Summer garden plans

The best thing about February is planning for summer. We get stacks of seed catalogues normally, although some haven't found us at our new address yet. Someone once asked me how you get a seed catalogue. I just can't figure out how to get off of the list. Once they have you on the meta-gardener mailing list you can never get off. It is like moving to a new area to escape from the church. Somehow those hometeachers will just keep finding you.

So I have big plans for summer gardening.

1. Add 50-100 strawberry plants to our front flower beds.
2. Replace the bushes devoured by japanese beetles with berry bushes.
3. Expand tilled garden area behind the garage.
4. Re-lay the brick around the raised beds. - need to put sand down and a border edge.
5. Build a container for compost heap - I never have gotten compost heaps to work well so I am looking at methods that help to rotate the compost. Maybe one of the round barrel types or something.
6. Plant peppers and herbs in any empty space in flower beds
7. More bulbs - we NEED more daffodils. Desperately. I planted 100 tulips this fall.
8. Decide which patches of phlox to encourage this year and which to tear out.
9. Rake out leaves left in the flower beds from last year.
10. Get some more mulch for inner flower beds, again.
11. Trim bushes, again.
12. Decide what to do with the front corner that last year went to weeds - maybe eggplants and geraniums? with lettuce borders?
13. Remember to put iron and phosphorous on the roses along the side of the house
14. Divide some of the hostas?
15. lettuces, spinach, basil, sage, oregano, parsley, peas, carrots, tomatoes, onions, endive, rosemary. Am I forgetting anything?

Where are you on the internet?

From the Opte project: A visual map of the internet from 2005

When I started college in 1996, I had a telnet and a gopher account to go online. I remember just a few websites that had pictures and no movies. When I got back from Nicaragua, the inventor of Napster came to talk at BYU about the future of the internet and intellectual property. Ironically, around that same time, I watched a pirated version of the Lord of the Rings someone from the lab had downloaded from the internet before it came out in theaters.

The internet has grown and grown. It has infiltrated almost every home and cell phone in the US and across the world. This is a universe of information that for the most part is freely accessible. I did almost all of my research for my last paper sitting at my desk and querying databases and the internet. I have 1000s of .pdf files saved on my harddrive that just a few years ago I would have printed out and bound.

I get emails now from friends in Nicaragua that live in towns where we struggled to find a telephone and had electricity only part of the day. Crazy.

I was just thinking today as I was reading a sci-fi novel that our present didn't turn out like the future depicted in the book: No flying cars, no fusion powered vacuum cleaners, no settlements on mars or the moon, no aliens with consulates in Chicago, no interstellar travel. Now none of that seems plausible for our future, but if someone had described the internet to me 20 years ago I would have thought that was pretty absurd also. So who knows. Maybe.



from xkcd.com - illustration map of the internet



From Discover magazine 2006- diagram of how data moves around the world on the internet. with representation of the world as a flat disc.

Solution for Afghanistan or Heart of darkness?

I read this fascinating article in the Washington post online.

Jim Gant was special forces in Afghanistan in the tribal areas. While he was there he made the decision to embed himself in the local tribe and make a deal with them to fight alongside them. To fight in their battles. To die for them if necessary.

He is arguing for a personal relationship with each one of the tribal warlords. One where American soldiers live, fight, kill and die with the tribal leaders. This has the potential to make true allies where we have none. But, and there is a big, but there is a great potential for abuse. By choosing sides, we may be choosing the wrong side. American fatalities will rise. Special knowledge of language and cultures will be required.

It appears that his proposals are getting some attention in military circles. Let's just hope he isn't like Mr. Kurtz.

Freezing in Iowa . . . And happy about it

When I heard about the winter storm watch yesterday I was excited. We were expected to have 8-10 inches of snow with 35 mile an hour winds, and the storm delivered. Schools were closed today. Visibility was low and it never got about 0, again. We have had three weeks of below 0 F weather.

Amazingly, I have not complained and I will be sad to see the winter go. Since we moved from Texas and to the frozen midwest I have whined and complained all winter long. Cold dark days filled with snow and freezing temperatures make me antsy for spring when the garden is growing and it is warm. I love the heat and humidity of the summer. I rarely complained in Texas even when it was 105, 90% humidity, and sweltering. Leila dreaded it because she hates the feeling of sweat beading up on her brow as soon as she stepped outside. I rode my bike to work and spent most of the summer in a cotton field and my winters in a 95 degree and humid greenhouse. I don't think that I sweat normally or something.

So what has changed? Iowa is colder than ever.

1. Long underwear - I now have a full complement of very long, very warm long underwear. I am warm when everyone else is shivering for once.

2. Wool socks - Even my feet are warm.

3. More weight - although I grumble to Leila, the last ten pounds I gained I think have helped me stay warm in the cold.

4. No animals to take care of in the cold - although I miss my little farm constantly, it is nice to not have to worry about water freezing, snow in the barn, keeping the chickens from getting frostbite, moving hay, finding the cows and pigs at the neighbors barn, and all of the other winter chores. This may also explain the extra ten pounds. Gotta do something about that.

and last but definitely not least:

From early january 2010

5. Cross country skis - I bought them off of ebay, they have old three pin bindings and I have had to repair the shoes already, and I ski like Goofy in that instructional cartoon, but I look forward to getting out in the snow every night. The cold isn't so bad if I get to flail about on skis every night.

From early january 2010

New Years Resolutions

I don't know why doing things that are good for you is hard. I have no trouble reading all the books I get from the library in one sitting or watching too much TV or eating that one last piece of cake.

But no more! This year I am determined to do all of those things that I haven't been doing that I want to do. That is the odd thing. I want to have done them, I just don't like doing them. Or I do like doing them, but it is easier to do nothing instead.

To commemorate my determination here is a poem by Ogden Nash:

Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man
By Ogden Nash

It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts,
That all sin is divided into two parts.
One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important,
And it is what you are doing when you are doing something you ortant,
And the other kind of sin is just the opposite and is called a sin of omission
and is equally bad in the eyes of all right-thinking people, from
Billy Sunday to Buddha,
And it consists of not having done something you shuddha.
I might as well give you my opinion of these two kinds of sin as long as,
in a way, against each other we are pitting them,
And that is, don’t bother your head about the sins of commission because
however sinful, they must at least be fun or else you wouldn’t be
committing them.
It is the sin of omission, the second kind of sin,
That lays eggs under your skin.
The way you really get painfully bitten
Is by the insurance you haven’t taken out and the checks you haven’t added up
the stubs of and the appointments you haven’t kept and the bills you
haven’t paid and the letters you haven’t written.
Also, about sins of omission there is one particularly painful lack of beauty,
Namely, it isn’t as though it had been a riotous red-letter day or night every
time you neglected to do your duty;
You didn’t get a wicked forbidden thrill
Every time you let a policy lapse or forget to pay a bill;
You didn’t slap the lads in the tavern on the back and loudly cry Whee,
Let’s all fail to write just one more letter before we go home, and this round
of unwritten letters is on me.
No, you never get any fun
Out of things you haven’t done,
But they are the things that I do not like to be amid,
Because the suitable things you didn’t do give you a lot more trouble than the
unsuitable things you did.
The moral is that it is probably better not to sin at all, but if some kind of
sin you must be pursuing,
Well, remember to do it by doing rather than by not doing.

Winter in Iowa

While Leila was gone at her sister's wedding, I was bored. Sometimes I complain that I don't get much done, but the truth is that I enjoy not getting anything done with Leila around. Much better than productivity while alone.

So, as part of my grand plan to keep myself busy, I searched the internet for plans for a workbench. I have pretensions of doing woodwork. There are a few things I learned again about myself in the process:

1. I cannot cut a straight line. No really. I measure twice, cut once, sand, cut again, sometimes with a new board.

2. I don't really like power tools. I much prefer hand tools. The kids can be in there playing while I work that way, and I cut crooked lines slower and have a better chance of correcting it before finishing.

3. I am an overacheiving perfectionist. If I could cut straight lines, I would dovetail every joint. But, I don't have a lot of patience with myself. I remember making pinewood derby cars when I was a kid. In my head I had a vision of this sleek, shiny car that would speed down the track. Instead in my awkward hands I usually had a rather blocky thing whose wheels fell off halfway down. When I start a project now I still have a platonic ideal of what I want in my head and when it begins to fall short I get frustrated with myself rather quickly.

4. I enjoy planning as much or more than the execution. I spent hours looking at pictures of peoples benches and plans on the internet. We looked through plans and designs and I tried to force myself to simplify my designs to something I could actually make.

5. I may not have all of the skills developed yet, but I can sure make stuff sturdy.

6. Working with Aleah is great for the ego. She continually says things like, "That looks gooood, Brian. That is a goooood cut." - As a side note, she still continually calls me Brian, instead of Dad.

The design I settled on was a simplified version of this bench:



I took the dimensions, put in butt joints instead of dovetails, designed a frame for the top instead of joined maple, removed the tool hollow, left room to add a bench vise, and planned to build it out of cheap lumber I could find at Menards. I decided to build the top out of 2.5" hardwood plywood. This is pricey stuff, but they make thick plywood planks for using as floor or roof joints. They are thick, heavy, full of resin, and seemed to be made of mostly hardwoods, and much much cheaper than even the 3/4" plywood. So I got a 10"x 12' board and cut it in half for the top.

I also found Spax lag screws. They are supposed to hold up to 5000 lbs of force and have serrated edges that are supposed to help drive them in and grip without splitting the wood. I was concerned and so still drilled guide holes. But, they sure hold tight.



So this is the finished bench:

From from phone

Here are the girls trying it out. Note, Emily in the future is likely to be embarrased by her hair here. In my defense, I did make her brush her hair while Leila was gone, and I did bathe them. She wears this hooded sweater nonstop and it kinda makes her head a static magnet.

From from phone

From from phone

Me with the fam, not getting work done while Leila was back:

From from phone

Broken computer, broken camera, busy = few posts

I am afraid Leila and I both have posted very little over the last month. Part of that is I have been busier than expected at work. The other part is our computer hard drive started making strange sounds and then sometimes wouldn't spool up. The operating system wouldn't boot and it just sat at the Compaq startup screen for as long as you sat there.

I took it to Best Buy and they said if the hard drive was dead it would cost 1500 dollars to recover our pictures and files from my dissertation that we desperately wanted to keep. The guy at the desk said that if I put the hard drive in the fridge and hit it on the corner with a hammer just right it would start working again, for a little while. So I put it outside in the cold and then hit it on the side of the desk. I got it to start up and then took it back to Best buy for them to transfer it to a new external hard drive. I am still amazed at how advanced computer storage has become. The smallest one they had was 320 gb! I still have my laptop I bought in college that has less than 200 mbytes of total memory.

The camera is broken also. So no pictures and only a computer if I bring my work laptop home. We are still here and we will try to post more often. Heaven knows I have opinions and stories about my kids.

Fall Gardening

When my mom was here visiting this August she helped us plant a small garden by the kids playground. She planted a circle of lettuces, a mix of greens, two lines of carrots, two lines of spinach, some onions, and a pumpkin plant. I planted some cabbages and collard greens later. It is now November and we are still harvesting lettuce and small carrots. It has been particularly easy since most of the weeds are done for the year.

We also are trying to grow greens and herbs in our sunroom this winter. So far the lettuce and the cilantro are thriving but the basil is weak and spindly.

So the plan right now for next year is to replace some bushes in the flower beds with berry bushes, finish the raised beds, replant our fall garden space, and put peppers and strawberries in the flowerbeds. I think kale and cabbages look great in flower beds also.

It is odd not having the little farm in Indiana. I still miss it. I miss the idea of it maybe even more than the actuality of it. The simplicity of a smaller yard with established landscaping is so much easier. And I do so love our house here in Iowa. No pig to root up the yard, or cows to round up, or worrying about raccoons and the chickens. But at the same time, I was very proud of dealing with all of our farm problems.

Maybe I will get bees. Or try to farm chickens under our porch or out of our shed. Or buy a cow and put it in a rented pasture.

Why parents are always tired:

I read stats blogs like Leila reads quilt blogs - looking for good graphing techniques so I can make my stuff look good.

One of them had a link to a hilarious article from the New York Times

Here is just a few of Christoph Niemann's explanations for why it is hard to get a good night's sleep:



Perception vs reality of ease of sleeping and being awake.


Why sleeping with a child in bed = not sleeping and no procreation.




Summary of nightime distractions

The summer is coming to an end

But I wish it wouldn't.

Chris complains that photos without captions are mostly meaningless. Too true, but here are a few of what we were up to the last month in a slideshow, without captions.

To appease Chris, the corn is a white sweetcorn from Seminis that is my new favorite called "Devotion." And I now am a devoted fan. The hands are Aleah's with her collection of caterpillars from the sweet corn. I think she had 10 or so at one time. The rest speak for themselves.

Remembering Norman Borlaug

I just learned that Norman Borlaug has died. He was at Texas A&M while I was there, although he didn't teach classes and was constantly travelling, speaking at conferences or to politicians. He was in his late 80s and early 90s when I met him, yet he still worked harder than most of the professors.

He had a yearly discussion with the plant breeding students where he would reflect on his past and tell us stories about starting CIMMyT, travelling through India, his efforts to establish farm to market roads in Africa, and his ideas about what we need to do to continue to feed the world.

He was one of the greatest men of our age. Most people don't know who he is, even though he won the Nobel prize, the world food prize, the congressional and presidential medal of honor.




Norman Borlaug developed semidwarf wheat, which shortened the plants while increasing yields. Simultaneously introducing disease resistance and eliminating photoperiod response helped make his varieties adaptable around the world. Using his ideas semidwarf rice and sorghum are also grown worldwide. He wasn't alone in this effort, but because of that worldwide yields have more than doubled. I read once that yields in parts of India and Central America have increased 5 times because of Norman's work. He also was an unwavering advocate for mechanization, chemical fertilizer, development of genetic pest resistance, and use of chemical pesticides and herbicides. Modern agriculture reflects his views. The modern world exists because his ideas worked.



My 2005 post after meeting him at A&M.

The Wikipedia entry on Norman Borlaug.

GM corn

Anti GM mural from Mexico taken by one of my BYU profs.

The bigger fear should be the loss of diversity, not because of genetically modified grain, but from hybrids and improved varieties.

The complicating factor is that hybrids can outyield old landraces by so much that as a farmer I would want the elite hybrid, even though the old landrace has more genetic diversity, because farming is a business. And more yields = more money. Genetically modified corn is also much less work to grow. Roundup is easy to spray. It breaks down quickly in the soil and sun and has a low toxicity. Weeding mechanically takes a lot more time and labor. BT and other disease resistance genes make it easier to get reliable yields without having to spray for borers and other caterpillars that eat corn. You still have to spray for other bugs. That equates to more time not taking care of corn.

I worry about the loss of genetic diversity. I worry about the loss of small farmers.

Yet still I am a corn breeder. I don't think we should go back to landraces that yield less than 100 bushels per acre on the very best ground. The question to me is how do we continue to increase past 200 bushel an acre corn yields and not decrease genetic diversity. How to do that and support local and small farmers. How to do that and make farming profitable and sustainable as a lifestyle and a part of our environment.

Research related

With all of the changes at my new job I am spending way more time thinking and reading scientific literature than I have in a long time. (I am typing this with one hand because I am bouncing a fussy baby with the other, impressive, no?)

Web and book finds:



Analysis of messy data
by George A Milliken, PH.D., Dallas E Johnson, Milliken A Milliken

I will quote the insightful reviewer from Alibris, Drpopcorn (That is me by the way!):
"Johnsen and Milliken have assembled in these three volumes clear advice on how to handle real world data. No other statistical textbooks come close to the practicality of these three volumes. The others sit on the shelf after the statistical coursework is over; you might as well sell them back and take the few bucks and go out to eat. These though should be carted around from job to job long after college courses are done. They cost a fortune, but they are worth it."



Mendeley

Facebook for real nerds. None of the stupid quizzes or constant updates, just what research papers people are reading. They have desktop software that organizes your pdfs and keeps track of bibliographies like endnote, but it is free as long as you realize they are gathering info on your reading habits and presumably selling it to someone that cares. The software lets you annotate pdf files with questions, highlights, and comments. It also will insert bibliographies into Word for you. I love it. I wish I had it years ago.

my new prescription safety glasses. I have looked at every glasses store in the greater Des Moines area and these were the best that I could find.



Leila and the baby.



Emily wearing my work hat.

So many places to go

Leila and I have been looking at our calendar and thinking about when and who we can go visit. The problem is that we would like to go so many places and see so many people. Besides the limiting factor of money time just isn't going to let us go and do all that we would like. Maybe we will try and escape this winter from the Iowa winter winds and cold.

Family:
Leila's = Gig Harbor, Washington and Provo, UT. Leila and the girls went to Gig harbor this summer and Leila's mom came here to visit just a few weeks ago. But I still would like to go. I love Seattle.

Mine = Boise, Idaho, Pocatello, ID, Washington DC, Florida, Texas, not to forget my cousins that live "close" in Nebraska. My dad even lives in Hawaii - not that I have plans to visit him, but Hawaii would be fun and I would stop and say hi if I was there. I need to go visit Anna sometime in Florida. I never have been and Mike has all of the cool toys. I would like to go to visit Aunt Sandra again and see all the changes around her farm, especially now that we don't have ours. I haven't been to Boise in ages and would like be at Mom's house and see grandma and Bob. I have a quite a few cousins there that I haven't seen really since highschool that I would like to catch up with. Marc lives near all the museums and excitement of DC and I would like to see him there also.

Friends:
New York City
Lafayette, IN
Bryan, TX
Nicaragua
Soda Springs, ID

Places we just want to go for no other reason than it's cool:
Anywhere in Europe - especially Belgium, France, Hungary, Stockholm.
Iceland - I have always wanted to go there. I see pictures and for some reason it seems like one of the most interesting places to me.
London
Cairo - one of the towns like London that need no designation of Country of Origin. The pyramids are there. Any questions?

If I forgot you and you want us to add you to our list of places to visit, please let us know. Or come and visit us in Iowa! I know it does not have the pyramids or culture of Europe, but we are here and we have a spare bedroom! We will feed you well and keep you up late talking. The kids will play. We can look at some corn. Just come.

Aleah's recipe

From Junejuly 2009

Food is important at our house. This is a recipe that I copied down for Aleah as we were making it. I told her we would make whatever she wanted for dessert and this was her idea for cookies. It really wasn't a good cookie batter so we cooked it in the muffin tins and it was quite good.

Note: The two small cups of cocoa were about a third of a cup. I added a teaspoon and a half of baking powder also.

From Junejuly 2009

This is Emily's recipe she made at the same time. We will let you know how it is.

From Junejuly 2009

Musings on life, death, and the meaning of it all.

June 22nd has come and gone again.

I am not sure why I am writing about this here or now. We don't do anything to mark this date, but the day passes and I catch myself thinking, Brian would have had his birthday today. Baby Kate came close to being born on the same day as her stillborn brother. He would have been 6 years old this year.

When he died, people tried to comfort me, but inside I seethed. No words about how he was in a better place or how children that die early were too pure for this mortal realm made me feel any better. It all rang hollow. I have always believed that there was a plan and a purpose to life, and this seemed to scream that life was full of pain and pointlessness and any plan that involved this was not one I wanted. I just couldn't see why God would do this to us, to me.

I read Connie Willis' book "To Say Nothing of the Dog" over and over again in the months after Brian was born. It is not a philosophy book, or a spiritual guide. It is pulp science fiction, but it is full of randomness and debate about the nature of "The Grand Design." while the main characters try to find the bishop's bird stump, a particularly ugly vase missing from Coventry Cathedral from World War II. They travel through time and change the past by saving a cat from drowning and bringing to the future. The main character falls in love with another time traveller as they try to repair the changes they have made in the 1800's before the future is changed irrevocably. The problem they find is that the solution is not what they thought it was, nor was the problem. They didn't have all the information and were wrong about what was needed to fix it.

I don't know if I can really say this how I mean to. On the page it seems preachy and incomplete. I want to say how I see this as a chaotic network, not clockworks, or a plot in the book. The things that are important to directing history may be small, they may involve death and pain, they may not make any sense to us on the ground at the time that it is happening and why. But, if we could understand the whole pattern we would see what really mattered. There was a story in the Ensign soon after his death where a couple faced a similar situation and they prayed, had a blessing and the baby was born alive. Why their's and not ours? I asked myself. The problem is I don't have all the information. Maybe there was a reason their's was saved and mine not. but maybe there is randomness in the equation.

Oddly, it is comforting to realize that I was wrong about world. I still think there is a plan, but I had a very simple view of it before. God's plan for the world includes randomness, pain, free will, temptation, sin, suffering, chaos, death, destruction, evolution, sex, growth, punishment, reward, and unjustness; all that we look around us and see. It includes beauty, success, love, mosquitoes, cholera, first kisses, camp outs, war, computers, fleas, mites, elephants. All of it matters. I just don't know how.

There is a plan he is in control, but it isn't like I envisioned. I can't see it like god is the grand puppetteer writing a script to a play where my son dies and I learn my lesson. He is the creator. It is like being a parent to the universe. You create it and it grows and exists. People die in this world. Even good people.

I even think that God is directing the outcome of this huge creation, but I don't see his control as heavy handed as I once did. I think it is interesting that according to chaos theory there is a pattern in randomness. That chaotic systems can develop order. Sometimes that order is hard to see though. How do you change and control a chaotic system? Sometimes small and indirect actions have a large effect on the system. Sometimes large ones have no effect because the interactions are self sustaining. Somehow that makes not understanding feel better.

Baby

Katherine Alma Gardunia - that is what we wrote down on the form, but now we are having name regrets. We were about to leave with "Baby Girl" Gardunia, but the nurse pressured us into writing something. So we did. I think we may knickname her Becca.

"Girl" Gardunia

9 lbs 10 ounces - length - I am not sure.

Leila came in to be induced at 6 this morning. By the time we got everything filled out and questions answered it was after 8. They started her on a pitocin drip and by 11 she was having regular contractions. The doctor broke her water around noon and then leila had an epidural. She was born just after 1 PM. The epidural only numbed one side so Leila was not very happy for a little while, but it went fast.

She was big enough that her shoulders almost got stuck.

She already has double chins and chubby cheeks.

The biggest problem is that we don't have a name at all!

That and I left the digital camera sitting on my desk. Hey, it was 5 AM. I thought it was in the bag. I bought a disposable camera at the lobby, so none of the pictures will probably turn out.


For names we have considered:
Katherine - Kate? Marie
Carol
Erin
Rebecca - Becca
Sara Jane
Ann (Marie)
Chubbs {Double Bs for double the chins}
Alma
Evangeline (Evie)
Marie

Going to the Hospital

Leila and I are off to the hospital to have this baby.

The rest of the story

Leila wrote about some of the move, and I agree the move itself went smooth, but it was a stressful couple of days.

My last day at work was the 15th. After that I was at home trying to get some things done, but I found I could spend my whole day just hanging out and get not much done. But, I cleaned out the barns, picked up tools, organized the garage, the basement, washed the windows, replaced the broken pane in the living room, worked my way through the relocation company checklist, mowed, cleaned out the flower beds, and when the movers came felt like we were ready to go.

The movers were great. The two of them moved our piano like it was no big deal. They packed everything Thursday. Then Friday morning they loaded the truck. They parked on the street and wheeled everything from the house all the way out to the road, about half a block. I was impressed.

Friday afternoon Felicia Trembath came over to help clean and we cleaned the house from top to bottom. But, we still hadn't mopped the floors when it was time for us to go eat and so we decided to come back on Saturday morning and mop one last time. We ate with the new Merrills, and spent the night with the Cooks. All was going pretty well. Saturday we had a load of stuff in the trailer that I took to goodwill while Doug helped one of the Elders put up a swing set. Then we went and cleaned the floors in the house.

By the time we were done, it was really too late to hit the road Saturday so the Cooks offered us another night at their place and we would leave first thing Sunday. That afternoon I asked Tara if I could borrow their laptop so I could check email, blogs, etc. I sat down and opened my gmail account and the relocation company had sent me the results of the foundation inspection and had decided that in order for them to assist us in selling the house we needed to:

1. Replace one of the support beams in the basement




2. Install window wells with drainage for each basement window


3. Regrade the dirt around the house.


If we didn't do these things they would not assist us in selling our house, which we needed since we are committed to buying our new house in Iowa. I was so mad. I called and complained, I stomped around for about an hour trying to figure out what to do. The relocation company had an estimate for them to take care of it at 4300 dollars. I was about to scream.

Then I started calling around and got help from Aaron Trembath, Doug Cook, Kyle Merrill, Marriner Merrill, Marshal Winder, Cory Hansen, and Dwayne Harris. Aaron went with me to get fill dirt in his truck. Doug went to get supplies at Lowes. Everybody else brough shovels and rakes. We met at our house just as the rain hit. In the rain we filled the best we could with the dirt we could fit in the Trembath's truck and went to work digging the window wells. I made everyone stop because it was pouring hard for a while with lightning and thunder, but we were soon back at it. We stopped as it was getting dark and still raining, but we had a large part of the grading done, the window wells installed, and the post replaced.

I don't know what I would have done without their help. Aaron Trembath went back after we left and added gravel to the window wells and cleaned up the landscaping even. I owe them a lot.

I think I called in all of my favors that last night.

In the morning we left the Cooks and came to find the cat. we couldn't see her anywhere and Emily was frantic. I told her we could wait until 12:00 and then we needed to be on the road. we looked everywhere, but that cat was hiding out somewhere and of course didn't come when we called. We waited and looked until 1:00. (I have a weak spot for weepy girls. ) We said one last prayer and I walked all around our property and down the fence rows on either side. Just as I had given up and was on my way back to the car, I heard her in the bushes. When I emerged from the brush with her in my arms, the girls were nearly apoplectic with gratitude.

By then it was nearly 2:00 and we had a long ways still to go. We stuffed the cat in the travel box and drove away. The cat hyperventilated for the first few hours of the car ride, but then settled down and slept in the cat carrier. The girls were great in the car and slept most of the way. We made one stop for gas and got in time for bed at the new house.