Melina's third Country Fair

It's hard to believe that Melina's only two and has already gone to three Oregon Country Fairs (the first when she was only three months old). The first time we used my parents' VW bus; the second time we camped; and this time we camped again. Next time I intend to use my parents' trailer (hint hint) because I just don't know if I can take another stretch of three sleepless nights, laying there in the tent listening to drunk twenty-somethings whoop around the camp at 3:00 a.m. That part just isn't fun anymore. Especially since I am essentially tent-bound at 11:00, trying (unsuccessfully) to sleep because I know that Melina will be waking me up at 7:30. (Jeff can stay out later because he seems to thrive on less sleep). Oh, the exquisite joy of being kept up until all hours, only to be woken at sunrise by a car alarm going off, somebody's baby screaming, or my own daughter wanting to jump on the bed.

I have to admit there were times during this OCF that I felt like I was just too old for this anymore. Or too something. (Nevermind the many aging hippies who thrive in that environment.) I told someone that it seemed less magical to me this time, and they pointed out that I had spent several days chasing a two-year-old around. Oh, yeah. During the 20 minutes when Jeff and Melina got lost trying to find the kids' area, it DID feel kind of magical. With a two-year-old there's never any time to actually get INTO anything, or relax, or go to a talk, or focus on the music...

Oh well. It was fun to watch Melina having fun. She LOVED it. She talked to lots of people, and ate corn on the cob, and ate tamales, and drank huge amounts of lemonade, and climbed on things, and rolled in the dust, and played with our friend's three sons, and darted out into the road, and got to sleep in a tent, and saw horses, and rode in a yellow school bus, and admired the water truck, and swam in the muddy lake, and saw a big striped bug, and ate illicit jellybeans for breakfast, and pretty much lived on fried things and sugar for a while. She even sat still long enough to watch some bellydancers, and part of a puppet show, and part of a couple juggling shows. By the end, she looked like a brown dusty little hippy baby who has never had a bath. (I took a shower at the fair for $8; Melina stood on a stool and mixed up the shampoo and body soap so I ended up washing my hair with Dr. Bronner's).

There were a few sweet moments after Melina went to bed where I got to roam around Zumwalt (our campground) with friends. (Usually that was when Jeff was putting Melina to bed, or shortly afterward. We did have about half an hour together when a friend babysat for us). Jeff's friends Monica and Cipriano were there, and I really enjoyed talking to them, sitting by the big bonfire and listening to music. Sibelia and Simon and their three sons camped next to us, and Jeff's friend Chris was also there. It was nice hanging out with them all. Zumwalt is great because it's next to Fern Ridge Reservoir, which cools the air in the evening and at night; and the same people go there year after year, so a community forms. A couple of my coworkers have started going there, which is nice.

Next time, if we go (and I'm sure Jeff and Melina will want to), I am going to bring a) ear plugs; b) my parents' trailer; c) sleeping pills and d) an eye shade. And a nanny. And THEN I will feel the magic.

Our first egg!

Today one of chickens laid her first egg, a nice little brown specimen, very clean and perfect looking. I'm not sure which chicken laid it, but this morning I did this "thing" that I learned on the Portland Backyard Chicken group where you sort of tap their backs and they hunker down if they're going to start laying eggs soon. Dolly and Abigail both hunkered down (Martha didn't), so I think it was one of them. Apparently this "hunkering" has to do with showing the proper respect towards a rooster.

We went to the Country Fair this weekend and it sounds like the chickens had a wild time in our absence. They wandered into our neighbor's yard for the first time ever (of course it had to be the neighbor who isn't crazy about chickens) and then they were let loose for several hours by a friend of one of the neighbor girls. Their mom didn't know the chickens had been let out until about 11:00 p.m. She came over here to search for them and couldn't find them anywhere - apparently she even went under the porch with a flashlight and drove around the neighborhood looking for them. She didn't sleep too well that night (and neither would I have if I had known!) but the chickens were found safe and sound in the garage the next morning. I think, given the number of poops I found, that they had slept under the wisteria vine on the deck. It's a very secure spot where they're almost invisible. Also, I should note that the little girls spread chicken feed all over the yard to try to lure them back to the coop. So now the yard is a patchwork of dead grass and chicken feed. I think we should just start over with it in the fall.

Tonight I worked on putting together a permanent pen for the girls to use when we're out of town, so I don't to ask a neighbor to let them out and round them up every evening. I have sort of a quasi-run now, but it's not very pretty and it still needs a lot of work.

By the way, our camera got lost at the Country Fair, so I don't have a photo of the Egg. I'm posting a photo of a similar (Portland, July) egg instead.

(And I'll post about the County Fair soon too).

Our first backpacking trip

We went on our first official backpacking trip with Melina last weekend, to the Salmon River trail near Mt. Hood. It's a beautiful low-elevation old growth forest and a great place to backpack with a kid. The trip started out a bit rough since Melina never napped on the way to the trailhead, and had a very short fuse. She refused to stay in the baby pack (which, since I was carrying all 27 pounds of her plus some gear, was fine with me) but she also refused to hold anyone's hand on the steep parts of the trail. Jeff ended up carrying her a lot of the way. About a mile in (yes, a mile) we found a really nice spot and decided to set up camp. Melina was very excited about sleeping in a tent, and she slept pretty well. Since we don't have a three-person backpacking tent, Jeff slept in his little one-person tent and I slept with Melina in the two-person tent. (When we go for two nights, we'll trade off). Melina went to bed around 8:00 and woke up around 7:40, just like she does at home.

While she was awake, there were lots of things in the forest to entertain her. She enjoyed climbing up on logs and jumping off them, looking for wild strawberries, throwing rocks in the river, staring at bugs, walking across the little stream near our campsite, and running down the forest trails. Jeff also got to take a dip in the ice-cold river, and I spent a nice hour sitting on some exposed tree roots in the river drinking a little airplane-sized Grand Marnier and watching the dusk gather while Jeff put Melina to bed. It's such a beautiful, wild river - obviously there has been a lot of change in the last few decades, with new gravel bars from flooding, new growth, and old stands of white alders looking like Russian birches along the riverbank. I waited for a family of Sasquatches to dart of the undergrowth to slurp water from the river, but they never came. Actually we didn't see much wildlife at all, apart from baby trout, caddis fly larvae in the rivers, crows, and a water ouzel.