Bits and Pieces

Just checked my Primary Choristers Group emails--I love that group. I get lots of great ideas from them. I'm also periodically astounded by such stunners as a woman who made 30 fake buffalo chips from spray insulation and painted them brown as just PART of her plan to teach "Pioneer Children Sang as they Walked" ("I hid them around the room and the kids loved looking for them and putting them in their baskets!").

Okay, okay! I admit! I thought about trying it! But just for a minute.

New topic. Boys and knives. There's a relevant incident I could relate to get this topic rolling, but I think I might still be sworn to secrecy. Suffice it to say that I learned nearly thirty years ago that a boy in posession of a sharp knife is about five minutes away from doing something incredibly stupid. My nine year old boy who found himself in posession of a sharp kitchen knife used his five minutes to decide to cut up popsicle sticks. And when he got cut up himself, he discovered that he could reduce the pain in his finger by shaking it around violently while screaming his head off. By the time I got to the kitchen, it looked like the scene of a massacre. I immediately noticed the spattered blood all over the walls, floor, stairs, sink, cupboards, countertops, chairs, and table. Gradually I discovered that there was also blood on the whiteboard, desk, phone, phonebook, calendar, front door, doormats, stair railings, dog dish, mixer, refrigerator, doorbell, etc. The only blood-free items were, of course, the knife and the popsicle stick. It was a minor cut. Thank goodness for bandaids.

I also spent about a half an hour out on the deck with my five boys plus the dog. They were using the giant tennis ball slingshot (it's called "The Hyperdog") to shoot tennis balls as far up into the stratosphere as they possibly could. They all wanted a turn, but even more, they all wanted to just watch the balls go way, way up and come down. That's the problem with being the only female member of the Mumford Testosterone Club. I'm invited to the party, but I'll never really understand.

Still, there are benefits, and one of them--Cub Camp--starts tomorrow. I can't wait. It's all the fun of girls camp minus the drama and plus the sleep. It's one of those moments when I look around at the boys and think, "I bet I DID choose this. I'm SURE I did."

Take the Long Way Home

There are two categories of travelers. The first category, to which my wife Julia belongs, believe that the best way to deal with the fact that you have a long (and possibly hot) drive ahead of you is to load the car with water bottles, books on tape, and meals and put your head down, pedal to the metal and NO STOPPING (except for gas) until you get to your destination. In an even more extreme version of this mode of traveling, a receptacle for urine known as a nenu jar can be used to avoid even otherwise necessary bathroom stops.

The benefits of this mode of travel are obvious -- you reach your destination quickly, are able to spend more time with the people you are going to visit and when you are on the road you have a clear sense of purpose and a solitary objective. Roughly 95% of the people I know are category 1 travelers.

The remaining 5% of us believe that life is a journey -- not a destination. We stop a fruit stands. If we are hot and are driving along a river, we pull off onto the shoulder, change into our swim suits and take a swim. If we want a snack (and we frequently do) we forego the Chevron at the rest stop for the donut shop on the old downtown business loop. We pull over to take pictures of a scenic overlooks. We scout campgrounds for future reference. We have lunch with the locals.

This past week, Julia flew back from Boise to go to girls camp and the three oldest boys stayed with the cousins in Emmet. Nigel and I could have driven home in about 10 hours up the interstate. Instead, we decided to go through McCall, along the salmon river, up White Bird pass and spend the night in Pullman. We had a very nice visit with Judy, Gillian and Jonathan and enjoyed seeing Wackerburg. I'm sure that it will be featured in some future publication -- very unique. I really liked it, but I do worry about how you will get the groceries up to the second story, since right now the only way up is a long spiral staircase.

Nigel and I then left Pullman for Bellingham via Wenatchee. We sang songs, talked about how things work and practiced our counting and ABCs. In Wenatchee we stopped to meet with a great local lawyer, Bob Parlette, whose fearless and tireless efforts resulted in a national class action settlement against Household Finance Corporation worth 484 million dollars for deceptive mortgage lending practices. Bob did not charge his clients a contingency fee and in the end was only paid for half of the time he put into the case. I have worked with him on one of my cases but had never met him, so Nigel and I stopped by and collected some documents. I thought I could keep Nigel quiet by giving him a lollipop, but in the end I had to go get several wet paper towels with which to wipe up Bob's desk.

We could have made it home in three hours, but we chose to head north and take the Cascade Loop through North Cascades National Park. We went through Chelan, and it was so hot and the water looked so cool and blue that we couldn't resist stopping for a swim. This brought back fond memories of our trip there with Brett and Alison when our kids were tiny.


We then headed north and passed through Twisp, Winthrop, and Marblemount stopping for some cold chicken and peaches and some cherries from a family cherry orchard. We again sang, talked and enjoyed the beautiful scenery. I was so busy taking a picture of the general store in Winthrop while driving that I took a wrong turn and several miles later we ended up in a camp which had been hastily set up for firefighters battling a forest fire in the mountains. Although the detour set us back in time, we discovered a beautiful valley which I hope to visit later with the family for a camping trip.



We wound our way down the pass. Nigel fell asleep as the sun went down and I admired the brilliant blue of Ross Lake, promising myself that we would return there someday soon. I reminisced about the last time I drove that road 8 years ago when Zach and Alex were very young and how I had also made the same resolution at that time -- life just flies by so fast.

We finally pulled into our driveway about 12 hours after we left Pullman. Pullman to Bellingham is usually a 6 hour drive. My only complaint was that it didn't last longer.

Ziploc Bags

What is it about the Ziploc bag that makes mankind feel so secure? Something about the act of squeezing the air out and zipping the top together gives the bagger a sense of control. Yes, you're sending your barely adolecent child off to Korea for two weeks, but control your nervousness. Just pack everything--EVERYTHING--in ziploc bags and squeeze the air out. Use a vacuum! Think of the space efficiency, the organized sterility, the perfect neatness of your son's duffel full of ziploc-ed clothes!

And the rain gear. The outdoorsy-looking rain pants and rain jacket make me laugh. How well I remember the Elder who tried to wear that in Taiwan. Imagine dousing yourself with pop, wrapping yourself in black garbage bags, and going to sit in a closed car on a hot summer day. He nearly suffocated. True, you can't wear nothing. The rain comes down in cliches--it pours, it dumps, in buckets, torrents, deluges. But VENTILATION! VENTILATION is the key!! He needs a poncho, very heavy duty, with a billed hood that channels water away from the face so he can see to dodge cars and motorcycles.

Will he wear the poncho? Can I find one on ebay? (Don't they have an ad about that?) Should I just get the standard rain gear so he can fit in and be uncomfortable like everyone else? Should I vacuum pack his clothing in ziploc bags even though he doesn't know how to use ziplocs and will, once he's ripped out the clothing items inside, no doubt leave them blowing about South Korea? Or should I let him pack his own bags, choose his own rain gear, and suffer the consequences?

One thing I learned at Grandpa's funeral. He really got the whole adolescent boy thing. He understood that "be prepared" applied even more to the scoutmaster. We grownups seem to swerve unpredictably between the extremes--taking over and giving up. One moment, we're jumping in ziploc-ing everything in the poor kid's suitcase. Control! Control! The next minute, we're tossing the whole job onto the kid, watching in some amusement as he tries to survive a weekend on one pair of socks and three cans of tuna. But Grandpa was different. He cared about that little scout, huddled in his sleeping bag with cold feet. Then he planned ahead. Every scout that brought a towel got a hot rock. A little responsibility, a lot of backup. The most excruciating way possible to raise a child. And, I think, perhaps the most successful.