Our Past Tents – Page 5 – Aly & Bryan are always up to something…

January 2, 2013October 20, 2023

Snow Days

Mandy’s out of town, leaving Bryan and I with quiet days home together on holiday break. On Christmas afternoon, it began to rain, and slowly the rain started freezing on the roof and on the bushes and on the trees. And on the street. And then it was ice. And little pine-tree branches fell on our house. And then it was snow. It snowed for hours, and when we woke up the next morning, we had more snow than I can remember seeing since I moved to central Arkansas.

Like a little child, I put on my boots and my rain pants and I went outside. But like the grownup my father taught me to be, I shoveled our sidewalk and then our driveway, throwing the white stuff off into the yard, making strips of piles of snow alongside the pavement. I love snow. I love looking at snow, and playing in snow. I even love shoveling snow. I love every single thing there is to love about snow. Continue reading “Snow Days”

December 29, 2012October 20, 2023

Foster Dog

A couple of weeks ago, my coworker Kristin noticed a stray dog outside her office window. I went out to say hello, and found that the dog was so afraid that he’d freeze anytime he saw a person, even far away. I stood still for five minutes or so, and he stood still too, just terrified of me. I felt awful for him but went back inside, hoping he’d go away and we wouldn’t see him again. I didn’t think there was anything I could do.

He was back again the next day, and was just as scared. I called the animal control place in Little Rock but they didn’t have anyone they could send to catch him. And then it was the weekend. Continue reading “Foster Dog”

December 23, 2012October 20, 2023

Festivus (For the Rest of Us)

We’d settled into the afternoon when Monkey sent me a text. ‘Can we come over and meet Foster Dog?’ Of course. Come on down.

And, since it was Festivus, it seemed appropriate to just go ahead and get the Festivus Pole down from the attic and pose for photographs with it. Bryan made chai again – it’s been his holiday-break project to perfect an easy and yummy recipe – and had a nice visit and a sort of aborted version of the Airing of Grievances. And Monkey and I tried to be appropriately serious and grumpy looking for our Festivus Portraits, but somehow that just didn’t work out very well.

December 22, 2012October 20, 2023

Merry Christmas (Observed)!

First there was Christmas (observed) at our house. Since Mandy’s always in Tulsa for the first half of her holiday break, we always open presents either before or after that trip. This year, Saturday the 22nd was the day chosen to observe the gift-giving part of our holiday. We kept things pretty simple this year, and most of our gifts to each other involved needed outdoor gear. A stack of books grew as we opened our presents, too, as it always does.

We’ve tried to move away from using lots of wrapping paper and toward reusing gift bags and lidded boxes. But I think some of our presents may have gone a little too far away from ‘festive’ toward ‘cheerlessly utilitarian.’ Continue reading “Merry Christmas (Observed)!”

December 21, 2012October 20, 2023

Goodbye, Diane

Our friend Diane was hit by a car in November, while riding her bike. She spent over a month in the hospital, in a coma, before her death last week. I think it was hard for everyone who’d known her to wrap our heads around the loss of such a beautiful person, in such a difficult way.

I feel a little self-conscious for taking it so badly, since I hadn’t known her as well as many of our other friends had. Is it because I feel sort of responsible for bad things that happen to cyclists in LR because I was involved with trying to make things better? Is it harder for me because my granny died in such a similar way? I don’t know. When it comes right down to it, loving people means knowing we’ll hurt when we lose them. Continue reading “Goodbye, Diane”

December 14, 2012October 20, 2023

The Geminids

Bryan was determined to see some good meteors this year. DETERMINED. Our Orionids had been rained out, and our Leonids had been somewhat spoiled by the experience of driving around for an hour looking for a nonexistent viewing spot and then lying on the concrete in front of a dark fire station hoping not to get run over. The Geminids, though – they looked promising. A new moon and clear skies were going to line up perfectly. Some astronomers even predicted the co-occurrence of another, more minor meteor shower!

Bryan planned carefully. He invited our friends Cliff and Mitch and their kids, and he packed a stove and hot chocolate mix and air mattresses and lots of blankets. We had our good binoculars, and Mitch brought his telescope. We met at Williams Junction, where highways 9 and 10 meet west of Little Rock, and drove a caravan to Flatside Pinnacle. The parking area there is nice and flat, the glow of Little Rock is blocked by the mountain, and the skies to the west are dark over the wilderness area.

This time, we weren’t disappointed. We snuggled into our blankets and watched dozens of meteors streak across the sky. Most radiated from Gemini as it rose, of course. But there were a good handful angled perpendicular to those, was that the second shower or just random other bits of space dust? Some streaks were faint but many were big and slow and really impressively bright. Some even trailed glowing stuff behind them. The rest of us took turns dozing, but Bryan stayed up all night and watched. Just before we packed up our things to head home, about two-thirty in the morning, we saw a meteor so bright it lit our upturned faces and cast shadows behind us.

Here we are, friends, on a big rock we call home. Sometimes we need reminding that ours is not the only rock out there.

December 9, 2012October 20, 2023

Arkansas Footdown Championships

What, we’ve found yet another ridiculous bike-related thing to do? Ummm. Yep.

Avoiding ‘foot down’ is a highly valued skill in bike polo; if you can’t balance on your two wheels and your mallet, and your foot touches the pavement, you’re penalized. I suppose it’s also good to be able to balance without touching down in things like cyclocross and mountain biking, too, since putting a foot on the ground would mean a loss of forward speed and rhythm. Even road bike people like to be able to ride very slowly so that they don’t have to unclip from their pedals. And it goes without saying that people who ride tall bikes and unicycles should avoid the need to put their feet on the pavement. Learning to improve balance, in all kinds of cycling, is important. Continue reading “Arkansas Footdown Championships”

December 3, 2012October 20, 2023

Sick Puppy

Poor Hayduke.

He had a really nice visit to New Orleans last week. He behaved well in Aunt Dot’s backyard, when he was there, and when he was allowed in the house, he was a gentleman. He rested in our spare bedroom, played nicely with Emma, and even when he escaped to the living room he didn’t do anything more rambunctious than sniffing and wagging. He got to spend lots of time in Julie’s backyard playing with her dog Bourbon, and we took him to the NOLA City Bark four days in a row.

He’s also really good in the car. We couldn’t ask for a better traveling dog – he slept on his mat most of the time, and didn’t need pee stops any more often than the rest of us. We’ve been careful not to feed him fast food or snacks, ever, so he can share a backseat with a teenager and a cheeseburger without anything more than a vaguely left-out stare.

And now he’s sick. He has a terrible cough, which started really suddenly. I thought he was choking on something – he coughs so hard he gags himself, a reaction I remember clearly from his “I’m a Puppy and I Eat Mittens and Other Very Inappropriate Things’ phase. But he’s not choking, and he hasn’t eaten anything bad. He’s just a sick, sick puppy.

December 2, 2012October 20, 2023

It’s Starting to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Bryan and Mandy insist that we have a real Christmas tree, and while I grouse and complain about it, I really don’t mind. I like supporting our tree farming people, and I like the way a real tree looks and smells in the house. Someone meets us at the truck with a saw when we first pull in, and we spend some time wandering around with it, looking for the perfect tree.

My role, once at the farm, is to prevent Bryan and Mandy from choosing a stupid Christmas tree. They tend to be distracted by such trivial things as “it’s the right height” and “it’s pretty.” My job is to keep them from picking a tree that has giant holes in the cone, or a tree with a badly curved trunk. This year I had to discourage them from choosing a tree that was obviously deceased, though I really think they were kidding when they started cutting this one. They choose the tree; I have veto power. This means that the whole process of tree – shopping usually takes a couple of hours. Continue reading “It’s Starting to Look a Lot Like Christmas”

December 1, 2012October 20, 2023

Mama’s Little Coonass

Mandy’s been deer hunting several times this autumn with our friend Jarion. At first we thought she was interested in hunting just because she likes to try new stuff, and we supported that, as we always try to do. We figure that, as parents, part of our job is to let Mandy nose around and do lots of different things so that she’ll have the opportunity to figure out what she really enjoys.

We were a little surprised to find that, after getting up early to sit soddenly in the cold rain for a morning or two, she still really wanted to hunt. We scratched our heads a little at that, but Jarion was a very good sport about being willing to continue taking her along, so we continued to make time for her to go . “It’s not called deer SHOOTING,” they said. “It’s called deer HUNTING.” Continue reading “Mama’s Little Coonass”