Our friend Christopher was in town this weekend, and we always try to find something interesting to do with him. Jen found that there was a John Waters exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art, which got all of us excited. The show is mainly his 2D work, stills he’s taken of television screens, playing with the juxtaposition of popular culture and stuff he’s created. There was also some sculpture, some video work (a children’s table reading of Pink Flamingos, which was hilarious) and some adult material we, uh, had to talk Finley through when we left the show. The rest of the BMA was great, as usual–it’s been at least 15 years since I’ve been through there, too long–and we headed down the street afterwards to R House for some dinner.
Sunday I took advantage of some rare sunlight to get outside and fix the soffit on the end of the garage, which had come loose from the roof joists and was hanging off the edge. I propped it back up, washed all of the squirrel nest material out of it, and nailed it back into place. Then I sprayed some commercial moss killer on three sides of the garage roof to kill giant clumps of the shit that have been spreading. Hopefully it will make a difference. In the afternoon I got half of the tomato plants pulled and tossed into the neighbor’s yard (don’t tell him), cut the rest of them back, and organized the back of the greenhouse so I could store the lawn chairs for the winter. I emptied two of the three rain barrels, got the front lawn mowed, buffed out a bunch of scratches on the side of the CR-V (the paint looks good as new), and cleaned up the garage somewhat. There’s still more to do but it’s good to have gotten a start on fall.
The Weasley twins were returning from their Quidditch match. We saw Fred and Molly as well.
Finn chased the Golden Snitch.
This is her scary face. I think it works.
Walking back over the bridge, we got to see the sun set over the river. Not a bad day at all.
Jen’s birthday was back in August, and I completely dropped the ball on her. I didn’t have anything planned, and at that point I was still on a limited diet so she didn’t see the point in going out for dinner anywhere. I should have come up with a Plan C but completely failed her, and I’ve felt terrible about it ever since. I decided I’d try to make it up to her in some small way by arranging a spa day someplace fancy, and enlisted Karean to help me with a recommendation. We agreed on About Faces in Annapolis, and I arranged for a four-hour treatment with lunch for the two of them. In the meantime Finn had a double-header soccer day, because they missed a whole weekend on account of the rain.
I packed Finn off in her soccer gear and Jen left for the spa. The Purple Panthers kind of got their asses kicked in the first game, but Finn had one good half before she ran out of gas. There’s a mixture of fourth, fifth, and sixth graders on the teams so the skill levels are wildly different and the younger girls are generally much less aggressive than the older ones. As we got in the truck to head home between games, she asked me if we could skip the next game because she didn’t want to play. I did my best to buck her up and pointed out that her teammates were counting on her to come back. Then I reminded her that all I wanted her to do was have a good time. Then I sweetened the deal with a donut–to be eaten only after the second match.
The second game was mostly a repeat of the first, but the score was a little closer. She stuck with it and made some good stops on defense. As I ran across the field to hand her water bottle over at halftime, she called back to me, “I’m having a good time, daddy.” That made me feel better, and the parents on the other side of the field with me all smiled as I walked back over.
Returning home I farted around with some small repair stuff on the Scout and around the house, then rustled up some dinner for the ladies when Jen got home. Apparently the spa was a hit; she came back relaxed and feeling good.
Sunday morning I hit the lawn early and hustled to clean up the yard so that I wouldn’t embarrass us in front of the father of one of Finn’s friends, who asked if I could show him how to homebrew. After the lawn was done I set up a table in the backyard, dusted off all of my equipment, got a new propane tank, and cracked a beer as he was unloading his car in the driveway. We got his turkey fryer repurposed to cook wort and fired up the burners by about 2. His burner took a long time to come to a boil, but the staggered timing worked in our favor because I could show him what I was doing with my kit and get it chilled while his was starting. When mine was done we moved his kettle to my burner and finished the boil. By about 6 we had the gear packed up and were shooting the shit over our final beers, and he took off to get dinner. I humped my carboy down into the basement and let it cool off overnight before adding the yeast. It’s another grapefruit IPA I meant to brew for the summer, but time and the summer got away from me. Actually, during the boil I realized that the last time I brewed beer was the day Rob passed.
After dinner, we put Finn to bed and I walked over to the neighbors’ to watch the Ravens beat Pittsburgh on the big screen in his backyard. That was an excellent way to cap off a great weekend.
I’d been planning to organize a baseball Sunday with Finn and Zachary for a couple of months, since before our camping weekend. Knowing that the season is winding down, I found a couple of Sunday games at Oriole Park toward the end of September and started making plans with K to schedule. As it turned out, she was offered three tickets through work for last Sunday and grabbed them for us. We made some quick plans and arranged to meet at the McDonald’s over the Bay Bridge on Sunday morning. I was worried because the weather had been so-so on Saturday, patches of sunshine alternating with patches of bruised gray clouds, and I thought we’d get rained on at least once during the game.
Bright and early, I headed over the bridge to the east side and waited, and it turned out she’d headed over the bridge to the west side and waited–so she came back over and made the hand-off. D’oh!
Driving to the park, I followed the signs for the A/B/C lots and was directed toward C, right next to the train tracks. One of the attendants asked me if I had a pass; I had a $10 in my hand ready to go. He looked in the back of the car, reached in his back pocket, and gave me a free parking pass. Thanking him profusely, we found a spot, readied our gear, and walked into the park under a slightly cloudy blue sky. Because the O’s have sucked this year, the stadium wasn’t packed, so it was easy to keep an eye on the kids.
The tickets we had were awesome; Section 66 is down the third base line, right in the heart of foul ball territory. Zachary had his glove so he was ready. The usher saw our seat numbers and asked in a low voice if we were with the hospice group. Blinking, I said we weren’t, and he walked us around to the other side of the section and found us three seats in the middle of an empty area. We settled in and watched the O’s pretty much dismantle the White Sox.
I counseled the kids on when to look out for foul balls and made sure they were keeping up with the game. There were three home runs, a killer double play, an amazing diving catch, and a pair of foul balls that landed in our section but too far away to catch. We enjoyed some hot dogs, cotton candy and popcorn, and I definitely enjoyed a couple of beers. The sun was warm and steady, and at the point when I started getting hot it dipped below the edge of the stadium, blanketing us with comfortable shade. By the middle of the 8th inning the nails were in the coffin, so we made for the exits ahead of time.
Returning to the Eastern Shore, we met up with K at Hemmingway’s, a restaurant right over the Bay Bridge, and found seats out on the deck overlooking the water. There we had some lemonade with dinner, caught up, and made plans for pumpkin picking in October.
Finn had a friend over for a playdate on Saturday so Jen and I took the opportunity to get things done around the house.
We hauled the cucumber tubs out of the greenhouse and dumped them at the edge of the yard. They were infested with whiteflies, which had disappeared since my first mention and then returned in force. I then mixed up some of the insecticidal soap and sprayed the shit out of all the remaining tomato plants. After two treatments there were hundreds of dead whiteflies laying on the edges of the tubs, so hopefully with a few more applications I can save the rest of the plants. The box fan I’d put in there died sometime back in late July so there’s been no real air movement in there, which is also bad.
We pulled a Dagma and an other Oaxaca from the big plants and a handful of black, yellow and cherry tomatoes from the others, and a lot of them found their way into our salad Saturday night. I also swapped out the green rain barrel on the platform behind the greenhouse, which has a leak somewhere, for one of the soda barrels and pumped the water from Friday’s rainstorm into it. With that and one more good rainstorm we should be able to make it through the fall without going to the hose (with the exception of our vacation, everything I’ve used in the greenhouse has been rainwater, and I’m pretty proud of that).
Sunday we did some errands and in the afternoon I went over to Christi & Glenn’s house to help wake up their Acura, which has been slumbering in their garage since it french-kissed a Prius in 2016. They parked it in the garage because it’s in need of serious bodywork before it can be roadworthy again. Miraculously, even though the top of the radiator has been pushed back 4″ and the bumper mounts are pushed downwards 6″, it hasn’t leaked any critical fluids. I brought over a set of ramps, a siphon kit, a set of tools, and jumper cables in the Scout. First I checked all the fluids to see how it looked and found everything topped off. I pulled the battery and cleaned the cables and posts. Then we looked at siphoning the gas but were thwarted by a metal screen at the base of the fuel tank, so we jacked it up, pulled the tire off, and used a handy drain plug to empty the tank. Once the varnish was out we put about 2 gallons of good gas in it, stuck the tire back on, and hooked the battery back up. With the cables from the Scout on it, it only took two tries (I had to adjust the cable for the best connection) to fire the car right up.
We let it idle for a while, then Glenn turned it around in the driveway so that the exhaust was facing outward and pulled it back inside before the temp gauge crept up (the inlet hose to the radiator is kinked shut at a 90˚ angle from the impact). He’s thrilled and I’m happy for them to have it running again. I left him with instructions for a trickle charger and some tarps to keep the varmints off.
Labor Day was quiet for us. I woke Finn up at 7AM to go do some soccer drills on the field across the street, and we stayed out for about 40 minutes before the gnats and Finley’s bladder brought us back inside. Mama had started a pumpkin pancake assembly line so we helped her finish that and chowed on pancakes and hash browns for a hearty breakfast.
After that, we geared up for a hike in Patapsco and happened across another Scout parked at the trailhead: a yellow Scout I’ve seen around Baltimore for years. We met the owner, snapped a picture, and then descended down the trail into the park. After the second flood they had the trailhead closed off for repairs so the usual route I used to take with Rob and Matt was off limits; we followed a longer southern route that eventually linked up with the main trail I was used to and wound up at the river at the bottom. After a bathroom break we took out shoes off and cooled off in the river for a while, letting the fish nibble on our toes. Then we headed back up the trail and home into the air conditioning.
We made a quick run to Lowes for some bathroom caulk and Jen and I decided we needed a full-size plastic skeleton to sit on our front porch for Halloween, which made Finn happier than if we’d given her a barrel full of candy. Jen promptly christened him Brutus. We propped him up in the back of the Scout, and out on the road we were admonished by a fellow driver to make sure he was buckled up.
At home we relaxed for a bit and I tackled the back lawn, which was 5″ high and gone to seed. Every second row filled the bag on the mower and I’d have to stop and empty it, which took longer and made things hotter. I had sweat pouring down my face by the time I finished. Then I shot the plants in the greenhouse with more insecticidal soap to kill the whiteflies, which are now greatly diminished but have taken up residence on the tomatoes. After watering and tending to the plants I called it a day and came inside for the last time.
After cracking a cold beer we sat down and opened up a new family boardgame: Payday, which is an updated version of the game Renie and I used to play when we were Finn’s age. It’s more complicated now and doesn’t look nearly as cool as the original but we still had a lot of fun.
After dinner we busied ourselves with getting Finn ready for the first day of 4th grade. Jesus, time is flying by.
So I got to thinking yesterday about our upcoming trip to the IH Nationals in Ohio. I’ve owned Scouts for over 20 years and never made it out there to the Big Event, only the East Coast regionals at Carlisle twice, once with Chewbacca and once with Peer Pressure. I am as hesitant to go to Ohio for the same reasons I was hesitant to take her to the Eastern Shore: Something could happen. She could break down in any one of a million ways. We could get rained on the whole way out there (not the end of the world, but my wipers only have one setting: SLOW).
But as I thought, I realized I was holding myself back for some pretty dumb reasons. The 270-mile trip to the Eastern Shore was as good a shakedown cruise as I’m ever going to get for a 7-hour trip to Ohio. I’ll be with Brian, who will provide humor and good judgement should something go wrong. I’ll be on a major route that’s sure to be transited by other IH fans on the same journey. I’ll be surrounded by experts who can help diagnose and repair pretty much any issue I may have once we get there. I’ve got new tires on the truck that are much kinder than the ones they replaced. I’ve got newer, better insurance with a solid towing package.
I texted Brian in the middle of the day and told him what I was thinking and he helped talk me into it.
Today I made an appointment to have the alignment done on Friday morning at 8:15, which means I should be able to get on the road by 9. My hope is that it will solve the wandering issue and even out the wear on the tires. I’m going to bring the four Mud-Terrains and see if I can sell them while I’m at the show, along with an automatic transmission cover, a center console, and a spare set of Kayline bows I’ve had sitting in the garage for years.
Meanwhile I’m making a list of all the other crap I need to bring along:
- Tools
- Fluids: antifreeze, brake fluid, ATF, water
- Spare hoses and hose clamps
- Rotor
- Bikini top for the journey
- Anxiety medication.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
These shots are from Wednesday. I’ve been in the hospital since then with what the doctors tell me is a bowel obstruction; most likely a shitty side-effect of having major surgery on my abdomen. The kids have been having a great time and the weather has been great all week, so I’m glad everyone is able to get outside even if I’m stranded with an IV in my arm and a GI tube down my throat.
If this is the hardest decision I have to make tomorrow, I’m doing something right on our vacation.
