Crafty Dayeseye

A Real Keeper Pt. 1

You guys know I love my husband right?

Right. 

But I bet you don’t know about the day I knew he was a real keeper.

We met in January and during our first few months of dating we only saw each other a few times a month, I don’t even think once a week for a while.  He works a pretty regular schedule with stints of travelling, and I have always worked a crazy, never the same, always rotating schedule.

Sometime around May we decided to do a day hiking trip.  We planned to hike about 5 miles past Rose River falls and Dark Hollow Falls in Shenandoah National Park.

And like Roald Amundsen said “Adventure is just bad planning.” Our adventure began.

We packed a PB&J sandwich, an orange, 2 bottles of water, and a bottle of Gatorade each.  Just enough for lunch and a light walk on a nice day.

About an hour into the walk we were in a heavily tree covered area and it had rained the night before.  The ground was wet and some of the rocks were slippery.  I put my left foot on a rock to take a step down and slipped, twisted my ankle and fell on my ass.  It wasn’t anything awful, I was more embarrassed than anything.  M- made sure I was okay, helped me get comfortable and made me laugh while I sat there for a minute. 

After a while we got going again and started to notice how hot it was getting, even under the tree canopy.  We were sweaty, and thirsty, I drank from my water bottles freely.  It was well over 90 degrees.  Major water fail.

Somewhere along the way we made a wrong turn.  We probably walked 2 miles before we realized we weren’t where we were supposed to be.  We turned around and headed back to the trail split to take the correct turn…who knows what happened, but we ended up completely mixed up.  We trudged ahead, walked along using the compass to guide us to where we THOUGHT we were supposed to be.

...To be continued...

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear

Yesterday M- and I along with a couple hundred thousand of our closest friends went to the National Mall, the long beautiful stretch of green space between the capital and Washington Monument, for The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. 

We went with the hopes of a beautiful day, a fun event, and maybe, just maybe, something more.  The Rally delivered.  From the best house band around --The Roots, Ozzy, 4 Troops singing a beautiful rendition of the National Anthem, the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens, The Mythbusters, John Legend, Jeff Tweedy, Mavis Staples, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kid Rock, Tony Bennett singing 'America the Beautiful', R-2 D-2, Sheryl Crow, Father Guido Sarducci, Anderson Cooper’s Tiny Black T-shirt, and the list goes on, not to mention our hosts Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert.

We weren’t there to say “WE are right, YOU are wrong”.  We were there to say, just because we are different doesn’t mean we can’t respect each other.  To my right stood a couple in their mid seventies, behind us, a young Muslim couple, and around us everything in between, even a robot, Santa Claus, and Elmo were there.  In our little area there were folks from New York, Alaska, Minnesota, Virginia, Maryland and Arkansas.

As much as the media would have you believe the Rally was a total Liberal Love-fest, the Rally wasn’t about partisanship; it was about each demonizing the other.  Yes we will disagree, no we won’t always see eye to eye, but we are in this together, and we are not each others enemies.  It was amazing to be a part of this. I was so proud to be there, to see so many like-minded moderates asking for something often left out of our modern political process—civility, reasonableness, and decency.

--One of the moderate (slightly more liberal than some, but more conservative than others) majority.  JWMG

 

P.S. Thanks National Parks Service and National Park Trust!