Hi Everyone!
So apparently my email got forwarded on to all my extended family (thanks mom..) now everyone probably thinks I need psychiatric help. Just kidding I don't really care. I really haven't cared about anything since high school graduation...I don't even bother to put a shirt on when people come over anymore (just kidding I would...it's just...I'm outside and they just walk up...awk..) actually today was the first time the relief society president has seen me with a shirt on! I felt accomplished. She has a funny family. The first time they came over, one of her little boys took one look at me and went and hid in the car...:P Apparently they've never seen a shirtless guy before..or maybe they're intimidated by my manly 7 pack...that must be it.
So it's only Wednesday...but I'm writing you anyways...I probably won't send it till Sunday though.
News:
My alarm clock bird left this week :'(. Every morning there's a devil bird that sits next to my window and kaw's at 4:50 exactly. It's one of the most annoying sounds I've ever heard (besides chewing with your mouth open...that's the worst...) the best description I can come up with is, imagine a 12 year old voice cracking boy...trying to imitate a witch's cackle...while gargling nails...just kidding I have no clue. It does sound like a witch though. Anyways since it left I haven't woken up on time, and usually get started just before 6. I think what happened was the evil witch bird knew that I hated waking up that early (I used to yell at it to shut up...) but since I started using it as an alarm clock it eventually realized that I wasn't getting annoyed...so the fun was ruined and it left.
Yesterday Grandpa's shirt caught on fire. :P That was kinda funny. He was using the steel grinder/saw...which is pretty much the manliest tool ever by the way, especially ours, we have the manly man upgrade. When you grind metal it shoots sparks everywhere. Ours is special, because the thing that directs the sparks away from you broke off, so it's pretty much like taking a fountain fire cracker and using it to take a shower...It feels very manly.
Speaking of Grandpa, I finally found out why I'm doing all this. He told me today "When I kick the bucket I want to be mummified with my hat and set up on one of the flower boxes with a fishing pole." You guys should see the holy hat..it's my both my and grandpa's favorite one, so we sometimes steal it from each other...although I wear it more than grandpa does, because when he wears it he gets a sunburn blob on his forehead :P
Alright time to answer some questions... Grandpa Walter is funny because he's sooooo old...but he still acts like a little kid. I feel bad for him...having to deal with Grandma Jane and her memory loss. Jane is always trying to boss him around, and he comes up with the funniest responses. Grandma Silvia is determined to teach me and the Grandpa's southern table manners, and such nonsense, and is always getting after grandpa Walter for making a mess...or eating my Gluten free food...and stuff like that...and he just comes up with the funniest excuses.
Sunday was officially the start of monsoon season. And the rain came right on time pretty heavily Sunday night. Monday morning I woke up at 5 and rode the ATV around picking up some dirt (we use it like a motorized wheel barrow..it's spiffy) and I pretty much got a breakfast of nats...They were everywhere. I hit at least 3 swarms of them the first time driving, and then decided to postpone that job until they went away. Which they did, the next day there were no nats...it was kinda strange.
Dirtbiking is loads of fun! Evan and his kid (can't remember the name...) dropped off their 100cc Honda for me to play with for the next week or so. Me and the kid rode around everywhere him on his friends 140 and me on the 100.
For the sake of not scaring mom all I will tell you is
A) I'm wearing a helmet
B) I'm really bad at sharp turns and braking.
C) Bugs can really do some damage when your flooring it in 5th...especially in the eyes...but only my left eye...what's up with that?
D) Always stand up when going over ramps or large bumps...it makes life easier.
E) There is some CRAZY dirt biking trails behind the elementary school! It's flippin fantastic!
I'm thinking about offering him $200 for it, since he just bought a 250 and doesn't use this one as much anymore.
I figure Thatcher would be about as good of a place as any for a dirt bike, so I could really get my money's worth out of it. He got it for a little over $300 and that was 2 years ago, so I bet he would sell it to me.
Meet my roommate Harry:
Harry is a sunspider that decided to join me for my evening prayer on Sunday. I didn't know what he was...and didn't really trust him with my eyes closed, so I put my cup over him and then played with him after prayer. Since I am a guy, I had to mess with it a bit, just because that's what males do...play with anything that looks potentially dangerous. I poked a pen in the cup and watched him lunge at it and try and strike it, and then pulled it out at the last second...eventually I lost and he bit it, and as I pulled the pen up, he held on (strong little bugger) and came flying out of the cup. It was kinda creepy...He was loose, and hanging out in my essential oils, so I let him be while I did some research on what he was, and if I should feel comfortable sharing a room with him.
I found out alot. First off all...these guys have a pretty insane reputation...they're called sun spiders, screaming spiders, camel spiders...and a bunch of other names, even though they're not really a spider. They can get up to 8" they have LOADS of legends and false stories about them. I posted a photo on fb and people told me all about their numbing venum that they use to keep people asleep as they eat bore a hole into you and eat your muscles...etc etc. Actually it wasn't the uneducated people on fb's fault, most of the internet sites I found at first were warning me of deadly venom and speed and stories of babies being eaten...and such. They actually are quite remarkable though. They have a very painful bite but no venom and they don't generally bite unless they're bothered. They are ridiculously aggressive, as I saw with the pen. They hunt their pray by running them down, making an eery screaming noise while they do it. They are one of the fastest bugs, at a top speed of 10 miles an hour. Anyways there's lots more cool stuff about them...but I doubt any of you really care...so...
Oh and this was Sunday. I've ran into him a couple more times throughout the week. Last night I nearly stepped on him while walking down the stairs. It was kinda funny and we both jumped. He jumped off the stairs and hid under the couch before I could catch him again. Grandpa told me to kill him next time I see him. Grandma Silvia is scared of them (she got chased out of the shower by one once :P) and so knowing that they can climb up and down the stairs makes me need to get rid of him.
Update (I wrote everything before this Wednesday) I have now seen 6 different sun spiders this week, ranging from the size of my pinky to a little smaller than my hand. I've killed half of them. They all came inside once it started raining under the laundry room door, since it's not sealed very well.
Me and Grandma got in big trouble yesterday. We went on date to see "The Lone Ranger" which I thought was great by the way. And then went to Applebees afterwards for dinner. We didn't bother to call Grandpa about going to dinner though, and so he was at home worried sick about us for a couple hours. We got home at 8...which I think is a pretty good time to have your date home...although I had told Grandpa the movie would be over sometime around 6, so he was expecting us back well before then. It was kinda funny seeing Grandma get chewed out like I had been chewed out so many times before.
Grandpa has had a sorta rough week. He was really sick on Tuesday, so much so that he lost over 2 pounds in barf...which is really gross... I realize now that that was probably why he was so grumpy on Wednesday.
Katherine agreed to give me horsemanship lessons last Sunday! I had my first lesson on Friday, but it was kinda canceled because of the thunder. I still went over and learned how to groom and clean a horse, and then how to properly lead them, and train them with a line. I'm going to work on ridding on Monday.
Grandma Coleman asked what it was that I was working on, and asked for pictures. Here they are!
The pipes in this picture are where the fountain will go, I took these a week ago. If you look closely the closest leg to us on the canopy is wooden...I bumped it with the ATV, and broke the leg, so I made a splint for it. It's broken much more since then from the crazzy dust devils that we've been having. It's been flipped upside down 3 or 4 times now...and that's with it being staked in. Now we don't even bother to stake it in, and just accept that it's going to die.
To put in perspective just how much work I've done...and because it's fun to see the numbers, I tallied up all the supplies that we've burned through since I've been here.
Well over 5 tons of rock (we haven't used it all, I just helped load it and unload it, since Grandpa can't lift some of the rocks.)
2 tons of sand
18 tons of gravel
52 94 Pound bags of cement (this is why my back is sore...because when I hurt my knee...I could no longer lift with my legs)
and 5 gallons of cement binder/glue.
This is to make 6 rock flower boxes, 5 of which have junipers in them, the other one is going to have vegetables. The biggest one is next to the parking lot, it's huge..and I only had time to lay the first set of rock and one full corner before we started on the fountain. We also laid a cement curb where we're going to hang flags from all the grandkids missions that he currently has out. Last weeks project was the fountain, it's going to be huge. All we have done so far is laid all the cement for it (sorry I forgot to take a picture of it..) There's going to be a 6 ft fountain running into a little pond with gold fish. The cement layout looks like the ship from star trek.
Semi funny story: So we took three trips to get more rock this week...and I somehow got the illusion that I had muscles, and loaded on some HUGE rocks...like some of these weigh more than I do, and I'm not completely sure how I picked them up to put them on the truck...Anyways I was feeling buff, so I lifted multiple 100 lbs+ rocks into the truck. Then...I got home, and I realized just how large these darn rocks were, as I had to figure out a way to carry them from the truck to the place where I needed to use them...I didn't feel nearly as buff as I had before, and had no earthly clue how I managed to lift some of them, and couldn't even get some out of the truck. So I made grandpa back the truck up in between a bunch of mesquite trees so I could roll them off of the truck. He ended up getting stuck by the mesquite trees and had to wait till I finished unloading to get out..which took a while. These rocks were so big that after we unloaded them, we realized that we had dented up the license plate and the parts of the bed of the truck that I used to think were seats when I was a little kid...sorry, can't think of a name for it.
I feel like making more lists.
Things we've broken: 3 wheel barrows, hammer, tape measure, truck bed, shade canopy, manly man steel saw (just the guard broke), axe, clippers, extension chord, cement mixer...and I think that's it. I broke 6 out 12 of those...which considering I'm working about twice as much as grandpa my ratio from work to stuff broken is pretty dang good. Everything on the list (except for the truck bed) has been fixed with duct tape. It truly does fix everything. I installed an air conditioning unit yesterday with duct tape, stuff works miracles. Actually now that I think about it, we didn't end up fixing the extension chord, or the axe, or the clippers...I guess even duct tape has it's limit.
I've worked a total of 230 hours in the past 4 weeks, which averages out to a 57.5 hour week (I only worked 54 last week).
Well that's about all I've got for now. I don't think this email was as funny as the last one, so I wonder if it will get forwarded on.
See ya'll later!
-Bryce
Random side note that I just remembered...I cleaned out grandpa walter's garage/food storage on Monday. It was horrifying. It was like walking into a haunted house mixed with a evil scientist...or maybe a witches layer is a better description. Anyways there was lots of jars...of unidentifiable stuff...everything from jars of dead cockroaches and crickets, to jars of pickles and pickled foodstuffs that was too old to identify and stuff that I think Grandpa said was V8 juice..but definitely didn't look edible. Anyways it was hard to imagine that any of it was meant for human consumption, and I'm pretty sure if they had to live off of it. They would starve. The peaches still looked like peaches and the jams still looked like jams, although they were all dated to 94 or 95...which is older than I am...After cleaning it out, I vowed that I would always go through my food storage when I'm older, continually replenishing and recycling through it. I don't get it either...its not like grandpa and grandma have anything to do...all they do is watch tv all day, occasionally play piano, and go on a walk to the porch and back. You think you could find the time to break into the food storage and sort it every 5 years or so..
Ok, I THINK that's all I've got, this has ended up to be a pretty long email too...or maybe it's just the giant pictures, not sure. Anyways love you all! See ya in a bit.
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