Spring Break 2013: The Middle of Nowhere

Nothing makes a small town seem big like driving through a bunch of other, much smaller towns. That was the case with John Day, Oregon, which seemed like a booming metropolis once we reached it after a five hour drive.

For Spring Break we decided to check out John Day Fossil Beds National Monument near John Day Oregon. My mother lived in John Day from the time she was a newborn to five years old. Additionally, my grandfather was the first Branch President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in John Day after my grandmother mailed their tithing to the Portland, Oregon Mission President. So in a way, I felt very much like I was returning to my roots.

Unfortunately, Grandma and Grandpa's John Day stint was short and my mom can't remember a thing about it. So we focused on the unique and beautiful landscape in Central Oregon.

About 45 minutes from our destination (The John Day Best Western Hotel) we stopped for a (boys only) potty break and photo op. While the landscape was definitely high desert, there was a distinct beauty in the colors and landforms. 

Once we checked into our hotel and met up with our friends who'd traveled with us, we made reservations at the Snaffle Bit Dinner House for a delicious, large meal. Since we were in cattle country, I took advantage of something called a Cowboy Wrap, which was roast beef, garlic mashed potatoes, bacon and chipotle sauce all wrapped up in a giant tortilla. It was amazing. I ate half and saved the other half for lunch the next day.

Day two found us at the Sheep Rock Unit of the fossil beds. Home to the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center and ranger station for the monument. The boys had fun earning their Jr. Ranger badges, watching a little paleontology in action through the lab window, and taking a little hike. We couldn't have hoped for better weather. Blue skies with high clouds--not too hot, not too cool. Perfect!

After Sheep Rock, we headed west to the Painted Hills Unit--about 45 minutes away. As we drove, the clouds descended and it threatened to rain. That's when I saw something strange on the horizon: a very odd-looking tree. A SHOE tree!

There was no question about whether or not we would stop. This tree literally came up out of nowhere on the Ochoco Highway. The closest town (if you could call it that) was Mitchell (population 129). The boys had fun climbing and throwing shoes onto the tree. (There were plenty of "windfall" shoes on the ground beneath the tree to try and hurl).

By the time we arrived at the Painted Hills Unit, the sun was out and things were stunning again. We took a few short hikes and admired the stark, but beautiful scenery. This area is 33 million year old volcanic ash fall. The color in the hills is minerals leaching out. We saw a couple other cars, but for the most part, we were the only folks around this pleasant March afternoon.

We had dinner at the Dairy Queen, which, incidentally, cost just about as much as our fantastic beef dinner at the Snaffle Bit. I sat at my window seat, watching the only stop light in Grant County order traffic along the highway (Grant County is the size of Connecticut!) I couldn't help but wonder how much things had changed in the 60 years since my mother lived there. Kids walked up and down the street in the evening, perfectly safe, out on their own. Every pick-up had a Border Collie in the bed. The 100 year old Chinese pharmacy still stands from back in the Gold Rush days. 

I could easily picture my grandparents and their young family as part of this community.

On day three we headed for home. But not without a few stops first. We stopped at the James Cant Ranch and toured the building. Then Jonah and Isaac took the trail down to the John Day River to skip a few rocks. It was early in the morning and the sun was just coming over Sheep Rock.

On the way home, we stopped in Fossil, Oregon. We'd heard about the fossils ripe for the picking behind Wheeler High School. After looking around Fossil a bit (and finding a few non-paleo fossils, like a working cigarette vending machine and a working phone booth still with the 10 cent price advertised on the glass) we made our way up to the high school.

The boys had a blast digging and splitting open rocks to find plant fossils. (Proof that Robert came with us--see him in the upper right corner of the picture?) It was actually quite easy to find the fossils. All you had to do was pick them up off the ground. But that didn't keep the kids from digging to see if they could find something more exciting.

We took the scenic route home and passed the Clarno Unit. Scenic, in this case, meant windy roads because other than the stunning Palisades rock structure at Clarno, I didn't see anything super scenic. We passed through Maupin on our way back to The Dalles and on the road home.

It was a long drive coming and going, but totally worth it to explore this totally unique, beautiful corner of our state. 

Special Spoon

Somehow I ended up with a spoon from the church kitchen.

Actually, I "borrowed" a bunch of spoons, forks and knives from the church kitchen for a Christmas party I had a while back so I wouldn't have to use plastic ware and this little spoon ended up left behind when I returned all the other flatware.

Anyway, the spoon. It's plain compared to my other Oneida "tea rose" spoons and somehow, it's been designated as the special spoon. The boys taunt each other when they get it passed out to them at a meal.

I can understand if that was the only odd spoon out in our silverware drawer, but it's not. There is another spoon that is different. Robert purchased it in Japan when he was over there for work so he could eat at his hotel room and not have to buy every meal out. And the spoon came home with him.

"Why isn't that spoon the special spoon," I asked.

"It just isn't," Jonah said.

"It's not fancy. This other spoon is a little nicer. I would think this would be the special spoon."

"It's like when Indiana Jones chooses the cup at the end of The Last Crusade. He picks the one that is plain because that is the cup of a carpenter. This spoon is like that cup."

Okay.

I'm not sure if they actually think they have the holy spoon, but considering it is church property, there might be something to their reasoning.

A List

Things I Would Like to Do Today

Run/walk 2 miles
Write Goodreads review on the best book I just finished (Truth in Advertising by John Kenney)
Work for 45 minutes to an hour at my job
Go to the Dutch store to by hagelslag
Prepare my Sunday School lesson so I can help in-laws move tomorrow
Write a clever Facebook status update about how my neighbor used his car remote to lock his doors last night at 2am and made the horn honk three times working in the fact that I wasn't able to go back to sleep after 2am. (check!)
Put a note on the windshield of neighbor's car asking very nicely to not honk the horn at 2am.
Shower
Return/Pick up books to/from the library
Start a new book
Eat breakfast (not including the chocolate peanut butter cookie I already had)

The thing is, if I'd gotten my running clothes on and just left the house when the kids went to the bus stop, I'd already be back from my run/walk and halfway through breakfast.

Instead, I put all that effort into the Facebook status update and the subsequent checking back for comments and/or likes.

*Update - conference call with 2 sisters and run/walk is out. I'll do it tomorrow. Probably.
Also, the neighbors are having a garage sale, so the passive aggressive note leaving will have to be scrapped too.

A Moment

I ordered five plastic "cloches" for my garden from Amazon and today they arrived. They are big, but light. I didn't know they were here until Jonah and Isaac came home from school and saw them on the front porch.

But they didn't just run in the house and tell me I had a package. Nor did they come running in the house carrying the package.

Here's what they did:

They rang the doorbell and when I opened it, they were both carrying the giant box like it weighed a million pounds. (It weighed four pounds). They struggled to come in the house and made me think they were really having to work for it.

And it was just one of those moments where I thought my heart would break for the love of seeing these boys grow up. It was so sweet to see them work together to pull one over on me me, to make me laugh. How did I get so lucky?

Inconvenienced

Last night Robert went to bed around 11:45 and was paged at 1:30am and stayed up, working, until 7:30am. He was able to have some time this morning to sleep, and in order to keep things quiet, I grabbed my hair dryer, a brush, a few hair products, and my clothes and planned to shower in the boys bathroom after my morning run.

However, I quickly found that letting a sleeping husband lie is a hard thing to do. More precisely, staying out of my bedroom is a hard thing to do. I had to venture into the bedroom four separate times for various things:

1. deodorant
2. shoes
3. moisturizer
4. shampoo, conditioner, scrubby thing

Here are the things I did NOT go back in my room for and decided I could live without for the morning:

1. a book to read
2. make-up
3. toothbrush
4. wedding ring (no need to read anything into this)
5. hair clip used during blow drying

(Also, I tracked dirt all though the house, but could not vacuum it up.)

In a few weeks, it is likely (although Robert won't let me start telling people yet) that Robert will start working night shift at Intel. There are a lot of good things about this new position, the best being that he will get to spend more time with the family and will not need to be accessible 24/7.

However, I'm really, really grumpy about the fact that I will lose access to my room, my stuff, my bathroom, all my clothes, shoes and anything else I might want on the spur of the moment 3 to 4 mornings a week.

I don't know how I'm going to do it.

In Which I Get My First Trophy

Remember the American Mother's Gala I wrote about last week? Well, I went. And guess who else went? Robert! At the last minute he was able to go and so we were able to both have a lovely salmon dinner and chat with other lovely couples at table #9.

He escorted me to the stage and I watched as my friend Liz became the 2013 Oregon Young Mother of the Year. (yay Liz!) The evening ended with me getting a Willow Tree statue of mother and child on a lovely base with my name engraved on it.

It was all very nice. And I'm glad that Robert was able to walk me to the stage.

Goldfish Torture Update

It's been two and a half years since I became a pet owner, against my will, at the Intel Family Picnic and wrote this highly controversial blog post. (Sixteen comments! That's more than any other blog post to date!)

As you know, we started off with two goldfish. About a year into the goldfish captivity, one fish decided to make a break for it while we were away at Yellowstone. Don't worry, the fish were being carefully cared for by responsible friends who were following my meticulous instructions to replace the water every 2 days--or 7 days. Anyway, Ned (or was it Lucky) leapt over the edge of the bowl and landed on the kitchen floor. He wasn't discovered until our shoeless, sockless friend wandered into the kitchen early in the morning and, well, I'll just let you fill in the details yourself.

Lucky (or Ned) on the other hand, decided his captivity was better than a tenuous chance at freedom (the devil you know . . . ) and stayed put. He swims today, just a few feet from where I sit, in the same fishbowl I put him in back in August of 2010. I am mostly ambivalent about his existence. There is, however, a part of me that is resentful he has lived so long, if I'm being perfectly honest.

There are plenty of goldfish advocates out there who claim I'm torturing this fish. And maybe I am. But I wonder what I should have done when my children ran up to me, thrilled with their newly-won prizes in little plastic, water-filled bags?

Should I have dumped them in a pond or flushed them down the toilet to put them out of their misery and prevent their eventual suffering? Would that have been more humane?

I guess the reason this compassionate move didn't occur to me is because while raising a goldfish, I'm also raising three boys. Humans. Children from my womb. Making them flush their living creatures down the toilet just seemed . . . wrong. I'm not ashamed to say, I am more concerned with their upbringing than I am with the upbringing of a couple fish.

Should I have insisted they return the fish at the family picnic? Maybe. They might have gotten over that eventually.

Should I have made them turn them over to the employee at Petco, where the goldfish could live out their lives in a 20 gallon tank? Until someone came to buy feeder fish for her turtle.

Should I have purchased my own 20 gallon tank, a filter, and all the other tank paraphernalia for two goldfish? Am I wrong for not wanting to make a huge investment on pets I didn't want? Pets that everyone told me would be dead in 6 months. Pets that cost 29 cents each?

I know there are plenty of people out there who will say I was wrong to keep the goldfish in such a cruel way.

You know what? I can live with that.