I feel like I’m passing notes.
Dear Brad, Annette wanted me to show you what happened to her handles. The lower ones are where she keeps the delicious snacks and cereal, the upper ones are where she keeps the vegetables and fiber-rich foods.
Weird and sad
Kathryn, if you’re reading this – I’m sorry.
Kathryn and I were roommates in college, and she has a very nice little plant that she called Sylvester. (It was some kind of evergreen-fern thing. Brad will know.) Somehow, when school was done I got custody of Sylvester and he traveled many places with us – Minnesota, Maryland, and then back to Seward. Not being a plant person, I have hated Sylvester for many years now. He just kept growing taller, skinnier and sad-looking. He’d drop branches like there was no tomorrow, so it looked like a sickly palm tree. Lloyd and I have argued about euthanizing him, and this summer Brad said, “Put it outside in the winter. It will die a painless, natural death.”
So we did.
Mission accomplished! Plant’s dead! On Lloyd’s second day of yard work we were disposing of the corpse and found this!
Whaaaa? Still in tiny pots? No wonder! The hilarious thing is that I think Lloyd and Brad repotted this from it’s earlier container, but they just put all the dirt in from the small pot.
This was also found in the dirt. Kathryn, I think it’s your sleeve.
Our Very Special Guest Star…
Remember this boy?
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that is Josh! For those of you who don’t know, Josh is Lloyd’s cousin who came to Seward with Lloyd’s brothers several years ago to detassel. They were teenagers when they were here, and now Josh is all grown up. He’s headed to Alaska to cut down all the trees. (Josh hates trees.) Oh, wait, actually he’s doing tree service – bringing them fresh towels and freshening their drinks. No, wait – trimming the trees. Got it. (I should have paid attention when the boys were talking.)
Good luck, Josh! Have a great adventure!!!
Here are Lloyd’s two favorite Josh quotes from when he was 14 and spent the summer with us…
Josh talking with his Grandma: “Yeah, they [Lloyd and Lauren] have to buy all of their food from the store, ’cause they don’t got the woods”
A few weeks before the 4th of July, Josh wanted to buy some fireworks. He asked Lloyd where the closest fire works stand was from our house.  Lloyd told him that there was one right up the street about 5 blocks. Josh left to go shopping, but came back in about 30 seconds later: “Hey Lloyd, what’s a block?”
Alley Walks
When the weather is warm and Lloyd and I are feeling adventurous, we walk. Outside. No foolin’. Ok, usually it involves a stop at Dairy Queen, but at least we’re walking. Instead of walking on normal sidewalks, it’s much more interesting to walk down the alleys. Lloyd thinks we should make a new category called, “Places in Seward you never knew existed”. So, here are a few photos of the unseen side of our fair town.
I especially like the door at the top. What’s in there, anyway?
All this one is missing is a hound dog chained to the tree and a cooler of beer.
Yer-ba Ma-te
I’m a sucker for trying things ‘as seen on t.v.’, and last week there was a show called ‘Get Fresh with Sara Snow’ where she was showing all kinds of things you could do to eat better. The oddest thing was a completely vegan chocolate cake – no eggs, no milk, no butter. It looked ok, but I don’t think I’d crave it.  She went surfing with the owner of Kashi, and they made a cool-looking rice snack on the beach later, but I’m too cheap to buy all the ingredients for that.
So instead I bought some yerba mate (really pronounced – mah-teh) tea.  The people who are hard-core drinkers of it put it in a gourd with a metal straw to steep, then drink it from that. It looked like they were drinking drugs! (They’re not – it’s just tea.) Anyway, it’s supposed to be energizing without giving people the bad side effects of coffee. Since I drink SO much coffee at school, I thought I’d give it a try. (Less jittery.) The taste is awful – like drinking brewed cigarette butts. But hey – put enough sugar in it and I’ll drink anything.
Pants on fire.
Today Lloyd got up, showered, got dressed for school, followed me out the driveway, drove to the city limits of Seward…..then turned right around, came home, and cleaned up the yard.
He did not have school today, even though when I asked this weekend, “Are you out on Monday? We’re going to have a lot of children at the center because Seward is out.” He lied and said, “No.”
He did this once before. The last time he cleaned up the whole basement. It’s such a shock because his deception is so thorough. I mean….driving away? Dressed up? Coming home is so disorienting. “Why is he home? Why is he wearing that? Why is it so clean? Am I dead?”
Here are some photos of his amazingness, though they are only meaningful if you can understand that we HATE yardwork, and every nook and cranny was filled with a foot of compacted leaves and dead weeds. Brad has been our only lifeline to greenery, though Lloyd has really stepped it up recently. It’s really too bad that there are no ‘before’ pictures. Lloyd said he raked up seventeen billion trash cans of leaves from the front yard and side garden.
