Brisingamen End Of Year Note, 2022 (May)

Ralph Stover State Park was on our list to visit for the year.  We got out there and of course I needed to go to the bathroom – I always have to whenever I get out of the car – and um, yuck.  Oh gosh.  The worst.  Ralph Stover State Park easily had the worst bathrooms I ever had to use.  They needed to be pumped out.  There were large plastic bags of bloated something in the holding tank.  Seriously – honestly – there could be a body down there and no one would know.  Don’t worry – I’m not just telling you – I called the main office in Harrisburg and let them know that the horrid stench of the bathrooms permeated the whole lower side of the park.  We hiked (of course with Sessrumnir) along the paths of the rock-climbing wall.  Yeah – you can do real, hook up your equipment to off the side of a cliff and repel down, climb up, rock climbing.  That area was beautiful.  We enjoyed that.  I’d like to hike that again.

Justine and I wanted to go camping.  We thought and figured out and plotted.  We made sure nothing was going on – that we were totally free on the weekend we picked.  Mother’s Day weekend was free.  We double and triple checked.  We made out non-changeable reservations and we put them in our calendars on our phones.  Yep, and then I realized that I double booked us!  The weekend – Saturday and Sunday – was open, but we were scheduled to go to Luke’s boss’s daughters’ Bat Mitzvahs!  I could not believe I messed it up.  Justine said not to worry, we could just stay an extra day.  So, we booked another day on our camping reservations.

            The Bat Mitzvahs were fun, beautiful, and the food was tasty (even if the waitstaff kept stealing my plate!)  People were very happy, and the aura was exciting, the music was upbeat and fun.  Thank you for the invite!

            Our vehicle was already packed for camping, so we went home and changed out of our good party clothes and grabbed the dogs and got on the road to head to the campground.  We got in late, so we threw all of our stuff in our cabin, walked the dogs quick, and went to bed.

            It was raining on Saturday, so we went to Crystal Cave.  Beautiful.  It was interesting to hear stories of parties that were thrown in the caves, of explorations prior to electricity, and vandalism that was done years back.  Tawbs painted a tiny canvas for me for Mother’s Day.  The kids played in the rain and puddles on the playground.  We had a good day!

Sunday, we went for a hike up Pulpit Rock and Pinnacle Loop (at Blue Rock Campground out of Lenhartsville, Pennsylvania).  It was a great hike.  6+ hours.  Almost 7 miles.  I personally burned 2,550 calories – per Google Fit.  The kids did great.  And Sessrumnir kept up well.

Monday, we packed up and moved our cars over to the other side of the campground and we climbed through the boulder pit.  Again, like last year, we enjoyed climbing the boulders!  It’s satisfying to judge where you need to jump and climb to.  And even though the boulders are going up a hill, it’s horizontal climbing.  I can’t climb vertically – I have no upper body strength.  We had a couple of hiccups along our journey, but all made it out with no issues.  We even saw a large snake contently sunning itself at the end of the climbing.  So issues at all.  All in all, camping was great.

Pennsylvania switched Primary elections to May from March, I believe.  I showed up to work the polls and I was not good at setting up the machines, but the team I was with was very experienced and we were ready to open with time to spare.  I was lucky enough to have Lucas work from home so he could hang out with Tawbs.  The two of them had a blast together.  I feel I did well at the polls.  Honestly, I worked on crafts for Catawba-Lynn’s birthday party the whole time – but I still did good.

            We were told by Justine that there was a free drive-in movie in New Jersey; they would be playing Encanto.  Tawbs had seen Encanto once and liked it, so we headed to Tractor Supply first, bought a large kiddie pool I had seen there the time prior and wanted, attempted to strap it to the roof of the VW and failed because it was made of too flimsy of plastic, so we shoved it in the back of the VW and drove to the movie.  It was fun, reminded me of the whole extended family piling into my dad’s van and getting to the movie – I don’t know, 3 hours early?  Back then, it gave us plenty of time to play with rocks before the movies.  Tawbs was excited to see a movie outside, so she enjoyed the whole experience – and yelled at me for not bringing Sessrumnir with.  I didn’t know if he would have been allowed, so we left him home.  She pointed out the handful of dogs that were there and made me feel bad for leaving a family member out of the activity.

            There was a Pennsylvania Sled Dog Club meeting on 5/21.  I decided not to go.  We don’t have sled dogs and I didn’t need to be getting wrapped up in that activity at that time.  So instead, Catawba-Lynn and I invited Justine and her boys to the Tyler Arboretum’s Members’ weekend.  We went with Judy and her son Henry the next day.  And in the evenings, Catawba-Lynn played with her kiddie pool.

            Sunday night though, I decided I was going to prep for the coming week, which meant getting the grocery shopping done.  Surprisingly, there was a red light that I had to stop at.  There was also someone trying to back out of their driveway.  I stopped early to let the car out.  The vehicle behind me stopped in the single lane of traffic that the street had.  And the vehicle slowly backed out.  The light was still red, no big deal.  Then the car put it in drive and moved forward a little, trying to get properly in line with traffic – the light was still red.  Then the car reversed, the light turned green, the car tried to straighten out but had to pull forward and reverse again… Annnnnd the fucker behind me became too impatient and rearended me.  I was in the iQ.  I knew he could see the child seat through the rear window – but to tell me to go – he hit me.  Okay.  I put my car in park and put my 4 ways on.  I got out of the vehicle and went around my car.  I stared at him and then knelt down and started looking at my car.  The bastard didn’t even have the decency to get out of his car, he just rolled down the window to yell something about the people behind him were the ones to blame.  I ignored him and continued to waste the green light as people behind us honked and went around us, while I looked at my car with no damage.  I was so pissed I was shaking.  Finally, the piece of shit got out of his vehicle and apologized repeatedly – trying to tell me it was the people behind him’s fault.  “How?!” I demanded, “We’ve been sitting here at a stop for quite a while!”  I was pissed.  But there was no damage, and I saw he was Coast Guard and I had recently been thinking over my involvement with the Coast Guard Auxiliary.  I turned around and got back into my car.  I heard the guy call “Thank you, ma’am, thank you.”  What I surmise is, the guy sitting behind me was annoyed with me for “wasting his time” by letting the other car out. He thought about hitting me – and actually went through with it – it may have even surprised him for acting on his thought.  I’m guessing he figured I was just going to drive away but was surprised when I got out and questioned him.

Very cute – we went to a Newtown Library scavenger hunt.  There were 500 pennies hidden in the children’s section.  Out of about 20 kids participating, Catawba collected 90 pennies!  Proud of her!

            Before it got too hot, I baked the tiny cakes for Catawba-Lynn’s birthday party.  We took tiny bundt cake molds and made 85 mini cakes.  With a little bit of imagination and whip cream – we made the cakes look like volcanos.  It was part of the theming – I let Catawba-Lynn pick out her birthday party theme.

            The Brandywine Zoo started their Thursday morning story time at the end of May.  Catawba-Lynn went to everyone that we were in the state for and not in a summer class for – except for one week when the zoo had no parking.  I needed to be able to park.

            That weekend we went to White Clay Creek Preserve State Park (Pennsylvania side).  We did the tri-state hike and went to touch the Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland corner.  We got a picture of the three of us and Sessrumnir and the marker.  I would do the hike again.  It was beautiful and fun, crossing in and out of the states as we walked to the marker.

Afterwards, we went to Preston’s Playground, a playground and walking spot nearby.  We walked around a pond and let Catawba-Lynn play.  Then we went to the Delaware College Botanical Garden and afterward had ice cream on campus.  I totally forgot it was graduation, so we got caught in a little bit of traffic, but no big deal. 

The trip was good, but the drive out there was intense!  Like an idiot [I guess] I stopped at a red light.  It was red, not pink – not changing red, or I slammed on the breaks – it was red.  Red red.  I stopped.  But the dump truck behind me wasn’t planning on stopping – so he slammed on his breaks when I stopped.  And the dump truck behind him wasn’t going to stop either.  So, he slammed on his breaks.  Look – the second dump trucks breaks started smoking – they were not planning on stopping for this light.  I heard them attempting to stop.  I saw the smoke.  Out of fear of a nasty accident, I took off and blew the red light from a stop.  Shear craziness. 

I was able to close out the month by doing some yard work and mildly insulting our neighbor!  Go me!  We started digging the trench in the back yard to divert gutter water, rainwater, and run-off water from our yard.  I needed the water to go away so I could plant arborvitae near the fence line, so I don’t ever have to one of our sets of neighbors.  However, arborvitae can be over watered, and their root system can rot from standing water.  Lucas and I were going to dig a trench, bury a pipe and attempt to divert all of our water to the alley, which is raised higher than our yard.  This whole project ended up taking over a month.  Thankfully we were able to borrow Justine’s wheelbarrow (thank you!) because we had to move around, probably literally, tons of dirt and stone.  While digging the trench, we found previous, failed systems that were installed.  We got the project finished up right before Catawba-Lynn’s birthday party.  And the system works!  It just needs to be cleaned out now and then.

In the front yard, we planted and moved around some trees.  We had a beautiful, squat, unique Silver Maple sapling planted in between the street and sidewalk.  However, we really liked that tree, and the curb greenspace technically belongs to the city.  We were afraid the city would eventually cut the curb tree down, so we moved it in to our fenced front yard.  We planted another tree in it’s place and another silver maple to mirror our squat moved one.  (We still have the four Tyler Arboretum arborvitaes growing in the front from 2021).  (Some of our stuff has died.  A silver maple sapling, a pine sapling, and we finally called it on our specifically picked, annoyingly expensive, shade loving bush that we bought from the Tyler Arboretum, that the 2021 roofing company mostly killed).  How did I insult our neighbor?  She lives two houses down and we get along with her, asked what I was doing as I was digging up our cool squat tree we had planted in the front a month or so prior.  I explained the situation and stated I felt like our block needed more trees – it was starting to look pretty run down from the lack of tree coverage – kind of like Chester or Darby.  I said, “Walk through Swarthmore; it’s beautiful, there is tree coverage.  Our block, not so much.”  She said, “Oh hey now, you can’t compare us to Swarthmore – Swarthmore is in its own class – but we aren’t Chester or Darby!”

Funny side story: Lucas and I looked at a property in Swarthmore.  It was very nice – fully remodeled, (besides the basement) on a creek, on a dead end, with a long driveway.  But it was the most expensive property we looked at.  We could get the loan for the house – but I didn’t want to spend that much.  Well, luckily, we didn’t buy it, as we wouldn’t have been able to afford it after the taxes were reassessed.  I actually met the family who bought it.  She’s a friend of Justine’s.  I met her at swimming lessons.  She was talking about her lot, and her move in date just made sense – so I asked her – and sure enough, her family bought that house!