The boys roped at the Merced Fair this morning; Chris broke out on his calf, on what would otherwise have been a great time. We really need to practice more with barriers, but he did spend half of the last week up practicing with one of his friends’ Dad. That guy used to calf rope professionally, so hopefully he picked up a tip or two.

He’s actually very good technically. He needs to work on barriers a little more and just get a little faster. He was number 20 in the standings last week, but I see that he got bumped off the page. We think he’s almost as good as he thinks he is.

And in the team roping, Cowboy’s loop popped off the horns right when he went to turning the steer. For once, I was watching with my own eyes, instead of through the viewfinder, and I couldn’t see why it came off; might have just been one of those freak things.

They hauled butt out of there to get to Plymouth. I hope they have better luck up there.

I was going to take the boys to the Fair after the slack, but it wasn’t open yet. By the time it did open, it was so damn hot here that I really didn’t feel like walking around out in the sun anyway. Hell, they’ve already each gone with field trips this week.

We spent last night over at Cowboy’s since a house with one toilet is infinitely better than a house with no sewer at all. My landlord had a roto-rooter guy out, who couldn’t do anything since there isn’t a clean-out on this house. So the landlord dug up the sewer line, and found a place where it had obviously been broken into in the past, for the same reason.

Sadly, no roto-rooting until this morning. And when he did do it today, he found it clogged with unmentionables. Great. I thought those were supposed to be flushable, but apparently not when the line is collapsing and there are root intrusions.

So he fixed it for now, but sometime in the future I’m getting my back yard dug up to replace the whole lateral line. Good thing it’s not landscaped anyway. It’s good to have a sewer; that’s one thing you don’t give much mind to until it’s gone, and then it’s a major crisis. I’m doing massive amounts of laundry today.

And I finally scanned in another set of pictures. I’d been having a green fit, and actually stopped on my drive home one day to take pictures of some of the everyday scenes from my commute.

I’m sure this guy wondered what the hell I was doing taking pictures of him. I wish photos could capture the smell, because fresh-cut alfalfa is heaven on earth.

I couldn’t figure out what this odd triangular plant was for the longest time. Up close, I decided it was lettuce, but why was it that shape? It’s become obvious in the last couple of weeks that they’re not growing lettuce; they’re growing lettuce seeds. And that also explains why this plot is out in the cotton and hay fields—no cross contamination from the other lettuce varieties grown further to the south of us. Right now, it’s in seed, with fluffy halos above each plant. I really need to stop and get a picture of that too.

I love the rice fields. They are so smooth and still when they’re first flooded, and then they get this shimmer of green, growing brighter every day, and it’s an intense green, the green of emeralds or maybe a jungle canopy. Rice fields are what started me on this green kick, because I couldn’t get over the fact that we have this jewel of a color right here amid the dirt and the dust and the blacktop roads. There are days when the snowy egrets decide to converge on one particular field, dotting the endless green with perfect white.

Makes me want to eat rice, even though I’m not a fan of the end product.

Coming soon to a monitor near you; Cotton bolls, close up, and the green and gold view from inside a silage corn field.

Forward:

So I finally got to twist the ear of someone in charge at the RV Dealership of the Damned yesterday.

I called and left messages, the usual routine. Oddly though, the cursed DMV clerk actually bothered to return my call. Of course, it wasn’t with good news; she was full of excuses. “We couldn’t get a release from the seller.” “No, it’s not really registered to us at the DMV; it has our names on it because we started the process when the trailer came on our lot.”

Oh, really? Then you admit that you did once have the paperwork? Interesting.

And my personal favorite: “I’ll walk your paperwork over to the DMV tomorrow or maybe next week.”

Yeah, I’m going to be happy with that, lazy bitch. It’s taken TEN MONTHS!

So I weaseled the name and phone extension of the general sales manager out of her. Shortly before I invoked the gods of the small claims court.

And lo and behold, this guy actually answered his phone!

I relayed the basics of my story to him. I used words like “getting the runaround” and “unhelpful DMV clerk” and “very unhappy with my service.” This made the manager nervous. He looked me up right then and there on his little computer (and I bet they could all do that, but he’s the first to admit to it yet.)

He noticed that the registration for which I had paid was good through 2004, and assured me that it would be taken care of through 2005. He then signed off, telling me that he had to go find some things out, and that he would call me back that day.

And he actually did. Apparently, he had some words with the DMV clerk, because he came back and told me that she would be walking my paperwork (which they must have had all ready) to the DMV that afternoon. And that I would have my registration in hand no later than next week. We’ll see.

I suspect that that’s the last of the politeness I’ll hear from that particular clerk, but so what? She’s screwed me seven ways from Sunday; I don’t care if she gets fired over this and holds a raging hatred for me for the rest of her life. Your own fault there, sister.

I’m still going to sue them. Ten months of payments and insurance on a trailer that I couldn’t use is ridiculous, and entirely their fault. I’m just lucky that I live on a dead-end road, where cops don’t normally cruise, or I would have been ticketed for having an unlicensed vehicle on the street. It’s two feet too long to fit in the driveway.

Back:

Did I mention several weeks ago my sewer woes? Probably not, but the city sewer crew had been out messing with the main line for a couple of days, and coincidentally, my drains backed up. The toilet overflowed, raw sewage came out of the tub drain; it was a disgusting mess. I had to chuck the bathmat and the tub mat and start all over. Fortunately, I had most of the tubby toys out of the tub, so they didn’t get ruined.

I called the city after hours in a panic, and the guy came out and insisted that it wasn’t their line. “You could roll a golf ball down our line,” he said. And therefore, he said that it had to be my lateral line, which the city no longer maintains due to too many problems. Great. But of course, right after he came out and popped the lid to the manhole upstream, everything started to drain. My landlord said he’s had problems with this before; when they use the big suction truck, it creates weird pressures on the lines. Popping the lid relieved that.

So I went and bought myself a pretty new bathroom rug, after sterilizing the boys’ bathroom. Oddly, my bath didn’t overflow.

Well, until last night, that is. I’ve seen the city truck out there some more lately, which seemed a little odd, considering their lines are sooo clean. And sure enough, I have no sewer service to speak of again.

I started a shower for John, and the shower door stuck, as it’s wont to do, before he got in. Good thing, because when I went to open it for him, I noticed that we weren’t getting any draining at all, and the water was about to climb right out of the shower stall. And the toilets were both gurgling ominously. That’s an evil sound, the toilet gurgle.

So I dropped it in my landlord’s lap. This is a big part of why I don’t own this house. I can get him to fix it instead of doing it myself. Well, I did plunge the shower, which helped not at all, but he’s going to get a roto-rooter guy out there today. I hope. I’d hate to have to shower in the trailer out front, and the laundry situation is going to become desperate pretty quickly.

Nance wrote a nice entry today on appreciating her husband, and she commented that too many journallers out there only bring up their spouses when they have something to complain about.

I quite agree. I understand that we’re only seeing a portion of their lives, that which is on their minds at the moment and which they choose to share. There is probably more going on, but it’s not noteworthy. But the trend to only write about the significant stuff makes it seem as if there are more bad marriages out there. And that makes me sad.

Not everyone does this; Grouse is always very positive, as is Melissa. They both seem so caring, and set great examples, somehow without being goopy about it. I’d like to write as positively as they do.

I’ve tried not to do it too. I did come unglued that one time, but I decided that I didn’t want my meltdown to be public, and deleted that entry. Because I think the world of Cowboy, I didn’t want that one episode (which was more my fault than anyone’s) to skew anyone else’s opinion of him.

He’s a great guy. He has a few flaws, but they’re faults that match pretty well with my own. We’ve come to fit each other better over the last couple of years, and I expect that to keep improving. He’s not the timeliest guy in the world, for example, and sees no problem at all with being late to things. While I’m ridiculously anal about being on time for the most minor stuff, to the point where I have to be careful not to show up too early. A half hour is OK; an hour early is not. But we’ve made adjustments about it. He makes more of an effort to be there on time if it’s important to me, and I’m learning to redefine what exactly is important, and to just let it go if it’s not. I’m a more relaxed person because of it too.

And he’s everything I would want in a man. If I had sat down a few years ago and made a list of the qualities that are important to me, I would now be able to check off every single one, even the little ones.

He’s hard working. I’ll take a man who gets obsessively dedicated to his job over one who doesn’t give a rip any day. And he plays just as hard as he works—fortunately, his games are something that I like too, and that I’m welcome to join. I couldn’t handle a man who wasn’t inspired by anything.

He’s kind and he’s got a wickedly funny sense of humor. He’s fun! I always have a great time when I’m around him.

He’s a quiet man, but there’s a will of iron underneath that I’m not sure everyone knows about. He’s respected by damn near everyone who knows him, but he doesn’t really understand that he is, and therefore doesn’t have a big head about it.

He’s a patient teacher, and a patient boyfriend, and he’s not the kind of guy who would ever cheat or just pick up and leave. When he says he loves me, I know that he does, because this is a man who doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean, ever. He keeps his promises, and he’ll give people who are worth it second chances, and thirds, and fourths, without ever making himself into a doormat.

I’m incredibly lucky to have found a man like him, and to have him love me back is more than I would have thought that I deserved at some points in my life. I feel closer to him than to anyone, ever, and he’s mentioned that he feels the same way.

It’s funny what life can drop in your lap when you’re least expecting it.

On further reflection, I realized that almost all of my favorite journallists are pretty darn positive. I think that I just don’t like to read the negative people very much…

So a County guy came tearing in here this morning, looking for the contractor’s site manager, who’s on vacation. Damn, so I get to deal with him—I do like the man, but he’s got some sort of personal vendetta going on against one of my contractors that I’m going to have to squash here sooner or later.

County guy had his panties in a twist because of some freak accident that he’d like to blame on us. It seems that one of his subordinates; a guy not quite bright enough to rub two sticks together, was mowing a dry field with the big tractor.

This guy ran over two of our in-ground valves, which he knew were there.

The mower picked up one of the covers, an eight-inch diameter piece of cast iron. It frisbeed this thing all the way across the street, clear across a parking lot, and through a plate glass window. Fortunately, it hit the window about eight feet up, or else it could easily have decapitated someone. Or at least ruined their day.

I don’t blame County guy for getting excited about this, but I do question his timing. I had specifically noticed that area mowed yesterday—and he comes up all freaked out today? He would like to blame us. He says that the valve covers (there were two) weren’t on the valves, but were lying next to them. That may be true; I can’t vouch for where they were, except that my contractors are in the habit of replacing covers to keep the rain out.

And even if they were on the valve boxes, they would still have come off in the mower suction—there’s nothing but weight holding them on. I went and looked. There are pieces of one still there, and the moron on the mower obviously drove right over the whole assembly, since it’s all neatly trimmed. He’s not supposed to do that, and I think we just demonstrated why.

So I’m having my guys stake out all of the rest of the valves, for moron deterrent. We’ve already had to do that for pipelines and some surface-completed wells. This whole place is going to look like a porcupine.

Ya know, I’m thinking I might be just a teeny bit allergic to one of my favorite drinks.

I know, Bailey’s has always made me sneeze, and I mean instantly. Gulp….sneeze. Sip…. sneeze. Guzzle…. sneeze.

But I like it so!

Well, um, I’m thinking that perhaps it shouldn’t make my mouth swell up. I mean, this is really starting to remind me of the reaction I had to walnuts the time before they made it hard to breathe. Perhaps I need a clue?

Fortunately, the chocolate variety never did make my head explode, so I can continue my path towards Mother of Doom. Thanks Jane.

Too bad I’m out of pomegranate juice, because that was really good with vodka. Not a cosmopolitan, but hell, it was pink and it was good.

Finally scanned in a couple a rolls worth of film. So here are the pictures from Taylorsville, a little late:

The beautiful arena, looking back towards the campground. We were farther up into the trees than you can see.

The boys in a roping series.

Chris getting ready to rope one.

And after the rodeo, Cowboy and I took a drive. This guy was bedded down near the side of a road, and didn’t seem all that concerned about our presence.

And this is where we wound up until dark. I couldn’t capture the overall effect without a wide-angle lens, but it was a tiny alpine lake plopped down in a bowl of granite, with the sun setting behind it.

And just for kicks, while I’m doing pictures, here’s Angus being a cowdog. I have to tie him up, or he gets in the way of the ropers. He thinks his life’s ambition is to chase those cows, and since they conveniently run away when he’s parked by the chutes, he’s a very happy dog. What I’m really doing is getting him used to the cattle so he doesn’t get quite so excited every time he sees some.

Oh, and as of last night, the boys were sitting third in the Fortuna Rodeo standings, but there’s a performance today. Still, that’s better than they had been doing lately. Can’t attribute it all to Jack, since Cowboy said he was acting up and they had a real rodeo on their hands handling the steer they drew.