Manure Bank

It's Monday. That means it's a good day to go out and get some work done. My work today consists of going to various spots (five of them, in fact), and standing there for an hour peeping around with binoculars, and constantly getting a sinking feeling in my stomach every time a truck approaches, thinking it's going to be some farmer come to chase me off with a shotgun. But this has never happened, and will probably never happen. The farmer today compliments my Vortex spotting scope, and shows me his Vortex cap. He's an avid supporter of all things Vortex. Then he drives off into a cornfield to fidget with some sprinkler or something. THE FIDGETY FARMER - the name of my latest cheery musical composition. The weather this morning, at first, is tolerable. It's a bit foggy. Then the sun appears by about 9:30 and begins its favorite little chore of melting the flesh off my face. The birds are smart and just hide from the flesh-melting death rays. They've been hiding pretty much all month. Come out little birds. FLY YOU FOOLS! Later on, me and the fam take a little trip to the local YMCA to frolick in the beverage. I enjoy a good swim. It's a nice big pool. There are random brown splatters on the ceiling that look like poop. I ask Rivers what the brown stuff is, and he says, "Poop bag!" At one point, I jump off the diving board and water just shoots up my nose into my brain and it hurts. LIKE HELL. The whole time we're swimming, the life guard just stares at us. Non stop. There's only like, 3 other people in the pool, so I guess he has to look at somebody. I can feel his eyeballs on me, every second, waiting for me to screw up, waiting for me to break some rule so he can blow his little whistle. Now Emily is mad at me because there's a gay couple moving into the apartment below us, and I didn't go and offer to help them move a mattress into their apartment earlier. All I know is that for the last 10 years, every time I've asked someone moving something if they need help, they always refuse, and then I feel dumb. I have this distinct memory of being on my mission, many eons ago, a day where Elder Call (my trainer) and I ran into some lady getting groceries out of her car, and we said, "Can we help you with that?" And she responded snidely, "Why? So you can get your good deed in for the day?" And I guess that gave me some sort of PTSD, because now I hate helping people. Thanks grocery lady. You ruined everything. Normally, this would all go in a journal, but everytime I open a journal now, I forget what I was going to write, and then I start smelling the journal pages because they always smell great, and then that's the end of that.

Nebraska

I've returned. It's been too long. Just kidding. The timing has been perfect. Does anyone write blogs anymore? Remember when that used to be a thing? Remember when many things used to be things? Well, here I am in Nebraska. In a year, I'll probably be somewhere else. It'd be nice to come back to Utah. I miss sandstone cliffs and Anna's Hummingbirds. Do you think the cliffs and the hummingbirds miss me?