Our first living pet joined our household last month. This is huge, breaking news, as Meg and I very publicly loathe the idea of sheltering animals inside our living space (raising chickens in a coop outside? maybe some day). One perk of having kids who are mildly allergic to pet dander is that we have a legitimate excuse for rejecting the kids occasional plea for adopting a pet. Somehow this one slipped through the cracks. May I introduce Shelly, a 15-year old western box turtle. She lived with another family in Westmoreland who, ironically, became too busy with their young children to take care of her anymore. Meg found a listing for Shelly on craigslist while looking for someone who might have lost a cat, as one had recently showed up on our porch and refused to leave. I figured it was a stray, as it had no identification, but Meg insisted it belonged to someone. Meg doesn't like it when I tell this story, but just before bringing Shelly home, Edward picked up the mystery cat, disappeared, and returned maybe 15 minutes later. And that's the last we saw of that cat (that's how I wish the story ended, but it did come back a few weeks later, but our second shooing-away apparently worked)--it felt like a scene from a Haruki Murakami novel (where cats, especially disappearing ones, are frequently major plot elements).
Shelly seems to be pretty resilient to the kids' not-so-gentle and generally irresponsible habits and is still alive a month later. She lives in a large, plastic storage box in Aaron's room. The boys are supposed to take her outside every day, where she loves to crawl around and hide in the bushes throughout our garden. I haven't figured out what exactly she likes to eat, but I do know she loves earthworms and will eat sow bugs. Western box turtles can supposedly live about 50 years in captivity, so Shelly might out-stay even Edward (who has in the past claimed he's never moving out--he has lately softened this assessment though).
Mt. St. Helens was beckoning us the whole trip I had planned on taking a vacation day the day before Meg and I were to begin our celebration of 15 years married to each other, but Meg suggested just working through the day as she had class all morning and her job to attend to in the afternoon, and then taking the next Friday off and take the kids to the pool or something. The pool? Nah, I wanted to do something memorable, something they would remember for years to come. While that may seem like a tall order for my boring-routine lifestyle, I think I may have actually pulled it off. Back to that conversation with Meg about going to the pool, I voiced my interest to go to Mt. St. Helens and camp and go on all-day hikes. Wow, that actually sounds really good; I better figure out how to make it happen. I searched semi-casually for a camping spot to reserve, but there was nothing, which wasn't surprising given the nature of the request. There were walk-in spots available, but ther...
Aging is a gradual process, so why should I worry when the clock officially tacks on another number to my age? Perhaps I should have realized that, as my peers began turning 40, and I would post half-serious questions about their experience, that I had my own issues brewing steadily in the background. I don't think I've had a birthday party since I was six, but Meg insisted on having one for me--something about 40 being a milestone or something, despite my arguments that I had done nothing significant to warrant anything--I had simply aged another year. But I conceded the point. I offered up the idea of a roller skating party--which is probably what my last party was; see, I haven't changed a bit--but I think she laughed that one out of the rink pretty quickly. I get daily emails from Groupon and LivingSocial, and they had something for a karaoke box rental. My half-Japanese side recognized something that could be fun and probably aligned with my personality. I told Meg...
I don't think I've been on a true backpacking trip before. Back in high school, my friend Bart and I planned a multi-day trip to Carl Lake, but we ended up turning around after one night of camping at Cabot Lake because it was raining so much and we'd rather stay at his family's cabin instead. I also hiked up to Moraine Lake as a scout leader, on the way to South Sister, where we camped in preparation to summit Oregon's third tallest peak, but we left all of our gear at the lake on the second leg of our climb. That was back in 2001. I first learned of the Timberline Trail by reading a brief summary of it in, of all places, Portland Monthly. Sure, it was 35 miles farther than I had ever backpacked before, and it involved two more days and nights, and I would be going solo. But the summer of 2016 is all about change and new beginnings for me. Day 1: Timberline Lodge to Ramona Falls I slept in Tuesday morning, as I was up late Monday night making my final preparat...
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