Dried Out

Our dryer attempted retirement/went on strike/broke last week. Stephanie states she was on her period at the time, and coupled with the fact that "there has been ZERO CHOCOLATE in this house for WEEKS!!" (-Stephanie) made for a difficult several days for her (she's the laundry guru in our house).

I tried to buy a used dryer off of craigslist, but the only acceptable dryer for sale happened to be blue, which of course is not even an option because blue is the same color that blueberries are and it's not even summer anymore. However, I did accidentally talk to a dryer repair-man for as long as he would keep me on the phone, attempting to squeeze as much free consultation out of him as possible. The result was nothing concrete, just a newfound sense of "this can't be that hard to just fix myself" and "I love DIY appliance repair anyway."

Well, I went through the odious task of replacing two parts in the dryer in a real-life version of Battleship; unfortunately, I didn't get a hit and the dryer was still broken until last night, when I figured out how to do a strange something called a "continuity test" with that magical item we refer to as a "voltimeter." Turns out a fuse was blown, which interrupts power and the electricity monkeys can't swing around their cages and blah blah blah. I ordered the new part on Amazon and I hope it works tomorrow.

I forced my family to go camping on Friday night; this makes 16 nights of forced family camping this summer. To sum up this trip, Braeden enjoyed riding his new bicycle while Emerson made 14,000 attempts at riding his new hand-me-down bicycle without training wheels. To be completely fair, Emerson has rarely had the opportunity to ride with training wheels during his lifetime (we live on a large hill and our driveway is steeper than the side of the St. Louis Arch), even though he's 6 years old now and in my mind is long overdue for the ability to simply roll along a straight stretch without falling over. *sigh* Eliana loved riding her bicycle with training wheels, but is still completely oblivious to the connection between the handlebars and her trajectory.

At any rate, we spent good time together this weekend and I'm glad for it.

I AM A SAILOR

Yes, you read that correctly. Yesterday, I braved the depths of the high seas with only my biceps, pocket-bible, and a large boat that happened to have two diesel engines and a competent captain (though I'm sure I would have been great at it if the need had arisen).

While there, we saw something close to 47 Great Blue Whales that were actually hump-back whales (I wonder if their species is offended by that name). They were amazing. Braeden, Emerson, and I shared the glory of catching four shark-like fish (two lingcod and two sea bass) that I later filleted with a dull knife and lots of willpower.

We also caught lots of crabs. So now I have crabs.

Now I'm sorry for being crude.

Actually, not really.

Braeden and Emerson enjoyed our trip, especially the part where we rode our mountain bicycles on a slow-motion adventure down a paved path to the sea. Emerson still has his training wheels on his bicycle that was designed for someone half his height; as a result, he can only poke along at a rate similar to that of erosion on the edge of Alaska.

Regardless, we finally made it to the beach and we caught hundreds of sand crabs with a little net; these little crabs would later be inadvertently murdered by lack of oxygen in the lidded container where they were housed as bait.