Wine store

I try not to take the kids on too many errands, a few stops is usually their limit. So I was surprised when Kadin seemed okay with going to the liquor store after the bank. He waltzes right in and picks out a bottle of red called, “Woop, Woop,” a name we had laughed over at home.

Kadin (age 7): “Here’s the Woop, Woop, Mom”

Me: “Oh hey, thanks, sure, let’s get that. But I prefer the Fairvalley Pinotage.”

Kadin: “That’s right over here, Mom, here’s the Fairvalley.”

Whoa. What is this kid doing? I was trying not to turn red. It looked like this was a daily occurrence or something. I know a few months ago he came down here with Greg, and apparently they had had a really fun time with it, Greg involving him in every decision.

Kadin: “Did you want a chianti? There’s a fruity one in the middle row.”

A fruity one in the middle row. Okay, we’ll get that too. Honestly, we only go to buy wine every few months, but this was looking really bad. Or really good, depending on your point of view. When I go into a wine store, I can barely remember what I bought, what I liked, where in the store it came from, etc. etc., but Kadin obviously remembered the whole thing in great detail. I might just take advantage of that skill of his and bring him along more often…. It was one of the best mixed-cases we’ve ever bought. A future sommelier in the family?

Bear update

(from backlog, this happened just about exactly a year ago…)

I had heard rumors of the bear. After seeing a man in the back yard with a gun and encountering a visiting grandfather who had seen the bear (see original bear post here), I got my turn. We were sitting downstairs watching a movie. You know how sometimes in your peripheral vision you will think you see something big and hairy, the proverbial monster, but when you turn to look it is a robin, or a squirrel? I glimpsed something out the corner of my eye, turned to look, and it WAS a big hairy monster just cruising through the back yard. In no way did it seem predatory or interested in diversion, but it was BIG, strong, and powerful. Awesome. We ran upstairs for a better view and all saw it out the bedroom window. I immediately called the neighbor whose yard he'd gone into, and her husband ran out with a camera, which startled the bear who ran away down the path to the next street over.

I called to report the sighting (which we are told to do, but, I'm learning, might not be in the best interest of the bear). That night I saw ranger trucks with big lights out looking for it. I learned later that it was a 350-pound male and had been tranquilized the next morning and moved to a more remote location because they felt it was getting too used to people.

That was a first for me. I finally saw a bear in the "wild." I am thrilled. There is a surreal feeling to seeing a large, wild creature like that trotting by the kids' swing set and trampoline. The lawn just seemed so wrong.

No personal sightings since but rumors of more bears and a report last week of a mountain lion at 10:30 pm a few blocks away. A few weeks ago, the new family from Scotland took video of the fresh bear scat on the sidewalk just around the corner. Heard some loud sniffing outside the window the other night, but when I went to look, nothing there. Could have been a dog, a raccoon, a fox, or...

Backlog

I haven’t been posting much, but am inspired to update the last couple of years.

Yes, really!

I have many posts that have just never gotten up, most from a year or two ago. It will be a bit scattered time-wise, but every day or two, along with current events, I’m going to try to clear up the backlog. And I’ll try to give you a hint about when it happened.

Summer dreams

I’d been having some odd dreams about a month ago. I felt a bit possessed. First there was a dream where I had to be at the airport for a flight that left in 30 minutes. From our house, there is no way to get the airport in less than 45 minutes. Still, I was going to try to make it. Or maybe I’d given up on that flight, but thought I could get on the next one. But first, I had to stop at the school to get something. And, as I was on my way out, I noticed that one of the burners on the stove was on and someone had left a potholder there that had just caught fire. I turned off the burner, wondering how that had happened.

For some reason I went out the back door instead of the front and there I saw the hose running, so I turned that off too. Who left the hose on? What if I hadn’t seen it? Would it have run for a week?

At this point I woke up glad it was a dream and fell asleep again.

This time there was a couple of feet of snow on the ground and outside our front door was the school carnival/festival with various booths and activities. I had four gloves with me and I kept dropping one. Nothing I could do would keep them all together. I kept searching in the snow, and as soon as I found one I would get distracted again, then notice another one was missing.

I woke again. What was my mind trying to do? I felt it had been hijacked by every possible distress. I thought back. I had started taking vitamin B supplements and I wondered if they were helping my brain to grow, but in all the wrong places! Anxiety was not something I wanted to cultivate. Still, I was starting to enjoy the show. Where would my twisted mind take me next?

This time a dream about the cat. Only it was the cat vomiting a huge vomit, a mass bigger than the cat itself. Somehow, I heard myself volunteering to clean it up.

Luckily the streak of disturbing dreams ended. I chalk it up to the transition to summer with its unpredictable schedules and masses of roaming children. Now, I’m happy to report that daily, I find the hose running, the cat vomiting, and it doesn’t seem to bother me at all. I do keep a close eye on the stove burners, though.