Tuesday Seth and the kids made a documentary of our house. This project did double duty as homeschool movie-making project and a way to give a tour of our new house to the folks who don’t live here. You will find the links here. Enjoy!
 I have dragged, pushed and carried an odd assortment of things down our street. The oddest that comes to mind was a rolling hamper full of dirty clothes. A few hours later I rolled that same hamper now full of clean clothes up the street. I’ve seen people walking stoves down the street and, when we moved, Sanford and Sons walked our stove, refrigerator and freezer down the street. But today I felt ridiculous.
We still have some things at the old house. We have two picnic tables, a jungle gym and we used to have a plastic playhouse. Today I was feeling young and full of energy so I went to the old house prepared to carry the playhouse back with me. Well, it turns out that the playhouse is actually much heavier than I thought it was. And the playhouse didn’t seem to want to come apart at the seams like it should have. Okay, I thought, I’ll just lug it down as it is. This was a good plan except that the playhouse wouldn’t fit through the gate. I pushed, I pulled, I even bent a gate post out a bit, but still the playhouse refused to fit through the gate. Finally, I managed to flip the playhouse up and over the gate. It landed with a crash and I was all ready to haul it away.
It is hard to feel dignified when one is pulling a plastic, pastel playhouse down the street. The pastel colors seem to lack a certain something and when the house catches on every bump and hillock one’s motions lack smoothness and grace. Thankfully, there were very few people out and about. I only saw two neighbors and a couple complete strangers. I got the playhouse all the way down the street, across the street, up the driveway and right to the gate before I noticed a disquieting fact. Our new gate is the same width as our old gate. The playhouse wouldn’t fit through the fence. And since our fence is about six feet tall there was no way I was going to be able to flip the playhouse over it by myself.
Not to fear!, I said to myself. There are plenty of children about. In fact, there were three children out in the back yard. Arianna, Samuel and Noah were very happy to see their playhouse, but not very confident in my plan to get it over the fence. I had just made Noah sit down at the kid’s picnic table to keep him out of the danger zone and had arranged Arianna and Samuel on one side of the playhouse when I heard a shout from the street. The man who had lived across the street from us before we moved had noticed my plight and come to help. He and I flipped the playhouse over the fence with no problems and then chatted about our house. He used to live in our house when it had been three apartments. After he left the kids and I put the playhouse together and they were very excited. It really makes our backyard look like ours.Â
As I’m writing this a thought occurs to me. We still have two picnic tables and a jungle gym left at the little house. There is no way I’ll be able to get them here by myself. I have decided I’m not even going to try.Â
It seems that I managed to get home just in time for the last bits of a cold that had been going around. I have skills.
So I was flopped in the front room yesterday watching Justice and trying not to categorize how yucky I felt. Because of poor planning I was flopped without the benefit of a tissue box. When I realized my lack I also realized that getting up seemed far too difficult. So I called Noah over and asked him to get me the tissues on dining room table. He left and came back with a tissue. I thanked him very much and then asked if he could get me the tissue box on the dining room table. He came back with another tissue. Now, please don’t misunderstand; I was very impressed with Noah’s helpfulness. I hadn’t expected him to be even this helpful. But two tissues won’t last long when one is in the throes of a bad cold. So, again, I tried to make myself clear. Noah, I said, could you please bring me the whole box. All the tissues.
Noah was gone somewhat longer this time. I replayed what I had asked him and decided I needed to investigate. I walked out to the dining room and, sure enough, there was Noah pulling tissue after tissue out of the box. He was trying to be so helpful I just had to laugh. I thanked him very much for his help and then held up the box. Noah, I said, This is a tissue box. He said something that sounded a lot like “Oh, a box.”
Here we have yet another Heroscape post. Thursday night Raquel and I played and Seth demanded a report. My apologies to the uninitiated.
“At forty points a squad that’s only ten points a Grut.”
“That’s better than you can get at the Asian Food Mart.”
We started by building the board. Samuel and Toby had something built, but it didn’t look like what we were looking for. However, I couldn’t bring myself to take apart the nifty castle they had put together so we played sans castle. We had some very specific design goals. Hill. With water. Oh, and road. So we made a very bumpy terrain that featured a waterfall spilling out in three different directions and had a road stretching from one end of the board to the other. We added the trees and agreed that it was a very pleasant looking picnic ground. I toyed with the idea of putting the ruins on the board, but Raquel pointed out that there wasn’t enough flat space for them to fit anywhere. About half-way through our oh so well thought out construction I mentioned that I was glad there were no men watching us. Specifically, that there were no men that are related to us present to mock us vigorously.
We finished the board mainly by running out of pieces. Then we drafted 300 point armies. Raquel was going for the squad strategy and so drafted the Izumi Samurai, the Marro Warriors, the Blade Gruts, the Zettian Guards and Raelin. I don’t think I had much of theory beyond ranged weapons and lots of movement points. I picked the Microcorp Agents because they had the above specifications and were really good in water, the Krav Maga Agents and Agent Carr. Yes, there was a bit of a theme.
The first half of the game went really well for me. My Krav Maga Agents managed to pick off both of the Zettian Guards in their first turn. I killed Raelin before she did anything other than move and the Samurai and two Blade Gruts before they did any damage. It was a this point that Raquel became a little, um, tetchy. I know how it feels to watch one’s army be obliterated because one can’t roll well to save their lives. It’s frustrating. But it was at this point that the tables turned and my dice started failing me. Slowly, but surely, my army lost ground and personnel to the advancing Marro hordes and the remaining Blade Gruts. Soon it was down to my last Micro Corp Agent facing two Marro Warriors and the very last Grut out to avenge his buddies. And still I couldn’t roll anything good! So after far too many turns of shooting and missing Raquel’s Marro Warriors finally managed to bring down my last Micro Corp Agent and she was victorious.
I was very pleased at how well my army worked together. I don’t consider myself much of a strategist, but I thought my army worked very well on the uneven terrain. Raquel put her army in a good place to do bad things, but her die rolling skills failed her. Altogether, it was very fun and a very satisfying evening.
I’m home! Hooray for me! It has been quite a hassle getting from here to there lately. You all heard about the adventures in getting there so when I say that coming back was just about as interesting I’m sure you will understand. I eventually had to take a bus from Chicago and then I walked home from the Bradley student center. It was just a couple of blocks, but it happened to be 7:30 at night. Seth had driven down to pick me up, but I wasn’t carrying a cell phone so he couldn’t tell me and the Lansberrys were borrowing our van so he wasn’t even driving a car I would have recognized. Apparently there was a thirty second period of time when he couldn’t see the door of the bus and it was in those thirty seconds that I chose to make my escape. He even described me to the bus driver who said that no one by that description was riding on his bus. It was an interesting ten minutes there for both of us.
So now I’m home and excited to pieces about it. Re-entry had been a little trying due to having to go pick up my luggage the day after I got here and because I got very used to my sister’s quiet house. Justice is teething which seems to require lots of shrieking and Kitty is just being her normal yappy self. Yesterday was a grumpy day, but then the Lansberrys came over for dinner and brought the sunshine with them.
It is strange to realize that I was only gone for two weeks because things change very rapidly when I leave. I remember coming back the last time I went to Erie for over a week and Crystal was wearing make-up and clothing she actually liked. But that’s a story for another time. The big change this trip is that Seth and Crystal have decided to make some rather drastic changes to our diet. Translated this means that we are going to be eating more, how shall I say it?, freaky odd, whole foods. Crystal also found a good source for farm fresh eggs and a legal source for farm fresh milk. To get the fresh milk, however, we have to bring our own containers. So where does one find six or seven one-gallon glass jars? That’s right, folks, in the pickle aisle. Yesterday Crystal bought seven gallons of pickles. Seven gallons. Of pickles. Luckily, they are kosher dills so they will probably be consumed at a disturbing rate. We served them after dinner as a sort of dessert and between our two families we ate an entire gallon. There are only six more to go. Today I had the fun job of repackaging six gallons of pickles so that we could run the jars through the dishwasher. I’m glad we have a sanitize feature on our dishwasher. Images of pickle flavored milk keep running through my head. Yuck.
This visit to Erie was very nice because I was glad to be there while I was there and I was glad to be going home when I was. And now I am home and very glad to be here.
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