I Would Walk 5.00 Miles

Last Sunday the 10^th Kevin's mom invited us over for dinner: Cheesy cream of potato soup (and some popcorn chicken and mac and cheese for Riley, Olivia, and Hannah in case they didn't like the soup).

Kelly and Steve have taken a "reverse psychology" approach recently to trick Liv into finishing her dinner. They'll tell her the food on her plate is Daddy's and she absolutely better not take another bite of it... which naturally makes her want to just that :)

At one point she decided dinner should be a democracy instead of a benevolent dictatorship, and she tried her hand at negotiating:

She looked at Steve, tilted her head to the side, and said,

Kevin asked why Riley should be allowed to have dessert then (since she left literally just a bite or two of uneaten food on her plate). This got him a typical unimpressed glance from both of us:

On Monday our realtor Angel reached out to ask if there had been an update from our loan officer yet (regarding the whole fiasco where our certificate of eligibility for the Rural Development program expired shortly before Thanksgiving, but our loan officer took the entire holiday week off and didn't get back to us until the following Monday).

We promptly reapplied again back on Monday November 27^th. But as Kevin said to Angel,

I mean, it's only been two whole entire weeks. Why would we have heard anything from her yet? She probably won't reach out again until April of 2029.

Since neither Kevin, nor Angel, nor Brody have ever had any luck getting her to return their calls or emails in a polite and timely manner, I finally decided to try getting in touch with her myself.

I called her...

Twice...

Left her a voicemail...

Then sent her an email...

And started cursing her name and her firstborn...

Until finally:

So, she hopes to have an answer for us by the end of next week.

I for one totally believe her, and I know Kevin does as well.

The middle of last week was uneventful (which is nice sometimes!). Mostly just relaxing in what little spare time was left after we'd finished making dinner, washing the dishes, getting showers, helping Riley with her math homework, and so on.

If we were lucky, we'd get in an episode or two of Fringe. Otherwise, we'd just pull up some mindless YouTube compilation of "fails" or "instant karma". (Kevin likes "idiots in cars" too, but he doesn't have a 90 mile round trip commute to work every day, so he doesn't find those clips stressful the way that I do!)

But Odin is a big fan of fails and instant karma too, apparently :D

On Friday afternoon Riley went to sleep over at Kassie's, so Kevin and I took the rare opportunity and made plans for a low key "date night" by ourselves.

I stopped by Qdoba on the way home from work to grab us dinner...

...then after we ate, Kevin and I locked our lock and our deadbolt (as always) and headed over to his parents' house, where he and I had each commandeered one of their guest bedrooms and had a growing stash of Christmas presents piling up for the past couple months.

Some for each other...

Some for Riley...

Some for everyone in Kevin's family...

With Christmas drawing ever closer, we decided to take a few hours to wrap everything and have it out of the way.

But I think it was after 10:00 pm by the time we finally left Kevin's parents' house, so it was too late (and we were too tired) to do much of anything except head back home, watch a couple episodes of Fringe, and call it a night.

Saturday morning, Penny and Odin woke us up super early, tearing around the room chasing each other. So we started the day a little on the grumpy side.

Then around 8:00 in the morning, two "thugs" (as Kevin is fond of calling pretty much everyone around here) decided to hang out on the guard rail just below our bedroom window.

After more than an hour of listening to them, Kevin finally got up and shot a video of them:

So, we had some cereal and thought about where to go hiking.

Kevin pointed out that I was just finally recovering from a sprained ankle a couple weeks back, while he apparently has no tread left on his hiking sneakers (nevermind the new ones he ordered on Black Friday that are still sitting unopened in our bedroom).

So he reasoned we shouldn't go anywhere too treacherous, like navigating all the mud at Dark Hollow or parkouring up the stream at Tyler Park.

We eventually decided to head around the corner to Five Mile Woods, just to get outside for the first time in... I don't even remember, but it feels like it had been a while.

We hadn't been there two minutes when we became aware of a guy traveling solo and coming up quickly behind us.

He turned out to be super friendly, so Kevin asked him to take our picture:

Then we continued on our way, and soon we were off the beaten trail entirely:

After all, that's the only way to get the best pictures :)

We came upon a random pile of large rocks in the middle of the forest:

We spotted something way off in the distance that we thought looked like a storm sewer outlet. So we started making our way in that direction.

We came upon a group of deer, which were obviously way more afraid of us than we were of them. But Kevin reasoned that he wasn't too keen on being gored by a buck, however unlikely that might be. So he found a big stick and carried it with us for the rest of the walk.

A short while later, we found a half-deflated black balloon on the ground and he stopped to fasten it to the end of his stick:

Soon we arrived at the "sewer pipe", only it turned out to be a mass of even bigger boulders than the previous ones we found:

We were thoroughly lost at this point (at least in the sense of being so far off-trail, since it's impossible to truly get "lost" in these woods with all the highway noise from Rt. 1).

So we continued through the woods in the hopes of picking up another trail at some point.

It wasn't long before we spotted a blaze on a nearby tree, just next to the giant blaze up in the sky :)

I found this tree's predicament interesting, trying to support the weight of his fallen brother:

Kevin got a kick out of this one:

He made a big production out of it:

We got a lot of pictures of the sky, too:

And you've heard of "BFFs", but have you heard of "Tree-F-Fs"?

We found some of those as well:

Kevin asked me to get a picture that looked like two of them were about to fall on him:

But from this angle I think it looks more like he's trying to fight them Foghorn Leghorn style or something.

I didn't focus too much on artsy shots this time, although Kevin has taken to identifying things he'd like me to capture, and then he'll just point to them and say, "Oh, you should get that!"

And sometimes I do:

When we got back in the vicinity of the parking lot, I bent down to try to get a close up of the swamp puddle that's always there just inside the edge of the woods. And I slipped on one of the mossy planks and nearly went in, so that was the end of that!

So Kevin bent down and got a shot instead. And then he spent a minute deliberating whether or not to leave his "pretty decent stick" behind for someone else.

Finally he decided, "I'm gonna Excalibur it":

He hurled it like a javelin into the center of the puddle and said, "If anyone actually goes in there to retrieve it, then they're worthy of wielding it."

Just before we headed out, we walked by a tree with a bunch of names carved in it.

We don't condone carving things into trees, but amidst all the Him+Hers that probably broke up a month later, we also found a certain familiar name just by itself :)

By the time we got home from the woods, checked for ticks, and showered, neither of us felt like cooking. But we hadn't eaten (or drank) anything since our cereal that morning, so we were also famished!

Luckily Burger King recently sent out another full sheet of coupons a few days prior. And so, having learned nothing at all from our numerous trips there last month, we hit the drive thru and psyched ourselves up for what was sure to be a quick, tasty, high quality, and nutritious meal.

Except it wasn't any of those.

Then Riley called to ask if she could spend another night at Kassie's. And with another entire evening suddenly free to ourselves, Kevin and I decided to... binge watch four episodes of Fringe instead of doing anything else worthwhile the rest of the night :)

Meanwhile, Penny and Odin have been getting along fantastically. We knew Penny would at least tolerate him, and our biggest reservation was whether or not we'd have any problems with them sharing a litter box.

And, well...

But anyway, no problems at all on the sharing front, although Odin is even more of a "digger" than Penny is.

(And he's a boy, and he poops like a boy.)

But on Sunday morning when I went to clean up all the stray litter he had kicked out of the box in his time here, our vacuum cleaner seemed to be doing nothing at all.

A quick inspection revealed a clog down in the bristles, which I promptly tended to. But, still no luck when I turned the vacuum back on the second time.

Only then did I discover that the entire hose between the bristles and the collection chamber was clogged... and clogged so thoroughly that Kevin couldn't even dislodge whatever was in there by pushing a broomstick through the hose with all his strength!

He finally started hammering at it with the broomstick, which only produced little clouds of dust at first, until all these segmented masses finally worked their way out one by one!

It was nearly 18 inches worth of solidly packed cat hair, litter, and dust at the end. And once we finally cleared it, the vacuum actually vacuumed again :)

Sunday evening Kevin and I headed back over to his parents' house to work on putting together a few more gifts, both in the sense of assembling some things and arranging some things.

Riley reached out to let us know she was on her way home... and sick with Kassie's cold :(

So I gave her a heads up about the downstairs door: No reason to risk putting her key in the broken lock and having it get stuck where she couldn't get it back out!

But it turned out that maintenance had already been out to fix it (probably because of what a huge liability it would be for the landlord if someone were to get robbed and be able to prove that the complete lack of security at the entrance door may have been a factor!)

Riley didn't sound that great by the time bedtime rolled around, so I told her she could "stay home" from school Tuesday. (She has only missed one day so far for the entire year, and it's virtual school anyway).

Shortly after noon Kevin sent me a video of Penny and Odin and was mildly worried because he couldn't decide whether they were playing or fighting:

We each did some research and learned that real fighting is accompanied by lots of intense staredowns, growling and hissing, "airplane ears", and big bushy tails, while play fighting is mostly silent and the cats will usually take turns pinning each other and being pinned.

The weird part was that Penny was being quite vocal even though her attacks didn't seem to be as vicious as they appeared, since Odin seemed entirely unfazed by them and clearly thought they were just playing.

But since Penny showed no signs of "real" fighting beyond being vocal, and the cats were fine together the rest of the evening and night, we decided that Penny probably simply hit her tolerance limit as far as Odin constantly pestering her, and she laced into him a bit to convey that he needed to cool his jets.

Wednesday the 20th, Kevin texted me late morning:

Just went out to make some more coffee and saw some guy carrying this big pack of Home Depot moving boxes across the parking lot toward our door... So I think, "GREAT! The schmucks downstairs are finally starting to pack"; right?

Next thing I know, I hear the guy coming up the steps! And I'm like, "Really?? After all these months, today's the day one of these little shits finally comes upstairs?!" So, I ran back to the bedroom to arm up. Like, if this is how he wants to play this, I'm ready.

I thought about popping both locks for him too, but I figured let's try nonviolence first. And with that, I heard him sliding a key into Ruth's door and letting himself in. So, crisis averted.

But STILL no packing going on downstairs yet, I guess.

A short time later he sent me these pictures:

Guess Ruth has a new boytoy: He brought some stuff downstairs and drove away in her SUV, and then she came out a minute or two later and got into some blue sedan.

That leather jacket though! He looks like the dude from Breaking Bad that Gus brought in toward the end to make sure Walt and Jesse were cooking meth on schedule and not dicking around.

Thursday was quiet by comparison, although Kevin and I shared an early morning laugh. I always text him to let him know that I made it to work okay, and then he texts me back when he wakes up.

All week, I've been hoping the morning traffic would lighten up a bit as we got closer to the holiday weekend. And in the meantime, we've been having a minor issue where Odin tries to bolt out to explore the living room every time we open our bedroom door (which is especially great fun in the middle of the night when it's pitch black.)

(Unrelated but also necessary for context, Odin poops like a boy as I mentioned earlier, and tends to have a bit of a stinky butt 99% of the time.)

So, I had open roads and a lovely drive into work Friday morning, and I relayed this to Kevin in my text.

Then when he got up an hour later, he gave me the details of his commute as well:

But on Friday the 22nd all the stops seemed to have been pulled out!

First Kevin sent me this shortly before noon:

The same "thugs" from the weekend. Kevin said they hung around shouting, littering, and waxing philosophical about being on parole for nearly two hours until a lawn crew finally showed up to cut the grass and chased them away with their noise.

Then just before 3:00 he sent me another one:

Check out Ketchup and Mustard out here smashing all the empty beer bottles the assclowns last night must have left behind. Glass all over the street now, and then they went over and dragged a gigantic rock out into the middle of the parking lot between that second set of garage doors.

I literally had the non-emergency police number dialed, but then they bolted just as I was about to place the call. Two maintenance guys for that complex came along and took care of the rock, and a guy from one of the houses is out sweeping the glass back over to the far curb.

As usual though, nobody did a thing. It blows my mind. If I was still under 18, I'd be out there whaling away on these two right now!

That is really crappy behavior.

Then again, I remind Kevin quite often that it used to be way worse before they significantly cleaned things up and kicked out the real riffraff five or six years ago.

But anyway, I decided to cut out of work a few hours early Friday afternoon, and so I actually got home in daylight. Just in time to catch this:

We had already planned to do Qdoba for dinner (and McDonald's for Riley), but I hadn't anticipated leaving work so early. So I just came straight home instead of picking dinner up at 3:00 in the afternoon and having it get cold by the time we were ready to eat.

Then a little later, Kevin and I ran back out to Qdoba, and then to McDonald's to get Riley's "dirty dish sponge nuggets", as Kevin likes to describe the consistency of McDonald's chicken.

He snapped these pictures in the drivethru:

As for our meals though, they were spectacular!

Last time we got Qdoba, some new kid made our bowls and barely put anything in them. But I guess tonight's guy wanted to make sure our Navidad was muy felis!

As we unpacked everything to dig in, Kevin grabbed my fork to inspect it and then tossed it back onto the table in dismay:

Oh, I see. You got a NORMAL fork.

I got some weird west side Spock fork throwing up a gang sign or something. Look at it: it needs braces!

(Just for the record, Kevin survived the ordeal and is working through the trauma.)

A few minutes after we finished eating, we were all still sitting at the table when we heard someone come up the stairs and knock three times on our door REALLY loudly!

Kevin leaped out of his chair and made it to the living room before stopping to try to decide whether to go grab a weapon or just wing it and answer the door.

So I insisted that he let me do it instead and I sidled past him to ask who it was.

It's Lil..... from downstairs.

Kevin and I looked at each other:

We opened the door, and they told us how much they appreciated all the tomatoes and other produce we gave them from our garden throughout the summer and the fall, and so they had got us a Christmas gift!

And what a gift it was! A four tier set of candy, chocolate, popcorn, and cookies!!

Totally unexpected, totally thoughtful, and totally awesome :)