Category Archives: Rancho Roly Poly

Finger-sucking solution

Mr. Boy went to bed irritable because of the extract of cactus painted on the fingernails of his two sucking fingers. Nibble No More is the name of the stuff provided by his dentist this afternoon for the nail painting. All in the interest of ending his finger sucking to straightenhis bite before his permanent teeth start coming in. The stuff–which tastes unpleasantly sour–is billed as a solution to nail biting. I don’t doubt it. It’s sad, in a way, because he’s leaving one more vestige of babyhood behind. Will this also be the end of Miss El? He usually holds her while sucking his fingers. I didn’t see him with her once all afternoon. Passages.

UPDATE  In the middle of the night we hear a cry from Mr. B.’s bedroom followed by: "I feel like I’m going to throw up." His fingers had gravitated to his mouth in his sleep.

Happy campers

We’re making our last checks and pulling together things we still need, like C batteries for the flashlights and paper plates and cups. ‘Cause we’re off about noon tomorrow for the Tiger Cub’s first camping trip, an overnighter at McKinney Falls state park, 744 acres on Onion Creek southeast of Austin. Must not forget to charge up the camp light so Mom can read Mr. B’s nightly story to him. Tent erecting has been practiced, so no likely glitches there, but I’m still not sure about the self-inflating air matresses. Never heard of them, and I find some get lousy reviews on the Web. We shall see.

UPDATE  Mom tested the air matress. It inflated easily and she thought it was comfortable–in the family room. No telling if it will be thick enough when filled to work well on hard ground.  

Mowing

Warm weather returns for the rest of the week, according to Bob Rose, meteorologist for the Lower Colorado River Authority. I’m running out of excuses not to mow the back yard one more time before grass growing season is over. It already looks over everywhere but in the back yard (no, I will not post a picture) out by the tool shed on the north end. There it is getting open field-like, is the way I think of it. It reminds me of a bit of mowing wisdom I heard several years ago, for really the first time, that if you want grass to grow, you have to mow it. Perhaps it was on that principle that I stopped mowing that end of the back yard a few weeks ago. First I would say it was too dry and really needed to grow more there a little on its own. Then it rained so I could say it was too wet–especially with an electric lawn mower (another story)–and then it got chilly, with days in the 60s and nights in the 40s, so I could say the growing season was obviously over. But now Bob is saying we’re to have highs in the low 80s the rest of the week, and not even another cold front before Friday night. Unless I can think of a new excuse, I will have to mow–unless I can put it off until next week when Bob expects a lot of rain followed by more chilly weather.

Happy Halloween

TheBat.jpg

It’s supposed to be a bat. Design had it hanging upside down, but Mr. B. convinced me to do it upright. So it’s a little droopy. Still, a fair approximation of what Pumpkin Master tools can do. 

Adios Longhorns

El Nino is being merciless, away down there off the coast of Peru, so it looks like Mr. B. and his Tiger Cub buds will not be making a Longhorns practice for the fourth Thursday in a row. Because the field at DK-Royal-Memorial Stadium will be soggy again and they’ll move the practice inside where there is no seating for cubs and parents. Oh, well, it was a cool invite. And there’s always next week, maybe, after Oklahoma State, which might be another Tech, or worse.

From the Austin-San Antonio National Weather Service Forecast Center in New Braunfels.

Wednesday Night: A 40 percent chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 61. East northeast wind between 5 and 10 mph.

Thursday: A 50 percent chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 71. Northeast wind between 5 and 10 mph.

Rainwise, El Nino is being merciful. Spacing it out like this–midweek now for four weeks–means we haven’t had a flash flood yet. Of course, we haven’t had a lot of rain, either, and the lakes/reservoirs are still way down.

New Market Battlefield

One last glance back at our week in the Shenandoah Valley where Richard Torovsky, my former Vietnam associate (and a Citadel graduate who is also Mr. Boy’s godfather), is president of the New Market Rotary Club, which meets Wednesdays here. RT also is co-owner of the Reveille Vineyard, at nearby Quicksburg, which celebrated its first marketable crop this year. Yay.

New Market’s battlefield park and museum are worth anybody’s visit, or just explore it on the Web. The story of the young VMI cadets who marched 80 miles in three days to help the Confederate Army defeat the invading Yankees is inspiring enough.

I was somewhat put out to discover the museum’s purported cataloguing of all Confederate veterans does not include my paternal great grandfather, Pvt. Edward Parker Stanley of the 13th Mississippi Infantry Regiment. It was part of Griffin’s/Barksdale’s/Humphreys’ Mississippi Brigade, which was in Stonewall Jackson’s “foot cavalry” in 1862. But otherwise the museum is a stirring experience.

Of tractors, parrots and cousins

Mr. Boy enjoyed the Virginia interlude, getting to help drive a tractor at his godfather’s Shenandoah Valley vineyard and see the house parrot while maintaining a respectful distance from her curved and pointed beak. Then he got to spend a few days with his older and younger cousins from California and Mississippi who converged on Roanoke’s grandest hotel for my niece’s wedding, a get together of more than 250 relatives, friends and other guests from around the country.

He was quite good despite long hours in cars and on planes. For the latter he enjoyed the view out the window at eight miles high, remarking on the flight up there: "Mom, we’re above the Earth!"