Happenings

I haven't updated my captivated audience for a while because we have been very busy, and have many stories to tell! I can't relate all of them right now, especially because it is late and I won't do them justice, but here are a few to correspond with pictures. Enjoy!

Story Un: Smokey Skies

Earlier this week there was a thunderstorm, and the lightening started a forest fire near Bountiful, about 80 miles south of us. Eve and I spent the early afternoon at the Cache County Fair manning the La Leche League's Breastfeeding Cafe (yay National Breastfeeding Week!). It was a pleasant, mild day. When I got home I noticed an eerie, apocalyptic glow in my living room and went outside to see the east sky against the mountains beautiful, sunny and clear, and the west sky brown, smoky and tempestuous. The sun was red, and looked really freaky reflected in our flooded garden:

Story Deux: C.O.P.S.

This is the condensed tale of our next door neighbor, Bruce; a nice man with a sad history. He is a Vietnam Vet suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and in the past few years has become very reclusive and paranoid. While we are not afraid that he will hurt us, he has told us somewhat scary stories of people breaking into his house, police fights and other assorted things.

Several months ago I received a phone call from a neighbor across the street asking if I knew that there was a cop in my front yard with a semi-automatic rifle. As soon as she said that I knew it had to do something with Bruce. I looked out the kitchen window, where there was indeed a cop with a large gun, and there were also several in our backyard similarly equipped. Down our street was a row of five (5) cops cars, an ambulance and a fire truck, with cops and lawyers running around the whole block.

Turns out, Bruce had the flu and had tried to starve it out of himself. When that didn't work, he contacted the police for help, but he has a strained history with the Logan Police, every time they respond to his calls they have to be "prepared" for anything, hence all the cops everywhere with drawn weapons. His door was locked and they kept yelling to Bruce through the windows that he needed to open the door, but he was too weak to move. Finally he managed to unlock the door and they took him to the hospital.

Well, a week ago this morning Richie and I awoke to the sound of smashing glass at 3:30 AM. It went on for quite a while and sounded like someone smashing hundreds of glass botttles. We tried to see what was going on, but it was too dark. We then heard someone moving around, but then that stopped. We were trying to decide what to do. It was bothering me that I hadn't called the cops, when about 15 minutes later they did come, quietly, but again swarmed our house and yard with rifles and flashlights, tyring to figure out what was happening. They entered Bruce's house, and after a while we saw someone wheeled out to an ambulance. Then we saw the cops talking to our neighbor on the other side of Bruce, and Richie went out to talk to them. Our neighbors had called the cops when they heard the smashing glass, and when they arrived, they found Bruce in their driveway covered in blood, holding a board. He bled all over their stoller and other stuff and was totally incoherent. The cops asked Richie what he heard, and if he had heard other people besides Bruce at his house. They also said that they thought he was in California (rumor was that his son was going to put him in a psych assisted living facility), which was odd because we had heard that he was in jail, and that the police had impounded his car. Now we don't know where he is or what is going on.

The moral of the story is that his house is for sell, and someone can get it for really, really cheap. And I know what it feels like to film an episode for C.O.P.S. "Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do?..."

Story Trois: Dam It!

So you can't tell from the picture, but this little gem of a resevoir has some great cliff jumping on the east side of the lake. July 25th all the Petersons, my parents, and Richie's uncle Larry and his two kids descended upon us here in Logan and had a family get together. All the men played golf in the morning, then we met up for lunch, swimming, cliff jumping, then came back to our place for a weenie roast and potluck. It was a great time together except for one incident at the lake that sort of put the kibosh (spelling?) on our nautical fun.

Just as we were arriving, another group was setting up a zip line that ran from a tree up on a cliff to the opposite beach, the intent being that you let go and fall into the water half way between the two shores. The line was above all the cliff jumping spots, probably between 150-200 feet, and ran about 10-15 feet over land before it came to the water. Richie, his two cousins, his sister and niece, and myself all swam over to do some jumping. We had taken a jump from about 10 feet and wanted to go higher. Richie and his cousin Josh were on the edge of the cliff and I was back a little ways, when I heard everyone start to scream. Richie and Josh were both wearing shocked faces. A boy had started down the zipline, only to have something malfuntion and he fell before he reached the water. He had landed on a pile of loose rocks and shale from 200 feet up and them flopped into the water. For a good half minute no one could see him. People were yelling "Someone just died!" "Call 911!" "I'm gonna be sick, I can't believe I just saw someone die!" Everyone was shocked and were all just standing at the edge of the cliffs, looking down. I tried to get to the water, but was blocked. I know CPR and remember bits and piece of emergency First Aide from my lifeguarding days, plus I'm a strong swimmer, so I wanted to help. But quickly enough about six guys jumped into the water and went to the kid.

He never lost consciouness, but he didn't make noise at all. He had compound fractures in both legs, and must have ended up losing a lot of blood, but he was so much in shock that he never screamed or cried or anything. In fact, he joked around with the EMTs when they finally arrived 45 minutes later. Meantime, the boy had to wait in the water because no one had a big enough board to serve as a body board.

I didn't see the fall itself, but I heard it and saw the resulting drama. Richie and Josh both saw it, and Richie said it was really disturbing to watch, in part because it didn't look real to watch a body fall from that height and hit ground. He felt like he was watching a movie. Needless to say, though everything turned out alright (as much as can be in that situation), it dampened the mood quite a bit. After about 45 minutes people resumed jumping, but it didn't have the same lighthearted thrill to it. I felt especially bad for Josh. He is 16 and really excited to do something so crazy as cliff jumping, since he is from Illinois where there are no cliffs. He wanted to earn major bragging rights, which I can't blame him, though he will still have a pretty good story to tell all his buddies when school starts again.

Nicole wasn't there, and it wasn't until several weeks later that I told her the story. "Wow," she said, "that's pretty crazy. Do you want to know the rest of the story?" She then told me about a missionary couple at the MTC that she has been tutoring in Greek in preparation for their mission to Greece. She doesn't know Greek but was using a new tutoring system. The MTC found a Greek tutor for them the last week they were there, so Nicole didn't get to see them leave. A week or so later, she ran into a coworker that asked if she had heard what happened to the Bells. She said "No." The other tutor then said that they had to postpone leaving for Greece because their son was seriously injured in a zipline accident at a lake near Logan two Saturdays ago! Nikki started freaking out because she knew we were there that day! Isn't that crazy? Everything is connected, someway or another. I guess Scotty Bell is still in the hospital in critical but stable condition.

Story Quatre: In Which I Am The Most Amazing Cook Ever and Bake a Pie With Buttery, Perfectly Flaky Crust and A Filling of Freshly Picked Local Raspberries, and We Eat It All, and It Is Incredible, Amazing, Lifechanging; Richie Begs For Another Pie, and I Make a Second Pie That Is Equally Awesome and I Fear That My Superpower Will Now Be Used For Evil Instead Of Good But I Must Not Let That Happen.

As one can surmise from the title of this last story, it is not really so much a story as a declaration of fantastic homemade pastry and the love and obsession that it spontaneously ignites from a pudgy blonde woman. Is it sad when pie rocks your world?