Farewell to Freedom

Growing up on a farm, we'd had a variety of animals, including chickens. The memory I have of butchering chickens centered around taking them to the processing plant a town over where they could efficiently dispatch them and begin the cleaning process. We opted for this because my parents had tried butchering the chickens themselves but the process was a huge pain in the butt. “It was so cold out, I looked forward to pulling the guts out just because their bodies were so warm,” my mom said. So, when we were in Sonoma with Bethany's parents and her dad mentioned that he had two chickens for eating that were past due for butchering, I was fairly surprised that Bethany jumped up and said she wanted to help. Since the butchering hadn't happened on our farm, I expected the adage about running around “like a chicken with it's head cut off” to be true in the sense the chicken would flop around once or twice and expire. Instead, we learned firsthand that the chicken has about 45 seconds of utter insanity bottled up and held in place by it's miniscule brain. The extra weeks of growth had turned them into turkeys, and while we ate like kings that evening, it turned them into Thurman Thomas following their expiration.

Bethany striking a pose

 Some day I'm going to wake up to this....

We all have to go sometime.... 

 WHY THIS BIRD LOOK LIKE ADRIAN PETERSON? Bethany looks like Ditka playing LB in 2014

 

The finished product

Bethany and I returned to Madison our first weekend back in the Midwest as part of a reunion tour. Arriving Friday afternoon, we first went to the Great Dane and grabbed drinks with Bethany's old professor and co-worker Bill. Kelly and Alex also joined us, co-workers of mine from Epic who were about to take off on Alex's sabbatical with Epic. Their jaunt around the Pacific will be shorter than our trip, but cover more miles than we already have.

Feb '11 hire class representing.

“My family does a gift exchange where you have to make your present, but we're all super competitive and try to win each year.” my old co-worker Stephanie said to us as we toured her new condo during the housewarming party. While it was great for me to meet up with old coworkers and enjoy Stephanie's excellent Pinterest recipies, it just served to encourage Bethany's desire to be a homeowner. Not good.

Last fall Bethany and I returned to Knox for our 5 year college homecoming. We don't feel particularly removed from college in terms of age and experience. But as we stood in the student section during the Wisconsin football game [my first] Saturday morning, we heard snippets of conversation; “Corey boned her. Boned her eight times over the weekend. And he didn't use a condom!” or “Oh god I dropped my iphone 6! My mom is going to kill me!” and watched students take selfies with each other and miss most of the game. Bethany, Lisa, and I kept giving each other knowing glances as we realized that we had absolutely nothing in common with these children anymore. I just prayed that I wasn't just like that as a college student. [Probably was]
Jeff and Elise, newly transported to Madison from Iowa City following their wedding, were doing their best to acclimate to Badgerland. Jeff informed us shortly after meeting up, “Iowa won today. I'm drinking to get drunk!” With the afternoon stretching out ahead of us, we made ourselves comfortable on the roof of Lisa's apartment and enjoyed our brewskies. That evening, Bethany demolished the truffle fries from Cooper's Tavern, and we celebrated with our friends who could join us.
We retired to Lindsay and Matt's place. “I built a bed frame since you guys were coming!” Matt enthusiastically told us. They grow up so fast.

Thank God Lisa and I had a build your own bloody bar prior to the game. 

 Well, since everyone else was doing it....

getting caught in a downpour with 30mph gusts of wind. #justmadisonthings

Matt explains the rules of the tabletop game he created to me. SPACESHIP LEGOS AWW YEAH. [I can hear Lindsay and Bethany rolling their eyes from here] 

“I looked over and thought. 'There's Bethany and Ike.' Then I went, 'OH! THERE'S BETHANY AND IKE!” Laura told us after church finished Sunday morning. We had a great time seeing friendly faces, and realized how much we loved the community of Midvale Lutheran Church. After church, we visited with Ashleigh and Nick and met baby Marion for the first time. Arledge is still growing like a weed and looks like he's three. Marion is adorable. “Tracking her growth and comparing it to Arlo's, it's like, here's them pacing each other early on, and then here's where Marion levels off and Arlo just keeps going up.” Nick said, charting lines in the air with his fingers. Bethany and I also became acquainted with apple chips, quite possibly the best snack in the history of ever.

Bethany with the Radiant Child

In the afternoon, I told Matt I seriously missed mowing lawns, so I proceeded to call his bluff and mow the lawn.  When mowing lawns, you naturally drink beer.  In addition, the Cozon's have an old fashioned push mower [but new] they were pressured into getting.  Surprising to no one ever, it was a pain in the ass to get it to mow properly.  We then helped Matt move a cabinet inside the house, which served as a valuable retort to the 'I built you a bed' comment.
That evening, Bethany and I played a new [and awesome] board game with the Cozon's called 'Power Grid'. It's a very fun game, and if it taught me anything, it's that if you're going to power Germany, stay away from Berlin.

We're thinking of adding something like this to Sweetcakes. Good idea, or GREAT idea?

“Remember when I asked if you'd be willing to help with some random tasks while you're back?” my Mom said. Trepidation filled me. “Yes....” I replied cautiously. “Well, here's a list.” Boom. Next thing I know I'm [making Bethany help me] clean gutters. The following week was a whirlwind for us. Sweetcakes needed a checkup and work done to her, Bethany and I had errands to do as well. The biggest changes were a lockbox and new swingout, added through the immense help of Denny and Leo, Bethany's dad and grandpa. The old trailer platform was too long and killed our clearance angle on Sweetcakes [something we mentioned in a previous post when we were in the UP] The new one is much shorter and still holds what we need, and the fact it can swing out makes it much easier to get into the back of the vehicle. The lockbox is also pretty clutch: the profile of it makes it blend into the bed platform. We also trimmed a fair amount of our goods and thinned out what makes it south.

The new schnozzle bag to make inflating our air pads easy. (Thanks for the recommendation, Andrew & Amanda!)

"Don't post this up on Facebook; the last thing I want is more requests to build these!" - Leo 

 This counts as helping, right?

Look how awesome this is!

That weekend we celebrated Bethany's grandma's 80^th birthday and Monica [Bethany's cousin] and Chris' wedding. I personally enjoyed making off-color jokes with Phil.

The fam

In between off-color jokes, we look good.

 Too cool for McCool

.....ladies night? (ahhem, zombie faces)

The farm I grew up on used a wood stove as it primary source of heat. Getting wood was always a chore, and I remember being jealous of my dad, who got to just stand there holding the chainsaw. All he had to do was pull the throttle [cool] and let it blast through the wood like butter [super cool] with the coolest zombie defense weapon ever! I realized very quickly how wrong my childhood self was as my dad gave me pointers about how to use a chainsaw as it was going through the tree trunk on the ground. With the throttle maxed, your hands buzzed and went nearly numb in seconds. You had to hold the saw [not super light] and press it into the wood but not force it, while maintaining an even angle. The worst part was trying to get the damn thing out of your grooved cut: pulling it out while maintaining a firm grim so it didn't buck or jump and go flying towards your head. I have a new-found respect. But it was all worth it to surprise my uncle Rick, who left that morning with a truck-tail of logs and came home to find only two new logs ready for splitting.


“Old Lux is the oldest restaurant in Springfield. It's now in a bad neighborhood, so they pay an off-duty cop to sit outside in their car.” My Grandpa told me. I didn't care if it was at the gates of hell, any place that had $15 filet mingion was A-OK in my book. [Although I did get the fried chicken livers] Earlier in the day, we'd dropped plants off at his workplace, and saw an estate sale next door. Dropping in, we saw the place was pretty haphazard. The adjacent building had some additional items, and therein I found some old tobacco tins. Picking them up, I asked the woman if she'd take a buck for them. She signed, and said $2.50. I said I didn't need them that much and set them down, turning around to leave, but by that point mom had $2 out and we struck a deal.

When you were this cool, you're allowed to do things like:

Hearing the alarm at 5:45 the following morning was rough, but as we'd packed the night before, it wasn't difficult to get out to the vehicle and get on the road. As 6am greeted us, we found a radio station that was willing to get us enthusiastic about our day by playing 'Enter Sandman' and 'Rollin' back to back. Still, 14.5 hours is a long time, and when we pulled into Pete's apartment in Houston that evening, we were ecstatic to have BBQ and sides waiting there for us.

KEEP ROLLIN ROLLIN ROLLING ROLLING WHAT? KEEP ROLLIN ROLLIN ROLLIN ROLLING C'MON! 

 THAT IS A LIE TEXAS

Someone actually still has a prowler?!!? of COURSE he had slicked back hair

We became friends with Sable and Smudge, two cats staying with Pete. They're just the best. The following day we visited Pete's workplace and met his coworkers, while spending quite a bit of time dealing with our solar battery. [to be discussed in a separate post] That evening we visited with Erick, Kim, Dave, and Kelly, watched some fantastic comedy shows on Netflix, and took it easy.

Guess it's bug season in Texas...

 Doin' cartwheels on the riverwalk

JCL vets

The following day we drove to San Antonio, spending the afternoon with Linda [Bethany's aunt], and had dinner with Alicia [Bethany's cousin], Phil, and Elliot. The following morning we had breakfast with Leah [Linda's oldest]. I think Austin, their dog, was happiest to have me there, though. We had lunch with Liz & Bailey [old coworkers], who just happened to be in town on business. That afternoon we made our way down to Laredo to prepare for our border crossing. Vamos a Mexico!