Joshua's Spot

Autumn in all its glory

Fall has officially fallen at the Poopiness House. The days are getting noticeably cooler, we're starting to get rain at least once a week, the mornings and evenings are becoming chilly enough that Gimli's first walk of the day is quite, erm, "bracing" if I forget to throw a jacket over my PJs, and best of all, the trees are beginning to change color.

Mind you, autumn is my favorite time of year. There's just something poignant and special about it, this usually-all-too-brief transition between the basking days of summer and the bleakness of winter. It brings to mind the first days of the school year (which I, nerd that I was, always looked forward to), football games, jumping into leaf piles, playing soccer games on the weekends, lighting the fire in the fireplace for the first time since spring, breaking out the sweaters and jackets... Looking forward to the first snow fall of the year, and Thanksgiving, and the long, cold semi-hibernation of winter. It's a melancholy time, and given that I'm a native Midwesterner and primarily Dutch and Scottish to boot, melancholy is my native habitat. Autumn feels like home.

Which has been something I've missed since I moved out here - because Oregon (at least this part of Oregon) doesn't really have much of a noticeable autumn. Oh, there's plenty of fall color in town, where most of the trees are transplants from elsewhere, but all around the hills and mountains that surround us, you really have to look hard to notice any recognizeable changes from one season to the next, other than whether the grasses are green (in spring) or brown (any other time). Unlike, say, Michigan, or Massachusetts, or Virginia, or pretty much any of the other places I've ever lived, virtually all the native trees and plants are evergreen, or so non-descript in their autumn color that you'd hardly notice them changing unless you looked really, really closely. So fall out here is mostly noticeable because the temperatures finally drop down out of the 90s and 100s, and the rains begin.

This year, however, we have all these new trees that we planted in our home landscape, and every day brings a new surprise. Mind you, we were warned up front that the fall colors would be pretty stinted the first year because of transplant stress, and wouldn't be up to their full force the second year either, so it wouldn't be until the third year or so that we'd begin to see all the autumn colors that we should reasonably expect. But even so, any fall color is more than we've had up to this point, and it's a balm to my Midwestern soul. The maples and oaks are turning yellow and bronze and orange, the dogwoods have a few leaves that are a deep, deep blood red, and the vine maples (the one native plant we have that has any kind of color display) are slowly going flame-colored around the fringes. I can only imagine what this will all look like in a few years, when all these beautiful trees have had a chance to grow in and become established.

I can also only imagine what the leaf-raking job is going to be like - oy. But this is why we're breeding our own grounds crew. After all, what childhood would be complete without the job of raking leaves in the fall? Right?

Of mice and minivans...

Briefly:

I made my dad cry? KEWL...

Okay, now on to our regular daily programming. I thought I'd give you an update on what's been going on with Joshua's Daddy lately - I know, I know, you're not really interested, you'd rather hear about the baby. But TOUGH. (I'll throw in a baby picture, just to bribe you into listening. I'm that desperate for adult conversation, really.)

You're going to laugh at me (I know you are), but I've been approaching another major milestone in my downward slide into irretrievable parent-geek-hood: yes, I've been experiencing an early but pronounced stage of Minivan Envy. What's particularly sad about this is that it's only a year ago that I finally bought a Manly-Man Vehicle with more testosterone (barely) than what my kid sister drives - I guess we could argue about that, but I think I win just on the sheer fact of greater size, my Titan versus her Jeep. And now here I am, my monster truck relegated to duty as a baby-hauler, having been used hardly at all for its intended purpose of shlepping piles of dirt and trees and drywall and other such manly things, because first my knee reconstruction and then His Poopiness intervened before any major projects could get underway that would have required significant truckishness.

So I find myself overlooking the integral cargo tie-downs in the cargo bed, and the nifty little lockable toolbox in the outside of the left rear wheel well, and the four-ton towing capacity, and even the factory-applied (as opposed to aftermarket) bed liner... and wishing Mr. Truck had a baby-view mirror, so I could watch what the Pookachoo is up to in the back seat. And it would sure be nice if the truck had some sippy-cup holders, and maybe a set of LATCH attachments in the middle seat.

Clearly, I've unwittingly migrated into a market segment that Nissan did noooot have in mind when they set about designing a big, bad, macho manly-man truck. (For that matter, it's a market segment I didn't entirely have in mind a year ago, either - but then, who's complaining? I did get a really super-cool Jack Spade diaper bag for a wedding present, after all.)

All this comes to a head anytime I have to haul the whole family around, dad, mom, baby, and especially puppy, in one of our existing vehicles. The trip up to Klamath Falls weekend before last started the whole thought process; this past weekend, running all over the Grants Pass Greater Metropolitan (ha!) Area on the Garden Tour just gave it added impetus. Minivan Envy. You betcha. Boy would those sippy-cup holders and the baby-view mirror be nice...

The Garden Tour, mind you, is one of my very favorite things, and a highlight of the year. Not just because I love getting inspiration about all the beautiful things we could be doing with our property if only it weren't a Big Huge Dirt Pile (more on that in a moment) - but also because there's this undeniable voyeuristic pleasure in seeing how other people (usually richer people, admittedly) live and what kind of neat stuff they have around their houses. I peek into all the hedges and planting beds and underneath all the trees to see what's growing and try to play the "let's identify that plant" game; Felicia, meanwhile, peeks into all the windows and checks to see if the doors are locked, hoping she can get a look inside. (I just know I'm going to have to bail her out someday, if not for trespassing then for shoplifting, given her habit of "taste-testing" stuff from the bulk food bins at the grocery store and showing up at the checkout line with nothing but empty plastic bags.)

Of course, the downside to the Garden Tour comes at the end of the day, when we pull into our own driveway and are smacked in the face with a visual reminder that the various contractors working on our landscaping have been coming up with all new ways of de-beautifying our property. I know, I know, it's all just a stage, you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs and all that garbage, but still.

The latest taunt to our thwarted aesthetic senses was dumped into the landscape just yesterday: namely, a massive cement water tank half-buried next to our driveway, in an all-too-prominent location that makes it the very first thing one sees when pulling up to the house. The positive aspect of this monstrosity is that it should finally resolve our Water Problem - namely, lack thereof, due to some impossible-to-locate leak in the mile or so of PVC pipe that runs between the well we share with three other properties and our house, which became apparent just as we finished planting 50 or so new trees and ran out of natural rain to keep them happy with - which has been driving me crazy and keeping me running up and down hills with hoses (in between baby feedings and diaper changes) for the past month trying to keep all our plants and trees alive, which is NOT the preferred irrigation method around here.

The negative aspect to this solution to the Water Problem is that I'm not kidding, the first thing you see as you pull up is this massive cement vault, like somebody's tomb, sticking up out of the ground, with a bright fluorescent blue pressure tank and a bunch of Rube Goldberg-ish PVC tubing sticking out of the top of it, along with a truly lovely freestanding plywood... "thing" holding the breaker panel, which looks like a big signboard that's just waiting for a tourist trap ad to be stuck on it.

We're trying to come up with ways to hide, or at least disguise, King Tut's Tomb - not that we're not grateful to have a ready supply of water to support our plants in the manner to which they aspire, mind you. Apparently the traditional thing to do around Grants Pass is to stick a shed on top of it, on the theory that you've got this nice level cement pad already there, so you may as well park your lawnmower and weedwacker and meth lab and other assorted paraphernalia on top of it and stick some kind of a roof over them. Of course, it's also traditional in Grants Pass to park three generations' worth of worn-out cars, trucks, refrigerators, dishwashers, and surplus children in the front yard, in case you need spare parts or a handy place to bury a body. So perhaps we can come up with something less traditional, but a bit more elegant. They tell me it's not really a good idea to turn it into a lap pool, but I haven't given up yet.

Sadly, King Tut's Tomb fits in all too well with the rest of the landscaping at the moment, since our entire yard is basically a massive pile of dirt with trenches and pipes running through it more or less at random. They tell me there are several hundred perennials and shrubs waiting at our landscaper's property, all ready to go in once we have a ready supply of water, so hopefully if I can just be patient a bit longer everything will work out for the best, and we'll have a Real Yard Very Soon, as opposed to something all too closely resembling a BMX track. We'll see. Getting people up here to do Actual Work is a perpetual challenge, so I'm not going to hold my breath.

Wait! I have the solution! MINIVANS. Lots and lots of minivans, parked all over the front yard. They'll hide the dirt, AND I can shlep the whole family around in comfort and something vaguely resembling style, sippy cups and all.

Yeah, that's the ticket...

Shaking things up...

We actually felt this earthquake shake the house last night... No damage, of course - it was a long way away, and contrary to popular opinion, Oregon, unlike California, isn't really earthquake country - but still, the whole house shook slightly for a few seconds yesterday evening. Felicia and I both thought there was something new going wrong with the house, like the roof supports caving in or the foundation shifting, which just goes to show how our whole remodeling and home improvement process has been going lately (I've spared you the details, so far; trust me, it's been anNOYing). But no, it was just Mother Nature toying with us.

That I find that reassuring is perhaps somewhat alarming, but there you have it.

It's been pointed out to me that I failed to share a gazillion pictures from our wonderful little weekend getaway. No, this is not an oversight, I was simply hoping to duck the issue and allow yet more proof of my inherent dorkiness to pass by unnoticed. No such luck, so I guess I may as well fess up and get it over with. See, I took the camera along and fully intended to blaze away with it at anything that moved all weekend... but unfortunately, when I stuck it in the camera bag, I apparently did so in such a way that the "on/off" switch was accidentally flipped to the "on" position as it went into the bag. And then the thing proceeded to take lovely pictures of the inside of the camera bag until the battery ran out. (They're very, erm... "artistic," but somehow I don't think you'd be interested.) So no photos, really, to speak of, from the whole weekend. I know, I know! I failed in my fatherly duty, not to mention my obligation as a blogger-of-small-children. I'll do better next time, I promise! ("I coulda been a contenda...")

That's my excuse, and I'm sticking with it, thankyouverymuch.

Nesting, Nesting, and More Nesting...

A question I've been meaning to ask Maytag: why is it that no matter how long you set the dryer to run, the load is always damp on the first try?

Other great mysteries I've been pondering, as I try to blast through all the little things that we need to do to get ready for this little Tasmanian Devil who's about to land in our laps:

1) How does one keep all those thimble-sized baby socks together? (I see a train wreck looming on that one, with fifteen thousand singleton socks wandering around in the nursery dresser, each about the size of the tip of my pinky.)

2) What alternate uses can one find for surplus baby washcloths (of which we have enough to pave our driveway in plush polyester)? I'm thinking, like, maybe you could dry off a car with them, since they're a lot cheaper than chamois... though you'd have to sew together about, oh, thirty of them to get something manly-man sized. (And God help you if your buddies ever found out what you were waxing your ride with.)

3) Is it really possible that one little 8-ish-pound critter, who isn't even capable of independent motion much less making mudpies or eating fingerpaint (yet), could truly need so many clothes? I mean, short of putting on a fashion show, how is this little guy possibly going to go through so many onesies and socks and things?

Clearly, I've been doing Baby Laundry this morning. Not sure at what point it became a philosophical exercise - probably somewhere in the midst of folding all these things, which is a lot like making origami, actually. (Fold carefully, using only your pinky fingertips, tongue sticking out in concentration... my kingdom for a jeweler's loupe, so I could see what I'm doing...)

I'm beginning to see how these families with 13 kids actually happen - the parents had all these baby clothes and just hated to see them go to waste, so they kept popping out little ones to keep those onesies occupied. Tempting. I'll have to see what Felicia thinks about that, as a plan.

This week has been all about nesting. In other words, after 39 weeks and a few days thrown in after that brief moment of glory when we got ourselves into this mess in the first place, it finally penetrated my dinosaur brain that yes, we really are going to have a baby, and yes, I really am going to have to figure out how to take care of this little bugger after Felicia goes back to work and leaves me at home holding the diaper bag. Once I had this brilliant epiphany, and after I was done breathing into a paper bag and my heartrate was back to something approaching normal, I went into a blizzard of preparation. Which, in my little world, included some things that were fairly predictable (moving the bassinet and changing table into our bedroom, so Felicia's mom doesn't have us wandering in to change poopy diapers at 3am while she's here over the next few weeks)... and some things that would probably make sense only to my so-called brain, and maybe a few other similarly addled would-be and have-been ever-so-slightly-crazed dads-to-be (like calling all the landscaping contractors who are working on the house and setting in motion a flurry of activity, to make sure the baby has a lot of neato trees and a freshly redone front porch to come home to).

I just didn't expect Baby Laundry to be such a logistical and intellectual challenge... We may be in real trouble, here.