Browsing Archives for July 2010

First you have to measure the depth of the water in cubits.

So you know how big to make your ark.

And then you assemble a large vessel using a great amount of gopher wood.

This is Shem…

Ham…

And Japeth.

(Japeth always was the thinker…)

And this is Caanan.

You know the one…

The grandson that grandpa Noah cursed when Caanan’s dad Ham saw Noah naked in his tent after an all night bender in the vineyard.

Because this demonstrates God’s mercy, justice, love and his divine and omnipotent insanity.

Finally the time came to see if the ark was seaworthy…

The sons of Noah gathered some inner-tubes.

They hoisted the ark out to the water…

Deeper…

Deeper…

Deeper…

Even deeper…

Yes… deeper.

The Country Doctor removed the inner-tubes.

For some reason he seems to think that this vessel is going to float on it’s own.

He really must be a man of astounding faith.

And then God shut the door.

So the Country Doctor decided to scrap the ark project and build a dock instead.

“If we are going to drown for our faithless iniquity, ” he said, “we might as well fry up a nice mess of fish caught from this here dock which we shall fashion with our own hands, in our own likeness, before we go.”

This is a weight.

One of the Country Doctor’s patients made this weight just for this ark project.

Which is now a dock project.

Because an ark is supposed to float, but a dock is not.

At least not this dock.  NO, no no… not THIS dock!

For some reason that I can’t really understand, the CD hates floating docks.  He hates them passionately.  He regards floating docks with the same disdain that I reserve for store bought salad dressing, Folgers coffee and Pioneer Woman.  Which explains why his dock looks like an ark… well… it looks more like an ark than a dock…because he designed it to stick into the bottom of the pond.  So that it won’t float.  There will be no floating with this dock.  None.  None at all.  Don’t even say the words ‘floating dock’ in front of him.  He will react like you just poured hot acid on his inner thigh. And yes… this dock seems to be missing the actual ‘dock part’ but that is only because… because… I have no idea why.  I guess he intended to build the ‘dock part’ later.

The trouble is that his dock did float.  He didn’t think that it would, but it did.  It was designed to be the extreme opposite of a floating dock , but it is a floating dock anyway.  Evidently wood floats.  Even really heavy, creosote soaked wood floats.  Who knew?

And since floating docks are the CD’s worst nightmare, this was not a good moment.

Fortunately, the Country Doctor had a solution.  He had a scrap metal weight.

He thought he would use the weight to sink the poles into the bottom of the pond and hold the dock in place during floods.

Instead, he is going to use it to keep the dock from floating.

They took the weight out to the dock on a hastily assembled mini-ark.

Drew got a little nervous.

He was worried that his dad was going to drown putting that weight on the dock.

I told him that his dad could just let go if he got into trouble, but Drew didn’t buy it.

He is one of little faith.

The CD and Calder attempted to attach the weight to a bolt that was sticking out of one of the poles.

They worked at if for ten minutes.

And then they dropped the weight.

And it rapidly slid to the bottom of the pond.

Never to be seen again.

I guess the boys are going to have to hold that dock in place for… like… probably… forever.

The Country Doctor kept trying to salvage his dock.

For one hundred years he labored.

But it was all for naught.

It began to rain.

It rained for forty days and forty nights.

His faithless family abandoned him for higher ground.

The promise of a rainbow was not enough for them.

It left them feeling empty… and hollow… and in need of a hot cup of tea.

“What’s a stupid rainbow when we could be playing COD on the X-box?” they said.

The next day the CD began to draw up plans for a new dock design.

This one will ALSO absolutely NOT FLOAT.

He may not have the gift of prophecy, nor speak with the tongues of angels, but once he sets his mind to something.

There ain’t no changing it.

This was my favorite stand.

It had the prettiest design…

And also – the best costumes.

At first I didn’t know what this vegetable was.

I thought maybe they were exotic carrots.

Or petite beets.

Or tiny red rutabagas!

But then I read the sign.

“Radishes” it said.

Sometimes I have a tendency to over think things a little bit.

Hey!  I told you it was exciting!

Happy Fourth of July!

We are in the midst of a very quiet holiday weekend.  In year’s past, the Country Doctor has organized and been one of the primary forces behind our local Fourth of July parade.  It is a really nice parade and our family spent most of the three or four past Fourth of Julys setting up main street, manning entrances and exits, and cleaning things up when it was over.  This year my husband decided to hand the reigns over to someone else and so we are staring down a very quiet Fourth.  Which seems kind of weird and kind of pathetic and sort of lazy and very non-spastic for us – especially for the Country Doctor.  It’s such a listless weekend (comparatively speaking) that maybe we should just go ahead and move into the nursing home or get ourselves hooked up to a respirator and have nourishment pumped directly into our veins.  As hoisting that spoon all the way up to our pie holes seems a bit daunting right now.

We are at loose ends.

How does one celebrate the Fourth without cleaning all the trash off of Main street?

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In other news…

I spent a night at a fireworks stand with Jack and Ethan. We were on guard duty, protecting the fireworks from any bandits and robbers that might come sneaking under the tent flaps in the middle of the night. The stand is a fundraiser for Ethan’s choir. Much to our dismay, no one broke in during our night of surveillance. So all I got is a poor photo or our sleeping arrangements and this accompanying lame paragraph.

However!

There has been plenty of baseball going on.

Turns out that my son Drew did break his thumb.  I had to take him to an orthopedic surgeon in Topeka because the break was in his growth plate.  The surgeon came into the exam room, introduced himself, looked at Drew’s thumb and then said, “The good Lord knew what he was doing when he made our hands, as they break all the time, but they generally heal without any problems.”

I just nodded and smiled at him, but of course a million questions about this surgeon’s deity were beginning to form in my mind.

The surgeon went on to further explain “Now a leg or an arm is a different thing.  If a kid breaks his leg and the break is in the growth plate, the leg can grow real funny.  It can grow out to the side or be shorter than the other leg.  It’s a pretty bad deal.  But when it comes to the hand, it usually heals very nicely.”

“Well that’s a relief!” I so badly wanted to say.  “It sure is a good thing that Drew broke his thumb and not his leg as this god of yours seems to be somewhat limited in foresight and insight as well as imagination and the old improperly healed sideways leg would make it pretty hard for Drew to run the bases!”

But I didn’t say that…

Because this surgeon was making a cast for my son.

Which is probably not the best time to ridicule a person’s beliefs.

GOOD NEWS!

We thought Drew’s broken thumb would mean the end of his baseball season.

But that has not been the case.

Once he figured out that he could fit a glove over his cast…

And wrap his hand around a bat.

He just kept right on playing.

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In other… other... news…

I went to the Manhattan (Kansas) farmer’s market today and took some very exciting produce photos.  You may not think that the words ‘exciting’ and ‘produce photos’ should be in the same sentence, but you would be wrong.

Okay…

Maybe you would be right.

It just depends on what your definition of ‘exciting’ is.

You can see these (exciting or not) photos at Farmhouse and Garden.

I would post them here, but I didn’t want to over excite anyone without fair warning.

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In Summary…

Our town does have a really nice Fourth of July experience.

There’s a carnival…

That can honestly be a little too exciting…

A parade, and  a fabulous fireworks show.

It’s the ultimate in small town America celebrations.

Hmmmmmmmmm.

Perhaps next year we should invite some people over to share it with us?

It would give us an excuse to shut down the respirators for a day or two.

Potato Salad and Homemade Ice Cream!

Rechelle