It was time to get away from everything and just be with each other for a while. For some reason, that never actually seems to happen when we’re at home; people call and there are things to do with them, the duties of running the house take over, and I can never get fully away from being on-call to that damned job.

So we packed the truck with the sleeping bags and some snacks and headed for the hills.

We checked out camp, only to find that the loggers who’d intruded on it last year have completely taken it over. There’s a 20-foot high stack of former pine trees laying on the spot where we got married. Clearly, we’re going to have to find another place to camp this year, and maybe next. But it was getting close to dark, so we drove around until we found a nice quiet mountainside, blew up the air mattress, laid on the bug spray, and watched the moon set and the stars come out. We stayed up way too late, considering the sky started lightening at 4:30 in the morning, but it was great to sleep in the open like that.

In the morning we packed our tiny camp back up. I wanted to watch the sun come up over the badlands and Cherry Lake, so that’s what we did. Then, with no firm agenda, we started wandering.

Junior wanted to show me a hidden waterfall on a creek I’ve been all over and around, which I had never seen. It was still early morning when we pulled up to Jawbone Falls, and we climbed on the granite and had a little breakfast.

I wanted to show Junior the end of the creek that I’d found while waiting for him to come back from a bear hunt last year. I had thought he was further up the creek at that time, so I went to see if I could hear him and found a really interesting diversion structure. It turned out that he was closer to the middle, and once they got the bear to the creek, there was no time for sightseeing. So we went this time, taking our time and admiring the trout in the creek and the newt we found along the trail.

After that, we thought we’d head into Yosemite. Junior thought the crowds would be something he could deal with, but when we rounded the corner and saw a sign announcing a 20-30 minute wait in traffic just to get to the entrance, we turned around. We’d just passed the turnoff to the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, also a part of Yosemite, and neither he nor I had ever been there, so that’s where the truck took us. We didn’t know what we’d find, but the ranger at the entrance gave us a brochure that said there were a number of small hikes right around there. We weren’t exactly prepared for hiking; the one time I don’t bring my little day pack and we want to hike, of course. 

We drove over to the O’Shaughnessy Dam, the one that holds back San Francisco’s water supply, and were pleasantly amazed. One of the available hikes was a moderate five or six mile walk to Wapama Falls, so we had our lunch and stuffed water bottles in our pockets and went for it.

It was a good way to start getting in shape for bear season for me; just enough of a hike to get my legs wobbly but with a cool, refreshing reward at the end as we stood in the spray. The hike back didn’t take half so long, and before we knew it, we were grabbing a burger at our usual place, where the waitress doesn’t know us but recognized that we were hunters, not tourists, and wondered what we were doing here before September. Ha! Fooled her, we actually were tourists for the day, but it was pleasing not to be lumped in with the yuppie crowd we’d been immersed in all afternoon.

Sanity trips used to be a time for me to reset my internal calibrations; to not go anywhere in particular, but to pay attention and quiet the voices in my head. I’m quite pleased that they work just as well with my husband along. We kept it loose and just enjoyed the day and each other’s company, and that’s all I needed.

Well, there was something you don’t see every day. Actually, I see a lot less crime since I moved from the ghetto house.

I was driving home to lunch yesterday, minding my own business. Right at the spot where my road home fronts the freeway for a little bit before going over it, there was suddenly a giant dirt cloud in the equipment yard between the road and the freeway. I looked over, and there was a Highway Patrol hot on the ass of an SUV, which had just blown through the chain link fence at a high rate of speed. Now, to get the way they were going, they would have had to flip an extremely fast U-turn off the freeway exit, have been travelling excessively fast down the other end of the frontage road, or have been going the wrong way on the freeway. I don’t know which; I only saw it from the fence-smashing on.

The other cars and I slowed down to gawk. I saw the SUV swing around the one building on the lot and someone jump out of the car and run. Well, that was fairly stupid of them, as there’s nowhere to run to there. A cop was running around the building after him, but the SUV had continued its swing around the lot and was more or less headed towards me. The next thing I knew, that SUV had blown through another section of chain link fence right behind me, trying to get out on the road where I was. Apparently it didn’t make it, because the driver wasw running towards me. I was busily rolling up windows and locking doors, but as far as I could see, there wasn’t another cop on the scene yet. So I flipped on my caution lights because I’ll be damned if I was going to go anywhere, and yanked out my cell phone and called 911.

I got right down to the point with the 911 operator, and she obviously was aware of what was going on because she didn’t ask me to back up and slow down like they usually do. I was watching the guy run across the field, away from me at this point, and towards the livestock auction/flea market. So I kept up a running commentary to the operator, giving as good a description of the guy as I could. I could hear her relaying my information and sure enough, here comes another cop on foot floowing the guy across the field. Some more cops from the local police were driving around into the flea market area, but by then the guy had ducked behind a semi trailer and I couldn’t see him any more. It wasn’t flea market day so there weren’t as many people there as there could have been. I hope they got him.

The operator finally got my name and thanked me, and I got off the phone and went home and had lunch. As I went over the freeway, I could look down into the yard and see that the first cop had the first runner down on the ground. By the time I drove back, there were ten assorted police cars there, the SUV was all open like it had been searched, and the cops were standing around unexcited. I considered stopping in and telling them I was their RP and seeing what had happened, but they probably hate that. I may see it in the paper today, or I may never know. One of the cops I saw was a guy I’d just seen an hour before when I was reading the water meter at their hangar, so maybe I can ask him. Still, it was a fairly exciting interlude to a regular day of water meter reading. It probably would have been smartest just to drive my truck on out of there when I saw the guy running toward me, but if everyone did that, this world would be a pretty miserable place. Someone’s got to stand behind the good guys.

Edited to add a link to the story in the local paper.

Since this is my last day in my third decade, the past ten years have been on my mind a lot. It’s been a busy time; I’ve felt more alive in this decade than any other before it. It hasn’t all been good, but at least I didn’t feel like I was wandering through it in a fog, like most of my 20s.

I’ve grown a ton in the last ten years. I’ve done a lot of different things. I’ve come a long way towards being the person I want to be, although I’m not done yet. I will probably never be done.

I parlayed a part time job into two part time jobs, and then negotiated one of them into a full time job. I kept jumping in place, always reaching beyond what was comfortable and where I felt competent. I worked for six different companies, all at the same basic location. One job led to another, a stretch for me each time, until I went off on my own. From scratching to feed the kids, I now own the business and a house. I don’t have to feed them macaroni and cheese for dinner any more.

I got divorced, which was one of the smarter decisions in my life. I picked myself up from the pieces of that, fell in love, and had my heart stomped on again. Somehow, I managed to pick it up again and make much better choices, and fall in love yet again for the last time. I started the decade ending a marriage and am ending the decade starting one.

I spent my single years having a ball with a good group of people. Things that I had never relaxed enough to let myself do when I was younger, I embraced.   I spent a summer just about living at the lake. I went to more rodeos than I can count. Hell, I even announced a rodeo. I bought that horse I’d always wanted, sold him at a profit when he turned out to be all wrong for me, and bought a better horse. I spent a lot of those years on the back of a horse, even with a cast on my leg.

I got hurt a fair amount, physically and emotionally, and didn’t let it stop me for too long at a time. I lost thirty pounds, twice. I wore a bikini for the first time since sixteen. I changed my hair color three times, but only changed my hairdresser once. I went through four trucks in a decade, but I still own and use two of them. I grew from a decent cook to a really good one, and built a kitchen to be proud of.

I lost three grandparents, found and lost a family, and found another one. I doubled my children, cleverly without having to actually be pregnant again. I really went through an excessive number of dogs, but the best dog ever is still with me after most of the decade.

I travelled. I spent a New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas. I saw the National Finals Rodeo, twice. I went on a couple of cruises. I saw Alaska and Mexico. I flew to Colorado to see friends get married. I went to Washington, DC, twice. It was much better with company than alone, but alone was interesting too. I spent time on the beach and lots of time in the mountains. I never let being alone stop me from doing what I wanted to do.

I worked hard at becoming the person that I wanted to be. I’m not there yet, and I could spend a lot of time detailing how I’m not there yet, but I won’t. I’m a lot more patient, and I try harder to think things through before I do or say them. I fail a lot, but it doesn’t stop me from trying any more. I’ve come out of my shell. That shy person sometimes lurks in the background, but I can walk right over her if I want to. I learned to dive right into things that seem intimidating, and learn how to do them as I go along. I learned to be comfortable in my own skin.

All in all, heartbreak and everything, I think it was an astoundingly successful decade. I seem to be on the path that I’ve chosen, for once, rather than blindly going wherever I was pushed. And if my 30s were so good for me, I can’t wait until my 40s, to see what happens next. Fortunately, that starts tomorrow.

We got a little ambitious when we put this garden in. We fenced off a whole corner of the backyard so the dogs would stay out and not dig up and pee on everything. That took a couple of weeks and no small amount of money. More money was spent fixing the water to the back section and putting in drip irrigation. There was a lot of trial and error. It seems that even the same brand of soaker hoses don’t all emit water at the same rate, so in the bed I’d patched two together, I was either drowning plants or making them crispy critters.

Then we started way too many seeds, and they didn’t all come up. Some of the peppers and melons never did, actually. Eventually though, I had something like three dozen assorted tomato seedlings going, and three or four small plants that I bought when I got impatient.

The weather was weird. We got late, late frosts, and it kept fluctuating between unseasonably hot and unseasonably cold. The poor little plants that we managed to get in the ground didn’t know if they should grow like crazy or shrivel up and hide. They seemed to compromise, with some doing each even now.

Finally the weather stuck to warm, more or less, and things started to take off.  The spring peas didn’t have a chance, and each managed to squeeze out one peapod before they gave up the ghost. I ripped them out and planted yellow runner beans in their place, and those are very enthusiastic. They’re catching up to the bush beans, which were planted at least a month and a half earlier. Good, I can make two-bean salad someday.

We’ve got way more hot peppers than we’ll ever eat. Junior got a little carried away with those. What we don’t pickle, we’ll give away. Even though the plants aren’t huge, they’re starting to put on significant peppers.

I ended up planting about seven Brandywine tomatoes, a couple of Big Boys, two that I don’t remember that came as plants, and a couple of cherries. I don’t even have them all in cages yet, but I’d better get going before they take over the world. And then I’m going to have to learn to can tomato sauce after all of those Brandywines erupt at once.

The weeds are crazy. The back lot is full of puncture vine and I’ve made it my mission to eradicate it. I’m out there with a scuffle hoe just about every night, and it’s all I can do to keep up with them.

The house came with three grapevines. Junior thought they were dead, but they were just dormant. He fixed their trellises and we duly strung the canes up, waiting for growth. Man, did we ever get growth. All three of those grapevines have bunches and bunches of grapes on them; all we have to do is wait and see what varieties there are. I’m hoping for at least one Concord, to make jam out of. If there isn’t one, well, we can build one more trellis. We have the room.

We planted three kinds of corn at three different times with the idea that we’d see what variety we liked the best. But the tags faded and at least one kind must have been old seeds because we didn’t get very good germination from that batch. So we’re very hopeful about our short stalks with tassels.

We’ve got a lot of lessons-learned in this go-around. We’re going to add a bunch of compost in the fall, after everything’s pulled out, to make up for the crappy soil. The compost piles I’m making are nice, but it won’t be enough. Junior wants to rearrange some of the beds, and I keep thinking of more or different things to plant. This garden’s been a very nice evening diversion; we like to walk outside and weed and admire it. The kids each have a designated vegetable, and it keeps them invested in it too.

But really, I’m just waiting for that first Brandywine tomato, and a nice fresh cucumber to go with it. Pick some basil from the herb garden, drizzle it with some fresh local olive oil, and I’m done.

I’d picked up the girls yesterday, from my mother-in-law’s house, and we were so very close to home. I started smelling diesel, and wondered if it was the truck in front of us.

Seamus pointed at the steering wheel and said there was smoke coming out. Sure enough, there was, sort of.  Thick, oily black smoke was coming up from under the steering column. The last time there was smoke in the truck like that, the trailer brake controller was on fire, so that’s where my mind went, but we weren’t using the trailer brake.

I pulled off the side of the road in a hurry, thumping my wheels so bad that I thought I also blew a tire. I wrestled that beastie a little further down the road, as I’d pulled off next to a straawberry field and didn’t think it’d be a good idea to set the dry grass around it on fire. Just past the field was a flatter spot, so I threw it in park and cut the engine and made all of the kids get out of the truck and go stand way out of the way.

It’s a diesel truck and diesel isn’t particularly flammable but still, I dove into the toolbox for the fire extinguisher, just in case. At the same time, I was on my phone calling a local buddy, as I knew Junior was at work and half an hour away at best. While I was doing those two things, the guy who lives in the house I’d stopped near came out to check on us. We could see fuel pumping out under the truck, and when we popped the hood, it was sort of everywhere in there. Clearly I’d broken a pressure fuel line.

He offered us something to drink and tools if we needed them, said it looked like I had things well in hand. Probably he couldn’t see my hands shaking, but I was starting to calm down by then.

Marv swooped in and took us all home; fortunately John was there to babysit the youngers while Marv and I went back for the truck. We hooked up the tow strap to his truck, but unfortunately, when my winch was installed they took out the front hooks. We hooked the strap to the winch carrier and crawled on down the road.  Turning and stopping that beastie without power steering or brakes is no joke, and when Marv made a wrong turn that involved about three times the number of corners, I just groaned.

When he stopped before we were there, I wondered why. Turns out he’d caught a glimpse of my winch in his mirror during one of the turns, and we’d bent the shit out of the piece we attached to. As Murphy would have it, I used to have an extra one of those pieces, but threw it away when we moved, thinking I’d never need it. So we repositioned the tow strap and got the truck on home, where I unloaded the rest of our junk and left it parked on the street. It’s not getting up the driveway without a few strong backs or possibly a tow truck.

It can all be fixed, but I hate to see it like that. I have another truck, but I hate to drive the work beastie around town when I don’t have to. That’s a good way to get my tools stolen out of the back, and if I want to put any more than two people in it, I’m going to have to clean the inside tools out of the back seat. At least Junior says he can fix it, although there may be a lot of cussing coming from the shop. Just what we needed, another money and time suck. It is what it is, and what it is is broken.

It’s still really new to me to share life with someone that I can share lots of different activities with too. The hunting is easy enough; plenty of men are into that. But the gardening and food preservation that I’ve always dabbled in, I’ve dabbled alone.

Not any more though. Junior was right on board with making the garden, even if it started out as my project that he was helping me get started. At this point it’s both our project; he’s enjoying it every bit as much as I am. He gets out there and weeds and checks every little plant for signs of vegetables popping out. When his peppers started growing little micro-jalapenos, he was the proud papa.

It did surprise me to find him developing an interest in food preservation. He started pretty traditionally, wanting to make deer jerky. Since he gave me a smoker for Christmas, we cured some meat and gave it a shot. Come to think of it, I don’t think I got to taste much of that first batch of jerky. I think it all went to work with him to share. That led to a kitchen purchase, the electric slicer, and my realization that two people in a hobby do nothing but feed off each other in the purchasing department. That can be hard on the checkbook, but at least we’re acquiring some of the machines that I’ve wanted for a while.

The next logical step was to try to make snack sticks from venison. We do have a lot of venison and it’s so expensive to have the butcher make them, but they’re always the first things to get gobbled up. I already had a meat grinder as part of my KitchenAid, so we defrosted a little bit of meat, per the recipe on the sausage spice pack we got, and added some pork roast to it. Deer meat is really dry; the fat tastes about terrible, so we trim it very lean when we initially process it. Pork fat is added back in to give some body and moisture. Since we’re on diets, we stuck with whole pork, not just the fat.

We had a good old time stuffing these things. I’d bought the stuffer attachment and some casings for myself for Christmas in 2007, and hadn’t got to using them yet. They went on really well, and then into the smoker they went, to cook slowly for six or eight hours. We had some lessons learned in this batch, but we’ll try it again and continue tweaking as we go. This also gave us incentive to finally get that vacuum sealer that really makes a lot of sense when you’ve got a lot of meat to process.

Since I was online buying a meat slicer anyway, I added to my cart a giant pressure canner that I’ve always wanted. I’ve done a little canning but only with a water bath – pickles and jams. I’d love to try pressure canning, like you need for low-acid vegetables, meats, and fish. Since we live in one of the most productive agriculture areas in the country, we could probably be preserving something local about every weekend. For now, we’ll start with the easier, safer stuff, and work our way up into the more complicated.

This weekend, it was pickled asparagus. I don’t have an asparagus plot yet. If I did plant one this year, it wouldn’t be producing enough to set aside for a long time, considering how much I adore fresh grilled asparagus. So we bought about nine pounds at Costco; it’s California-grown and a really good quality. I’ve been buying two to four pounds a week there anyway.

Junior’s not a vinegar fan, so he did the cutting of the vegetables and peppers to spice things up while I made the brine. We didn’t need to use the pressure canner – any old big pot would have done the job – but we broke it in anyway. It works just fine for water-bath canning. We learned the lesson that for things not under pressure, we might as well set up a table outside and use the turkey fryer and gas grill burners, and keep the heat out of the house while heating the water faster.

We did it in two batches, producing less than I would have thought from that giant pile of asparagus spears. But at the moment we have about seven quarts sealed and cooling on the counter and we’re very pleased with ourselves. We’d thought about wokring with strawberry jam while we were at it today, but the fruitstand was closed. It’s just as well; that canning is more work than it seems reading through the recipe. It’ll just take practice; I hope by the end of the summer that we’ll be old hats at it. Maybe we can even justify that tuna fishing trip that I’m jonesing for. Home-canned tuna is to die for.

My writing goes in cycles. I tend to pour it all out when I’m miserable, and am not too quiet when there are really interesting things going on, but the days in between? I get very lethargic about documenting contentment.

What am I going to write about? The excruciatingly slow progress on the yard? Sure, we’re doing things with it every weekend, but sometimes those things are just weeding, and there’s not a lot to show for it.

The nice weekend kept largely inside from the rain? Wow, did I ever need that, but it doesn’t make for good journal fodder. We did a little shopping, did a little shooting, and a fair amount of cooking and cleaning. None of that is earth-shattering.

The brutal weekend taking three-quarters of the kids camping to a trap shoot? Yeah, I was stressed to the max before we went; that trip didn’t help. Best if I don’t actually put what I was thinking to paper. I’d rather just forget about it.

The diet that continues to work, if slowly? Nah, not interesting to anyone but us. Although between us, we’ve lost almost sixty pounds. I’ve bought new pants; Junior prefers to just wear his really baggy.

Work that’s driving me crazy? We’re at another Monday, but this is the end of the project and it’s no longer quite so bad. Some customers love the meters and some hate them. I’m tired of dealing with the ones that are screaming because their water is no longer essentially free. They got away with it for a long time; what made them think it would be forever?

So I’ll just keep on living, and working, and weeding. When something interesting happens, I’m sure I’ll get back into it.

Every house you buy has its oddities. Sometimes the previous owner was a crackmonkey; sometimes they just did strange stuff like plumbing water lines with electrical conduit. Sometimes you buy a repossessed house, and the problems are multiplied by the time it sat vacant. We looked at a lot of houses, and the one we bought was definitely the best of the lot. There were houses we didn’t even bother going in with holes in the walls visible from the windows, and some that we were considering with no living landscape left at all, if it was ever installed.

This house had landscaping we could work with, we felt, and it wasn’t all dead either. The lawn was, but that was to be expected. It did have a lot of sort of generic stuff that I really didn’t like, like the row of red shrubs along the backyard fence, and the ugly queen palms all over the place. It was a start though, and it had good fences.

The first thing we did was to clear out the trash the previous owner left. The back area is about a third of an acre behind the backyard fence, and was knee-high in weeds and trash. There were weird piles of dirt everywhere. It was really a hassle to mow, and besides, we want to use that space.

So Junior borrowed a tractor after we’d done all we could by hand, and spent a couple of days running the box scraper around, levelling off the back field. That was also where the garden was going, and since the dogs didn’t recognize not to stomp all over freshly-tilled soil, he put up a nice fence to keep them out.

We had to do something about the lawns. We tried just fertilizing and watering them all winter to bring them back, and there was some grass there. It was patchy and ugly, with lumps and holes. So we decided to tear them out and start fresh. Junior mowed them really short and then put a couple of rounds of Round-Up on them to kill the weeds and grass. For a few week there, we were definitely the white trash of the neighborhood, with the dead lawns.

But getting to the next step of ripping them out and pulling all of the old sod was overwhelming. We had a ton of other yardwork to do anyway, so we called in reinforcements. We found a gardener who would prep the lawns for reseeding for a reasonable price, and they spent a couple of weekends working on it while we pruned trees and pulled shrubs. It was worth every penny; they pulled out cubic yards’ worth of dead sod and spread ten yards of new dirt that we bought to level it.

While they did that, we spent one day pruning and cleaning up the trees that are going to stay. There are a lot of redwoods, some liquid ambers, and a bunch of crepe myrtles that needed to be cleaned up. It was amazing the difference just doing that much did for the place; it went from looking like a jungle to looking more like a yard.

The next weekend, we squeaked into the backyard with the tractor before the lawn area was too nice to drive on. We ripped out about 15 ugly red shrubs and a couple of those queen palms. We’ll have to leave the bigger ones; they’re harder to get out than they look, and pulling those would break too much concrete. We’re not ready to open that can of worms just yet, so they’re going to stay. I don’t like them, but at least they don’t drop too much crap in the pool.

The plan is to landscape with edibles; fruit trees are going along the back fence where the uglies were, and possibly a nice asparagus bed and some artichokes. The garden is getting better and bigger by the day. There’s only corn planted in it for now, but Junior’s prepping beds and we have lots of seeds started. We plan to put some bigger, messier trees out behind the garden, where the chicken yard is going to go. A pomegranate won’t hurt anything back there, and will give the future chickens some shade. We’ve even contemplated cross-fencing the back one more time to give us a little pen for a sheep or a steer. We both believe that it’s important to know where your food comes from, and like the idea of raising our own. I like plants that are both functional and pretty too, instead of boring contractor’s special landscape shrubs that don’t add anything. And I love having a partner that likes that too, and is willing to work on it; he works harder on it than I do, that’s for sure!

I got to see something new this weekend. Junior had a regular league trapshoot up at Coarsegold. A big chunk of the league usually takes their trailers up there, since it’s the farthest club from most of us, and spends the whole weekend. The other motive for that is that the Sun Mountain Gun Club isn’t just a trap club; they also have a sporting clays course, and a bunch of the guys shoot that on the Saturday.

I’d never seen this before. It’s sort of like golf, I guess, if I know what golf is like (I don’t, not first hand, and I’m fine with that.) Except it’s much more rugged and instead of hitting little balls with clubs, you shoot flying clay pigeons.

Our team of six shooters happened to start on station 2. You don’t have to start on the first one, you just go all the way around and finish up at the ones you skipped. At each station, there are two shooting positions, an easier one and a harder one. Standing at the one the team has decided on, the shooter of the moment has a designated number of targets to shoot at. They come out two at a time, and they’re really tricky compared to trapshooting.

With trap, you can see the house the target’s coming out of, and there’s a big clear field behind it where they fly. There’s some variation, as the target thrower arcs back and forth, but you know where it’s going to start. In sporting clays, you can sometimes find the target throwers in the brush, but until they actually throw a target, you don’t know how they’re going to fly. Some go way up above your head and some roll on the ground like rabbits. At some stations, if you time it just right, the two targets intersect in a way that you don’t have to swing the gun too far, but if your timing’s off, you have to really search for that second one. And it’s not like you get a lot of time, only until it falls and breaks.

So they rotate through who has to start first, and everyone else crowds around to see where the targets are going. With our team of six (no, I wasn’t shooting,) everyone had to go first twice, which was nice and fair. And then when you’re done with that station, you stroll on to the next, and so on. Out of a hundred targets, our guys ranged from the mid-sixties to 93 hit; the two guys with the best scores do this a little more often than the rest, but Junior held his own.

It’s a little more expensive than trapshooting, but I can see that it’s fun. The weather was absolutely gorgeous and it was a lot of fun to watch. The variety alone made it interesting, trying to figure out where the next set was coming from and watching the guys take really challenging shots. We’ll probably be back at that club for the league shoot-off, and we’ll stay again and Junior will shoot the course again. It’s a fun time.

A couple of weeks ago, Junior and I took Seamus and Sierra, the two kids we happened to have that day, up to Bass Pro Shops. We had a couple of motives; Seamus’ birthday was coming up and I made a deal with him that he could pick something out for his gift and I would pay for it. Junior and I both wanted to look at guns too, he went for the .45s and I was looking at .40s.

I’ve been wanting a nice compact .40 cal for a couple of years, as a carry gun. I’ve amassed the concealed carry application, got my name changed on the pertinent documents, and scoped me out a nice training class. I used to hold a CCW years ago, when I was working for a Sheriff’’s Department on call at odd hours. It wasn’t hard to get at that time, working for the Sheriff and all, but I let it lapse when I had John. I didn’t think I could successfully deal with both a gun and a baby at the same time. I always meant to renew the license one day, and now that the kids are all older and I’m again on call at weird times and places, now is the time. My old revolver is really big; it’s going on the permit too, but for an everyday carry, I also want something smaller and automatic. Hence the .40 caliber shopping; more stopping power than a 9 mm and yet not so punishing as a .45, so I will actually practice with it.

So at the gun counter, I pulled my number and patiently waited at least half an hour while Junior browsed ammunition, Seamus played with the turkey calls and plinking range, and Sierra gradually sank lower and lower into not feeling good. When I was finally called up, the little Taurus I was interested in fit my hand like a glove. I picked up a few more, but kept coming back to that one while Junior browsed his 1911s. Finally, I decided on that one, and started the paperwork. It was a really busy day, and getting everything together took another hour. Sierra zonked out in a cart. Seamus found a bow that he thought he might like.

We kept doing paperwork. We got passed from the orignal, under-21 salesman to a legal one. This one, Ray, was very personable. He explained the requirements of the DROS form, and I paid that fee. None of that was a big surprise, as I was once a gun dealer myself, years ago. I paid my fees and signed my name, and then he brought up the ID issue. Well, that’s changed a little bit in the years since I’ve been doing it, but OK. I had my driver’s license with my correct name and address. But then Ray mentioned, after the sale of course, that I needed two forms of government ID that showed my address. Uh, that could be a problem. I explained that we were recently married and I haven’t changed my name on everything yet. My registrations aren’t changed yet, as they haven’t come up for renewal. We bought the house before we were married, so it’s my maiden name on the deed. Seamus looked at backpacks.

“No problem,” said Ray. You can bring in a utility bill with your correct name and address. He helpfully wrote that down on the stack of paperwork I would need to bring in to pick the gun up. Seamus decided on a bow, but they didn’t have the right one. He selected a wrist rocket as something to have for his actual birthday.

This kicked my butt into gear to get my name changed in all of the rest of the places that I hadn’t bothered with. After all, the cable company doesn’t care whose name is on the check as long as they get their money. I did that, and got PG&E to resend me a bill, since I throw them away after I pay them online. Hell, I even got off my ass to go get a new passport photo taken to get that updated too.

So today, the magical day came along, and I scooped up Seamus from his dad’s house. We had my bundle of paperwork, a list from Junior revolving around shotgun shells in case quantities, and a post-it note with the exact model of bow for Seamus’ birthday. We attracted the attention of a salesman, gave him my paperwork, and went to look at bows. Sadly, they only had either the left-handed model or the low-draw-weight models of his bow. He was disappointed, but I had him measured for arrows and a helpful lady started cutting a box of them for him.

At which point the gun salesman wanted to see me other form of ID. I plopped my utility bill down on the counter. Promptly, my joy was dashed. Apparently, if you went the utility bill route, you needed 90 consecutive days’ worth of utility bill. Which Ray had neglected to mention to us, obviously. I had told him right then that I was in the process of changing my name and didn’t have a lot in it yet. He didn’t say anything about three bills. He didn’t write anything about it on my paperwork.

I was flummoxed. What was I supposed to do? None of my other paperwork at home had the correct name on it. My auto registrations probably didn’t even have the right address. This guy offered to get a manager at least, so I thought I cold get some clarification.

Boy, was I wrong. This manager type barely glanced at my paperwork, hardly listened to what I was asking, and dismissed me. “It’s not our policy, it’s the law,” he kept saying. Well, I understand that; what I didn’t understand was why hadn’t his salesman TOLD me that law whe I was buying the gun? I wouldn’t have bought it knowing I couldn’t pick it up. I couldn’t wait the extra two months until I did have three months of bill because the DROS registration is invalid after 30 days. I didn’t think you could return guns. I knew I was out the DROS fee, which I wouldn’t have paid in the first place if I’d known about that particular piece of law. The manager kept repeating that most people use their registration. I kept repeating that I didn’t care what most people used, my registration wouldn’t work and I’d told Ray that and why up front.

I was surprised and getting frustrated, and to my sincere annoyance, I started getting emotional about it. This was not what I’d expected to run into on a good day out. This manager treating me like I was some sort of common criminal trying to get away with something was not helping. He was so scornful. I’m embarrassed that I was so flustered that I didn’t think to get his name even, so I could write a scathing letter to their corporate headquarters. He said I could return it, and was on his way to escort me downstairs to do so. I already had arrows being cut though, so I needed to wait for those. I told him that I was done doing business with Bass Pro Shops if that’s how they treat people, and he did not give a rip. I hate to lose that place, as it’s one of my favorite retail places ever, but this was ridiculous.

But while the archery girl was ringing me up, another man in the department had been watching the whole interchange. He quietly took my paperwork and went in the back to talk to the actual department manager. I was apologizing to the girl for getting emotional; not one of my finer moments in a strong professional life. While I was standing there, scenarios were rolling through my head. Do I cancel my class? I can’t even apply to buy another handgun for another 20 days.  I don’t want to take the class without the gun I’ll actually be carrying. And now I have to start shopping all over again? Joy.

Seamus and I took our one purchase and had started downstairs while I tried to explain to him why we wouldn’t be going back to one of our favorite stores because of how they treated us. We had stopped on the stairs while I explained things to him about how one behaves when one values customers, and that I would find him his bow somewhere else, but that he would still get it. Randy, the quieter salesman, called from the top of the stairs. I had forgotten my paperwork, which I would need to get my money back.

But Randy’d been doing some research. It seems that his manager was of the opinion that the paperwork was designed to establish where I lived, not my name. They seemed to think that if I brought in documentation with my maiden name and my correct address, it would probably fly. He asked if I still had my old driver’s license, which I do happen to have. I asked if bringing in my marriage certificate would help, and Randy allowed as how it wouldn’t hurt. So instead of walking out never to return, I asked him to keep the gun stocked and I would try again. He took my phone number, promising to do some more research. But best of all, he apologized, and said that his store didn’t want to treat customers like that. He’d seen the whole thing, and while he didn’t directly contradict that asshole manager, I don’t believe he agreed with him either.

So my plan is to give Bass Pro one more chance. It never was about the laws; the laws are what they are. It was about them not telling me of the laws, and that I wouldn’t have bought the gun had I been able to make a fully informed decision, and how they treated me with contempt. I am no criminal; I’ve never even had a speeding ticket. I wasn’t yelling, I wasn’t making a scene, I was just trying to find out how to resolve a mistake that they had made, not me. I don’t appreciate being treated as scum for trying to make a lawful purchase, especially at a store that survives on those same lawful purchases.

So Seamus gets his bow after all. This was the only store with a name that I recognize that carries this particular model. I’m not big on sending money over the internet to places I’ve never heard of. I ordered it, and when it comes in, I’ll bring him up for another two-hour drive to get it fitted to him.

And should they treat me with contempt again, I am done. Bass Pro Shops is on probation, as far as I’m concerned. I lived without it before they opened up here, and I can do it again. It’s too bad, but if I have to, I will.