The Simple Things

I hope I'm not too much of a snore this week, but life has been quite simple.

The night of returning home from our weekly Van Horn outing brought about one of our most beloved friends at the tin shack. Hector, our friendly neighborhood bull snake, was hanging out on the porch about to muscle his way into one of his favorite spots; the underside of our window pane. Well, we heard what sounded like a hissing sound and then saw hector flinch and retreat. The culprit then stuck its head out. A bull snake much smaller than hector had already claimed his special place. We dubbed her Sylvia. Sylvia we believe was really in love with Hector, but just playing hard to get. she chased him around the front porch, while he attempted a variety of ways to ascend the building most likely just to get away from her. All of his approaches were futile and were punctuated with a big thud upon the cement floor. Poor Hector, I'll let you know more about his whereabouts a little later on.

Usually snakes aren't in the forefront of someones mind when you think about the word "entertainment." Maybe the radio seems to fit more appropriately. Well, we don't like to think about that too much down here. Halley and I receive one station; NPR. now it is nice to know what's going on in the world, but because of the segment called "All Things Considered" we have memorized everything that's going on. You can only listen about Obama's one-day trip to Ghana so many times.

Without luxuries like a radio (or you know, electricity), we have found pleasure in the simple things. Like for instance, the mouse that keeps us up all night ate a small hole in our bag of garlic pepper. Normally one might be angry at an act like this and just throw the bad away, but not us; we put the idea of contracting a disease in the back of our minds and instead use the hole as a shaker. See, if the mouse hadn't been so kind to nibble on everything we wouldn't be able to have the perfect amount of garlic pepper sprinkled on top of every meal.

Besides the happenings inside the house and inside our tummies, we have taken up a great enjoyment in star gazing. We had just one of the most beautiful nights sitting in the back of the pick up. It was as if someone had taken a bucket of glitter and tossed it across the night sky; every star seemed to twinkle with more veracity than the next. Maybe a taste of wine enhanced the experience, but even without, it was still magical.

Later that night, while I was fast asleep, Halley woke up to the sound of an owl call. The next morning we feared the worse when neither of our two remaining birds showed up for their feeding. We ended up calling Brian to let him know the status, and we all decided that we'd wait until that night's feeding before we made any assumptions.

To take our mind off our reign of bad luck, we took a trip over to the Baeza site. After stopping at the Means and getting a handful of confusing directions, we headed off, with watermelon in tow, to find the dirt roads connecting the two sites. Even though we ended up ditching the directions, and making a few eany-meany-miney-mo's to pick which way to turn, we finally made it to the Baeza hack site.

Charlie came to greet us and introduced us to her two partners, Blaire from Washington and Kelly from I believe Missouri. We hung around at the site, had a few sloppy mouth fulls of watermelon, and chit-chatted about how they were enjoying their site thus far. It wasn't too long before we started hearing horror stories about their hous which made our shack seem like a four star hotel. Thanks to Artemeo, our little tin shack was fummigated before we arrived to cut down on the amount of creepy cralies popping in and out of our many cracks. Well, I guess they weren't so lucky. I would take no electricity any day in comparison to what they've been sleeping in. It seems that the Baeza house has an infestation of spiders and scorpions. These are well equiped little bugs and they have been showing these girls whose boss. Charlie has been bitten by a large spider, and Blaire has been stung by a scorpion. She even felt another scorpion crawling up her arm when she was sleeping. My goodness, and only within the first couple of days at her site.

On a good note, after making our way home on the maze of dirt roads connecting the two sites, we heaved a big sigh of relief when RZ and AU returned for their night feeding. Brian was just as pleased as we were.

Our hearts were filled with bliss once again, this time in the form of another real shower at the Means' guest house. Clean and ellated, we headed off home like any other night. Halley drove because it was dark by that time and my one contact focus isn't that great when the sun is no more. So we were riding along, cautious as always but at a pretty decent speed, showing our knowledge of each turn and bump. Then, "Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhh!" Halley slammed on the breaks and I went flying into the windshield, plastering my face upon the glass like the bugs on the other side. Then a little tap against what seemed like nothing until I peeled my face off the window and my eyes re-entered my skull to see the two glowing eyes of the cow parked right in front of us. Wow, that was a close call, but I guess the cow didn't think so. She stood there for a moment and walked off casually as if to say, "Gosh, wait a second. I'm movin'. I'm movin'."

So after that cool night (temperature wise) we had a scorcher awaiting us. The past few days had indeed been hot, very hot, with thermometer readings of 100 degrees Farenheit and above. This day though took the cake. Without rain for over a week, the air filled with dust with the slightest breeze. The breeze itself wasn't welcoming either; it was like opening up an oven to check on something and letting the warmth blow on your face. Even walking to the bathroom was no small feat.

The next day matched the previous and bathroom trips became a tortureous routine. This time was slightly different; let me just say that I never knew I would spend so much time in a blistering hot port-a-potty. And no, not for the many possible scenarioes that just entered your head. Remember Hector? Well, Hector decided to move to the crapper. And so the story goes...

I had already made the walk of doom for the day, when Halley called for me across the way. I guess when she was about to mount the seat, she heard something move beneath her feet. We made our yells through the smells, but Hector didn't care because he had a home there. We took a little walk to find a yucca stalk, then we made our way back to try a second attack. We gave Hector a nudge but he just wouldn't budge. Well Halley just had ate and could no longer wait. So she just had to grit her teeth and bear, and drop a new house warming gift into Hector's new lair.

Well, no snake bites on the bum yet. I hope I didn't gross anyone out too much. Enjoy your snake free bathrooms and I'll talk to you again soon. Sssssssssssee ya later.