LaurenandLloyd.com

where our wasted time becomes your wasted time

Worst day ever

I inconvenienced a deer

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Wednesday morning, right outside of Seward, by the parade of flags, I noticed a deer on the other side of the road headed away from me. I let up on the gas and then noticed the other deer on the shoulder moving toward me. I did two things next, and I think one of them was wrong. I slammed on the brakes and slammed on the horn both at the same time.

The second deer had time to get to my lane and then spent too much time wondering what I was honking about.

I hit the deer.

But not too hard.

I pulled off the road to check out the damage. I’d seen lots of cars that had hit deer and wasn’t looking forward to seeing the front of the car. But it was surprisingly mild.

I spent a lot of the rest of the drive in to Lincoln trying to put those 1 or 2 seconds in some sort of order in my mind. I think I was going about 50 mph when I saw the first dear. I think I had my foot off the gas for maybe half a second before I hit the brakes and maybe a half second of braking before I hit the deer at maybe 35-40 mph. It could have been slower. I don’t think I could have been going much faster with that little damage.

The deer didn’t go over the car or up on the windshield or anything. There was no blood. The deer walked away. I think it gave me a dirty look for honking.

Emeralds, please!

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Woo-hoo! Lloyd doesn’t have to go to work on Tuesday because he’s got jewelry duty! I gave him strict instructions that if he doesn’t come home with a bag of diamonds, I’ll –

what?

Oh. Jury duty.

Well, that sounds entirely less fun.

Hmmmph.

Not quite the worst fog ever

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I’ve been driving back and forth from Seward to Lincoln for nearly 12 years. Something like 2,500 times. Yesterday was the second worst fog ever. The worst fog ever was just a few months ago, but I don’t want to talk about that one.

Lauren checks the weather in the mornings and yesterday she said that it was foggy. I asked how foggy and she said that there was zero visibility. It turns out that zero is a relative term. There was actually a little less fog than a few months ago, but, as if to make up for it, everything was covered with a thin coating of ice. Luckily, the ice was only bad in Seward. Once I got out on the highway it was back to just fog.

A few months ago during the worst fog (okay, it turns out I do want to talk about the worst fog), I was the second person in the line of cars that looked like it stretched over half a mile behind us. The person in the lead set our speed at about 35 miles per hour (speed limit here is 60) and that was fine with me.  During the 20 mile trip to Lincoln, only two people tried to pass us, and I only had to drive on the side of the road so that the guy who tried to pass us could avoid a head on collision once.  About a mile later we passed one three car pileup at an intersection (emergency vehicles had already arrived).

It was nerve wracking, but I wasn’t in front. I had very little responsibility. Yesterday, I was the lead driver.  That was much worse. Should I go 35mph? 45mhp? 65 until I caught up to the next car, and then it could be his problem? Well, the fog wasn’t as bad as last time, so I fluxuate around 45mph. A little faster when I thought I could see a little further and slower when I hadn’t seen any other cars in a while (is there a 70 car pileup ahead of me?).

Once again, two people passed us and sped off into the night. Only one almost ran head on into another car.  But what really scared me were the deer. I saw 5 deer yesterday on the road. There were probably more on the side of the road egging them on, but the fog was too thick to see them.

You know how everything is very quiet in the fog? I think they just didn’t hear the cars. First there were two deer in the other lane. They were just standing there when I drove past.  They really didn’t look like they were going anywhere (see honey badger). Just standing in the other lane.

I don’t think I would have seen the second group of three except there was a car coming the other way and they were just barely discernible in the space between our cars where our headlights gave up to the fog.  I was actually quite a bit further away from this set of deer, but they shook me up more. Seeing two deer is out of the ordinary (that only happens every few months). Barely seeing 5 in one morning is a little ridiculous.  Right after I saw the second set of deer, the second idiot passed me.

The photos are from the trip home. Visibility: 1/4 mile.

G’bye, dreams.

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Across the street from the CDC is a tiny little building that has captured my imagination for years. It is so little – maybe 12 feet by 18 feet? I have especially come to love it during my Tiny House Phase. (Rich Inner World and all that.)

See it? The little tan one in front of the big white house? It’s pretty tiny, so it’s easy to miss.

Soooooo cute.

Throughout my time in Seward, this little building has been:
* a tiny vacuum/sewing machine repair shop
* a tiny used car lot
* a tiny Russian Orthodox church (they added an ‘onion’ on the top)
* a tiny office headquarters for a siding company
* a tiny empty building – my favorite

I would daydream off and on about what I would do with such a tiny place, because I obviously couldn’t live in it. (Could I? Could I?) My best plan was to paint the entire interior white, put pegs and mirrors all over the walls, set up a small table with beautiful china, hang some fancy hats and shawls on the pegs, and open up a tiny birthday party place for little girls. I had it all planned out – rent would be cheap and I’d provide tea sandwiches and cakes for a modest fee. Or, people could just stop by and pick up the key, and we would all agree that they’d need to clean up afterward. And when it was not being rented, I’d pretend to live there.

Today one little boy was watching the trucks go by out my classroom window, giving me a running report of how many semis he saw, when he asked, “What happened to that building?” I looked out and gave a desolate wail.

Noooooooooo!!!

The children nearby asked if I was ok, and I told them about my love of that little house and that it made me sad that it had been knocked down.

Tyler gave me a hug.

Then I put on my big-girl panties and went into stupid teacher mode and brightly said, “Well, they can’t leave all that rubble there. What do you think they’ll do with it?” Then as I explained what ‘rubble’ meant and we talked about how the workers might clean it up, I sobbed a little inside.

Oh, for the love of Pete!

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This weekend has had some truly disastrous baking events. Monday evening is our Grandparents’ Tea at preschool, and though the children will make some brownies on Monday morning, I know that we will also ‘sample’ them right away and they will be gone. That’s ok, because I always make back-up food ahead of time.

I started Saturday evening and made some oatmeal/craisin cookies (stupidly not using this recipe) while watching the new episode of Doctor Who – with kittens biting my feet as I stood stirring in the living room. Unfortunately, when I got to the dry ingredients I realized I had only seven grains of baking soda. I tried subbing a smidgen of baking powder (which is made of baking soda and cream of tartar), but it made the cookies too poofy and my stupid oven won’t brown things right. First batch of cookies: ruined. (no photo)

After church on Sunday we made our regular trip to Wal-Mart where I bought more supplies. I thought I’d make cake mix cookies since they’re so easy (box of cake mix, egg, soft stick of butter, a dash of water if needed), but also bought tubes of pre-made dough as back-up. (I was not in the mood to make anything from scratch again, especially since we needed to be in Lincoln for choir and some Lincoln Lutheran stuff.) I made a batch of chocolate cake mix cookies and half a batch of lemon cake mix cookies and admired them cooling on the counter, delicately sprinkled with powdered sugar. I needed to reload my tea strainer/sugar sprinkler, and as I dipped it back into the ‘sugar’ container….. I realized I had used cornstarch.

No! No! Turn back time! Buy some powdered sugar!

I tried brushing it off – no good. I tried tasting one. Barf. Imagine eating a cookie coated with unscented baby powder. Grrrrrrr!!!!!

All that so-called work for nothing.

Thank goodness for the dough logs. They saved my bacon. (Also the crackers and pretzels I have since purchased.)

Change of Plans

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No, we’re not switching the theme of the website. Lloyd was going to do some work on the website over the long weekend (as well as, he insisted, some yard work). But instead we’re going to Missouri.

Lloyd’s dad had a heart attack. He’s doing okay right now, but Lloyd is pretty close to being written out of the will anyway at this point, so we figured that we should go down and sing Soft Kitty to him.

So you’ll have to put up with this theme for the time being. Pray for Lloyd’s dad and have a happy Thanksgiving.