My Parent's Boat

I have no picture of my parent's boat, but I went there, promise! And I have all this supporting picture evidence...I just forgot to take the main idea picture. Oops. Told you I am learning. :)

They have an Owens boat that resides at this lovely little marina at the Delta. The most beautiful part about the boat (in my opinion) is not the paint job, or the cute cabin, or even the scenery. It's simply the fact that when I go there, everything else that has been swimming around in my brain is GONE. I almost wrote that my cares melt away, but that wouldn't be putting it quite right. Because my worries are just gone. Nada. Poof. Like that. And I always bring things to do to keep myself occupied, but I never even get them out of the bag. I am just happy turning into a vegetable. A vegetable that consumes every nibble of food within a quarter mile radius.


Their marina is really close to this awesome bridge that my dad has a crush on. We saw it open right as we arrived.


Kyle is not homeless. He is lugging all our stuff from the car to the boat. You have to walk up and over the levee to get there so they provide old shopping carts to help. Pretty good idea...right?


Tango came too. She is pretty great on the boat and just lounges the whole time. My parents did buy her a lifejacket just in case. She totally hates it and walks like one of those huge Star Wars robots things that look like telephone antennas. All stiff-legged and unhappy.


My dad and Kyle went fishing off the back of the boat and caught a Bass while my mom and I were getting lunch.


Kyle read the the fish in the Delta like hot dogs best. So this was the bait they used. And it worked. If you look closely, you can see a bulge in the fish where it swallowed the entire piece of hot dog.


Right above the last set of fins. See it? Remember, I have an old camera.


They put their lines back in and didn't catch anything else for a looooong time. Just as my dad said it was time to quit, he got a bite. He said that he can't tell how many fish he has caught that same way. Right at the end of the day. And it was a catfish! The picture makes it look more like a salamander though. Promise it wasn't.

Reason Why I Am A One Animal Person

Animals love me. They want to be near me...on me...under me. Whatever they can get. Our cute kitty Cheeseburger learned that the hard way when she lasted a week before I caught kitty claustrophobia and insisted on taking her back to the shelter (sorry).

For everyone's future reference, I enjoy having one singular pet. The above picture is proof that any more is just awful. You can see my toes in the picture. Through inference you can guess that ALL three (3) dogs are playing DIRECTLY under me. They have no sense of personal space. And like them as I may, I have a low animal tolerance.

FrappyCrappy!

I have been trying to make these for years and this is the best I have ever made. Ever. And it's in a canning jar. Which makes it superior.

Modern Day Church

Sea Parable from ilovepinatas on Vimeo.

My pastor recently posted this short video on his blog Thinking Eternally, Living Presently. I have been thinking about church recently and trying to figure out where I sit on the continuum stretching between serving in the church and being served by the church. Trying to figure out if my desire for meatier chunks of spiritual food is God-centered or me-centered. Am I interested in learning about Christ because I am a prideful scholar of the text, or because I am merely his disciple and I want to BE like him?

Capay Box is Here!

A friend of mine told me about this Farm to You program where they deliver a box of fresh produce right to your door. She raved about the quality of the food and how fun it was. I thought about it, but eventually decided not to try it out. But a couple weeks ago, I fell hostage to a nice salesgirl going door to door asking if people wanted to try the CAPAY program out.

Yes.

So our first box came yesterday. The deliver it at night so the produce doesn't spoil, and you wake up with this present sitting on your porch.

I ran inside and immediately started opening up all the pouches and dumping food all over our counter. Fruit started magically flying into my mouth. It was great.


We will see if we can eat all of this before it goes bad. I dunno.


And apparently, I need to figure out how to make pasta sauce, because we have a lot of tomatoes. And try as I may, I just don't like them.

Two Different Encounters

I met two different people today. Very different people, but people that I believe were made by the same God, and in his image. People that God loves and people that God calls me to love and care for.

However the first person was really easy to love and the second was not.

The first person was a boy who was 4 and a half. He had a friend who was 5 and a quarter. And I was quickly told that the first boy would be 5 and a quarter in January. I was walking Rowdy and they wanted to pet her. So I knelt down and we chatted for a few minutes. He told me about his dog at home who was going to Heaven soon and how he doesn't like it when dogs lick his face. I also learned that there was yet another dog near the playground who liked to sniff poo. But they decided that Rowdy probably didn't like doing that because she had a pink leash, which meant she was a girl and they both knew that girls think poo is disgusting.

The second one interrupted my coffee date with a friend. We had spent some time catching up and then were spending time quietly reading. I had seen him walking down the street earlier, and he walked up and loudly exclaimed that it must be Bible reading day since my friend was reading the Bible and so was another guy inside. He went inside and came back out a minute later with a beer in his hand and asked if he could join us at our table. We agreed, but only because it was the polite thing to do.

We started to engage in some small talk with him after it was evident that our quiet study was over. We were California natives, he was from Liverpool. We were married, he was divorced. We worked in the school system, he was a chemist. He made drugs. All kinds of drugs. Any drug we wanted.

"Do you do drugs?" he asked us.

"No."

"C'mon, be honest. What drugs?"

"Really, nothing stronger than an Advil."

"Well, I've done all the drugs. All of them except heroin."

Then he proceeded to tell us about the different drugs he has taken, including a mystery one from a "chick on the asphalt" outside a strip club ("The Gold Club in the city, you been there?").

The whole time I had Biblical teachings rushing through my head. Love him. What does he need? Jesus commands us to care for the least of all people. How do I show him Christ's love? What do I say that isn't judgmental?

But I also had other thoughts zooming around too. This guy is crazy. He is talking really loudly. Everyone is watching to see how we will react. What do I say to make him go away?

Our conversation ended when he went inside to look for his painting. And while he was gone, we had some further interactions with people who had shared the patio and earshot with us.

And although maybe...maybe I could make a case that we were protecting ourselves by being closed to him earlier, I cannot say that I am proud of how I acted when he was gone. I rolled my eyes and made a joke about how another group of girls should get rid of their extra chair at their table. I fit myself back into earthly things. Making myself higher and those around me lower. Building myself up and shunning those who are different.

I was exactly who I didn't want to be. James puts it this way:

"What good is it my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead."

Things I Wish I Could Unlearn

My family used to go on plenty of hikes together as a family, and afterward, we would always do a tick-check. I was pretty nervous so I checked really well. And I was pretty sure that they were almost microscopic. Like half the size of fleas.

This brings me to the topic of "Things I Wish I Could Unlearn."

Those were happier days. Thinking that if I got a tick, it would just be a teeny bug that was a little bit trickier to get off your body than a fly. Wrong.

I think I just stopped feeling like I was going to toss my cookies. I found a monster tick on Rowdy. And it has been chilling there for probably more than a week. Eek! And yes we did a tick-check on her after our hike. And we found about 5 on Waffle, but surprisingly none on Rowdy...guess next time we also have to check her booty better.

Thank goodness Matt is a man of steel and got it off her without my help, because I was going to be of no help. He put it in a ziploc baggie where he oogled it and I barely glanced at it when my curiosity finally got the best of my sick tum-tum.

Then he smashed it.

And it popped.

And made a popping NOISE.

And the baggie has blood smeared on it and a huge see-through tick tummy.

Gross.

Might I add that this particular post is sans picture for a reason. And the reason is not because I lost my camera, even though that is true.

It's because it is gross.

I am an Awesome Wife

Because I know my Transformers. Kinda. I may have called it the Cube. But check out how cool our backyard sculpture is.


And the Transformer Cube AKA the Allspark. And btw, there are websites (plural) dedicated to this. You learn something new every day.

You can't tell me you don't see the similarities.

Sprinklers Part 1

For years I have gotten beautiful plants from nurseries, hardware stores, drug stores, friends, relatives...you name it. And I kill them. One by one they fall to my black thumb/wannabe green thumb. It's very sad. And makes Matt mad. Of course when I explained that it is kinda like buying me inexpensive longer lasting bouquets, the frustration turned into indifference. Woo-hoo!

He is very patient with me and has explained that as soon as we have sprinklers in the backyard I can buy all the plants our budget can afford. So now it's me who is impatient. And I have been impatient for a really really long time.

But we have been working on our backyard and have been trenching like crazy. And Matt's brain decided that it knew how to install sprinklers. And it was apparently right. So we are on the road to having sprinklers in the back. The valves are in, and some of the lines are run.





WATER! And yes the pressure is great. Matt figured that one out real quick when he loosened the end cap while the water was on. And he got WET. Ha.


Of course it would just be too simple to JUST trench sprinkler lines, so in addition, we were also drawing lines in this sunburst pattern to give us a leveling guideline for the concrete that will eventually be poured. And shoveling. Did I mention shoveling?


Aforementioned shoveling also was used to dig MORE trenches for conduit for two electrical outlets. I was not thrilled about this until the idea of a fountain and again last night when we started running patio lights. So I'm ready for a backyard BBQ at our house. Next year.