11 days to go…

I am getting ready to take a trip out to Death Valley National Park. I’m a little nervous, mostly about scorpions and rattlesnakes crawling into unoccupied shoes or hiding in the foot of my sleeping bag, but I am mostly excited. I have never gone on a hiking trip but I am thrilled to go. I think it’s going to be a great experience, and some unique and beautiful landscape to explore.

Rain!

Yesterday I went into the basement and stepped in a sizable puddle. I informed my family and my brother in law checked out the sump pump – on which the motor had burned out! He went to the Home Depot, and got the 2nd to the last one.  We were very fortunate because we had started to get some water and caught it in time.  However, water continued to seep up through cracks in the basement.  My sister and I were busy saving boxes, repacking the contents into dry ones, and using plastic tubs as well.  I figure it took 15 hours to clean, and organize the basement – times 3 people.  We threw out a lot of things and junk, and labeled boxes for organization.  We live by a creek, so we would take breaks to monitor the creek level – check it out!

A productive day…

Today I went to church, ran some errands, cleaned out my car and vacuumed it, and organized the growing pile of stuff in my bedroom… A pretty successful day!

Practical gifts

A comment I often hear from my friends is ” What should I buy my mom/dad/parents for (fill in occasion here)?”.  This makes sense to me, because while you want to get your folks something nice, you don’t want it to be useless.  A friend of mine will get together with her sisters and buy her dad an “experience”, such as race car driving lessons or a birthday package with the local farm team (baseball) where he can throw out a ceremonial first pitch.  These are great ideas for several reasons – it appeals to his interests and recalls childhood fantasies of wanting to be a sports figure, it creates a family day situation, and the cost is split among many.

I tend to lean towards practical gifts for my mom.  One year during autumn, I was doing some catalog browsing and found some winter boots, which made me think of the sad state of my mom’s current boots.  I decided I would her her an early Christmas gift of new boots, because I know that she would never think to replace them on her own. 

So today, Memorial Day, I went into the garage to check out my bike, the tires, grease the chains, and I looked at my mom’s bike, dusty, icky and unused.  I decided to give Mom an early birthday gift.  I called the local bike shop, which was open, and he said to bring it in.  I inflated the tires and rode it across town and left it with him and walked home.   He is going to take her 25 year old bike and give it new pedals, water bottle holder, and replace anything worn.  So Happy Birthday Mom, you’ll have your bike all ready for summer!