Fire and Ice

Good morning! Yesterday was a fun day. You know, any day can be fun with the right attitude. That’s kind of how yesterday was.

We went to the school for Seth to do PE and then came home. I’ve decided that Monday and/or Tuesday would be good for field trips because our schedule is already messed up. Tuesday probably is best because it messes up the schedule worse than Monday’s Art. If we just pack a lunch, we could go almost anywhere within an hour or so and do some exploring. Especially now while the weather is nice. Once winter hits we’d have to find indoor places to go like museums. There are enough of those around that it shouldn’t be too difficult. Maybe one day we could do the tour of local cemeteries like I’ve been wanting to do for a while; I’d love to go and take pictures of gravestones. I’m not sure how excited the boys would be about that but I would like it. I think we could make some games up that might help them out.

After school, we came home and did school. I’ve been having Seth and Joseph do the tests/assessments for math so that I can make sure they are where they should be. So far, they’re both breezing through the work. I thought we’d just do it Monday and be done with it but we’re still going and I really don’t want them to stop until they’ve reached a point where they can still do the work but don’t already know it. Honestly, I really kind of wonder what Seth’s problem with math was last year because he’s not having any this year. Some of the problems he will look at and say, “I don’t get it,” but when I have him read it slowly, he does. I guess I don’t really wonder what the problem was last year: it was the lack of someone sitting there making sure he did the work and explaining when necessary. Reading, on the other hand, he just doesn’t enjoy; we are working on that.

While we were at school, Paul called and asked if I would stop at Ray’s and take pictures of an old Chrysler Ray wants to sell. Since I’d already said I would but had forgotten, I said I would. We did. Ray had it up on a lift but got it down and drove it outside. If anyone knows anyone who wants it, he mentioned that he’d like to keep the engine but wants to sell the rest. I had the boys get out of the car while I was taking pictures and Seth was having a fit because he thought that Paul wanted to buy the car and we already have enough junk. I explained that I was taking pictures because Ray wants to sell the car and Paul said that he’d put it on Craigslist for him. Then Seth asked, “Why can’t he do that himself?” Well, Ray has no computer and no internet access so it would be really difficult for him to. Besides, putting things on Craigslist is something that Paul can do when he’s on hold with customers. That satisfied him on that count.

In the afternoon, Joanna and Zak came over for cake and ice-cream. That was nice. I like Joanna and Zak. Twenty candles, though, make a lot of flame and sure do brighten a room up. Cedric couldn’t wait half an hour when he got home and left to go to Ryan’s. Stinker. I told him he should have asked Ryan if he needed a ride to scouts but he didn’t think that was necessary. As it turns out, they didn’t even know there was scouts last night so Ryan ended up not there so Cedric asking if he’d like a ride would have at least alerted them to the fact that there was. Such is life.

See what I mean? There was so much light from the candles that it made the rest of the house look dark.

And in the evening, Cedric had scouts. I took my knitting thinking I would do that until it was too dark and my computer thinking I could use it after it was too dark to knit. Well, I knit one row and decided I needed to fix the chart so I did that. It was really too dark to see without a light already anyway and when I printed the chart, the squares were really small because I wanted to fit it all on one page. I think it’s all fixed now and I’m going to print it out in two parts but the same page I think.

And that was kind of that. Sort of. I actually had done four rows of the pattern I thought I was going to use for my socks but I didn’t really like it that much so I decided to do something else. What I ended up doing is a combination of two ribbing and two cable patterns. It is now a twenty-four row by eighty stitch pattern repeat. And the eighty stitches are why the graph is pretty small when I made it fit on one page.

Other than that, I managed to write over 1,000 words on my Hywel and Cailin story, fed up a decent lunch and a decent dinner, and worked on my bedroom. Seth took the screen protector off my tablet and I won’t let anyone use it until I find the extras so I can put one on. I thought they were in the box the tablet came in but no, they weren’t. The bedroom is such a mess that finding them isn’t an easy task so, since I wanted to clean anyway, I’m doing that in the search. I haven’t gotten very far but I figured slow and steady doing a good job would be better than fast and furious doing a crappy job. And I’ve already gotten rid of two good sized bags of clothes for Salvation Army and I’m working on a good sized bag of garbage. The best part is that I’ve found missing socks galore and yesterday I found the missing fabric stash that I hadn’t found in the attic last week. It has some awesome stuff in it including some brocades and a piece of organza I got that I love (well, why else would I have gotten it?).

When I first showed this picture to Cedric, he thought it was a tornado. Imagine that coming at your house with 45 mph winds blowing. Yikes!

In other matters, I’ve been thinking about Siskiyou County a lot these past couple of weeks. They’ve been through the ringer this summer. Lots of fires. The fires around Happy Camp, as of yesterday, had consumed 131,996 acres and cost an estimated $86,700,000 with 85% of the perimeter contained. There were several other fires this summer as well, including the one last week in Weed, and that is just Siskiyou County; Shasta County was hit and at least one of the fires that affected Siskiyou was partly in Oregon as well. The dry, hot weather has not helped. On the other hand, there are trees with seeds that cannot germinate without fire so even tragedy has within it the hope of life.

This is just one section of town after the fire. The devastation is just incredible.

Other than fires, the glaciers on Mt. Shasta have been compromised this summer and a chunk of the Konwakiton Glacier (I’d heard that part of the Mud Creek Glacier, too) broke off and caused a flash flood watch for Mud Creek. According to a blog post I read (http://blog.sfgate.com/stienstra/2014/09/22/fractured-mount-shasta-glacier-triggers-flood-pics/#26942101=0), the largest mud flow event in the past 100 years was 90 years ago in 1924 in the same area. There’s a reason why it’s called Mud Creek, you know.

And check this out. You can see where it is and where it was and gosh that is a LOT of mud. (And you know that if we were in Siskiyou County, we would be there checking it out in person.)

So, in other words, Siskiyou County has experienced fire and ice this summer. I really hope they experience a little more ice this winter; they need it.

Have a splendiferous day!