happenings

I took Monte to the airport again yesterday - or maybe I should say, he again flew to Tucson for geologic research and writing with Stan. When he's gone, I don't have to think about creative meals, so it's a nice break (except I did have Gary spending the night with Dawson since they were studying for a history exam. So I did do some cooking, but easy simple stuff).

I started painting the laundry/exercise room today. Since I had given Dawson and Gary free reign to explore texture with drywall compound in that room last fall, and it's pretty thick and rustic, I thought I better put on a drywall sealer-primer first. I'm glad I did - it was so 'thirsty' it really soaked up the stuff! I'll finish painting it tomorrow with two colors. When I'm done I'll take pictures and post them.

I bought some fun kid maps of the world to put on the wall in front of the treadmill. I like looking at something with lots to look at and learn from. I'll change things out for new viewing off and on. I'm toying with putting up the old homeschool timeline we had in the laundry room. Don't know ...

That room has undergone several changes since we built this home 24 years ago. Since we didn't finish the upstairs for awhile, living in the downstairs, the laundry room started out as Monte's and my bedroom. Then it became Monte's office for years. We talked of turning it into my office or craft room, but I like what it's become - still laundry with a door into the garage and exercise equipment. It's on the north side of the house and overlooks the front porch. A macrame window-covering I made in our first townhouse when first married hangs in the window.

The funniest story of it as our bedroom has to do with a porcupine under the window in the night rustling in some flats of plant starts. Naked Monte went out to scare it away. But a porcupine? What happens when a porcupine gets scared?! No, it didn't fling it's quills at Monte, but it wouldn't go away and just kept eating all my baby plants. All that was around was a snow shovel, so Monte tried using it to shoo it away, to no avail. Then he began thinking about our dogs and vet bills and the ponderosa trees the porcupine had stripped. So he hit it and knocked it out. He then carried it all the way down our driveway (remember he's naked but for shoes)(and our driveway is long) and buried it in the ditch. Well ... a few weeks later a couple in an old Cadillac were trying to turn around at the bottom of our driveway and landed in the ditch, right where Monte had buried the porcupine. As they spun their back tires trying to get out, the porcupine, which had turned into a quilly, soupy, rank consistency, was flung all over their Cadillac and the road.

Well ... moving on to another type of soup, at the end of the BLT Soup post, I mentioned it was snowing that day after a 70 degree day for March 1st and now it's supposed to start snowing again tonight into tomorrow. We'll see what March brings, though warmer and lots of snow and ice melting, the road has already started that 'greasy' mud that's almost worse than ice.

I get Monte at the airport on Friday.