White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Late to bed ... late to rise? I guess, if 0800 is considered late. Since the macro-mastodons relieved themselves late last night, they did not believe it was a pressing issue. It was a good morning for sleep ... Jake was sleeping across the bed and Alexis had tossed off her blankets. They woke once they heard me enter their rooms and immediately pounced on the opportunity to bum-rush their greatest proponents. The Mrs, however, is still under the weather and stays in bed. I thought I would be the one getting direly ill, but somehow I'm managing to escape it while she is reaping the worst of it. At this rate, we may not get to visit our friends in Rochester.

After getting cleaned up, the kids and I headed out to do some rather important stuff ... like throwing rocks into the gully. The dogs thought that this was the most brilliant thing they had ever seen and would chase each-other down into the stagnant pools of skeeter infested runoff. Of course, after they ran out of sticks, branches and redwood trunks to haul back up out of the ravine, the started hauling boulders and bracheosaurus thigh bones up for the kids to toss back down. This could have gone on indefinitely if it were not for our appointment with the fishing hole.

We stop off at Big Little Brothers place and feed some apples to the horses before heading off to the pond where we will spend a few hours harassing the big-mouth bass. The horses are not spring chickens. One of them, Rebel, is 30 years old and has only two teeth left. Perfect for the kids since he cannot do much harm even if he tried to bite. Since he is quite fond of kids (who incidentally only want to pet, scratch and feed him), it's a perfect match. After we ran out of apples and grass, Jacob spotted an Ithacat off in the hay storage. Yes, it's an ITH-A-CAT. A particularly inbred version of a tom-cat indigenous to the area that has several toes on each foot. I believe the genetic term is called polydactyl. The peculiar version of it here can allow you to have 6 toes on one foot and 8 on another so they don't match. So Jake was in hot pursuit of the farm cat that had no real interest in being molested so made a quick get-away after a short time. That left Jake perched precariously atop several bales of hay from which he had to repel down. Fortunately, his descent was buffered by a rather loose pile of hay that mostly ended up within his clothing. Most entertaining by his judgment. Enough of the agricultural adventure ... off to the fishing hole.

The fish were biting even though is was nearly noontime. Best time to have done this would be early in the morning or late in the evening. Uncle Paul pulled a little Big Mouth Bass out of the drink and the kids got a bunch of nibbles. The patients part about fishing became rather evident and the luster of activity soon worn off.
I suppose that later on in life, just sitting about and throwing back a few cups of milk will appeal more to them. Wait till they actually catch something. Nemo will be horrified.

We head on back to the FOB and find that the Mrs has actually got out of bed today and bathed. That's good to see. Once we get settled in, she and grams go out to do a little shopping. That seems to be a good sign, but by the time they get back she is on the skids again and I send her right back to bed. Second night in a row is not a good sign. If this keeps up, we'll have to cut the vacation short and drag her back to Philly and right into the emergency room. While she is in her convalescing period, the remainder of the family dives into dinner and does a little cook-out thing afterwards. Yep, you can't go to the Grandparents FOB and not cook marshmallows over a campfire and make smoores. Of course, the kids think that this is some sort of opportunity to play with flammable projectiles. We spent most of the time trying to keep the kids out of the fire and nearly the same amount of time trying to keep the sugar balls from exploding in a napalm like slurry of flaming death. It was getting late and the only thing keeping the kids awake was the sugar. They got a quick bath, a few stories and then into bed. After that, it was daddy time. I watched a few episodes of 24. I'm not a big TV watcher so I've never seen the show before. I was actually quite impressed. It helps that we got to see several shows back-to-back. I suppose I'm impatient (wonder where the kids get it from) so waiting a week to see a 30 minute slice of something would kill my interest. Afterwards, I threw in a DVD player and watched Sahara till about 0100. Dried up river, eh? I'll betcha the fishing is pretty crappy.

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 3:38 PM