Constructing Memories

We try to do all things with our own special style and flair. And since this construction project is, Lord willing, the biggest construction project we'll ever do, we knew we had to add our signature to it! I mean, to be fair there are lots of our own special touches (like a bike room!) but when we knew that we were going to have a whole palate of three truck's worth of concrete to play with, we started brainstorming how to make it ours.

We ended up deciding on two pieces of flair.

The first represents all of places that are special to our family:

• Maryland (where Steve, Sam, and I were born)
• Utah (our home for the last 20 years)
• China (WanYing's birthplace)
• Kazakhstan (Sasha's birthplace)
• Mexico (home of Hogar de Amor and our spiritual second home)

The coins will sit right inside the door and they look awesome.

The second decoration (so far) is a pair of unicycle tracks in the bike room.

We thought it was too risky to have somebody ride a unicycle across wet cement, so our first plan was to rig a unicycle to a board and reach as far as we could to make a squiggle in the cement.

It worked remarkably well, especially when the concrete amigos (who were so good-natured about the whole thing!) lent us some pads for Steve to walk on to extend the markings even further.

At the urging of the concrete amigos, we then roused Ben from bed at the crack of 11:30 to ride through the concrete to make another line. We had originally thought this wouldn't be a good idea because:
a) riding a unicycle through wet concrete
b) we didn't really want tracks in the mud room, only in the bike room

But, apparently b was an unfounded concern because when we do the epoxy floor in the mud room the track won't be visible and a was an unfounded concern because Ben.

So, ride he did!

And both tracks look simply marvelous. I love these little touches that make the whole project uniquely ours.

Running Away

In these times of limited travel and lots of together time, I've increasingly found myself needing regular "running away" times. Not just taking a walk during a Zoom call or a family bike ride, but little times every day that are escapes. I usually run away by bike (no surprise) and it does me a world of good.

A couple of weeks ago we were craving a bigger family escape. We reviewed our options and the closures and recommendations throughout the state and eventually settled on heading into the desert to camp. We were a little nervous that it would be too busy to be able to effectively social distance while camping, but we were relieved to find warm sun and wide-open spaces in the San Rafael swell.

It was glorious! We hiked until the dogs had to be lifted into the van at night, we climbed and explored, we played tons of board games. We reveled in the sheer normalcy of it all - no masks, no people to avoid, just our family in the desert. It was a blessed escape.

Here's what our grand escape looked like:
We were excited to find that one of our favorite camping areas in the San Rafael Swell near Goblin Valley State Park was empty.

Of course, we couldn't go into the state park, but once we saw that the area was so quiet we decided to head to one of our favorite hikes, Little Wild Horse Canyon, to see if it was empty enough to hike safely.  As you can imagine, quarters get close in a slot canyon, so we didn't want to hike it if the trailhead looked busy. But there were only a few cars at the trailhead and we were blessed by a bonus hike in one of our very favorite places (we assumed we'd have to skip Little Wild Horse this time because of crowds, but, hooray!).

The next day we headed to our second favorite hike in the area, Crack Canyon. There's never anybody at this hike, so we were confident we'd be able to enjoy the canyon in peace.

We were having such good time that we thought we'd try striking camp and driving to a different area for another night. We had never been in the area of San Rafael Swell closer to I-70 and thought we would give it a try.

The roads were a little harrowing, but Rainy made it in grand style and with only a few new scratches as war wounds earned on the adventure.

We headed to Eagle Canyon Arch and happily hiked the ATV trail to a picnic under the arch. It's so fun that our girls are old enough to do 5+ mile hikes in a day and not even feel it! The dogs, however, did not fare so well. Apparently our old dog truly is getting old, because after 3 days of hikes and scrambles every day she was definitely feeling it that evening! Poor Chorney - at 11 she's slowing down a bit, but she's still faster than ChenXing, who has never really mastered the art of hiking or climbing or moving gracefully. We had to push that dog's butt up so many rock scrambles that we bought a belay harness for next time so at least we can lift her more easily next time!

We found a beautiful deserted pulloff for camping and enjoyed more board games and took on the challenging of burning all of our remaining wood! This led to lovely fireside snuggles and staying up to seeing the amazing desert night sky.  It was the perfect end to a wonderful escape and we drove home tired, dirty, happy, and grateful to be able to enjoy such beautiful places.

Now, to plan the next runaway!

Today I Caught a Parakeet

There's an inarguable sameness to these coronavirus suppression days. There's a rhythm to the days, but man oh man does one day run into the next. In my 4:30 meeting this afternoon we had a straight-up argument about what day it was and between the six of us in the meeting there were three different opinions about which day it was. The only thing we all knew for certain was that it wasn't Friday yet. And we're the lucky ones with jobs that are secure and can be completed remotely!

Anyway - the monotony was fabulously broken this afternoon by a parakeet visitation!

I'm no bird expert, but I'm pretty sure that parakeets are not native to Utah (this fact was later corroborated by Google). But this afternoon while Steve was trimming the apple tree this handsome feathered guy (gender actually unknown, I wasn't about to Google that) came over and landed on our treehouse, which is currently being demolished (this was an add-on to the tree trimming project).

Steve's instincts were right-on. He first took a photo and then went for the insect net that, for reasons I can't fathom, we still have from my insect collecting phase in middle school. By the time he returned, Mr. Parakeet was gone.

A little later I came outside to ask Steve a question or to distract myself from work or something, and there was a parakeet sitting out on the ground, happily pecking away at dirt or whatever (I cannot overemphasize my lack of knowledge about birds. I'm pretty happy I even correctly identified this guy as a parakeet).

With my own cat-like reflexes I motioned emphatically to Greg, the construction guy (he's basically a part of the family now) and after both of us standing around looking at the parakeet, Steve came over and volunteered the net-retrieval fact. At this point, our task became clear - we had to catch this thing.

It turns out that getting a net over a completely tame parakeet is actually remarkably unchallenging. He pretty much just kept pecking at the ground with the net over him.

But said parakeet was more resistant to us picking him up to put him in a box and he flew away - all the way to our neighbors' deck.

At this point I was on a mission and with wildly wildernessy skills I tracked the bird to the neighbors' (not really that impressive, he only flew like 30 feet) and climbed up to their deck to recapture him. This was every bit as easy as the first time - he really didn't care at all about having a net over him.

Still, I was feeling really proud of myself and took this triumphant selfie. This is my version of taking a photo of the lion I shot on the savanna... except... this was a salvation attempt and legal (so far as I know).

Anyway, at this point the full gravity of having a parakeet in a box settled on us. So, we did what any normal American family would do - we texted the neighbors and made "Found Bird" to hang on the stop signs around our house. We also moved him to a bigger box and Googled what parakeets eat.

So far our attempts to find the parakeet's owners have come up null, so tomorrow we'll call the humane society and figure out what one does with a caught parakeet. 

WanYing spent the evening upgrading his box - first it was the bigger box. Then she decided he needed more food so he got a wedge of orange and some lettuce. Then he needed more light so she put Saran Wrap over the top (this one was kind of my fault, I suggested a skylight). Then he tried to fly through the Saran Wrap so she then used roughly 800 yards of clear packing tape reinforcing the skylight. Now he's on the dining room table with a cork board over the skylight so that the cat can't eat him tonight. Oh, and Steve poked air holes in the new box... although I'm fairly sure that boxes aren't airtight... but, still, asphyxiating the bird that I captured so magnificently would be a bit of a let down, so I'm supportive of the air holes.

So, that was our Tuesday Thursday Wednesday night. I guess my complaint that every day feels like the days before is for void today!