Sacrifice

Remember when I said sometime's my friends make me do weird things? Cheri texted me at like midnight and asked me to go to WalMart with her. So being the great friend I am, I obliged. We didn't get there till like 12:45 and it closed at 1 so we basically ran around the store looking for the things she needed. Also the Spudman is tomorrow and that is super exciting so I am going to count this little post as tomorrow's post and call it good. Because I have a feeling I am going to be too tired tomorrow to be doing much of anything.

I don't feel like I am going to get my scheduled 9 and a half hours of sleep tonight.....

Rolling in the Deep

Today was Cassie's last day. :( We all rode together in the truck, even though there was room in the other truck. So as I sat in there being poked and punched the whole drive to American Falls, I just thought to myself how much I would miss that. <insert sarcasm here> I was driving and Cheri was bugging Cas, so when she started to take a drink of her water bottle, Cheri reached over and grabbed it and squeezed it which resulted in it spewing out of Cassie's mouth all over me. We aren't talking about a few drops that would dry really quick, we are talking fully drenched. She got me wet from the top of my shoulders all the way down to my pants. Then we did a few renditions of 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, including different tones, pitches, high and low voices, and fast and slow speeds. Put us in a truck for an hour and a half and this is what happens. We also are very good at singing the theme song to The Phantom of the Opera, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Harry Potter, various Disney Channel shows, and medley mixes of our favorite songs on the radio. So if you ever need to hear one of those, we could probably recreate that moment.

I have been doing so good these last couple of weeks with not hitting anything. Today I was on Old Rickety's Grandpa (the oldest and slowest mower we have) and I ran over a dead bird accidentally!!! It was so gross and it sucked it right up and the feathers of course went everywhere and it made me not want to empty it because that thing doesn't hold much grass so I was sure it was sitting right there on top of the pile when I went to dump it. I am sure the reason the cows that we feed with our grass are so healthy is because we give them lots of things like plastic, boxes, birds, and the little flags that alert us that the grass has been sprayed. All of which I suck up into the back of my mower. All in a day's work.

Adelle's song Rolling in the Deep came on at least 4 times today. It has been stuck in my head for a good 3 hours. Cheri and I sing it better than her...I'm fairly certain.

It's Raining, It's Pouring

Nothing exciting happened to me today but when I logged on Facebook, I saw that my sister is having quite the adventure. I guess it is raining a lot in Provo, and she lives in a basement apartment....so that equals flash flood apparently. I watched some videos and as they walked through their house, you could see the water was already past their ankles. That is pretty sad. I haven't talked to her yet, so I don't know how many things were damaged. Actually, I haven't talked to her at all so I put this whole entire story together from seeing her Facebook wall. Yes, that is how connected I am with my family.

I guess the highlights of my day were:

  The sprinklers hitting my clear car so now I have to wash it again! I hate hard water stains

 Chipping my nail on the stupid chain on our trailer that is broken

 Mowing 12 lawns in one day

 The realization that I will be leaving on a plane in 45 days (!!!!!)

 Playing on a slip-n-slide

Getting the best/worst tan line of my life from my rolled up sleeves

And the best part: I no longer have a sun glasses tan line. It took 2 painstaking days of not wearing them, but I finally am back to normal. 

That's it folks. That is my life in a nutshell. 

Wilderness Day

Remember in Bambi when his mother got shot by a hunter? Well, what they left out was the part where a semi hit her and left her for dead on the side of the road first. We found her while driving to American Falls today. I mean, I would have stopped and put her in the truck with us but I feel like when she became conscious, she would not have loved that. So we just left her on the side of the road. It was sad. Then on the way back we saw another full sized deer on the side of the road by the guard rail. It was a sad day for all deer.
Then, as we were driving home through all the construction we played the 'call out every dead animal you see' game. That was a fun one and kept us entertained for quite some time.

On a happier note, as we were driving out in the country there was a mother duck on the side of the road with all her little ducklings waiting to cross the road. This is not a joke. It was the cutest thing. I thought that only happened in movies. All the babies followed behind the mother in a nice straight, probably alphabetical, line. Tender.

And on an even happier note, I left a bunch of pennies on the train tracks and I went back today and they were all squished flat. I was so excited because every time I have left them before, they got lost. But they were waiting there for me to pick up.

Don't mind my rough, calloused man hands.....

Junk Yard Dog

There were plenty of shirtless male models showing off their belts, but I felt safer choosing the nerd... 

The things I do for my friends. Cheri really wanted to make a seat belt belt so we had to take a little adventure over to the junk yard. We spent a couple hours going up and down the rows and rows of cars, trucks, use-to-be cars, and many many weeds, sticks, bushes, and branches in the aisles. We finally found the one in a really old beat up Cadillac. This is almost like the time she made me go about 10 to 15 miles out of town with her to the middle of nowhere as we searched for willow branches to make whistles out of. Sometimes you get an idea and you just have to run with it.

Anyway, as we were going through these seriously damaged bodies of cars, I kept getting the thought of 'what if I open this door and under the back seat there is a dead body'. Morbid, I know, but nonetheless what was on my mind at the time. Also, what is to stop some animal from making that car his new home. I wasn't interested in finding a little family of bears in a car either. Also pretty unrealistic, but in my head all the same. If anyone is in the market for a belt made from a seat belt, I got the hookup... no pun intended.

Every Breath You Take

Every time I have seen a dead bird, it is exactly that. Dead. I see them and wonder to myself how they died or how long they have been there. Today, I witnessed a bird die. Right in front of my eyes. I went to the back of this place we were mowing and I saw it. I didn't hit it or even come close to hitting it, because I am now a pro at not running over things. I got really close to it and it just kind of looked up at me. I looked down at it and tried to see how close I could get without it flying away. Well, it didn't actually fly so I gave up on that game and just stared at it some more. I kept mowing and when I came back I saw it teeter this way and that and then it just toppled over on its side, closed its eyes and laid still. I was there for him as he took his last breaths. I'd like to say I held his wing and comforted him in his last moments, but I didn't. Because dead or alive, birds are kind of gross and germy. But I did feel sad, and Cheri gave him a nice burial in the back field. Minus the bury part because we didn't have a shovel or the time.

Also, in my spare time I like to play the part of Santa Clause. At some apartments we were at, I found this little toy car in the grass. Instead of running it over possibly reducing it to shreds, I picked it up. This little 5 year old girl was watching me and sitting on top of the heater box in the grass I was mowing, so as I went by I gave it to her. Her face immediately lit up and she ran as fast as she could to show her little brother what she had. I found another car in another section of grass and she was back, sitting in the same spot, so I gave her that one too. She was too excited for those toys. What a day.

Thomas and Friends

I have never in all my 11 weeks of mowing seen any creatures other than birds, spiders, the occasional squirrel, and normal things like horses, cats, and dogs. Today, I saw TWO snakes! As you read this next paragraph, imagine my high pitched, panicked voice.

I was mowing at this big softball field in the back of a church and suddenly I saw this slippery, slimy, slithery huge snake! It was huge and nasty and I hate snakes. I do not like snakes and I did not like that this particular one was in my way. I got far away from it, then because I didn't think anyone would believe me, I went and took a picture.

Then at a whole new other church in a whole entire different town, Cheri brought to my attention this little huge snake that was just chilling under the window sill of the church. I named him Thomas. We were more daring with this one, and got sticks and things to throw at it to move it. Yes, animal activists, I know this was not nice and the snake probably did not enjoy it, but it wouldn't move out of the shade and I wanted a picture.  I got up enough courage and poked it, but it still didn't move so I scooted it over, it still not making any movement. Good thing too because my camera doesn't zoom and I could have lost my life with how close I had to get for a good picture. The sacrifices I make....

 Some snake expert please tell me that this snake isn't poisonous.....

Lonely

Lonely, I am so lonely. I have nobody of my own... Or something like that. Lyrics never were my strong suite. Well, its day two of living on my own. Only 8 more days until I can see some of my long lost family. It was different in college when I had to be home alone because I had a small room and not a lot of places to wander. Being in my big house I can just wander aimlessly from room to room wondering what to do next. My family should be happy, I've already done the dishes and the laundry out of pure boredom. I don't have any fantastic pictures from work today, sadly enough. And this post is becoming boring for me to even right so we'll end on Eli's favorite joke:

What did the man say as he saw smoke pouring out of the church window?  Holy Smokes!!

Miss that kid. And the rest of the hooligans.

Sun Day

We got rained out of work a lot the first couple of weeks we worked. It was always cold and windy and sometimes we got the day off because the weather was just ferocious. Well, today we got a hot day. It was too hot to work and the sun was just so hot and I did not love that so I made the executive decision and told my fellow coworkers that it was time to be done. It was around 98 degrees when we quit, so Cas decided to take us boating. If I could cool off every time I got hot by going boating, I would be one happy kid.

I have a fantastic sunglasses tan line. Actually, I hate it. 

This is Cassie's favorite way for me to dry my hair. I love swimming.

Effort

These days it is really hard for me to come up with interesting stories. Hence me being on the school newspaper for like 1 day because I wasn't original enough. Well that was like 3rd grade anyway...but... Moving on.

Well, it's like this. I can talk about 3 things that I mostly always have something to say about. Food, work, and myself. Three fairly important subjects. So lets get started

I went to Layton, Utah today for my cousin's (I think) farewell. He is somehow related to me maybe. That was fun and a long drive, but somehow we stayed entertained. After, Aunt Jan fed me some delicious angel food cake with strawberries and I kicked my cousins' butts at Phase Ten. (Actually I lost but I was within one card of winning)

Also while at the cousins house, I was trying on their trek stuff and this little bandanna keeps cold inside these little pouches inside the fabric. I thought that was pretty spectacular. 

I ate this in the car today only out of desperation because I had to wake up at 5 that morning and hadn't eaten anything so I was super starving. It kind of reminded me of cat food and I only ate like 1 bite. Then I just decided that either way I was going to die so it didn't matter. Either of starvation or food poisoning.

On the way to a job allllll the way in Lakeview, a huge semi passed us and left this lovely little huge crack in our window. It was like 2 layers deep. It sounded like a gun went off when it hit, and the driver (Cheri NOT me) almost killed us by closing her eyes when it hit because it scared her. Hey, we can't all be as good of drivers as I am....

Also at Lakeview, Cheri found this little birds nest that had fallen out of the tree. She put it back in the tree and my hope is that if the baby bird hatches, some other birds nearby will act as a foster mother to it. Mostly because we found its mother dead on the ground so it didn't have much hope there.

Throughout the day I found 2 other birds nests that had fallen to the ground. Somebody should offer a course for mother birds on how to build a stable home so their children don't fall out of trees and die.

Well, there is a crash course of what my weekend was like. I learned that if I do this as my life is being lived, it doesn't take me a half an hour to write these things! 

Irony

Disclaimer: The following story involves adult material, so if you are young and impressionable, please go finish watching Sesame Street and do not continue reading.

At one of the churches today (the name will not be disclosed for privacy reasons), I did something kind of dumb. You know sometimes when you do something, and then immediately after you really really wish you didn't do it? Yeah. That was me. Keep in mind this was an accident, and will not be repeated...to the best of my ability...

I was in the back corner of the church kind of back behind a shed. Sometimes when you get in the groove of things, it is really easy to space out and just kind of mow on auto-pilot. Well, I was going along and kind of saw a little box but didn't really care enough to stop and pick it up. With the power of our blades I knew it would just suck it up and it would be no big deal. What I didn't know was that it was a box of condoms. Well, once I ran this box over, of course every single little one of those little guys came out of the box and were strewn all over the grass. I swear this thing was like a 48 pack or something there were that many. I knew if I got off my mower to pick them all up, my boss would see me because he was like 50 feet away, and I was not interested in him coming over to see what I was doing. So I did the only thing I could think of. I decided to run over them to pick them up as well. Then, because it wasn't bad enough I had to deal with that, my blades decided to rip open all the packages, so when I emptied the grass in the back, there were millions of little unwrapped condoms. It was not a pleasant experience for me and I buried those things like a kid in a sand box. I only tell you this extremely embarrassing story so you will understand what kind of things I have to deal with on a day to day basis!! Oh, also there were some soda bottles in the back (which I actually picked up and took to the trash...who says I don't learn from my mistakes?) which leads me to believe a picnic of sorts went on back there.

Power Rangers

Here are things that start with P

Power washers
Power Rangers
Penguins
Poptarts
People
Pretty Ponies
Popcorn
Poltergeist
Polly Pocket

We finished all our work early today, so me and Cheri power washed the truck and cleaned out the inside. That was a job and a half. If you ever judge a farmer for his truck (or himself) being dirty, don't, because holy cow there was a lot of dirt on that thing. It just cannot be helped.

As sparkling clean as a truck out in the middle of the country is ever going to get.


The reason I am only blogging about cleaning a truck is because I am mad I got jury duty from September-November so I can't think of anything else to write about. Hopefully we will have a crime free town in those months.

The Good Samaritan

Its my birthday today. If you forgot, we aren't friends. Just kidding it's not. I like to find cakes at Smith's for the discount price and sometimes my mom buys them for me. This one is German Chocolate and it looks delectable. Well, it actually kind of looks gross, but I am almost certain it will taste good.

Today, also while at Smith's, we were in line and had already unloaded our cart of our 30 million groceries (which is usual for my mother) and this lady in front of us just informed the cashier that she was out of money with 9 or so dollars left on her bill. She said that she had some kids that were coming 'soon' and they would pay the rest. We stood there for about 7 minutes and they didn't appear to be coming. So I  took out my wallet and just paid it. Everyone was happy that so we could get moving and get the show on the road. Finally about 5 minutes later the girls showed up and gave me a couple of dollars.The lady didn't even thank me, she just rolled herself out of the store on her little electric wheelchair. The manager working there however gave me a huge smile, and that made it all worth it.

Lastly, this little guy was on our window this morning. I figured since I have some sort of animal sighting at least once a day, we can all treasure it together. 

Oh, side-note: Today, we were mowing during a thunder and lightning storm. I had two thoughts. 1- Can you be struck by lightning while riding a ride mower? and 2- If I got struck by a lightning bolt, would I be thrown off my mower, run over by it, crash it into a wall, and then find myself with a lost memory and no account of how I got there? These are the thoughts that run through my head during work.

Compliments

My mom, Cheri, and I went to the Old Folks' Home today. Among the compliments the 3 of us received, my favorites were:

You have really great legs! Stand up so I can look at you
I really like your teeth. Smile for me so I can see them again
Boy, you sure do have a great pair of feet on you
You sure have some great looking shoes. They match hers too and they both look good
I like those shoes

Our flip flops were a hit. I sure do love those grandmas there. I love that we can have the same conversation 3 times in 10 minutes. You never have to think up conversations because you can have the same one over and over and over again.

Old Age

Nothing like work at 7 in the morning to get a bright smile on our faces

Seriously. Who doesn't love getting a bright and early start to their day?  As we found out on Friday, both Cheri and Cassie now know how to drive the big rig, so I'm not the only one that has to do it these days! I still have to do the highway driving, but that is a lot better than driving all day every day. I was able to take a 'rest' while Cheri drove us and it was much needed because waking up at 7 is not my favorite way to start a Friday. I say rest because it would be impossible to sleep with those 2 in the truck. Between them randomly bursting out into any sort of song, hitting me, or just being impossibly loud, you can't really do anything more than just rest in there. But I kind of like them so I deal.

And nothing like an impromptu camp fire/Harry Potter Marathon celebration!

Seeing as we didn't start the movie till well after midnight, we didn't actually get a lot of watching done, but we were successful on the sleeping portion of that night. I find when you get older (yeah, I'm going to consider myself one of those oldies) you don't really need to have a lot going on. I am content just sitting on the couch listening to my friends talk (or bicker, whichever the case may be) and relax. I became a pretty successful player of Angry Birds last night, and some of the others became puzzle masters. So you may think 'Retirement Home' when we explain what we do when we hang out, but I think for the most part we have a pretty good time. I sure do love Summer.

Danger: Bird Crossing.

In 20 years if there are no longer any birds on this planet, I will not be shocked or surprised. With the amount of birds that I see dead in the grass, its a wonder there are any left to fall out of the tree at all. While I was mowing along yesterday, I was in the zone and getting tons of grass mowed in not a lot of time. Suddenly I came upon an object in the grass. From previous experience, I have learned not to assume that it is just a stick or a leaf so I kind of slowed down but apparently not enough. It was a baby bird and I had too much momentum going on to be able to stop completely so it sucked the bird up right through the blades. It made a popping sound/sucking noise and all that was left was a lot of feathers. If you've ever seen Shrek, you will know what this looks like if you envision the bird that exploded and all the feathers that went everywhere. I could not believe that had just happened and I was so grossed out that there was a bird in the back of my lawn mower I could barely finish. I had a lot of visions of the bird not actually being dead and when I open the back for it to fly at my face in enraged fury that I had tried to kill it. Throughout the rest of the day I saw 2 more birds but I was sure to give them a 10 foot radius so my blades could get nowhere near them. Today, Cheri was kind enough to leave me a strip of grass to mow and right at the beginning there was this monstrous bird and it was gazing up towards the sky eyes open beak ajar just staring at me. Its legs were contorted into a strange mixed up jumble and its wings were spread wide. I obviously got a good look at it as I almost ran it over. Baby birds can go through my mower just fine but I wasn't interested in picking out bird from the inside so I avoided that guy as best as I could. Watch birds go on the endangered species list pretty soon.

Alright, my PETA moment is over.

So....in other news I have finally watched Batman for the first time....Taylor has tried to get me to watch it before now, but I was too busy. Or tired. I get insanely tired these days.

This is going to be an 'everything that is on my mind at the moment' post, so bear with me. If work is the only thing I ever talk about I'm going to lose audience members here and I have worked very hard to gain a reputation. This next story deals with my little brother.....uh sister....no brother. I think.

This little kid is my best friend. Every day when I get home from work he runs up to me and gives me a big hug. We didn't used to love each other like that, but he is warming up to me. He tells me when I go back to college (which he doesn't know isn't actually happening) he will miss me the most. If that isn't the most tender thing I have ever heard, I don't know what is. So I realize this isn't so much a story as it is a declaration of love to my youngest sibling, but just deal. 

Please enjoy this

Another Day, Another Dollar

Driving to American Falls and back 2 times a week can get pretty  monotonous.  To curb the boredom, me and Cassie my truck partner made up some games. The first one (my favorite) is when the truck is dead silent and neither of us are really paying attention to anything as we drive around from place to place. I wait for the right moment then turn to her really fast and scream at her or say rawr! or just made a loud noise. She jumps so high and makes a terrified face. I can do this at least 3 or 4 times in a day and I get the same reaction every time. It is so much fun for me. The second is at any given time to just say 'what are you thinking about right now!' Sometimes we are both thinking some pretty weird things and we can get each other laughing for quite some time. I realize these aren't actual 'games' per say, but they keep us entertained.

These are the hands of a girl who just fixed her own mower. That's right. I had a problem and I got down inside the engine and fixed it! It took me about a half an hour but I got the plastic bag that had wrapped itself around and around my air filter under my mower out of there. You could call me a professional now. Don't mind the band-aid...hurting myself is a regular occurance at work. 

This is what happens when you try to put the truck gate up by yourself. I thought I would just be tough and speedy and chain it up, but some metal caught my thumb and sliced it open all the way around in a circle. I have no idea how I do some of the things I do, but I thought this kind of looked like a ring of fire of sorts, and of course needed to document the moment. If I come out of this job in one piece, it will be a miracle. 

Half Empty

When you think something looks like a stick, it is probably best to examine said object fully before getting any closer. What I thought to be a stick turned out to be a dead mouse. I weed-eated right over it, which in turn caught the little guys body and flew it in the air, towards me. I do not love mice in dead form or alive, so this little turn of events was not my favorite part of today. Nor was the blazing heat in which we worked in. At 7:45pm as we were packing up ready to go home, it was 88 degrees. That's what kind of day I had. On the bright side (literally) I am a lot redder than when I started this day. Which means in a few days once the pain has died down, I will be tan! Today, things went wrong. Since we got yesterday off, we had to do double the properties today which meant we pretty much were guaranteed a 12 hour day. This morning the truck wouldn't start because the key was left on in the ignition, my mower completely ran out of gas in the middle of the grass, I ran out of water after drinking my full gallon, and it was hotter than five foxes fighting a forest fire. (See my sister's blog for explanation on that one).  If you think this is as complain-y as I can get, think again. It was just too hot for me to love today. Lets try again tomorrow. 

One tiny happy note: I painted my fingers tonight and they look marvelous. Thanks to my best Taylor for supplying much needed new colors.

The Riot Zone

What is with the lack of blogging you ask? Well, I will tell you. These family vacations are not for the faint of heart. On our way home from West Yellowstone, we stopped in this little family park in Rigby, Idaho called The Riot Zone. It had bumper boats, inflatable bounce houses slip and slide obstacle course and basketball, go karts, and miniature golf. Let me tell you,  I am not so great at normal golf, so people shouldn't wonder why I was even worse at the mini form. My 7 year old brother did better than me. Well, that's not completely true because his favorite way was to throw the ball in the pond and "have" to take off his shirt and shoes and go out and get it. I do have to say, I was a champ at the whole go-karts game. I am pretty sure my calling in life is to go be a professional driver of one of those things. I didn't know my life path before now, but I am almost certain it involves driving really really fast around a circular track over and over and over again.

This is from wiping my face off after go-karting for the 70th time. Pretty gross stuff

Eli was a fan of the kids-kart form of go-kart

Mom is a natural

Maybe it's my form? In any case, I am not a golfer!

Well that sums up Saturday's adventures. Sunday I had to drive my older sister home to Provo and come home so that was a 7 hour drive of happiness. And we've made it to today. We are headed off to the Burley Parade and tonight is a fireworks party at the cousins' house! Can't wait!

The Backyardigans

Stove top s'mores are the way to go.

Look at that golden brown perfection

If you aren't my facebook friend, fix that. I don't feel like repeating the album of today's adventures, so if you are looking for something more to this post, just go there.