fivebyevif

The last time we went to Taum Sauk was just shy of six years ago. Which means I was turning 27, not 26 or 25 like I thought on Saturday.

Early birds get the best tent pad. Despite being perennial nightowls, Mike and I can be goaded into getting up early if we feel there’s any chance that tardiness may cause us to not secure a good campsite (Taum Sauk only has about half a dozen to pick from). With our registration secure and our tent up, it was time to do what we came for: hike.

I’m happy to report that the Mina Sauk trail — which has already attempted murder on us once before — remains a homicidal maniac. She had an extra bonus for us this time: after the trailhead, and with few exceptions, the entire trail was flooded. This meant picking our way around an already formidably rocky path. Slime covered the rocks in parts, and steep drops waited to embrace us on one side. Fun!

But the falls were breathtaking, and well worth the potentially grave bodily harm. We had a dandy lunch with water spilling around us and the sun high overhead, and got back to the site well before sunset.

This meant we had time for Elephant Rocks, a new and exciting locale! Unfortunately, I am old, and after an hour my knees protested. Also, someone was cooking steaks. Dear god, they smelled wonderful. We went back to camp, Mike built us a fire (his specialty), I cooked us some meat (my specialty), and we went to bed happy — despite the teenagers in the camp across from us, who were happy for other reasons.

Are any of you acquaintances with six a.m.? We are now, apparently. Sunlight on Sunday morning actually managed to wake me up at hours I previously thought of as only belonging to milkmaids and madmen. As I lay there, mumbling good morning and trying to convince my body to ignore nature and go back to sleep, Mike said the words I’d dreaded.

“I found a tick.”

Welp. So much for sleeping in. We got up, broke camp, and left Taum Sauk. Mike was at first all like, “Eh, we can get to it later.” but I said the magic words — “Lyme’s Disease” — and suddenly it was an episode of House and I was racing to get tweezers and rubbing alcohol. This is now the second tick I have plucked from his side in as many weeks. I am grimly preparing for when the tables will be turned. (And yes…I checked. If there are ticks on me, they are stealthy as ninja and worthy of my blood.)

After breakfast, we visited all the local camp-and-hike parks, found some future campsites, and finished up at the Blue Owl at around 3 PM. Yes…we spent five hours driving around state and federal parks. There are that many in this one part of Missouri.

The car is now empty, and all my potentially tick-infested clothing is in the washer. My car is blessedly empty of camping supplies. I still have to figure out dinner. It was, once again, a great weekend.

We’re off to parts known with our tent and our sleeping bag. Mike is still upstairs sleeping (I’m nice like that), but shortly I’ll be walking into my bedroom with a bucket of water and a small military-issue bugle to wake him up.

The cats have the run of the house while I’m out. I suspect I’ll come home to Cthulu in my basement.

Anywho, I am aware I have been scarce, but as usual that’s probably a good thing.

April 24th is the 15th annual Dining Out for Life — in St. Louis, at least. That’s a week from the date of this posting.

DOFL is a day when participating restaurants donate a percentage of their revenue that day to local AIDS charities. It’s probably the easiest charity work you’ll do all year. And it’s a great reason to knock back a few espressos and a bottle of wine.

Yum!

Another wonderful weekend, despite itself.

The new washing machine is making me happy. It’s quiet, efficient, tidy. All my upgrades of late have been like that.

Mike liked bleu cheese this weekend. No, really, this is a major achievement. As with quite a few people I’ve known, Mike has been adamant about hating the stuff. But like a parent in denial over her child’s sexual or political orientation, I held onto a desperate, delirious hope that he could change.

And I had no part in it! Mike did it to himself when he ordered a salad with a giant chunk of Maytag bleu on top of it. He stared at it for a moment and then looked at me.

“I’ll eat it –” I started to say, reaching out with my fork to remove it from his plate.

“No.” He cut off a piece. “It’s mine.”

I gasped, clutching my fork to my chest and holding my breath.

The cheese went in his mouth. It was not immediately spat out. I waited. His expression shifted.

“Oh,” he said.

“Yes?”

“I bet that one I had as a kid was just really bad.” He took another bite. “This is really good, especially with the salad.”

Words cannot express my heart’s jubilation.

Note to bleu cheese haters: if you are presented with such a marvelous chunk as Mike was, be aware that it is probably more delicious than the chemically injected abomination you got at some luncheon line in some godforsaken cafeteria. By all means, give it a go.

I need no convincing, myself. I’ll even eat the chemical abomination if you wave it in front of me fast enough. But that’s not necessary, for I have some tender slices of Rogue creamery in my fridge that I’m going to gently spring on him at dinner Wednesday.

I can now sleep, knowing I have made note of this somewhere.

My washing machine broke. On a full load. In the rain.

Also, there’s a dead pixel yellow line going down the left side of my Dell LCD screen. Does the fun ever end?^*

Aaaanyway. Hi there! I had a great night last night, despite being burdened by the knowledge that I just had to pay for yet another vital and important machine that keeps my household from falling to the Visigoths. I am feeling particularly eloquent, though I don’t know if that’s last night or the cheese I had for breakfast talking.

About that cheese. It was really good. I’d never had an aged gouda before, and I think I have cheese intoxication. I am definitely twitterpated.

We went to Niche for dinner, which is pronounced the pretentious way, but the food was excellent and not really pretentious, even if it was expensive. I discovered that after two weeks of no alcohol (or pork, meat, or cheeeese), drinking two glasses of wine causes me to be Rather Silly!

Luckily, I have a boyfriend who is like James Bond with the drunk ladies, and I don’t mean the annoying literary misogynist Bond, I mean awesome!Bond with the opening doors and making sure I don’t barrel into people or forget my purse.

Okay, so maybe that’s a side of James Bond you never see, but it’s there, I’m telling you.

I’m sounding like a horrible lush, but I swear to you I didn’t think two glasses of wine were going to do that to me. It must have been the wine itself! Yes, that must be it! Our waiter must have slipped some Everclear into the bottle when I wasn’t looking! Hah! I’m onto her!

Aaaanyway. Today, I am going to go buy bread and look at a bike. I think tomorrow I will have to do something with my lawn, as it is a monster. That is all from Camp Steph! Take care all, and remember, one glass, not two!

^* Answer: Nope!

So. The next three months. Where to start.

First, this coming weekend. We’re tentatively planning going camping. Again.

See, we use computers a lot at work. And we really, really like getting away from them on weekends. For example! This weekend we were hiking the 5.3 mile loop of the Lewis and Clark trail, and I said, “Didn’t you want to see Elephant Rocks?” And he said, “Yeah!” And I said, “Wanna go next Saturday?” And he said, “We could camp while we’re there!” Or maybe it was the other way around, but anyway, someone thought of it, and so we’re going.

Oh, and I totally tripped and fell on my face today while walking down a steep part of the trail. My back crackled and my knee slammed the dirt, but the good news is that the iPhone (which is not covered by my health insurance) was just fine. Mike felt bad because we were holding hands at the time and thus could not really use my aikido moves to soften the blow. This nugget of information either makes you go awwww or do not hold hands while hiking steep hills, idiots! Possibly both.

The government was nice to me this year. I’m getting a mountain bike, and paying off stuff. I always like it when I can balance the fun with the responsible.

In May I go back to Colorado for the first time in…it’ll be a decade, I believe. I went to visit my friend Jason last time, but this time I’m going to meet Mike’s family. The funny part here: Mike’s family calls him Jason. I just noticed that. Haw haw.

We’re going hiking while we’re out there. Imagine that! I want to drive through Boulder, for nostalgia sake, and I am going to finagle a dinner with Audrey and Ken. So that should be awesomesauce.

In June I’m going to California for my brother’s birthday. Mike will be along for this one as well, as that will be his turn to meet my family. I will also be taking him to San Clemente (clam chowdah, clam chowdah, clam chowdah!), and there may be Disneyland involved, because the very thought of getting Mike into an embroidered Mickey Mouse hat makes me howl with delight.

So…next three months. Yep. Wake me up when I’m 33.

Not really. Haven’t even begun getting my premeasured ingredients ready. All the stores were closed Sunday because of some holiday or other, and I being me didn’t realize it until it was too late. So that plan got blown out of the water, with a side of plastic Easter grass and a Cadbury creme egg to boot.

So here we are. It’s March, and I haven’t budged from 150. No up. No down. Just 150. Annoying.

I can’t blame stress, because there’s always stress. If it’s not the basement, it’s the story. If it’s not the story, it’s the shrink wrap on the new relationship. If it’s not the relationship, it’s the holidays. Stress is a constant. Blaming stress is pointless.

Blaming my thyroid would be nice, but my stubborn brain keeps telling me calories in, calories out.

Here is what I know about me after the last three months of trying to figure out why I keep hitting the 150 brick wall: I never feel full. Correction: I can feel full, but only if I eat massively massive quantities of food. I probably could have made a career as a competitive food eater but a) gross and b) ew, really, do you know what those people have to do to down that much food that fast? Again: gross.

So all that stands between me and the Nachos Bel Grande (which don’t, by the way, make me feel full) is willpower and being mindful when I eat.

It’s all very Buddhist.

Proper prep also helps. We had a catered lunch today, and so I cut a bun in half and stacked it with lean, protein-rich meats. Then I sat at the end of the meal and deliberately told myself I was full and had to focus on that while one of our lead programmers talked about pathfinding and physics.

But now it’s 1:55 PM and guess what? I’m hungry. So…I guess I eat an orange and try not to think about it.

Yup.

Crud.

On the first day of Spring, I sucked sixteen gallons of water out of my basement.

Eff you, Spring!

Well, the story got done. Which is to say I wrote something I am more than less happy with, and sent it to an editor, who I hope thinks the same. Then I sat and wished for a pot of gold and a laptop. So far, neither has materialized.

I’m baking a cake for a certain someone’s birthday. Said cake will be taken to work, so he and the rest of my coworkers can nom on it and so I won’t be trapped alone with it. The certain someone is also getting dinner Friday night, and though I won’t be doing anything too extravagant, I do intend to try to make chocolate souffle for us.

That’s not too extravagant. No, really.

I got fined two weeks ago for not having a front license plate. Apparently, what’s legal in California isn’t always legal in Missouri — who knew! I was super annoyed because I really thought the cop was going to be nice, warn me, and let me go on my way to fix the problem. Which I would have. Really.

But — no. Apparently, being a good (but ignorant) person who pays her taxes on time and has yet to bite a cop while he was sticking her with a fine doesn’t matter anywhere. So I get to pay that and fix the problem, which is fixed because I am awesome and not a bad person who deserves to be stuck with a crappy $75 fine.

Okay, I guess I’m still annoyed.

We are going camping next week. I will be happy to sleep in, eat hot dogs and pancakes, and not have to worry about flooded basements, anthologies, and the plates on my car. Yay!

Sorry, I’ve been busy. When the short story isn’t kicking my ass (how can 7000 words be so difficult??), other things (like trying to figure out how the heck I’m going to get a front license plate on my car) are.

I do do little updates on Facebook, if you are so inclined.

Otherwise, things are well, and I just need to do my taxes and they’ll be perfect.

Ha ha. “Perfect.”

Brooke Ashlynn

My sister delivered this morning at 8:55 AM Pacific. Between her and Cindy, they have now managed to bring equal balance to the grandchild side of the force: two boys, two girls.

Yay!

Brooke and Big Brother Brett