Heatwave!!! (and skunkwave)

Supposedly. 46 today and 54 tomorrow! Wheeee! This morning, we slid down Jackson, thru the stop sign at Kansas, and the stop sign at Colorado. no choice, as the hill is one huge sheet of ice. Then we slid all over Colorado until we got to Main street. Geeze!

We had to dig our firewood pile out of the melt too. What a mess! Oh, and the skunk came by for a visit. Phewww!!! I actually opened up all the doors I could to let the house air. It was bad. Walking through the house was enough to make my coat smell. Ugh. Have I said how much I detest the damn things? Double it. With prejudice.

For once I am looking forward to the melty part of the storm and Spring. I want to introduce Mr. Skunk to Mr. Trap or Mr. Shotgun.  I think I’ll go snort Listerine to get rid of the smell.

What a start to the week.

Sunday we went up to Colorado Springs. We spent the night up there because Morgan had SSAT testing at Fountain Valley. We got there on time and she took the test. The proctor said that they had never had a student so happy when they came in to take the test. She finished the test in record time. Interesting in that she didn’t know that it is the kind of test you aren’t expected to finish. It tests the limit of your knowledge at that level. Now we await the test results.

When we got home on Monday, we were watching a movie when the house began to smell. Skunk!! Two of them having sex under the house. Awwgh!!!! the smell!!!! gag… Have I mentioned how much I detest skunks? It was snowing, so we couldn’t even open the doors to air out the house. ugh. Did not sleep well.

Yesterday was a school board meeting that outlined just how bad things could be. Not pretty. Once again, I didn’t sleep well. On top of the school board getting my dander up, I upset a friend accidentally. So, I tossed and turned during the night trying to figure out how to fix things.

A good thing though is that I am making pizza for dinner.

And the month rolls by… with a whiff of skunk

Geeze! I keep waiting for life to slow down. Guess that won’t happen any time soon. Last week was busy with cooking more pies than I ever want to do again. At work I did 46 pecan tartlets,  4 pumpkin, 3 coconut cream, two pecan pies and one chocolate cake. Oh, and I helped with about 15 more pumpkin pies.

Plus, I had my baking to do on the day. We had roast pork with green chilies and garlic, stuffing, sweet potatoes with pecan crumble on top, brussles sprouts, green chile relish, and pecan pie for desert. Yum.

We also took care of my parents cat Elway, did two computer jobs -one of which involved a trip to Denver and back in a day- and all the normal everyday stuff.

I thought this week would be quiet. However, for a Monday, it was hell. Woke up sick. It snowed And…. At 6pm, Brandy went charging out the back door to defend Ian and Emma against…. a skunk. She got it full in the face at close range. Awwwwgh!!!! Two hours, hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and VO5 shampoo, lots of water and towels and she smells better. Granted, the house still stinks. Gaaaahhh!!!

Tomorrow I have a school board meeting to cover and then Wednesday thru Saturday we will be gone. What a week.

Trying Tuesday

Or how life got really hectic at La Plaza.

We had a busy lunch. That was both good and bad. Good because we had lots of people. Bad because we ran out of stuff and trying to prep to catch up killed us. It was a learning experience to say the least. We have some things we need to improve on and will need to work out so that we don’t have such delays again.

I have tomorrow off!!!! Wheee! We are having my Aunt Toni here for dinner. 🙂 I thought that chicken curry sounded good and made a batch of tomato apple chutney to go with dinner. It came out fantastically. Tomorrow I plan to work on classwork for college, do some sewing and clean house! I should go do laundry, but that isn’t going to happen tomorrow. Maybe on Friday. I have enough work clothes and the guys are fine.

We still have Kayla as a houseguest. She came down for the Relay for Life, a cancer walk thing in La Veta. That was on Saturday. She goes home on Thursday. Morgan is with us this week too!!! I do love her so much. I’m just glad that I have another ‘daughter of the heart’ in my life. Speaking of which, Natalie is going to Nigera with Medics Sans Frontiers any day now. Geeeppppp!!!!

We had the most awesome thunderstorm this afternoon too. I was really glad that I had gotten home before the storm hit. Thunder and lightning and buckets of rain for probably 30 minutes. At least it helped wash the skunk stink off the front porch and off of Spike.

Oh, and I’m going to bed early tonight!!! Wheee….  or is it sad that I look forward to going to bed early? A commentary of the fact that I get up way too early most days? That I work hard, or that I just stay up to late most nights. Hm…. Okay, all of them. LOL!

La Plaza Inn opens!!!

For lunch and dinner… It has been a really busy week. We did a soft opening on Monday and Tuesday. We are now open for lunch and dinner every day now. Wheeee!!! It has been busy and dead, and no rhyme or reason other than it is the first week. I am exhausted. A good kind of exhausted though.

I am baking breads, desserts and cooking lunch and dinner. Slowly, I will become the lunch chef and baker. The Wilson’s are working hard to run the hotel and the restaurant. So far, so good. I have two chefs working with me, Gordon and Tony. They are fun guys to work with, and we all work well together. Phew!!!

Now we have to get into a routine with scheduling and remembering what we are cooking. No one except Karen are use to the menu. So, life is a bit hectic as we try to remember what we are cooking or how we are plating something.

Must go! Spike just got skunked…. awgh~

And back into the Icebox!!!

Last night it started to rain.  We went to bed fairly early because Morgan had a field trip to go on and they had to leave at 6am this morning. At some point in the night, the rain turned to snow. Daniel turned up around 2:15am. He didn’t want to fall asleep and not be able to be woken up. I woke up at 3am, when something pissed off the skunk. Oh gads! The smell sent me into an asthma attack. 4am, my alarm went off. Dan was suppose to get up, but didn’t want to move. I don’t blame him. 4:25am, Dan and Morgan finally got up and moving. It was snowing and they knew that they needed to get on the road. Dan, Daniel and Morgan left around 5am for Gardner. I went back to bed, as I could finally breathe.

7:35am-The phone rings. Daniel. “Hi mom, we’re stuck in the mud and Erin is coming to pull us out.” Huh? Okay. I figured that they had gone off the road and were just stuck on the side of the road. I hung up the phone and went back to sleep.

8:58am-The phone rings. It’s John this time telling me that Daniel and Dan are still stuck, Erin couldn’t get them out of the mud, and that they were waiting for Daniel’s Towing Service to unstick them. Great… The boyz went Mudding. What the hell were they thinking? I debated rolling back over and going to sleep versus getting up. While I lay there debating, Dan and Daniel arrived. Dan was soaked and mud covered. They were hauling the hose out of the back yard to clean off Daniel’s car. I got up and took a peek. There must have been ten pounds of mud on it.

Brandy and Blanca of course took advantage of the chaos to run off. Dumb dogs!

They hosed it off, and Daniel headed home to shower and hopefully get his car fixed. He had planned to get a ball joint or something like that repaired today. If he couldn’t, he was just going to sleep. While fixing breakfast, Dan told me what really happened. They had gotten Morgan safely to school and were almost home when they decided to go play in the arroyos near Toltec. Dan said to Daniel that this probably was NOT a good idea. Daniel, being Daniel said “Well, I want to” and off they went. They did fine right up until they hit clay. The sand in the arroyo was okay. However, the mud was…. sticky, sucking and treacherous. Daniel almost got them out. he slid off the ‘road’ and that was it. So, they called Erin, who has a big 4WD pickup. Daniel’s is a 4WD Blazer.

Erin came out and couldn’t even get near Daniel’s Blazer. He got stuck twice and finally gave up. So, they called the towing company. The guy with the tow truck has a Mudder truck that he tows with for situations like this. He almost got stuck. It took Everyone, 8 wheels, two drivers and lots of luck to finally get the Blazer out. The guy told Daniel he was lucky! gads! Boyz!

Dan said the mud was sucking the shoes off of his feet, and rivaled Montana mud. (and that is something to rival!)

So, now we are curled up with a fire in the fireplace, the two dumb dogs have returned and are drying off on the back porch, Spike is with me in the house and the cats are on the front porch. Dan keeps saying he will take a nap. (ha! silly boy) At least he did crawl in bed even if he does have his computer with him.

There is about 10 inches of snow out there and it is still snowing. Such fun. I’m going to finish this post, play on the net a few more minutes and then go back to writing my story.

Boyz and Skunks

I haven’t had many boyz tales lately. However,… I have one to share.

The house on 520 is having skunk problems again. A month or so ago, it started showing up. Brandy barks, Tosoto hisses and on ocassion, we spend a night filled with the scent of …gag… skunk. To help drive the skunk away, Dan has been peeing on the fence at night to “mark the territory”. Our yard is very dark, so no one worries about this.

Keep in mind that the yard is dark…

Last night, Dan took Brandy out to do her stuff before bed. It’s cold, and stepping from a warm house to a cold backyard precipitated the inevitable. Dan had to go. So, he walked over to the fence where he’d been peeing and started to pee. Now, it’s dark and his eyes weren’t adjusted to the night, but… he saw a white patch and aimed for it. He was peeing away when he realized that the white patch moved. Figuring it was the pee making it move, he just kept peeing. About this time, his eyes adjusted and he realized that it wasn’t a piece of paper, but the SKUNK! He was peeing on it’s stripy little head!

Dan finished, zipped up, called the dog and ran into the house in record time. I came into the back part of the house to see what was wrong, and there’s Dan standing rather stiffly, eyes wide. I asked him what was wrong and he told me what had just happened. When he got to the point about peeing on the skunk, we both started laughing.

About ten minutes later, Dan walked to the back door, opened it slightly and shouted out to the yard, “And that’s what you get for disturbing a good night’s sleep!” in the general direction of where the skunk had been. As he walked back in, he looked at me laughing and then got this worried look on his face. Can you guess what he asked me?

“You aren’t going to blog about this are you?” he asked. I just smiled… Mwahahahahahaah!!!!

I FORGOT about the Skunk

Oh gods! Wednesday night, Brandy was barking her fool head off. Dan went to investigate and realized that she had trapped a skunk in the back of the back porch. Brandy was running in and out barking and nipping at the skunk. Dan was horrified. He yelled at Brandy to stop, certain that he and the dog were going to get sprayed. Brandy ran out in the back yard and the skunk followed. Brandy wouldn’t come in, so Dan closed the back door and tried to go back to sleep.

Unfortunately, the skunk did spray. The stench filled the bedroom and bathroom. It was so bad that after closing the windows, running a fan and burning incense, you could just about cope with the smell.

Brandy of course would not stop barking. Finally, Dan went to yell at her and realized that when he opened the door that she had not been sprayed! So, Brandy came in for the night. It made for a very short chaotic night of sleep.

Masses and Weddings and toasts! Oh My! (irreverant humor warning!)

    Yesterday was interesting. John’s boss Monica got married. It was a Catholic marriage with the whole nuptial mass. Oh, and you have to add in that all of us, (John, Dan, Beth, little Morgan and I) are PAGAN! So, it was going to be interesting no matter what.

Did I mention that Monica is in her 50’s and George the groom in his 60’s? Or that Dan still smells like his underhouse guest, the skunk?

I got up and started running around trying to get ready about 8am. At 10am, I came over to 520 in order to trim up Dan’s beard. He was in the midst of writing the tech savvy article for the Huerfano Journal, so I didn’t get that done until nearly 11:30am. I got back to the house at noon, dived into the shower and then struggled to get tights over damp legs and to dry my sweater which hadn’t. I wore my new brown skirt, green and brown tweedy sweater and my lovely English black hat. I even left the pin with the witch on a broomstick on it! I wore my pentacle and amber too! Yes, I was being a brat. However, I’m the only one who has been in that church out of all of us. Been there for lots of funerals and a few weddings.

The wedding was at 1pm, and it was nearly 12:45pm before we started out the door. It was snowing too!

We got to St. Mary’s Church in decent time. Sat in the back and hoped that Dan didn’t offend everyone in sight/smell. Beth had little Morgan sitting next to her in hopes of explaining all the odd bits of catholicism. I was sitting between John who was trying to be solemn and respectful and Dan who was switching from giggling to rapt curiosity.    Of course there were all sorts of people in there I hadn’t seen forever, and had to catch them up in 30 seconds or less on everything that has happened since I saw them last.

Things got started and that is when hilarity began to ensue. First off was the catholic aerobics… the whole up and down bit. I have always joked it was to keep people awake.  Little Morgan began to give the adults the “What???” look. Then there was the priest. He is from Africa. English was not his first language, and he had a very heavy accent.  This of course sent both Dan and John atwitter. I leaned over towards Dan and he whispered that all he could hear was Peter Cook from the Princess Bride saying “Mar-wage”. Snicker…. Then I leaned towards John… and he said all he could think of was Rowan Atkins in Four Weddings and a Funeral saying: “The Father, the Son and the Holy Spigot”. I had to bite my lip not to laugh.  The priest’s diction and pronunciation had us giggling all through the mass.

Trying to behave, I went back to looking around the church when we weren’t bobbing up and down in our seats.  (every time we did, Dan wafted skunk) St. Mary’s is a Very Marionite Church. The arch inside the church over the main altar is very Yonic. And it doesn’t help that at the very top of the arch there is an ornamental carved piece of wood in the shape of an acorn or ball. And yes, it is in exactly the right spot to be a clit. There is also a fringed dome behind the arch… very womb-ish. All I could think was that if you superimposed a picture of the female anatomy over the altar, it would match! Dan noticed this as well.  The church is also odd in that it’s main door faces North. In church doctrine, that is the “witches door”, or the door that all of those out of favour are suppose to enter when they come to church.  As this is an old church, it isn’t like they couldn’t have put the door facing east. However, there is a very heavy Converso element in the Spanish Catholics that was here when the church was founded. All of those Conversos would have come through the North door… (conversos… jewish converts to catholicism to avoid the inquisition) So, all of us Pagans came in the right door!

The mass itself was typical. Lots of bits about how god created marriage because a man should not be alone, that a good marriage is supported by going to church on Sunday, etc. The only part they really left out was the whole ‘fruitful’ bit. Considering the age of the wedding couple, it was a good thing! It also reminded me just how far from a Christian mindset I am. That whole “obey” and “until Death do you part” just doesn’t work for me. Never did.

There was a soloist who was very nice. Good thing I knew enough Spanish to know what he was singing. He sang at the reception too. Folkloric guitar and NO MIC NEEDED . Oh gods he had volume. But back to the wedding…

When they got to the actual vows, George was being a bit of a cut up. I was so proud of him. He normally isn’t a solemn guy, and to sit that long must have been a trial. They did the ring thing and then it was time for the sharing of the body of Christ.  The priest brought out the host and I started giggling. It was a plate sized disk, and all I could think of was “Oh my gods! It’s the Holy Tortilla!” It didn’t help when he broke it up in wedges and Dan leaned over to whisper, “look! it’s a holy quesadilla!” I just shook with laughter.  They actually did use the big disk broken into pieces for everyone. Norma Lou, one of the older ladies who is on the library board was helping with the cup part of things and when everyone is done, she drank the last of it. This of course prompted comments about her real reasons to help out, etc. Dan and I were also making snarky remarks about cups of sharing and cakes and ale etc. We were being very quiet, but John started glaring at us because we weren’t being “respectful enough”. When it came to the Peace unto Others fellowship bit, we stood, and shook hands with those around us. That’s when I realized that not only were we the “pagan” section, but the whole two rows behind us were too! All of our pagan/alternative faith friends were together. Dan apologized for his ‘scent’, and one guy laughed as he thought he had smelled skunk, but wasn’t sure.

After the wedding, we went to Alys’ Cafe for the reception. Daniel was working there and I got lots of hugs from my friends who work there.  I got lots of compliments on my hat. :> There was heavenly food. Shrimp, caviar, barbecue chicken on skewers, hummus, fresh fruit, chocolate and carrot cake, and lovely wines, beer, etc. Alys makes everything from scratch. Yummmm…… (and that is why I loved working there!)

Once again, I had to catch up everyone I hadn’t seen in a while on life in our family. I also got stuck talking to an “art broker”. Strange lady! Ah well…. We ate tons, visited and then went to say goodbye to Monica and George. George noticed the witch pin on my hat and asked what that was… I said it was a witch on a broom, and he looked at me a bit strange. (no, he doesn’t know I’m pagan!) I said it was on my hat and I hadn’t taken it of. He sort of smiled and then I said that “at least I didn’t go up in flames when I went into the church” with a smile and he laughed. John about choked. I waited until we were outside to laugh!

After the wedding, I went out to see Damon and Pauline. I visited with them for about 2 hours and then headed home and to bed! What a day!

Brrr! ~~~Phewwwww~~~ Brrr!!!

    It is 55 degrees in my office. Bloody cold! We got about 8 inches of snow the other day and it has yet to warm up. Granted, it is suppose to snow more tonight. Brrr!!! I know we need the moisture, but oh my for better heating.

We also dealt with a skunk yesterday. Yeah, the one under the house at 520 Penn. I was only suppose to be over there briefly to grab a few things when Dan realized that the trap had been sprung and we had a skunk. So, we started trying to deal with it and it of course sprayed. Luckily, we had put a black trashbag around the trap and most of the spray hit the bag. Dan got a bit of it, and the rest went into the air. We loaded the skunk up in the truck and headed out of town to let it go. We didn’t want to kill it. Well, it sprayed again while in the truck. Phewwww!!! We let it go and then headed home to the house on Walsen. Dan and I both had to shower as we stank. I washed all the clothes and coats as well as gloves and hats. Ugghh….. We bombed the truck with air freshener and left the hatch open. Hopefully, it will de-skunk soon.

Meanwhile, I made an awesome pot of lentil soup and homemade drop biscuits. Ate way too much! I got some knitting done and even some sewing done over the weekend. Sleep pants for some at Yule. :> Hopefully a new hot water bottle cover too.

This morning, Dan and I took the kids to school. He was worried about the road. I was rather relieved to let him drive. Then we spent the day trying to sort out a huge delivery from UPS.  When it was time to pick up the kids, Dan decided to drive again. I was so happy he did as we had car problems. One of the spark plugs came loose and was causing the car to run really rough. We pulled over and Dan checked things out while I called John to go pick up the kids. He did while we took the car slowly back to Burg. We got to NAPA  in time and bought a new spark plug and a tool to put it in. Brrrroooomm! Started up just fine.  We took it for a bit of a test drive and then came home. Dan will tighten the spark plug down in a bit and then I will head home for the night. Brrrrr!!!