Homework, Housework, Dark Park, Tex Mex

We did some work at my apartment, went to a park, and ate Mexican food this weekend, if you can believe that... because all of those things are such rarities in our family :)

Homework in a Half Shell

On Friday Riley asked for my help with a writing assignment that was due by Sunday at midnight. She had to analyze "The Wolf and the Shepherd Boy" (the boy who cried wolf) and couldn't quite come up with a response she felt would satisfy her teacher's criteria.

I reminded her that Kevin is a writer and suggested that she ask him when he and I came over Saturday so I could shampoo my bedroom carpet...

They spent about three minutes completing the assignment and then Riley asked Kevin if he wanted to play videogames with her. She was surprised to learn that he had never touched an Xbox...

Like, not even when you were a kid?

We didn't have Xbox when I was a kid; we had Super Nintendo ;)

But she fired up her Xbox and Kevin caught a glimpse of Shredder's Revenge, immediately asking how much it would cost to purchase...

Oh; This is basically a reboot of Turtles in Time from back in '91... I used to play the crap out of that game when I was your age, and I could play the crap out of this one right now!

...And they did.

Meanwhile, I managed to shampoo half my bedroom. And then Kevin and I decided today was the day we would finally go out and get Riley the futon mattress I've been promising her for more than two months now. (We trashed the worn-out mattress for the bottom bunk after Taylor moved out, so Riley has been dealing with an unusable futon frame since June.)

I suggested that we try Big Lots first, because I knew they have had futons in the past. We were temporarily disappointed to learn that the three available color options were tied to the three available thickness options: Riley would have chosen black for sure, but the black one was a six inch thickness that would compress into nothingness within a year's time.

Kevin and I managed to convince her to settle for the thicker "tan camel" option, which despite not being black would match her bedroom carpet and her room's mostly pink theme.

A friendly store clerk helped us get it outside and into my car, and then with a lighthearted comment about inflation we got into an unexpected conversation about the dark cloud of central bank digital currencies that seems to be on the horizon.

For being probably just a few years out of high school, the boy was quite well informed compared to most people his age... but also eager to listen and learn (a sign of intelligence). Kevin gave him a few pointers on acquiring precious metals and store them outside the U.S. where grubby government paws would not be able to confiscate them.

Think that could never happen? It has before.

And then we were on our way! After a short ride home, Kevin put the mattress over his shoulder and lugged it upstairs, we freed it from its plastic casing, and we gave Riley a long overdue place to hang out.

She loves it! ...Except the part where Kevin tried to get pictures :)

Finally Back at Dark Hollow!

Then we wanted to take Riley to Dark Hollow Park. We haven't been able to go for two weeks on account of all the recent rain, and Kevin in particular had been counting down the seconds all week.

We weren't sure what we'd find and whether the water table would be too high to allow us to get all the way back to where we had been the last time, but Kevin had just had lunch with his friend Richard at Tamanend Park two days before and said that the woods there were completely dry when the two of them went for a walk.

So we crossed our fingers and hoped for the best!

With the changing of the season, it hardly looked like the same place we had just been only two weeks before!

Water Table: The Moment of Truth

The water was definitely 3+ inches higher... Would that be a problem for us?

Here are some before and after comparisons:

Granted, I had on waterproof hiking boots...

And, Kevin was in waterproof trail sneakers...

But Riley was in her brand new sneakers from a few weeks back. And those are the only shoes she owns at the moment!

We'd have to take this next part very slowly:

On a brighter note, we managed to find some salamanders!

Kevin was surprised that Riley had never seen one before: He found it hilarious that the girl who loves catching frogs and toads was asking him whether they were poisonous or would bite her.

Up The Mountain

Riley and Kevin wanted to climb the mountain.

Kevin and I had encountered this trail on our last visit but ran out of daylight before we could explore it. (We were running out of daylight this time as well, but that's not such a big deal to a 12-year-old. Riley was halfway up before Kevin and I had committed one way or the other.)

This doesn't look steep at all in the pictures, but this climb absolutely kicked our butts... Even Riley (who weighs almost nothing) had to stop and rest at the top!

At the top, we were officially on "new" territory that we had never seen.

But the grass here was also quite high and potentially full of ticks (which wouldn't be the end of the world, except we had dinner plans later and didn't want to have to delay those to go home and grab three showers first).

And of course we were still running out of daylight and had quite a long hike back to the car. So Kevin (reluctantly) decided we should probably call it quits here and save the rest until next time.

Neither Riley nor I was particularly thrilled at the idea of having to go back down the mountain... Going up is one thing, since you can just lean forward to stop yourself from falling. But going down is another thing entirely.

We considered chancing a small clearing in the brush under the power lines, where storm runoff has carved out a rocky gully over the years. Kevin took one look at it, declared it "tick central," and made a vote for sucking it up and going down the mountain.

But once again, Riley was halfway down the gully and neck-deep in brush before he and I decided one way or the other.

So, it looked like it was going to be "tick central" after all...

Again, that photo doesn't do justice to the steepness of the hill (or the treacherousness of the "path").

Here's the same hill (all the way in the background) from another angle:

The Mill Road Bridge

Since it was Riley's first time here, we knew we'd have to let her check out the old bridge as well!

We caught a glimpse of a deer (and Saturn?) just as we were leaving.

Artsy-Fartsy

Kevin and I got some nice artsy shots as always. Here are mine:

And these are Kevin's:

Mad Mex

For dinner we went to Mad Mex. We haven't been since Kevin's birthday back in February!

The host pegged Riley as "too old for the kids' menu, but probably still wants crayons."

He was right! :)

We had a lovely meal and got Riley to try something new, and then we took her home and hung out on her new futon with her for a bit before Kevin and I headed back to his place.