Thursday Night Chocolate Fest

Did you know a bag of Oreos is one pound two ounces? That seems excessive. Especially when I'm eating them (not ALL of them, just five or six) after a hearty bowl of chocolate marshmallow cosmos.

I miss India and the circle of friends we lived within. (Still have them, but of course not in the same way.) It's hard to remember something and miss it and wish for it but at the same time remember that I wasn't really happy there either. I left on purpose after all. In light of these feelings, however, I have reached the conclusion that I will stay here in Kansas (or Missouri) until I finish school, assuming that other life circumstances remain relatively static. That gives me a little over two years to decide where I want to go from here. That should be long enough to control impulses and make a good decision, as well as ensure that I'll have a job wherever I go.

Time to make the scones.

Colorado

First we drove west. There's a lot to see in Kansas.



The first campsite where we stayed, near Colorado Springs. We were sure there were bears, and it was waaay too cold.



But there was some good hiking.



We hiked a little hike up to see a waterfall. There was a sign at the bottom telling the story of the woman it was named after, Agnes Vaille. In summary it was that she and a female friend had planned to climb all the nearby mountains but she fell off of one and froze to death waiting for help. It was a bit of a downer.








We went to a ghost town called St. Elmo. It was a mining town but even the trains stopped going there in 1910. For years it only had two residents, but the air is so dry up there that several of the old buildings are still standing just like they were 125 years ago.





We geeked out at a fossil park looking at ancient petrified trees. We were the ONLY people there under 45 until a jr. high field trip group showed up.



We went to a great little town called Salida where all the houses are these cute little square, stucco buildings. The Arkansas River runs through it. I'd definitely go back there sometime.





We accidentally drove west for a while instead of east the last day and felt real silly. But I got some good pictures (mostly featuring 18-wheelers... what can you do?)



We hit a crazy storm on our way back into Kansas.





And, that's the end!

Tomorrow we're going to Colorado for a five-day camping trip. I'm so happy about camping, but more about being outside and out of my daily framework of apartment-to-car-to-work-to-car-to-apartment. I'm tired of being so restrained and acceptable.

Plus, I've never been west of Wichita.

Last week the management at the nursing home where I work had all of us CNAs fill out anonymous surveys, answering questions like, "How can we decrease staff turnover?", and "What do you like and dislike about working here?" I guess they're getting tired of hiring ten new people ever other minute (that's a very precise figure). And of course, it being 6 in the morning none of us could really think of exactly what we wanted to say. But what I SHOULD have said came to me with clarity tonight, which is that people want to quit when they start to dread going to work. That's it in a nutshell. If they could manage to keep that from happening, we would probably all stay for years. I'm almost being treated like senior staff now and I've been there for all of four months.

Well, see you in a week. Eat your vegetables.


p.s. - does anyone have Kumiko or Sachiko's email address? (email it to me!)

Tenth mouse

We were watching a movie when the mousetrap went off, at the same time that Nate's phone started to ring. After three days of re-setting and re-baiting the trap, I finally felt victory and ran into the kitchen to assess the size and worthiness of my elusive nemesis. But it didn't kill the mouse all the way. I'll spare you the grotesque details of the mouse's situation, but all of a sudden I felt myself start to panic. "It's not dead!" I whispered in a hiss to Nate who was in the living room on the phone with his sister. He didn't drop the phone and come sprinting into the kitchen to bring the mouse some kind of instantaneous, painless death like what I had seen play out in my mind, and I looked back down at it with both my hands held out with my fingers splayed as if I were going to solve the situation by casting a spell. Little, grey, fuzzy. Something that looks like a pet with its black little eyes in a sawdust-bottomed aquarium with little kids tapping on the glass. And I had violently surprised it into facing its own death.

A few seconds later the mouse died and I dropped it along with the trap into the trash. Nate hung up the phone and I sat back on the couch to finish the movie. And I shed a few tears over the little death. This is the tenth mouse I have killed in this apartment, and the only one that has bothered me.