Postcards from Iowa

We just got back from a weekend trip to western Iowa. I’m sure you’re wondering why we went to Iowa… You’re not alone, about six hours into the drive I was asking that myself.

Anne: “Refresh my memory, why are we here again?”

John: “Damned if I know.”

The only one who really knew why we were there was my oldest daughter Alexi, but we’ll get to that later…

A lot of people believe that most of the mid-west looks the same. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana are all farming states, but you’ll have to trust me here: that’s where the resemblance stops.

I’ll be the first to admit that southern Wisconsin is not going to win any awards for beautiful scenery, and southeastern Wisconsin can be pretty darn flat. It is nowhere near as flat and featureless as Iowa though. You don’t have to take my word for it, I have photographic evidence.

Iowa:

Wisconsin:

These pictures were taken about 2 hours apart, about an hour away from the Mississippi river into each state. Now, John says he doesn’t see any difference (city boy), but he’s clearly blind.

Think it’s a fluke? Here’s more photographic evidence.

Iowa with it’s lovely flat featureless landscape of mud, with the occasional tree and/or house breaking it up every ten miles or so:

Wisconsin with rolling hills, patches of grass and forests of trees:

I can imagine that during the summer when the fields are filled with corn that it’s just as boring to drive though Iowa as it is in the spring when the fields are filled with mud.

No offense to any of my readers who may live in Iowa. I understand that it’s a lovely place to grow up. The crime rates are so low as to be almost non-existent (probably because you can go weeks without seeing another person), which makes it a perfect place to raise a family. However, I would like to state for the record that secluded doesn’t always mean safe. Ed Gien lived in the middle of nowhere too. Personally, I like knowing that the neighbors can hear me scream if the occasion arises. Call me crazy.

So anyway, after driving for eight hours, we arrived in the picturesque village of Storm Lake. It sits on the edge of Iowa’s fourth largest lake, which, living next to lake Michigan as I do, I would normally call a pond. We stumbled out of the van, eager to get into the hotel and stretch out our stiff muscles, and were greeted by a stench so bad we all immediately started gagging. We did find a slight respite from the smell inside the hotel room, but it was such a pervasive reek that it almost felt as if it invaded one’s pores on a cellular level. There was no real escape.

In trying to describe the smell I think Alexi did it best when she said it smelled like “rancid bacon set on fire along with someone’s smelly gym socks that had been vomited on.”

Yup, it was that yummy.

We had checked into the hotel before actually arriving, it was past midnight in a town that goes to sleep at 9:00 pm, so we were stuck there for the night. I had dreams of falling into a vat of rotting bacon fat as I slept; it wasn’t pleasant.

We checked out as soon as possible the next morning and learned that the hotel backed up against a meat rendering plant. When the wind blows from the north it makes the hotel nearly uninhabitable. We happened to roll into town on one of those lucky days.

Aren’t we just special?

Now I know I sound pretty snarky, but the truth is that we all got a good laugh over it, and we’ll probably be talking about it for the rest of our lives. Or at least anytime we eat bacon together as a family. The perfect moments in life loose clarity over time, but the bad ones seem to stick with you forever. You may as well get some laughs about it so that the remembering isn’t quite so miserable, right? So we laughed, we joked, we teased, and John and Alexi made sure to order bacon at lunch the next day just to make the rest of us gag.

I’m noticing my post is getting pretty long here, so I think I’ll divide it up into two and you’ll have to learn the reason we were there in the next installment. I will leave you with a few more pictures from our drive though.

When you go from Wisconsin to Iowa you cross over the Mississippi river, which Tiana and Jenna were really excited about. Tiana made sure I snapped some pictures (even though it was cloudy and raining, not ideal for photography) so that she could blog about it later.

CJ was not as impressed as his younger siblings.

Here’s a picture of one of the bluffs that border the Mississippi on the Wisconsin side.

When I was a kid we used to travel to the northern part of the state a lot where the bluffs are majestic and beautiful. Some have lookouts where you can go take in an unparalleled view of the river, which goes on for miles. The bluffs in the southern part of the state are much smaller, but still rather pretty.

About twenty miles after crossing from Iowa into Wisconsin, on the south side of Hwy 11, we found these cool sculptures in a field.

Jenna thought they were real fossils, and no amount of talking would convince her otherwise. They were pretty cool though, enough so that we pulled over to get a better look at them.

Later on in the drive we came across this, which has to be the saddest industrial park I’ve ever seen.

That’s right, the industrial park is a farm, complete with plowed fields, not a real building in sight. Welcome to the Midwest, our industry is your food. :)

I’ll be back later with the rest of the story, until then…

Hugs,

Hedgehog Photo Shoot

I woke up Zathras early today thinking that he might be more inclined to sit still for some pictures if he was tired.  That lasted for about thirty seconds, and then he was running all over the place, chasing after Duff, and generally trying to make my job difficult.

I did get a couple of cute shots though.  :D

This is from when he first woke up.  He was grumpy, so he had his quills sticking up a bit on his forehead.  When he does that he looks an awful lot like his namesake:

See?!?  I told you he looked like a Zathras!

Here’s some playtime on the carpet.  His nose is blurry because he was running right at me.  I think he was hoping to get a sniff and maybe a chew on my lens.

Here I gave him a treat, hoping to get him to sit still for a picture.  He did stay still for a minute, but now he looks like he’s snarling.

Ok, maybe if I throw a blanket on the floor he’ll burrow around in it and I’ll get some good shots.

Nope didn’t work, he stayed still long enough for me to drop him and click the shutter, then he ditched the blanket to go running after the cat again.

Oh well…  He’s still cute, even if he doesn’t make a good model.

Hugs,

So Retro

Do you need a good laugh today?  Well look no further!

Yup, that’s me in all of my 70’s glory.  I know, I know…  You don’t have to tell me…  I’m stylin’!    lol

That haircut is called a Dorothy Hamill pixie cut, and it looks suspiciously similar to the way I used to have my son’s hair done.  I know that I was not the only poor girl out there who had this hairdo foisted on them as a child, and I know that, like me, all of those girls now refuse to have their hair cut any shorter than their shoulders.  In fact, Dorothy Hamill is single-handedly responsible for an entire generation of women who have a fear of short hair cuts (properly known as Tonsurephobia).  She deserves a medal…  Oh wait, she already has one.

Now, how about that orange leisure suit?  You want one, don’t you?  There’s nothing like a soothing palette of colors from the seventies…  Harvest gold, burnt orange, and, oh yes…  Puke green.  I’m not sure if that’s a shirt or the upholstery fabric from my mom’s couch.  And what is with the gigantic collar?  I was in danger of suffocating if a stiff breeze blew one of those flaps in my face.  If that style comes back into vogue they’ll have to put warning labels on them like they do on plastic bags.  “Warning, this collar presents a suffocation hazard to animals and small children.  This is not a toy, do not allow children to wear unless closely supervised by an adult.”

Last but not least, check out my teeth.  You’ll be happy to know that in later years they got even worse.  Not only where they huge, but I also developed a wicked overbite.  By the time I was twelve I could eat an apple through a fence.  It’s ok though, it was nothing that gnawing down a couple trees (and a few thousand dollars in orthodontics) wouldn’t fix.

So why am I putting up this picture for public ridicule you ask?  Well, you see, I got my hair done yesterday, and the completed ‘do had my children pulling out this picture for comparison.

No, I didn’t get the pixie cut.  :Þ

When I was in my early twenties and started having children, a weird and awful thing happened to me.  My hair started changing…  Drastically!  I lost the strawberry blonde color and it turned brown with a slight red tint.  It also went from straight to really, really curly.  I used to spend money on perms and hours in the bathroom curling my hair, and now I spend money on dye jobs and hours in the bathroom (ok, twenty minutes tops) ironing my hair flat.  It’s not fair, why can’t my hair ever be in style as is?

I’ve been accused of dying my hair to cover up the grey (yes, I have some), but the truth is I don’t.  I started dying my hair long before any grey showed up.  I do it to bring back the red that I lost with each pregnancy.  I’m vain that way, and I got tired of people asking where Alexi’s red hair came from. 

Over the winter I had it dyed a dark auburn with blonde highlights and bright red lowlights.

Yesterday I decided to do something different for spring though.  I had all of the color stripped out (that was fun, my eyes still burn and my scalp will never be the same), and I went lighter.  I told Karen, my awesome stylist, to take me back to my childhood (minus the pixie cut) and make me a strawberry blonde again.

So she did…

That’s my color now, and it’s remarkably similar to the color it was back in the second grade.  Jenna even dragged out the lovely picture above to critique Karen’s work.  The verdict?  She did good!

I’m really happy with it, but I get confused every time I look in the mirror.  I wonder how long it will take before I get used to it.  lol

Hugs,

Should I be Worried?

Jenna likes to take pictures, she even received her very own digital camera for Christmas, and most of the time she takes pretty good photos. I think the most interesting thing about her portfolio is looking at the world through her eyes; everything is so big.

I was browsing through her photos today though, and I started to notice a theme. Tell me what you think…

So, do I start saving for therapy now? lol

hugs,

Just stuff…

I was playing around in my Twitter account today, and finally remembered to add Dawn from Because I Said So (funny, funny blog if you aren’t already a reader) to my Twitter feeds. As I was reading through her posts I followed a link, not knowing that she was setting me up on a new addiction…

Blip.fm

Basically it’s like musical Twitter. You can DJ your own stream, listen to other people’s stations, or get a mix of everyone who’s playing music. It’s really cool and you should go and sign up now! I’ll wait for you to get back. :D

That was easy now, wasn’t it? Now add my station to your favorites: StormRose That way I can find you and add yours to mine! Then we’ll be Blip friends and all will be right in the world.

Yea, I know my musical tastes are a little eclectic, going from Disturbed to Eva Cassidy, but if you can believe it I’m one of the tamer ones in my family.

Next subject…

Last week I posted a graphic I made for TommyD, and I wanted to show you another bit of recent Photoshop work I created.

The snake forum I hang out on has seasonal contests for photography and photo manipulation. I decided to throw my hat in the ring for the last one, and entered a little snaky valentine.

What you’re looking at is a composite of three different pictures. The first is the background with the red tag laying on it. The second is the heart shaped box, and the third is a picture of Kauket when I first got her (she was so tiny). To fit the love theme a little better I also took her markings and changed them into hearts (click on the picture to see it full sized).

It’s a good ‘chop, not perfect but mine rarely are. :D It did well enough though. I took first place in the photo manipulation category (out of two entries LOL), and won myself a gift certificate to get a new baby corn snake from Dakota Corns. Now I just have to wait for Breeding season to swing into gear so I can pick a hatchling.

Kek is about ready to move up into a 20 gallon tank, so the baby will take his old 10 gallon. Then it’s no more for me until Kauket has her own babies next year. I’ll probably allow myself to keep one of her beauties so that I have a grandchild, the rest will go to Chad to place in new homes.

Speaking of the snakes, I’m going to see if I can get some new pictures for you in a couple of days. All of them shed last week, so they’re looking gorgeous in their schmexy new skin. They ate last night though, so I have to wait for them to digest.

Next subject…

As of last Saturday we’ve officially had Zathras for a month. It’s amazing how much he’s changed in that short time. He’s bigger for one, and now he’s fully quilled. When we first got him his quills were pretty sparse and you could see patches of skin between them. Now he has a pretty thick blanket of quills that bristle out in a cactus-like way when he’s feeling particularly grumpy.

He still hasn’t taken to his exercise wheel, I moved it lower in his cage last night though so maybe he’ll start using it if it’s easier to get in and out of. He also still sleeps a lot, but it’s ok. We’ve bonded and now he’ll sleep on my lap when I take him out for play time. He’s adorable when he’s sleeping. :)

Last subject…

If you already follow the Creative Dreams blog you can skip this part because you already know. lol

I finally got some of my digi designing mojo back, and I released a new kit in the store last week. It’s called Aliens Among Us, and despite the fact that making it felt like pulling teeth, I’m actually quite happy with it. There’s a freebie add-on up on the CD blog, so go snag it if you enjoy digi scrapping.

After I made the kit I needed to make a sample page to go up in the store, and that was hard. I don’t have many pictures of CJ when he was little (due to the circumstances of my divorce), which made me sad. I did manage to find a more recent picture of him that worked well enough though.

I’m not sure he appreciated the sentiment, but I like how the page turned out. lol There are also some really cute pages that my creative team made up in the preview section of the store. Be sure to go take a look because wow are those ladies some talented scrappers!

OK, that’s enough out of me for today.

Hugs,

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Meet Jerri

It occurred to me the other day when I was blogging about the animals, that you haven’t met the smallest member of the household. In fact, when I went through my photo album I realized that I didn’t even have any pictures of her.

In my defense though, she’s not my pet. She belongs to Jenna. That’s a good excuse, right?

Now, before you think I’m totally insane (Hey, keep the snarky comments to yourself) for letting a six year old have her own pet, let me explain our policy…

My role in child pet ownership is that of interested bystander. I remind the kids when cages need to be cleaned. I check the animals daily to be sure they have food and water; if they don’t, I remind the kids to take care of their pet. I purchase the basic care items for the pets, but extra toys and treats are the responsibility of the owner. I will care for the pets if the child is sick or away, but the bulk of the care is the responsibility of their individual human.

To own a pet in our house, you must first demonstrate your ability to responsibly care for someone other than yourself. For example, when Tiana wanted a guinea pig, she showed us she could be a responsible care giver by taking care of the cat for three months.

So far this system has worked really well for us. And as amazing as it seems, the younger kids have to be reminded to take care of their babies a lot less than the older ones do.

So anyway… How does a six year old prove herself? Easy, she stole one of my pets. John got me a hermit crab at a fair last summer, and Jenna decided that it was hers. She named it Fluffy and though she wouldn’t hold it, she took really good care of it until it passed on about five months later.

So off we went to the store to get another hermit crab for Jenna, but hey guess what… You can’t get hermit crabs in Wisconsin during the winter. After Jenna cried inconsolably in the middle of the store for about five minutes, we asked what would another appropriate small pet for a six year old be? One that could happily live its entire life in a five gallon tank.

Meet Jerri:

You see the irony, don’t you? Wanna know what makes it even worse? She lives on the shelf underneath Amaunet the snake. Now that’s irony.

She’s actually not a bad pet, except for the fact that she likes to bang around in her tank late at night, and a few times has been loud enough that she woke us up and made us think someone was breaking in.

She’s really warm and soft, she feels like velvet, and I think that’s one of the things that makes Jenna adore her so much. She’s also hyper, so her and Jenna have that in common.

She has a tiny little hamster ball, and will cruise around the house in it. It drives the cat insane! It’s a lot of fun to watch. :D

Jenna has been really great about taking care of her. I do help her with cleaning the tank (mainly so that she doesn’t make a bigger mess), but she does the bulk of the work.

People have asked if it bugs Jenna that we feed Jerri’s relatives to the snakes. Surprisingly, no. Maybe it’s because we’ve had the snakes for so long she’s used to it. Maybe it’s because we feed pre-killed frozen mice, which look and feel quite a bit different than Jerri does. Whatever it is, she seems to have a pretty good understanding of the circle of life.

So now you’ve met the smallest member of our menagerie. :)

Hugs,