Unrelated Ramblings about my Weekend

This weekend my family attended a surprise birthday party for my brother.  It was a fun pool party, and the diversity of people in attendance made it memorable.  All of the guys we grew up with were there, and seeing everyone with wives and kids was a riot! It was like a big ole' reunion. And then there was Hiro.  Hiro is a Japanese man who is in America to do post-graduate work at the University near by.  He needed a quiet place to stay so he could study, and some how ended up renting a room at my brother's house.  This man is incredibly smart, and I think he is doing research about the planet Mars!  He is also from rural Japan, and speaks pretty good English. Yet, there are many things that somehow get lost in translation.  The following conversation took place in my brother's backyard after Hiro noticed a long line of ants walking across the pool deck.

Hiro-" There is long line of ant. I think they have ant house over there!"
Us-"We call it an ant hill."
Hiro-"What?"
Us- "It's an ant hill....that's where ants live....in an ant hill."
Hiro-"Ant hell?"  He pauses in deep thought for a few seconds.  "Oh I see, like....Go to hell!" He shakes his finger at the ants.
Us- "No, no, no, Ant hill, HILL....HILL.... you know like a small mountain."
Hiro- "Hell for ants"
Us- We begin to talk louder. Have you ever noticed that when someone doesn't understand, you start yelling at them like they are hard of hearing? "No Hiro, Hell is a place you don't want to go, a Hill is like a mountain that ants live on... the two are very different."
Hiro- " I don't know."

We gave up and just tried not to laugh too hard.  Ant "hell" is what I feel like we have around our house in the summer time when those little pests try to infiltrate my home. I guess his translation wasn't that far from being accurate after all.

Because we live in a relatively small town, and have harsh winters, there seems to be a weird phenomenon that occurs the first warm weekend in May.  Every place on the mountain that sells garden supplies gets ransacked like the world is ending.  We have a short growing season, and there are some things that must be planted as soon as possible in order to get a harvest. Namely, Tomatoes. Every Tomato plant on the Mountain gets fought over like it was the last Cabbage Patch Kid, or Tickle Me Elmo doll left on the shelf on Christmas Eve.  I have personally thrown an elbow in order to get an "Early Girl" tomato plant. Knowing the viciousness of the weekends to come, I thought I would out-smart the competition this year.  Since we drove to the big city for the party, I decided to go to Home Depot and purchase a flat of tomato plants.  Everything was fine until we had to figure out how to transport them home.  We got a warning call from home.  "It's blizzarding up here, and there's 4" of snow."  Yikes. This adds an element of danger for the plants.  My husband and I discuss the game plan.  I'm not OK with his plan to throw them in the back of the truck for the following reasons:
A. 75MPH winds will kill them
B. The Dogs will trample them
C. The snow will freeze them
D. The temperature change will put them into shock

After much discussion and some scolding for purchasing the "dumb plants", my meticulous dad comes to the rescue, and we place them safely in a plastic bin with a lid secured with string.  Bingo. My precious cargo made it up the mountain, and now resides in my kitchen until the following occurs:

A. The snow melts
B. The wind stops
C. The soil warms up

Stay tuned to find out if they survive.  If it's a success, I will consider myself brilliant! If I fail, my husband will never let me live it down, and I'll be an unwilling participant in the annual Spring Shopping Brawl! Wish me luck!

My four year old still needs a nap most days because she uses all her energy to keep up with  her big brother and sister.  Yet, she fights me tooth and nail about it.  She feels a great injustice has been committed when I sentence her to a nap in the afternoon.  I snapped this picture of her sleeping on her Grumpy's lap today.

An hour and a half later, when she woke up, I asked her how her nap was.  She looked at me with a straight face and said, "I didn't take a nap today. I sat on Grumpy's lap."  If only Grumpy was available every day for an hour and a half .... we'd have a well rested little girl.