I see London, I see France...

Until recently I had two wonderful houseguests. The houseguests were my brother in law Andy, and cousin Danielle. Andy and Danielle are roommates and they were switching apartments. When you switch apartments in Ann Arbor in the student area, you usually end up homeless for a week or two. All of the apartment complexes build in this week or two of homelessness so they have a chance to clean up the apartment before the next person moves in. Also, since a majority of the tenants are students they can just stay with their parents. Andy and Danielle were in this situation and they stayed with us for the week that they were homeless.


I love to play the martyr in this situation. I would love to go on and on, "Oh, I am SO kind and SO generous to let these youths stay at my home and keep their stuff there." But actually, having them at the house was a delight. They both work the evening shift at Pizza Bob's, and they had to work a lot because all the other employees went to live with their parents. I hardly ever saw them. But even when I did see them they were a joy to hang out with and Charles had a ball playing with them. When they were there and I was not, they would amazingly clean up the house. It was a great situation.


Well, it was mostly a great situation. There was one drawback.


One of the days last week I was cleaning the bathroom upstairs. I am trying to be a cleaner person, and guests were using the bathroom so I thought it was important to have it not be nasty. I don't know how other people clean the bathtub, but for me I have to take off my pants. So, I was cleaning the bathtub in my underpants and a tank top. When I was done, I did some more housework...all in my underpants. What did it matter? The houseguests were at work and I figured I would be in bed or in jammies by the time they got home. Nathan and Charles don't care if I run around in my underpants, so it was fine. When I was done with the housework, we settled down on the couch to watch a netflix movie and I snuggled up with a blanket and never gave another thought to what I was wearing. The movie went a little longer than expected and Andy and Danielle got home while we were still watching it. They watched the end of the movie with us and chatted and joked. We were watching "He's just not that into you" and there is a part in the end that has to do with Ben Afleck's pants. Watching that scene reminded me that I wasn't wearing any pants. I was sure it would be no big deal. I was sure that somehow I would be able to sneak upstairs with the blanket and no one would know. But I waited and waited and there was no opportunity. Eventually I had to confess. I had to confess that I wasn't wearing any pants. Both Andy and Danielle looked embarrassed. I gathered up the blanket and headed up to bed. It wasn't until I got there that I realized that they might have thought that I was sitting on the couch barebutted, or that possibly they walked in on something romantic. Oh dear.


Well, I still don't know what they thought, but I did get even with Andy Saturday morning. Andy prefers to sleep on the sofa, and normally in the morning I would just see him cuddled up with a blanket as I quietly left for work. But Saturday morning Charles woke him up because he wanted to play. And guess what...Andy was sleeping in his underpants. Gotcha Andy. I guess we are even now.


How do you clean the bathtub? Do you have special cleaning clothes? Do you have any cleaning tips?

Are you smarter than a 4 year old?

Tuesday night the family and I went to a botanical garden to attend the annual joint meeting of the Audobon society and the Sierra club. Those of you who know anything about me realize how odd this was. Well, the reason we went is because there was a Raptor - Birds of Prey presentation. We were invited by my friend Nikki. It was in town, it was free, and it was open to kids. All of those things made it the perfect outing for a Tuesday Evening.

I didn't give much thought to anything except the bird show until I got there. The place was crawling with Ann Arbor hippies. I think Charles and I fit in ok, but the hubby pretty much hates the environment so I kept threatening to put him on their distribution lists. It is pretty unlikely that I will join either of these groups, but they did have their strong points. Most of the organizations that I have been part of have been full of long winded people who go on and on to hear themselves talk. The bird watchers and tree huggers are surprisingly brief. They got up, said they had a fundraiser, and mentioned there was more information in the back of the room. It was great.

After the brief announcements, the bird lady came out. She brought 3 birds with her. I am glad Nikki took pictures and sent them to me, because I didn't even think about it. The first one was a Falcon.

Here are the things I learned about falcons:

• There is more than one type of falcon.
• They are the birds that wear the little masks.
• There is a sport called falconing where you use falcons to hunt ducks.
• If you are a falconer, you get your first falcon by catching it from the wild. You then use it to hunt for a year, then put it back into the wild. I don't know where you get your second falcon.

When the bird lady took the falcon out of the box, she asked everyone what it was. All the kids knew. I did not. She told us a lot about falcons and about the other birds at the reserve...including a turkey buzzard. Turkey buzzards can smell, falcons cannot.

The second bird was an owl.

Here is what I learned about owls:

• They hunt skunks and can carry half of their weight.
• Owls weigh about 4 pounds. I think this means they can either only hunt baby skunks, or when they kill an adult skunk, they eat it on the ground.
• Their eyes don't rotate inside their head because they are too big.
• They do not have infra-red heat vision, but they can use their ultraviolet vision to see mouse piss (ala CSI-Miami).

Again, the bird lady told us lots of information about owls and the other birds at the reserve. Owls don't mind hunting skunks because they can't smell. Turkey buzzards can smell.

The third bird was in the biggest box. When she pulled it out, she asked, "and what kind of bird is this?" All the kids, even little Carter who is only four years old (I know this because he told me he was only four years old) yelled out, " A bald eagle!!!!" I thought to myself, what a bunch of stupid kids. She already told us it was a turkey buzzard.

I was the stupid one. It was a bald eagle. This teaches me that I am stupider than a four year old and can't even tell the National bird from a turkey buzzard. How embarrassing. We didn't stay much longer after that. Charles started fussing since it was getting close to his bed time. He liked the birds ok. He pointed to each one as the bird lady pulled them out of their boxes. He stared at them as she walked them past. But, while she was talking about them, he much preferred to kick the chair next to him and flirt with the little girl behind him instead of listen.

Overall, the outing was a success. It also made me think of something I hadn't considered before. I think I am at the stage in my life where I need to make "Family Friends".

You start out life and you just have to make friends for yourself. Sure, your mom has to like them enough to let them come over, but even if your mom doesn't like your friends you can still play with them at school.

When you grow up and start seriously dating or get married, you are supposed to get couple friends. I never had any trouble making friends for just myself. I was never the most popular kid in school, but I had plenty of friends. Couple friends are much harder though. To this day I don't think I have any. A friend of mine tried and tried to make good couple friends, but 4 personalities are a lot to try to merge together.

I think I will be in big trouble now. Now I need to make Family Friends. I thought of this when I was introducing Nikki's family to my family. First Nikki and I have to be friends (and with her taste in music and reality TV contestants that is always tenuous). Then, to be family friends we both need to have children. Luckily she has a little boy, Carter. Carter is 4, Charles is 1.5, so we have to see if they can get along. THEN there is the added complexity of getting the hubbies to be buddies. GEESH.

Well, I don't think I am quite ready to make family friends. I will be content with mixing and matching for now. Maybe I will concentrate on making Carter and Charles be friends and then work on the hubbies later.

How has your luck been with Couple friends and Family friends? Do you have any pointers for me?

A Delightful Disaster

or Rolling Down the River

or A 5 Hour Tour

Last Saturday I went rafting down the Rifle river with my good old friends Karen, Missy, Kayla, and Emily AND my good new friends Nikkie, Erin, Rob, and Kellie. It was definitely delightful, and definitely a disaster. I should have been clued in when the 2-3 hour trip to the river was full of torrential rain. When we got to the Rifle river we all hung out in the small gift shop hoping the rain would go away. There were promises that it was going to clear up later and we were not going to get our deposit back, so we decided to take our chances. We all bought rain suits that seemed to be a great bargain, and we headed out for the river.

My old friends and I were sharing a raft. Nikkie and Erin shared a canoe and Rob and Kellie shared another raft. We had more clues that the trip would be disasterous when the workers barely helped us get our boats in the water and when poor Erin slipped in the mud and completely soiled her favorite capri pants. However, none of that dampened our spirits. We were ready to go and every clue that we should do otherwise was simply met with laughter.

The disaster started when Nikkie and Erin tried to get into their canoe. The poor souls had never been in a canoe before. That combined with the wet weather and mushy river caused them to tip over several times. We decided it would be easier if the two of them came in the raft with me, and Karen and Missy took over the canoe. I was a little nervous about that at first. I wasn't yet good friends with these two new people. My nerves were quickly put to rest because these new friends were wonderful and because we connected the two rafts and the canoe together.

For the first four hours the trip was wonderful. The rain was only heavy once in a while and every now and then it even stopped. We were all in good spirits and laughed at everything from the low durability of the rain suits we bought, to the weather in Wisconsin, to being a fan of rain on facebook, to who knows what else. Everything was hilarious and no one minded that we were kind of going down the river in circles and backwards part of the time. The picture below should be evidence of how hard I was laughing, but really, when I look at it, it looks like I am crying. Believe me, the crying didn't start until the last hour of the trip.





We stupidly signed up for the 5 hour river tour. That tour was about 1 hour too long for me. After 4 hours we thought we were at the end. You are not supposed to bungy the boats together, so we unhooked and everyone went their own way. This would have been fine if we only had 10 minutes left on the river, but it turned out that we had a whole hour left. So, the two children (Kayla and Emily), two of my new friends (Nikkie and Erin) and I were left alone on the river in a raft. All along I was the most experienced rafter, but that wasn't really saying much. Now, I had to use that experience to get us to safety. I don't think that experience did me one lick of good. That last hour was pure misery. We tried to hold onto our good spirits, but the following factors made it impossible:

• We all had to go pee.
• We were all freezing cold.
• The rain started pouring harder than I had ever seen. I think it was a hurricane.
• We couldn't steer at all.
• We kept getting hit in the head by trees.
• We were going down the river in circles.
• We were weak from paddling so hard.
• There were campers along that stretch of the river who were making fun of us for rafting down the river in the rain.

I have never experienced such a long hour. I was sure that there would be no end to the river. I was sure that I was going to have to raise Kayla and Emily myself and that we were going to have to live as river people surviving on the fish (smelt...I got no laughs after my "you smelt it you dealt it" joke) that we could catch with our deteriorating rain suits. I would like to say we got to the end of the river shortly after giving up hope, but we gave up hope long before that and it was a miracle that we ever got off that raft. I have never been so soaking wet in my life. I was wetter than taking a shower or going swimming or anything. It was terrible. We all had extra clothes, but even changing into them was a pain. We all had to fit into a little tiny dirty bug infested bathroom and do our best to clean up. Poor Kellie had to buy a who Rifle River outfit. I have never been so happy to get into a car so I could be warm and dry. We drove from there to Tony's in Birch Run. I was exhausted...evidence below.

We were all literally shivering when we got to Tony's. I don't normally like hot beverages, but when little Emily (cuddling with me in the pic above) ordered hot chocolate, I had to follow suit. It was the best thing I ever drank in my whole life and it really warmed me up. After we all warmed up we recovered our positive attitudes and I had an excellent time chatting and eating and joking with all my new friends.

Karen and Missy asked me if I want to go hiking with them next time. I think the answer is NO. No offense, but I need a little time to forget this last trip into the wilderness.