Walnuts on My Windshield
February 18, 2006

Today is a very unusual day, even for Walnut Shade, where most days are unusual. For one thing, there are only four of us here and it is very quiet.

Josiah turned 12 yesterday, and in honor of that event, his good friend from church, Ethan, who lives about 30 minutes on the far side of Springfield, is spending the weekend with us. Jessica's good friend from church, Emily, also has a birthday this weekend, and she invited Jessica to her sleep-over party on Saturday night. One of Andrew's best friends from church is Alyssa, who happens to be Ethan's youngest sister.

I talked to Emily's mom, Debbie, to see if they might like to have Jessica for two nights instead of one. They would! I also talked to Ethan and Alyssa's mom, Janet, to see if they might like to have Andrew for two nights in exchange for our having Ethan for two nights. They would!

The result of all that communication was that on Friday afternoon, I took Jessica, Josiah, and Andrew to Springfield. Jessica (plus her snow gear) was dropped off at Emily's house. She didn't even look back. I then gave Andrew (plus his snow gear, but sadly minus his toothbrush - where was my brain?) to Janet, who gave me Ethan (plus gear that only Ethan knows about), and the big boys and I came home.

Josiah got out of the van and for some unknown reason looked straight up into the clear blue sky. "Look, Mom!" he said. "There's a rainbow up there!" "Yeah, right," I thought, knowing full well that you don't see rainbows in a clear blue sky. But I looked up, and, lo and behold, there WAS a rainbow up there. It was short and 'upside down.' I have never seen anything like it, and I ran to get Scott to look at it, too, just because I knew he wouldn't believe it unless he saw it. It was really weird, and I even took some pictures of it and sent them to our local NBC affiliate's meteorologist with a request for an explanation. The weather man knows everything, right?

That evening, as planned, Scott, Katie, Josiah, Ethan, and I went Playtime Pizza in Branson, where we met one of Josiah's Scouting friends, Josh. We all had a fun evening of pizza, multiple desserts, miscellaneous video games, gooey butter cake and gifts, and Glow-Golf. This place also has indoor go-carts, and for the admission price, each person can get either one ride on the go-carts or one round of Glow-Golf. Scott and I were sure that the guys would choose the go-carts, but guess what? They picked Glow-Golf, and loved it! By the way, Glow Golf is indoor mini-golf played in dark rooms, under black lights. The frames around the putting surfaces, all the decorations, and even the walls are all painted with stuff that makes them glow. So are the putters, and the balls glow in the dark, too. For a while. About every three holes, there is a "ball charger" that you roll the ball through, and it comes out glowing brightly. These guys thought all this glowing stuff was the most! Furthermore, you'll never guess who won. . . ME! So, a good time was had by all.

When we came out of Playtime Pizza, it was SNOWING!!! What an incredible thing to have happen on your birthday! In fact, it snowed all night. Scott and I were up late and early (details below) and heard the snowplows scraping by about every 20 minutes. (The boys claim to have stayed up till 4:00 AM. Maybe they did; they were still snoozing at 10:00 AM.) When I stumbled out of bed at 7:45 AM, snow was still coming down hard, and we ended up with about four fabulous inches of the beautiful white stuff. As I type at 2:30 PM Saturday, it's 28 degrees and cloudy. The low tonight is expected to be zero!

At 10:00 PM last night, having finally dragged the boys away from the Skee Ball at Playtime Pizza, Scott checked his email and found out that his 5:32 AM flight out of Springfield had been cancelled. Not good. He has been invited to speak at the Action Impact Missions annual leadership camp in Calabasas, California on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. In several different sessions, he will be speaking on discipleship, parenting, and PTM and Mission China. The conference starts at 2:00 PM Saturday, and it's about a 1.5 hour drive from the Los Angeles Airport. It was important to Scott that he be home for Josiah's birthday party Friday night, hence the red-eye flight this morning.

He was to fly from here to Dallas, then Dallas to LAX, arriving there at 9:00 AM. A relative of one of the AIM folks would meet him and another attendee from Wyoming at the airport and drive them to the camp in time to get settled in before the conference started. That was the plan, but change was constant and it has been a bizarre turn of events.

The flight to Dallas was cancelled due to snow and ice there. At 11:00 PM Friday, Scott was on the phone with American Airlines, trying to figure out another way to get to LAX by 9:00 AM. They finally decided to route him through St. Louis. He would have a significant layover there and then arrive L.A. around 2:00 PM. This was a problem, as someone would have to leave the camp, drive to LAX, pick him up, and go back, thus missing part of the conference, but as Scott said, you can't control the weather. Scott called the folks in California and made those arrangements. His new flight out of Springfield (to St. Louis) wouldn't leave till 7:00 AM, so instead of leaving the house at 4:00 AM, he could leave around 5:15. It's nice to be able to sleep late.

I did suggest that he leave earlier than he wanted to, because with the snow, the roads might be tricky. He said, "Mm hm," which really means, "I hear you, but I disagree with you. I'm going to do what I want anyway, but your input has been noted." I got the interpretation, we finished a bit of last minute packing and went to bed. It was after 11:30 PM, and neither of us slept well.

Scott said I shouldn't bother to get up with him, so I didn't. I woke up at 7:30 and stood up at 7:45. There was snow everywhere!!!! What a blessing! However, there was also a phone message from Scott. I called him right back and he was in the process of boarding a plane - in Springfield! It seems that when he walked outside this morning, there was a great deal of snow (he suspects even more than the four inches I estimated) on the car, which had to be removed. That took a while. Then the roads to Springfield were completely snow and ice-covered. Not only that; there were semis off the road and sliding on the road. He, of course, needed to go around them, and since he had a plane to catch, he was driving - are you ready - 60 mph in those conditions. I'm glad I wasn't with him.

He got to the airport "thirty minutes before my flight," which is as early as Scott is ever willing to get to an airport for a domestic flight. In other words, in his opinion he got there in plenty of time. However, due to all the folks whose flights were having to be re-routed, the line for check-in was long. A man cut in line in front of him, and that made him "that much later." At one point, the American Airlines check-in employees were so tied up trying to do so many things that there was no one to wait on him when he did get up to the counter. That really slowed him down. And when he finally did get waited on, his flight was leaving in 20 minutes. The clerk called to the plane to see if his bag could still be put on the plane. Well, no. They were all done loading baggage.

Scott's suitcase is huge. He had to take a sleeping bag and pillow in it, so it is one of the monster ones he usually takes to China. The clerk looked at Scott and then looked at the bag. He wondered aloud if they could figure out a way for him to take it as a carry-on. No, they couldn't. So, Scott missed his flight to St. Louis. This was bad, not only for him, but for the pick-up arrangement in California. He said the clerk started to type very fast, and he started to pray very fast!

After quite a bit of typing and praying, it was decided to re-re-route Scott. . . through Dallas! He would end up arriving in California at 2:00 PM (a real problem for the pick-up situation), but his seat would be upgraded to first class (a nice perk). There was a short wait and they took off for Dallas.

In Dallas, Scott called me. His plans had changed and I needed to be aware of the new ones in case the California people called me, because they couldn't reach him while he was in the air. He was boarding in five minutes and couldn't talk long. He would now be arriving in California almost two hours earlier (go figure!) at 12:12 PM. Fine. Information noted. We exchanged pleasantries and hung up.

An hour and a half later, Scott called. Because I knew he was 35,000 feet up, I was REALLY surprised to hear his voice. Where was he? In Dallas - just boarding! The flight out of Dallas was delayed. They had indeed been ready to board in Dallas, but the proposed plane was found to be "broken." Broken?!?!? How can an airplane be. . . broken? So, after waiting almost an hour and a half, another plane was procured, and they were allowed to board. He was in the middle of that process when he called me. Because he still needed to try again to contact the folks in California, he couldn't talk long. It seems that the camp for the AIM conference is in a valley or something and there is no cell reception there. That, and possibly the fact that it was only about 8:15 on a Saturday morning in California was making it hard for him to connect with the team out there.

Not to worry. This second out-of-Dallas plane would arrive LAX at 1:30 PM (okay, whatever), but he had lost his first-class seat (bummer). However, there was some good news. While waiting in Dallas, he met a woman who was returning from a trip to Chile. When she heard about his work, she told him of her son who "needs to be baptized." She wants Scott to meet with her son and minister to him. Scott was excited about this possibility. In addition, it turns of that the lady lives only ten miles from the camp where the conference will be held, her husband will be picking her up at LAX, and they will drive him to the camp! While we were on the phone, he was also paged over the intercom and informed that his seat assignment had been changed, and would he please report to seat 6E, in first class. :

After the conference, Scott will travel on Monday night to San Bernardino, to the headquarters of Good Shepherd Ministries, which is the ministry that produces the ISOM video Bible school we use in China. Scott has scheduled a meeting with those folks to see if they would consider distributing PTM, along with ISOM. He has high hopes for favor with this organization, so all in all, it should be a fun, full weekend for him.

While he is gone, and Jessica is gone, and Andrew is gone, and Katie is sequestered in her room writing her term paper, and Ethan and Josiah are hanging out in his room rotating between computer games, video games, a thing called an Airzooka, videos, and intermittent forays into the great white outdoors, I am blissfully organizing things in my computer (preparing to do my monthly back-up), looking out at the snow, and writing. What could be nicer?

I kept a long journal during our Colorado vacation. It was really long - well over 30 pages, and all hand written. I wish I had had my keyboard (if I had I would be able to copy and paste here), but I didn't. I will offer this summary of some of those thoughts.

1. Colorado is gorgeous at any time and almost unbearably so in the winter.
2. No matter what, it is not possible to stay truly warm when the temp is 15, the wind speed is 20 mph, and it's snowing heavily.
3. Morning is a good time for outdoor photography.
4. I'm not sure which day God created snow, but it sure was a great idea!
5. Driving without chains, snow tires, or an ice scraper for your windshield in the mountains of Colorado during a late-January snowstorm is less than intelligent.
6. Snow skiing is an uncomfortable, inconvenient, expensive way to have fun.
7. Snow skiing would be even more fun if one could simply levitate from "in the van in your home boots" to "at the top of the slope in your ski boots, with skis and poles in hand." That hour or so. . . from the van; to the ski rental; to the computer sign-in (which, by the way, why DO you have to re-enter all that blurb for every family member every day? It is a COMPUTER after all, and it should be able to save that information from 24 hours ago, shouldn't it?); to the ski boot sizing counter; to the (if you're a boy) insistent peeling off of every layer of outer clothing and gear because you are so sweating hot that you are going to DIE, Mom; to the painful stomping into and buckling on of the ski boots; to the subsequent removal of one ski boot to have the skis adjusted because you forgot to leave one ski boot off - even though you have to leave one ski boot off EVERY time you come (hello???); to the picking up of all the outer clothing you dropped on the (puddly) floor, instead of putting it on the bench like your mother told you, so now it's all wet(!); to the ski retrieval counter; to the cash register (only Scott and VISA go there); to the pole selection area; to the process of putting back on all the outer gear (dry for girls, wet for boys); to the parental insistence that you must wear a hat/hood; to the offspring's refusal to do same; outside and down to the place to leave your skis and poles while you go pee; to the lift ticket window (a place for only Scott and VISA again, unless you had a two-day lift ticket that you unknowingly ran through the dryer last night and it melted into a mass of black plastic with absolutely no proof that it ever did sport an Arapahoe Basin bar code); and FINALLY across the snow to the chair lift. . . is an absolute stress-inducer and blood-pressure-elevator. And if you are the non-skiing mom, you have the privilege of adding: the collection all ten of the home boots; the carrying of them all down the hill and to the van (1st day in a messy armload, 2nd day gripping pairs of laces tied together - do not ever buy boots that zip instead of lace; they are un-carry-able - 3rd and 4th days with the four laced pairs tied together and slung over the left shoulder and Andrew's zipper boots in one gloved hand. This old dog can watch and learn new tricks!); the digging about for the van keys; the opening of the van with no free hands; the pitching in of the home boots in such a way as to be able to retrieve and successfully untangle them at 3:30 PM; the locating of the camcorder; the testing of it to confirm that it works; the shoving of it under your coat (coats are hard to unzip with gloves on and you do NOT want to take your gloves off); the hiking back up the hill; the subsequent attempt to locate the female portion of your family (males cannot be found because Andrew is in the bathroom, Josiah is half-way up the mountain, and Scott is never anywhere to be found); the taking of a few still shots of the female contingent to be preserved for all posterity; the fight against frostbite while waiting three eternities for Scott to reappear from God knows where; and the ultimate handing off of the camcorder. Said mom is then entitled to stand in the blizzard and wait for the family to go up the mountain (supposedly takes 5 minutes, really takes 12) and ski down the mountain (supposedly takes 10 minutes, really takes 23), so as to be able to retrieve the camcorder. It will be noted that your family probably comes down and goes back up and around several time while you stand there, but because all red coats looks like Josiah's orange one, all little boys wearing blue coats ski spread-eagled like Andrew, and 88% of all the adults on the hill are wearing black coats exactly like Scott's, you will not see them - or get your camcorder back - until and unless they decide to come looking for you; an unlikely turn of events. Upon its eventual successful retrieval, the camcorder is found to be full - no exaggeration - of snow, and must somehow be dried out without allowing water to melt into it. Mom is to figure out how to do this and do it, before returning the camcorder to the van, where any moisture remaining in it will instantly freeze. Once this is done, Mom is free to relax and enjoy the day - until 3:20 PM, when the boot/ski gear saga from above is repeated in every gory detail, in reverse.
8. If you can't drive from Arapahoe Basin to Interstate 70 via Highway 6 over Loveland pass (a distance of about three miles) because the pass is closed due to snow, then it will take you exactly two-and-a-half hours to drive back down the mountain, back through Keystone, Dillon, and Silverthorne, down to Interstate 70, back up the other side of the mountain, through the Eisenhower tunnel - most famous on our trip for being closed - and down the mountain to the place where Highway 6 joins Interstate 70 (a distance of 17 miles).
9. If your entire family leaves the ski resort and heads straight to Denver (as per #8 above) without removing any ski bibs or thermal socks, and travels in a vehicle with the heater running continually full blast in a largely vain attempt to create a hole in the windshield ice, then by the time you get to relatively flat land, the family toes will be pruney from soggy ski socks, and the B.O. caused by five people skiing all day, one man driving in treacherous conditions for the better part of three hours, and one woman praying fervently for the one man who is driving will be gag-awful enough to make even a true lover-of-snow wish it would stop snowing long enough to open the windows and air out the car!
10. Making family memories in special places is worth what it takes.

Until Next Time,
Patty

From My Book Pile:

Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 by Stephen Puleo, rank 9. This book was a superb piece of research and reporting. It was well-designed, held my interest, and was very well-written. It was recommended on a homeschooling website, and since I had never even heard of the Molasses Flood - sounds wild, doesn't it? - I was eager to learn something new. Boy, did I! If you like reading about history, disasters, and/or things medical, I highly recommend Dark Tide.

Quote of the Week:

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." ~ Abraham Lincoln

Enjoyed Walnuts on My Windshield? Want more? Check out the Walnuts on My Windshield archive!