This life

I hope my kids grow up remembering that their Daddy could fix anything.



My own Dad builds cabinets. Embedded deep in my brain is the sound of his saw, the smell of the wood, laughing as the air compressor blasted off the sawdust I had inadvertently collected on my skin when it was time to go home.



I wonder if it will be the smell of gasoline, the sound of the summer bugs and the toolbox drawers opening and closing, the happy sprawled dog panting beside them, the feel of wearing the shop floor on their dirty bare feet... but I hope it brings them right back.

The Mystery of the Multiplying Caterpillar

If a man jogs all the way down the road and happens to see that his neighbors are home, he'll stop for an evening chat. If the discussion turns to wondering about the battalion of fascinating black caterpillars that are marching through their yard, he'll say he doesn't know what they are, but he knows someone who does. If he gently picks one up and safely carries it a full mile back the way he came, he'll deposit the bewildered spiky insect in his wife's hands. If she has never seen one before and hasn't got a clue what type of butterfly larva it is, she'll click around online. If she finds the perfect match, it will be a species that lives in Europe.

Europe?

Wrong answer.

But if the online images of that butterfly's wings look vaguely similar (in pattern, but not color) to one that does live on the windswept North American plains, all that sleuthing might not have been in vain. And if I'm fresh out of Snapdragons but the apparently somewhat-slightly-related European critter likes Nettles, you know I grabbed a scissors, a jar, and a flashlight, and ran straight out past the barn, through the corral, and behind one of the gardens to a big old patch of Stinging Nettle.

Not literally, I mean.

Don't run with scissors. Ever. Especially in the dark, when half-grown cats are liable to come creeping along the darkest shadows of the garden path and ambush innocent seekers of Stinging Nettle. Stranger things have happened, believe me.

If the caterpillar happily munches away on that nasty stuff, I might mutter "Homeostasis is at ninety-five percent".

If a Bio-Dome quote randomly surfaces, there must be a former Pauly Shore fan in the house.

If that's embarrassing, let's pretend it didn't happen.

The critter seemed happy enough so I tossed the jar on a shelf for a day or three.

Welcome to the The Old Nichols Farm... where the wackiness level fluctuates between "coconut" and "fruitcake" depending on whether we had oatmeal for breakfast, the Earth's geomagnetic activity (honestly - I've tracked it long enough to know), and how many fireflies are loose in the house.

Fruitcake:

I have no idea what that thing is. She found it in the yard. I caught her just in time to save a very trusting cat (please don't ask).

So I know you won't be surprised. In the least. I mean, I wasn't. What? When I casually mention that we popped the lid off that jar a perfectly responsible amount of time later (cough, cough) to give our captive some fresh food. We carefully dumped the jar upside down and found...

Two?

What? What!

Yes, in our jar.

Exactly identical.

What on earth!?



My first thought was that someone had played a great joke on us. However, my awareness of our household having entered The Fruitcake Zone told me that much more fantastic options had the possibility of being true. Anything, people. Anything is possible.

Sure enough, that patch of Stinging Nettle had been attacked. Eaten up. We found a swarm of spikey black caterpillars all over the remaining plants. I somehow managed to identify our caterpillar so perfectly that I had inadvertently collected another one a few nights prior. And strangely enough, as many times as we had inspected that jar we had only ever seen one.

If you tell me something that bizarre can happen in The Coconut Zone, I'll tell you you're crazy.

Fruitcake Queen. I'm putting it on my resume.

Not a unicorn

Accepting my fate of having lost my blogging mojo, with a stocking cap firmly on my head, unaware I was out of hot coca mix... I headed out the door determined to fill a bucket to the brim. Last time it was spinach. This time I was after the peas. A week ago I composed an Ode to the Glory of Home Grown Spinach in my head. But I dare not publish such a thing here lest it make me sound weird.

First, I managed to tangle myself in the no-chickens-allowed-on-the-greener-side fence. I mean like really, the toe of my rain boot got hopelessly caught in one of the square space thingies as I tried to step over it, and the whole wretched thing collapsed with me attached. I'm not a cowgirl (which I guess is obvious when I say "like really" and other hippie phrases) so I have to wear rain boots. But I did buy them from the farm store. So maybe I'm an imposter?

Anyway, that kind of fence doesn't stop adolescent cats. Well, no fence does. But that and the fact that the wild little beasties are almost as destructive in my garden as the goofy feathered rototillers are topics for another day. Okay. So I crashed to the ground, minus a boot (rain, not cow), and was instantly wearing a black and white cat on my hat.

Glory be. I had arrived.

There were the peas.

The belligerent things should have been ready to harvest weeks ago.



I found which way was up and extracted the cat from my head.

And a brisk forty-mile-an-hour fifty-degree North Dakota wind went straight down, as my little girl would say, "mine butt track".

Coincidentally, we washed sand out of hers yesterday.

Likely these new jeans don't fit me around the waist as well as I thought they did. The jeans that have these funny scratches on the thighs that made nervously interrogate the sales lady as to whether they were designed to fray, even though I already knew the answer. She looked me straight in the eye and lied to me. I bought them anyway because even once-a-year clothes shopping is complete ridiculousness and I'd had enough of it... and (I thought) they fit amazingly well - no small victory when you have the figure of Popeye's Olive Oyl.


From Wikipedia

However, that daring blast of wind proved it was much too miraculous to be true. I bet cowgirls don't wear their brand new jeans to the garden. They wear belts too. Don't they? To keep the wind and sand out?

The dog howled.

The cold wind blew.

The peas were harvested.

And then it happened...



Not a unicorn. Let me repeat. Not. A. Unicorn.

And don't any of you leave a comment saying, "Wow. A Monarch!". Not a Monarch. A Viceroy. They're a less celebrated butterfly designed to fool birds, kind of similar to how sales ladies are designed to tell customers exactly what they want to hear.

Now I'm going to make up a new batch of hot cocoa mix, because it's June in North Dakota and I'm cold. I'm going to outwit that sales lady and iron a patch onto the inside of my new Jeans, because I'm clever like that and not a bit stylish. And I'm going to insist the peas are delicious, but the spinach was better.

Love,
Olive

Rainbows? Just my luck.

Scavenger Hunt at Ashley's.

Honestly, this feels like an excuse, a painless impersonal way to ease myself back into blogging again. Nearly seven weeks? Life goes on. We're now well into our summer schedule. It's not a smooth transition for us, change rarely is. Worse yet (as far as blogging is concerned), the only camera I have any desire to use isn't digital. I really had to push myself to shoot the big gun again this week rather than officially list it for sale. But I did pick that camera up, even though I didn't want to, and without throwing a tantrum too. Sometimes, as my oldest child is learning, sometimes that's what counts.

1. Shine
Awhile back I swore I was finished with the rainbows and unicorns. Finished! Well, as it turns out, I'm a liar. "Exhibit A"


2. Fast
These pigeons are squatters in our far barn. The barn we don't use. The barn that glass randomly shatters in the windows as the big building shifts. They're nervous fidgety birds. They don't like company. And, they're fast.


3. Left
The dog ran off and left him there. Poor lonely puddin'.


4. Peace
Some evenings I race out of here to catch the last hour or two of daylight and a shred of sanity. My time may be filled with a number of things or critters, but always peace. Oh, look, there's another rainbow. "Exhibit B" *sigh* Stand by for unicorns...


5. Plain
Since eggs are a renewable resource around here, it seemed only natural to start my seedlings in the shells.

This idea is from Pinterest, but the original pinned link was broken, so unfortunately I can't give credit where it's due.

Oh... Hi blog

Oh, Hi there Blog.

We're all still here. Plus one.

Arnold is a daddy. Shhh... don't tell Red.

Three weeks

No, I did not give up blogging for Lent.

Three weeks, four doctor visits, five prescriptions, one birthday. A husband gone overseas and back home, and gone again but not that far away, and back home again to find us still utterly miserable. Really, I try my hardest to be sarcastically positive in this little online space, so instead of the unending seriously-nothing-can-go-even-remotely-right-around-here list, I will say this... Today was good. I did not wreck my car. I did not burn my house down. We are all still alive. These are basic things, you know, but they count. They do count. They must.

Because the first of us to get sick, treated and recover from this horrid stuff? Sick again. With the same thing.

I'm trying to find the light. I'm struggling to see it.



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Onward

Onward, because tomorrow is a new day (and I really have no other acceptable choice anyway).

Last weekend was fueled by a neglectful stupidity, the high-magnitude type that spirals from bad to worse in a particularly horrifying domino effect. When I looked back and realized that the moment the frazzled cashier cussed her computer out in front of my kids was actually one of the better moments, I had the choice to either sigh in defeat or laugh at the insanity of it all. Except by that point I was far too tired to laugh.

Driving onward, with lessons learned.



Those lessons will be useful, I suppose, the next time my husband is in The Netherlands and calls at 2am to calmly say that none of his credit cards are working. Because now I'll know that the bank that does the immediate Western Union money transfer doesn't have their lobby open on Saturdays, and they don't do that through the drive-through. I'll know not to attempt to purchase too much Western Union "Go Cash" at Family Dollar or the computer will lock up for an unspecified expanse of time while accusing me of fraud (and I'll even know the correct location of said dollar store - the only place in town that has it). I'll also know they only accept cold hard cash as payment. And I'll be certain that when it can't get any worse, it will. And no, really, you don't want to hear the other half of the story.

Tomorrow is a new day. Can I get an Amen?