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Idaho, Part 2: The Caves

In the Babe Ruth Regional Tournament, each baseball team was only required to play one game per day whereas most tournaments see them play between two and three times each day.  When I was first made aware of the schedule, I thought of two things; first, what the hell were we going to do with a bunch of highly energetic teenaged boys for the rest of the time and, secondly, this was going to cost me a shit-load of money.

Thankfully, I was wrong.  Most of the area tourist attractions are really inexpensive and totally rudimentary.

There were the waterfalls for which the town was named after.  They are subtitled Niagara of the West and, like the Niagara Falls, they are prodigious and infinite and a wonder to see but, unlike Niagara Falls, there is no fanfare associated with them.  The cost to get to a viewing post was $3 per car load and there was one small souvenir / refreshment booth.  There were trails up and down the canyon and personal residences along the cliff.

I felt as though I had inadvertently stumbled upon them.

These waterfalls held the boys' collective attention for almost twenty minutes.  A true feat.  Included in the thee dollar admission was access to a small lake with low cliffs, lifeguards, floating docks and and dozens of Sunfish that would pull bread out of the boys' hands.  And, so went the rest of that day.

The following day, we set off for the highly publicized Shoshone Ice Cave.  The price of admission included a guided tour given by a lifer area resident.  She, of course, was knowledgeable about the cave itself but she also shared the history and pop culture of the region.  First ice cold beer in the west available all year thanks to the seemingly endless supply of ice.

The Ice Cave is actually a one thousand foot long lava tube created by one of the area dormant volcanoes.  Only the perfect combination of conditions can cause of one these lava tubes to create ice:  east to west direction and low pressure wind flow at the appropriate velocity to allow for the desert air to be cooled enough by the porous lava rocks to be able to freeze the underground water flow.  The temperature difference between the desert above and the inside of the cave is around 40 degrees Celsius in the summer.

Good education.

Then, in sharp contrast, on the way back to town, a few of us decided to stop at another cave.  The hand-made sign on the highway pointed down a single lane gravel road towards a Mammoth Cave and Museum; from the highway, we could see nothing.

The road ended on a claimed piece of desert that was strewn with seemingly unplanned buildings, reclaimed skeletons of carriages and cattle, live pigs and peacocks, character faces carved into stones and a large round building built from various densities of lava rock.  There was one other car in the small parking lot and a mid-70's model monster truck parked by what I assumed to be the caretaker's residence.

The first thing that the six of us faced when entering the large circular building was a crocodile that had to have been over twenty feet long (stuffed, not an imminent threat).  Not exactly what I was expecting to see at a cave in the middle of the desert.  The young man seated behind the manual cash register and propane lanterns told us that his Dad is a hunter and taxidermist and the price of admission ($4 - $7 each) included a tour of the Museum and the loan of a lantern for the "cave out back".

The Museum was, in reality, a mausoleum.  There were thousands of dead and stuffed things, skeletal remains, fossils and pelts.  Creatures from every medium and every place on earth were posed as if, at any moment, the spell would be broken and they would go on with their day.  In defence of the hunter-killer guy who stuffed all of these, many specimens were brought to him following the animal's unfortunate, but unplanned, demise.

It still looked like something that could set the ominous atmosphere for many horror movies.

As most know, Liam-the-thirteen-year-old-boy has an irrational fear of certain animals like turkeys and anything in the water that has teeth.  He was touring with two other thirteen year old boys so he certainly couldn't start screaming like a girl but he was more than willing to point out the obvious ferocity of the wild turkey with a certain satisfaction.

While touring ahead, I could hear his voice echoing along the walls from the water creature section, "Oh, great!  Now I can't go swimming in the Philippines either."

Then, the main event; the Mammoth Cave.

The six of us took three propane lanterns and started towards the entrance to the cave.  No tour guide, no map, no electrical.  I asked our host if he would come looking for us if we didn't return within a couple of hours.

He didn't even look up from his comic book, "Nope."

I would have thought that the lanterns were at least worth something to him.

I thought this sign at the entrance was a joke but in the 1960's during the Cold War, the US government approached the owner to ask permission to use this cave to house local citizens in the event that the local B-52 base was targeted.  For the next twenty years, the Mammoth Cave held enough supplies to feed 8000 people for an undisclosed period of time.

Recipe for good entertainment:

1.  Look at a bunch of dead things.

2.  Notice the random shot gun casing outside the cave.

3.  Read the sign.

4.  Have your super-mature parents take away your lanterns mid-cave.

5.  Keep up the air of nonchalance since you are hanging with your friends and, once again, can't scream like a girl.

Good Times.

Things that Coil

The phone rang; I answered it.  It was Liam-the-thirteen-year-old-boy calling.... from the bathroom, on his cell phone.

"Hi Mom.  I'm taking a dump and there's no toilet paper in here."

We are currently renovating the bathroom so there is nothing in there except a toilet and a shower.  The extra toilet paper was out in the hall.  I looked for a Bic pen to disassemble (because that's what MacGyver would do) to pick the locked door knob.

I was quite surprised to find that most pens seem to have a thicker, ratcheting type system these days and they do not fit into a door knob.  Who knew?  So, found a nail.

Liam, waiting patiently, shouted from his post, "I can get up and come to the door."

"NO!!!  Keep your butt planted on the toilet."

"OK.... I've made a lasso!  You have to see this.  It's not quite long enough but it still looks cool."

Now, I have to ask, in the context that I have presented above, what do you think he was talking about?  I'll tell you what I thought.  I thought he was being a typical teenaged boy who was bored waiting for his Mom to break in and give him toilet paper and was, therefore, peering into the toilet to see what shape his poop had made in the toilet.  Similar to a wistful girl picking out shapes of unicorns, bunnies and Justin Timberlake in the clouds.

I did the predictable thing and threw the toilet paper at him through a six inch opening in the door and told him that he's disgusting.  Daily reminder.

Five minutes later, Liam came into the living room swinging a piece of string around above his head.  His lasso.

The voices in my head are now shouting, "Don't jump to conclusions, don't judge, don't be so cynical, don't assume............"

Hellhound

While I've been away from home with work this week, Luna has decided to reside at Chez Le Pound.

The timeline:  I left home Sunday, Hellhound bolted from the kids on Monday, the kids finally grew the balls to tell me she was missing on Thursday and we phoned the local SPCA to find her today (Friday).  I return home tomorrow with my flight landing roughly fifteen minutes before late check out at the Chez.  I'm thinking of rounding her stay out to a full week.

I'm not a bad pet owner, The Ex is.  This dog is his dog.  However, while he lives the glorious life a world traveler, I get to feed her, pick up her crap, brush her and, now, post her bail.  While The Ex is in the country, he takes Hellhound for visitations and treats her like her place is somewhere above The Thirteen Goddesses of Greek Mythology.  Nice for her; major behaviour problems for me when I get her back.

Naturally I have handled this in my usual reactive fashion and fired off an email to The Ex filled with reprisal and loathing.  Because that's worked so well for me in the past.

If He Would Just Wear His Boots....

Some misadventures can start with the best of intentions that go terribly awry.  A chain of events that flows down a dark path filled with wrong turns and growing lies.

Liam-the-thirteen-year-old-boy owns a pair of great winter boots; like new, rarely been worn.  We have ..... oh..... let's call it 3 feet of snow everywhere.  Liam wears his running shoes, always, and they are therefore always wet and in some state of putrid molding.  Since I choose to pick my battles and I have long since decided that I don't have a hope in hell of winning the boot one, I tell him that he must dry his shoes or they will most assuredly rot his feet off at the ankles.

Good intention:  he put his god-forsaken, disgusting shoes in the dryer.  Good intention:  he attempted to wipe the dirt and grit out of the dryer when he was finished.

At that point a poor decision was made.  Liam thought that he would be more successful in gathering all of the dirt in one area if he manually turned the drum of the dryer so that it would all fall into one place.  Of course, being a mini-man, the resistance he felt when trying to turn the drum only made him push harder, forcing the drum to turn rather than consider that maybe said resistance meant that it should really not be turned.

The drum finally gave with a large metallic klang and Liam, then satisfied, continued to contentedly wipe out the dryer.

Me, then at the top of the stairs, "Liam, what was that noise?"

You all know the response to that one.

Liam, "What noise?"

Me, "That loud klang noise that came from right where you are..... right now."

Liam, "I'm really not sure."

Me, "Well, what were you doing when the noise happened?"

Liam explained to me how he had turned the drum to clean out the dryer, of course.

Me, "I don't think that was the right noise for the dryer to make.  Can you see if it's still working?"

Liam, shrugged, "Sure."

He turned it on, the motor ran, he turned it off and yelled up that it was working fine.

After a couple of days had passed and I had enough time to do a load of laundry, I walked down the stairs towards the washer only to be met with numerous articles of clothing hanging like ghouls from every protuberance along my path.

Suspicious, I thought to myself.  I suspected that perhaps the dryer was, in fact, not working and neither of my darling spawn wanted to be the one to get me up to speed.  What a surprise.

My powers of deduction had not failed me.  Though the dryer motor would run, that loud klang probably belonged to something that needed to be functioning to make the drum turn.

It occurred to me that Liam should possibly be reprimanded for breaking the dryer but, how many teenaged boys would have attempted to clean it out at all.  He should have told me that it was broken but, he said that he really didn't know why his clothes weren't drying since the dryer was still making noise.  I believe him.

So, I did what any exasperated parent would do.  I threw the shoes in the garbage and headed downstairs with a screwdriver and a socket set.

Yet Another Conversation with a Thirteen Year Old Boy

Me, "If we move to Den Haag, you will be able to go surfing in the North Sea.  There's a surf school there."

Liam, "I'm not going surfing where there are sharks."

Me, "There are no sharks in the North Sea."

Liam, "You're trying to tell me that in the 94,000 miles of water that is the North Sea, there isn't one single shark."

Note to self: he is obviously on the Internet at this point in the conversation so I had better get my facts straight.

Me, "Well, only if someone dropped one in there."

Liam, "So, it could happen."

Me, "No."

Liam, "Well, how big does an Atlantic Cod get."

Me, "Not big enough to be a threat."

Liam, "What's a porpoise?"

Me, "It's like a dolphin." (My apologies to the marine zoologists out there.)

Liam, "With teeth."

Me, "I think they all have teeth."

Liam, "Might as well be a shark then.  I'm not surfing.  Can I go to the hockey game?"

How Much Does a Therapist Cost?

Taryn-the-now-17-year-old-girl was walking down the hill to catch her school bus on Tuesday morning.  She phoned me within a couple of minutes of leaving the house to tell me to warn Liam that the hill was quite slippery and he should allow a few extra minutes to get to his bus.  Awww... how sweet.

The chatter went on something like this,

Oh, there's this cute little dog running by me.  He's black and white and small and his body looks like it's floating above his little legs that are moving sooooo fast.  He's adorable, I've never seen him before.  Maybe he's lost, I wonder where he's going.  Oh no, it looks like he's going to go out onto the highway.  Oh!  Someone just honked his horn at him.  He's not getting off the road.

Then came the blood curdling scream which, I'm certain, I could have heard, even if we had not been on the phone together.

The little dog just got hit by a car, he's yelping, he flew into the ditch.  Mom, he's just a lump, he's not moving.  YOU HAVE TO HELP!!

Now, she's crying and hyperventilating.

So, I put down my coffee, grab a hoodie (not my Wonder Woman cape), rubber gloves and a towel and get into my Jeep in my pajama pants and Crocs (which, we all know, should never be worn in public despite what you have been told), and drive down the hill to pick what I'm certain will be a dead and mutilated dog out of the ditch.

I must do this to save my daughter from having a stroke.

Lucky day for me and the little dog.  He She's not dead at all:  a little unsteady, sensitive and shaky.  I wrapped her in a towel, took her to the local veterinary office and told them that I had a plane to catch and could follow up in three days.

Today, on the way home from the airport, I stopped in at the vet's office to find that, not only was she just fine, her owners had claimed her.  While they were on vacation, they trusted the child, who they had successfully raised,to take care of their remaining dependent.  Being a dog who remains almost exclusively in her house due to her age and cataracts, she escaped into a totally unfamiliar environment.  According to the vet, the offspring was not completely honest to his parents as to the extent of the dog's disappearance.  A kid lying to his parents.... hmmm..... and I thought they outgrew that, eventually.

Report Card Time

Why is it that my children don't have the same sense of dread over receiving their Report Cards that I have?

I will tell you why.  Because I am not a good parent.  They have no fear.

My Parenting Report Card would read, "Prime Directive not met.  She has failed to accomplish the goals as set forth on the Parenting Agreement at all levels."

Last year, I paid money for good marks.  Worked well.  Liam made $140 on his final report card.

Before Liam-the-thirteen-year-old-boy brought his Report Card home from school, he asked me, "How much are you paying for A's and B's this year."

"Same as last year; I will give you $20 for each A and 10 for each B.....  But, I'm not giving you $20 for an A in gym; I will give you $10."

You see, an A in gym is not an accomplishment for Liam.  He shows up and all gym teachers fall to their knees, bow down and chant "We're not worthy."

Taryn-the-sixteen-year-old-girl will even admit that he is an Adonis when it comes to sports.  This from the girl who's kindest utterance to Liam as of late has been, "Wow, no zits this morning."

This is one of the first years that Liam has not had the gym teacher also teach a couple of his academic courses.  This combined with starting junior high school, has not gone well for Liam.  At this time, he is not passing two of his academic classes.  I can live with the realization that he has had a rough start this year and he now realizes that when the teachers ask for an assignment to be handed in, they really want to see it and they are not going to keep asking.  But, he doesn't.  Rather than come home and quiver while he begged for forgiveness for assuming that he can pass science with a cute smile and a good football throw, he told me that I owed him 30 bucks for the A's in gym and technology (he made a shovel).

No fear.  I have work to do.

Why She Can Never Live Alone, Part 2

The message on my cell phone, from Taryn-the-16-year-old-girl:

K, Mom, I know I keep calling but it's kind of an emergency.  I really, really, really need to talk to you.  You see, I was cleaning, I know, surprise, Ah!  Whatever.  And, you see, I burnt my face on a light bulb and, uh, there's some swelling and red blotches and it really hurts.  I called Laurie and she told me to put something cold on it and I already know that, it's done, I've burned myself enough to know.  Anyway, I was just wondering if there was something around the house or that you could bring home from work that I could put on my face so, you know, my grad pictures on Friday aren't ruined and all your friends laugh at you because your daughter is hideous and she looks like something from a Stephen King novel or somebody who writes really ugly monster stories.  So, I would really appreciate it if you would call us back, well call me back, well Liam wants to talk to you, too.  That's why I said us.

Oh, hold on...... you're calling back now, gotta go...... bye.

Sigh....

Raising the Bar

Liam-the-13-year-old-boy is the proud owner of a defective Xbox 360 which, by some very suspicious twist in my universe, is still under warranty.

Let the gasps die down.  I know.  I may go buy a lottery ticket or bet... somebody... something.

Here's the even weirder part of this tale:  Liam, unwilling to wait until I had a day off, rode his bike to the Purolator depot, picked up the Xbox warranty return box, appropriately packaged the box, labeled it and phoned Purolator for a pick-up.

Successfully.

All this from the boy who can't flush the toilet.

I am sooooo on to him.

When to Listen to the Voices

I believe that there is a large part of my brain that goes entirely untapped.  I also believe that the unemployed majority of my neural synapses are firing like crazy to try to protect me from myself.  (Like in most of my relationships.)  Although I don't directly recruit all of this extra activity, I still know that it is trying to work for me.  I simply don't pay attention.  I will call them the Screaming Voices of my Suppressed Mind or, the Banshees.

Allow me to illustrate.

A week ago, I was scheduled to fly from home to Vancouver for a one day course on the following day.

Sign #1:

That morning, Taryn-the-16-year-old-girl was doing her best Linda Blair impression.

Banshees, "Don't go."

Sign #2:

I had procrastinated the hell out of my assigned course pre-read.  The two shifts in which I intended on cramming were, instead, filled with sick people and ambulance calls.  I was on page 17 of 234.

Banshees, "Don't go."

Sign #3:

The weather was the epitome of what our local carrier's pilots do not fly in:  clouds below the tops of the surrounding mountains.

Banshees, "Different approach.  You're not going."

The skilled pilots found a hole in the clouds somewhere down the river and made it in to get me.

Sign #4:

When I tried to check in at the airport, I was told that only half of my ticket had been paid for by my employer:  the return half.  The employer is already into me for a billion dollars in yet unpaid travel claims and I was not going to put another dime on my credit card.

So, Sunday afternoon at 4:00 pm, I called my supervisor (on a cell phone that never gets a signal at the airport) to tell him that I would be unable to leave my daughter at home alone to attend a course that I was not prepared for because the department had not paid for my ticket to get there.

He answered the phone, of course, and dealt with the ticket issue.  I got on the plane.

Banshees, "How many times.....seriously."

Now, since I had not heeded any of the Banshees warnings, this is what happened:

About 15 minutes from landing in Vancouver, I was wistfully gazing out the window, down the wing and into the clouds with my MP3 player on and my course pre-read opened in front of me (best of intentions).  I then watched the left engine (two engine plane) slow down and stop.

I looked around to see if anyone else noticed.  Apparently not.

I leaned across the aisle to the newspaper-reading dude on the right side, "Is your engine still running?"

He looked at me, looked out his window, looked back at me, "Yeah, yours?"

Me, "No."

I looked towards the front to see that our stewardess flight attendant, Miss Smiles-Alot, was on the phone with the pilots.  She leaned over to get a view of the left engine, still smiling, nodded lots, hung up the phone and then turned to address her audience.

"Hi, Everyone!  I was just talking to our Captain and he told me that they have chosen to electively shut down the left engine because of some warning lights.  I didn't even notice since our ride has continued to be so smooth.  I can tell you that we are already over Vancouver and we were just about to start our descent anyway.  This airplane is totally safe to fly on one engine and we are totally keen to do our descent and landing on one engine.  This is sooo normal."

And the proletariat totally bought it.  They all smiled back at Miss Smiles-Alot and went back to their reading and chatting and snoozing.

Idiots.

I checked to see if I had cell phone coverage, of course not.  Not sure who I would have called but I would have liked to have had that option.

After a couple of sharp banks, we landed to great fanfare consisting of fire trucks and ambulances at every runway entrance along the way.  By time we came to a stop, we had an entourage of emergency vehicles surrounding us and fire fighters at the bottom of the exit stairs.

Normal, my ass!

Banshees, a little louder next time, please.