we checked in five, but there's only three towels.  I called the front desk for extra towels.  They brought them pretty quickly, along with the extra bedding.  No sheets, though.  Kelly went down to the car and brought up the camp cot and dressed that up for sleeping.  We had to draw straws to figure out who was going to be sleeping on it--this was Cammie's idea, and unfortunately for her, she ended up drawing one of the shorter straws.  She accepted that fate with grace and took the second night on the cot.

After cleaning up, we went down to get some dinner from the on-site restaurant.  The food was pretty good, but the service was underwhelming when it became clear that that were seriously understaffed.  There appeared to be one waiter for about ten tables.  He forgot to bring a salad for Kelly and the guy never came back to see if we needed anything, and I had to flag him down to get the bill.  The guy at a neighboring table went to go get the water pitcher himself.  When I mentioned to the waiter that he forgot the salad, he apologized and took 25% off our bill.  That was nice... :)

We settled in for the night, looking for a movie for the kids to watch on Pay Per View, but the only "family" videos available on the TV were toddler and pre-school 30-minute cartoons from Nick and PBS, like "Arthur", and given that they're on PUBLIC television, it was ridiculous they were charging $3 an hour for these shows.  The rest of the movies were horror, drama and other adult subjects.  Kelly and I wanted to let the kids settle down and go on a mini-date get a drink in the bar, but after sitting there for 45 minutes and not getting any service, we gave up and went back to the room.  We snuggled down for the night and found that the air conditioner wasn't working properly.  It was pretty hot in the room, even though the machine was set for 60 degrees and running full blast all night.

The next morning, Emma and I went to visit with Sharon & Jeff at their home--the remodeling of which is looking fantastic.  Kelly had dropped us off and then he took Cammie and Ben to a water park and airplane museum in McMinnville.  We made a trip to Fabric Depot where I picked up a couple of things on their 25% off cotton print sale and their 40% off clearance room.  We then picked up some burgers for lunch while Jeff made a fresh salad from their garden.  Delicious salad!  The burgers looked like they were run through the wringer first...

That night, we met up with Mike & Laura and had sushi at their favorite neighborhood Japanese place.  We were the last ones out of the place, and unbeknownst to us, Kelly dropped his keys on his way out the door.  Luckily, someone picked them up and turned them in at the restaurant, where we found them the next day.  Whew!  Replacing those electronic keys for the cars is an expensive thing, and going to work without the office keys can be a little awkward, too.  At least I had copies of the car and house keys, but I don't have copies of his work keys.

We returned to the hotel to find they had cleaned up the beds and took the wet towels, but only left us three towels again.  I took an evening shower to cool off, so that left two towels for four people.  The next morning, I called down to get more towels, and they brought us one.  I told her I needed two more, so she went to the room next door and took one (presumably it was unoccupied), and said she'd have to go get another one for us.  We never saw her again.  As I was opening the door for her, the swing arm security latch had caught on itself, and I struggled to free it for a second, but didn't look at it too closely at the time.  After she left, I took a look at it and the knob part of the security latch was hanging there by a metallic thread...I popped it off easily.  Totally useless.  I set the broken piece on the table next to the coffee maker.  Hopefully they won't bill us for that since we didn't break it.

Arrangements were made to have breakfast with Mike and mama-to-be Laura (who is due February 2nd), but the restaurant on site closed at 10 a.m.  It wasn't clear, but lunch may have only been available in the lounge, which is 21 and over only.  Lame.  We went to their favorite place, Wild Abandon, where the owner knows them by name.  They have amazing breakfast potatoes!  After breakfast, we said our goodbyes and we headed North...just a bit.

We only went as far as Heide's, where we stayed the night visiting, did some of our laundry and watched the closing ceremonies for the Olympics.  We spent a lot of time trying to figure out the purpose and focus of the closing show...we agreed that the ceremony was just weird, like a walk through British music from the 80s, but it must have been a great a private concert & 360-degree show for the Olympic competitors.  Madness singer, Suggs, sounded really awful...too bad, really...but Pet Shop Boys, Annie Lennox and several others did really well.  The costumes and props were just...weird.

The next morning, we got loaded up in the car, grabbed a quick lunch, and got home by the middle of the afternoon to find my new dishes on the front porch!!  I was a little concerned because the box it arrived in was not in the best condition, but I was glad to see that they were wrapped pretty well inside and there were no broken bits.  A few flaws in the paint, but given the price, I'm not sure I care.  The plates were originally marked at $17, but they were selling them for $9.34, plus free shipping.  The last set of dishes I bought (Gibson stoneware) have been breaking and chipping rather regularly over the last year, so I decided to invest in some dishes that many restaurants use.  If they can withstand the beating at a busy cafe, it can better withstand the abuse our dishes endure at our hands.  I wanted a variety of colors, so I got two of each in a rainbow of colors, plus two white plates (which were back ordered, but should be arriving in the next day or so).  Oddly, I hadn't intended to get every color in the rainbow...it just worked out that way.  The colors include scarlet, paprika, marigold, shamrock, turquoise, cobalt and plum.  I figured that at Christmas, we can use the green, red and white; at 4th of July & Flag Day, we can use red, white and blue; on St. Paddy's day, we can use green, orange and white...so many combinations!  I opted to get only plates at this time and I can get salad plates and bowls at a later time.  I have a few smaller cereal bowls in sunflower and turquoise already, and a couple serving bowls in plum and...something else...turquoise, maybe?  I forget.  Anyway, I can add to this collection as time goes on.  I like the idea of buying only what I'm going to use, rather than full place settings--I never use all those little coffee cups that come in the sets, and ended up donating the mugs that came with the last sets I got...they were just taking up space in the cupboard, and I really only use the 20 oz cups for tea.  I may just donate the rest of the dinner plates I've got, and keep the pasta bowls, smaller plates and mismatched chipped platters until I can afford to replace those as well.  The pasta bowls are $17 each and the platters run $35 each....yeah, that's gonna have to wait.

Back to the grind tomorrow, although I'm going to be finishing up the Midhaven Ithra and a big quilt show in the next couple of weeks.  After that, I'm not going to volunteer to do anything for the quilt guild again...at least not for a while.  School is getting close to starting again, so there is still some prep with getting supplies and clothes, which we'll have to take care of in the next couple of days.  Oh, and Girl Scouts should be starting up again soon.  Gack.

Olympic Cleaning

Kelly has made arrangements for us to go camping at Mt. St. Helens this month.  We went a couple years ago and had a great time (although the campground we chose for the first night was abysmal), but he wanted to go to another campground and do some fun things...there's some kind of waterslide that is built out of airplanes or something...kind of the aeronautical engineer's fantasy family vacation.  Not sure what all the details are, but it'll be fun.  Also not sure what we'll be camping in since our 8-man tent really isn't fit for more than 3 beds, and the 4-man tent barely fits 2 beds...and not very comfortably.  Maybe I can look to see if I can find an inexpensive 8-man tent for the kids to share.

After the camping expedition, we hope to visit some friends and family in Portland.  Of course, there's never enough time to see everyone, but I hope we can get a few hours in here and there.

I haven't gotten much done in the past couple of days in terms of sewing, although I did cut some fabric leftovers from the baby quilts I was working on (pile to the left), and I am going to make a few more 9-patches to add to the three that I made at the quilt show so that I will have another quilt top finished for the guild's charity quilts.  They give these quilts to area foster kids and to Seattle Children's.  The gal who is running this charity committee has a daughter who also spent a lot of time at Children's, although she's now an adult and expecting a baby in just a few short weeks!  I know I have way too much fabric, and using it up to make charity quilts is something useful I can do with the surplus and I know it's going to a GREAT cause!

My neighbor, Gordonna, came by to see my beads that we had talked about several months back.  She grew up in one of those little countries sandwiched between Greece and Italy and loved the evil eye beads.  I said that I was fashioning some of them after the traditional Turkish beads, and she said, "Oh, don't mention those people..."  We both thought it was funny that after 700 years, her people still have that reaction to the Turks.  She loved the beads but refused to take any when I offered them.  Maybe I need to learn how to make bracelets or necklaces with them and give them away since it's harder to refuse a finished gift...especially around birthdays and holidays.  First I need to clean them--the holes are filled with dried ceramic that keeps them from sticking to the metal rods--but I don't know how to do that.  Isn't that amazing?  I can make all these beads and I have no idea what to do with them.

I also started cleaning Cammie's room.  I've been asking her to do this for MONTHS, and give her small goals like "Pick up just dirty laundry" or "Pick up and put away 10 things."  Clearly it hasn't made a dent.  I found lots of dirty socks & three towels, which I stuffed into the already-full bin, and several dresses, shoes and slippers that are too small, so it was time to pack them up for donation along with a few toddler items that she no longer needs.  I also sifted through some papers, put books back on the shelves, and put the seasonal clothes and costumes away.  After about 90 minutes, I took a break to have lunch, then it was karate, dinner and more karate.  By then, I just sat with a cuppa tea and watched some of the trashy TV I taped and looked at some emails.  There's still a long way to go on the room, but I'll put in some more time tomorrow and see if I can't get a vacuum in there.  By the time she gets back from her cousin's house, she'll probably not recognize the place.  The trick is to thin out the stuff and hope she doesn't notice.  She loves playing with the blocks--building cities and houses with them, which you can see over by the fan--and then moving in the little creatures and dolls and creating stories with them.  This creates a bit of clutter in her room, but it's managable.  It's the broken crayons, papers, wrappers, strings, and other garbage that doesn't seem to make it into the garbage can that turns it into insanity.  To further the insanity, she's got a rock collection that is scattered everywhere.  Once I get the floor cleared, I can start sifting through her drawers and pull out clothes that are too small.  It'll give me a better idea of what she needs for the school year once I can see the gaps in her wardrobe.

I've been enjoying watching some of the Olympics, although I'm not as happy with the coverage this year as I was with the winter Olympics in Vancouver/Whistler.  They seem to be more spotty in the coverage and some of the "episodes" we've recorded have not actually recorded--it says, "Sorry, video not available." And then, of course, people are posting results online before I get a chance to see it.  My favorites events are men's gymnastics (there's some beautiful back muscles on those guys...)  and swimming.  If I were to have become an Olympian, it probably would have been in swimming.  I was actually part of swim team for a couple of weeks in my freshman year, but I found that pool chemicals make me sick to my stomach, especially after swallowing so much of it during practices.  I did become a lifeguard later and worked at a pool one summer, but competitive swimming was not for me.  The women's swim suits look really uncomfortable, though--they keep tugging and stretching them across their chests like they're not be used to that particular style or cut of suit.  I can see why--with the width of the chest and shoulders on these athletes, it looks like her boobs are about to fall out the sides.  That would make me crazy, too.  I think the suit designers need to keep this in mind when putting out styles--these aren't beach bunnies, guys.

I also didn't realize that equestrian events were still included in the summer games!  How did I not know this?  It really makes me want to sign up for regular lessons nearby.  I still have to take the Girl Scouts out again this summer...the two outings we've had already have been very poorly attended, and we're very rapidly running out of summer...August always slips by so quickly.  I need to get out and enjoy it a bit before it's over.  Starting....tomorrow.  Oh wait...I still have to clean.