Author: magrilless

Land of 14

Living in Colorado means that eventually you find yourself above 14,000 ft. A couple weekends ago I tackled Handies Peak with my friend, Stephanie. We didn’t want to drive 8 hours each way around the east side; neither did we want to tackle the legendarily terrifying Cinnamon Pass shortcut. So we drove just out of Silverton, hiked over a 13,000 ft pass, descended into American Basin, and up up up Handies. Then back down and back up and back down and home to a goooood night’s sleep. My first 14er!
Handies from its base

at the top of the world, sporting different hiking fashions
(notice my pockets bulging with gummy bears)
(and, by the way, it’s windy and cold at the top of the world)

glorious Grouse Gulch

Fantesstic Friday

A list of Tessa’s current favorite phrases:
“Play me!”
“I got it.”
“Me have it.”
“Drink the water!”
“Tessa do it.”
“Walk.”
A list of Tessa’s current favorite activities:
pushing a doll in a stroller
digging in the mud
taking baths
walking in other people’s shoes
opening drawers and cupboards
A list of Tessa’s current favorite foods:
oatmeal
pickles
tofu
buttery crackers
apple sauce
scrambled eggs
craisins

Best Day of My Life

Three years ago, on a hot July day, Maggie and I sat in the car at a mini-storage unit and watched all our possessions being unloaded from a big semi truck into a closet. The moving company had charged us twice their estimate, delayed our delivery for almost a week because of mechanical problems (they had to use the runaway truck ramp!), and then bribed me out of $100. I was happy to finally have our stuff, but it was not really a great day. When it was finally time to drive away from it all, I packed Maggie’s toys up and realized we had lost a piece of a game. The game is Rush Hour, a logic puzzle kind of game that consists of moving little plastic vehicles around a parking lot to get one specific car out of the maze. There are 4 big trucks and 12 small cars. But when we left the storage unit, we had only 11; the black car was gone.

And it has stayed gone for 3 years.

3 years, 1 month, and 13 days.

Until yesterday when it miraculously appeared in the back of our car. I had given up hope long long ago that it would ever resurface. I had not thought about its disappearance for many many moons. But it has returned!

Which is why, despite the fact that I was digging around in the back of the car for the spare tire after I got a flat, despite the fact that Tessa’s diaper had leaked (in a bad way) that morning and I had to clean the house before the drywall guy came and made a new mess, despite the fact that we’re babysitting a dog that pulls in the opposite direction from Eliza so on our walk I was nearly racked, despite Tessa throwing a toy train at a little boy’s head in the library and then throwing a fit at having to leave, despite everything — yesterday was the best day of my life.