blue ribbon* vegetables

The competition was stiff-ish, but we pulled out two wins for our best zuchini squash (one of four so far) and one of our 18 sugar snap peas. It was a small event, the LLL Farm Summer Fair. No rides, no rodeos, no vendors other than the array of candy jars on Grandma's fridge. And we didn't advertise much, which was a good strategy for winning our submissions. Look, you've got to start somewheres. We'll be ready for the Big Time another year.

* I don't have time to fiddle with Photoshop, so I'll kindly ask you to block from your vision the part on these blue ribbons that says 1959 Tillamook County Fair, rounded up by Judge Grandma.

good times (and one sad time) with Grandma and Grandpa

No doubt about it: making Zoralee leave Grandma Rena and Grandpa Larry will be the hardest part about going to Alaska for a few months. Seeing them is part of her daily routine. Whenever she hears Molly bark upstairs, she drops what she's doing and crawls toward the bottom of the stairs, knowing that someone has come home. If I say, "Wanna go see Grandma?" she gets very excited. She knows where the love is. And the treats.

helping Grandma to dog-sit Peanut and Murray

Zoralee loves to steal the pen from Grandpa's pocket. This time, he let out

a silly, startled cry, which prompted the same in Zoralee, minus the silly.

looking to Grandma for comfort from mean old Grandpa

back to good times, reading in the chair

and making Grandpa-inspired faces

w-w-weird w-w-week

It has been a bit of a strange week for us, kicked off, I suppose, by the spider-eating incident. Here are two bigger developments and a handful of other tidbits. And a few pics.

1. # 1 in the What We're Doing Next category: we decided last weekend we'd go to Alaska for the fall semester. Jason needs to take one class for a Biology degree that has drug on and on (due in no small part to the vagabond thing). School started last Tuesday, but he got permission to show up a bit late. Work here in the Park is letting him off early, and plenty of construction work awaits him in AK. In a few short days, things slam bam came together and we're going for it. Long story short, he'll head north Friday by car, and Zoralee and I will follow by plane a week later, depending on whatever housing sitch he finds. This isn't as sudden as it seems, actually. We'd been considering it all summer but let it slip to the backburner due to other things...
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2. # 2 in the What We're Doing Next category: I haven't posted on this topic, (we can discuss it through personal correspondence), but Jason has been in a massive application process since February for a government job that could initially take him away for several months of training. A couple days after we'd decided on going to Alaska for the fall, he was cleared for hire. Literally anytime we could get a phone call from a stranger, and within a couple of weeks it'd be Sayonara, husband. We're still heading north, because what else can you do? We might not hear from the stranger for months.
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3. We spent some time in car dealerships, which we usually avoid at all costs. We thought it would be the quickest and easiest way of getting rid of our pickup and into a smaller all-wheel-drive car, even if we had to take some loss. It was a bad omen when we were at the first dealership's "big sale" (hardy har) and I got myself a cup of rootbeer from their rent-a-fountain-drink machine. I looked into the cup to see 1/2 beverage - actual substance - and 1/2 foam. Just like the dealers' mouths. Three places offered us deals bordering on hilarity, to where we decided to keep the pickup and sell it privately when we have more time.
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4. My folks were given an emu egg, and while we considered trying to sneak it under one of our broody hens to hatch ourselves an emu, we opted instead (read: Mom opted instead) to cook it. Scrambled egg. Singular. Well, we added a chicken egg for size comparison. The shell was very thick and hard, and when it cracked with a good bang against the counter edge, it was sharp. It smelled blander than a chicken egg and was really viscous. Mom wouldn't eat any, but she did take video clips of Zoralee. Dad liked it. I thought it was alright, but I couldn't eat a lot. It's difficult to explain the texture. It's more dense and yet spongier or springier. It was a nice harkening back to dinosaur days. One very true phrase during breakfast was, "Eat up. There's more."

And now, for the randomnesses that have come in pairs:

1. Last night Jason took for a horseback ride a couple of Slovakian young folk he'd picked up hitch-hiking. This might take the cake.
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2. Two of our chickens are either off in the woods sitting on a clutch of eggs, or they were swiped by an eagle or coyote. One of them is Blind-ey. We're down to seven hens and Six Dolla' Roo.
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3. We have had two extra terrible nights for sleeping on account of little Zoralee teething and/or, okay, maybe I drank too strong of coffee too late during those days. Dangit. I need to write a whole post about shooting oneself in the foot. Anyway, the first night, while I was laying in the dark listening to Z squirm about restlessly, I had three spider encounters, enough to qualify it as a game - two matches of spider throwing and one match of spider seeing on the wall and waking husband to kill it. This is not a happy middle of the night activity. The second night, no spiders, but Zoralee was up playing from 3:30 a.m. until 5:20 a.m. Real nice.
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4. Both Jason and Zoralee have marks on the bridges of their noses where they were hit with forks. How does that happen? Well. Jason needed to tie on his lava-lava, but he had a fork in his hand. So, like anybody would do, he rolled the fork up in his shirt and commenced to tying. Meanwhile, Zoralee came over and pulled herself up on his leg, wanting to be picked up. He bent down, and the fork tumbled out and hit her nose. There was much unhappiness. Jason felt so bad that he dropped the fork from a couple feet above his own head to try and duplicate it. He said it was pretty painful.

Z's sore is healing quicker (quick-rejuvenation baby skin)