The Secret Garden of Spacey Dinosaurs.

Mae secretly planted a garden one day when nobody was looking.  She used the pumpkin and watermelon seeds she got from 4H.  Three days ago, upon seeing that there was a 'freeze warning' for the night, Kenny notified Mae that if she was going to pick one of her watermelons, she'd better do it now.  Her and Kyler both ran immediately out to the garden and together decided that one particular watermelon was large enough to pick.  Here it is:

After this photo was snapped, Mae gently set the watermelon on the island in the kitchen and grabbed a cutting board and knife.  She then used her 'presentation hands' and announced, "Now, we're going to see what it tastes like to eat a watermelon grown with no chemicals or wal mart in it."  I cut the melon in half and it wasn't as bright red as the ones you buy at the store so we were all a little leery.  I picked up a fork and plucked a small piece out of the melon.  I cautiously stuck it into my mouth and...it was beyond delicious.  We took turns each trying a bite, then everybody grabbed a fork and instead of calmly slicing the watermelon and partitioning it out like a normal family would do, we all pulled a stool up and just dug right into the two halves on the counter in front of us.  Barbarians!  It was just too good to wait.  

In other happenings (and since I particularly feel like uploading photos), here's a great one of Kenny making fun of me.  I have a long history of spacing off.  Boring movies, football games and lectures are the top three things that set off this spaciness.  Oddly enough, Kenny loves boring movies, football and giving lectures.  And according to him, this is EXACTLY what I look like when I fall under one of these spells:

And we can't leave Kyler out.  He had quite a day today.  Kenny took him (and only him) to a dinosaur exhibit.  He was in dinosaur heaven.  It's pretty much all he's talked about ever since.  Wait, actually, it's one-hundred percent all he's talked about (so much that it may have sent me into bug-eyed space-stare a time or two already).  Fortunately, I told Kenny several times to take lots of pictures and he actually listened, which allows me now to share my new favorite picture:

He just looks so oddly natural.  

And now to break the unfortunate news to you:  It is almost Monday.  That being said, it is nearly nine o'clock and I have a good book and a comfy bed waiting for me so I wish everybody a happy and funny week.  

Under the hood.

Aside from last Saturday (brrrr...), the weather has proven to be perfect for delivering mail.  And on these ever so perfect days, people are very likely to leave their houses to chat with their mail carrier.  This most usually makes me happy, but sometimes our conversations turn out to be not so pleasant.  The following story is one in which I was able to turn the chatter around to my own liking.

A man is outside working on his truck.  I put the mail in his box and greet him with a, "Hello!"  He steps away from his truck and asks, "Hey, what ya' got under your hood?"  I look at him as if he's just said something absurd (hasn't he?) and I ask, "Excuse me?"  He points to my mail truck and asks, "What kind o' engine you got in there?"  And this is the moment where he expects me to shrink about ten sizes smaller.  He obviously asked me this question because I am a girl and girls don't typically know about engines.  And he is right about that...I have no idea about anything 'under the hood', nor do I care to know.  But I wasn't about to spend the rest of my day kicking myself for saying something stupid so I held my head high and said very matter-of-factly, "All of our postal trucks have recycled lawnmower engines in them.  Saves the post office money."  He looked stunned.  He stuttered something inaudible and then said, "Holy shit, really?"  I flashed a smile and said, "Nope.  I've never even tried to open the hood" and then I walked away as quickly as possible before he could ask me anything else I don't know.  So take that.

Dog vs. Man

I enter a nice apartment building for the very first time and there are six mailboxes on the west wall.  This is the fanciest apartment building I have delivered in and I immediately wonder about the people who live here. The six mailboxes are all opened with one skeleton key, but when I put my key in, the left side is jammed.  I stay calm and try again.  And again.  And again.  And pretty soon I'm not so calm.  I hit the mailboxes multiple times and then pull as hard as I can over and over, making quite a racket.  In the middle of it all, a door at the top of the stairs opens and an old man pops his head out to look at me.  I figure I've upset him, but instead he just laughs wildly.  I ask him, "Does this happen often?" and he tells me, "Never, actually."  He climbs down the stairs in his bare feet and says, "Let me try.  I'm an expert."  I ask, "An expert locksmith?"  And he whispers, "No, I used to be a mailman."  He takes the key and I figure that of course, the mailboxes will open up with no problem now, leaving me to look unable to handle my own job, but...nope.  He hit the mailboxes multiple times and tried pulling them open in exactly the same fashion as I did, which made me laugh, but eventually, he was able to shimmy the boxes open.  He looks at me and says, "See?  An expert!"  

As I deliver the mail, he climbs back up the steps.  He sits down, crosses his left leg over his right, then leans back onto his hands and begins small talk.  We chat up quite the storm and as I begin toward the door, he tells me, "You're going the wrong way."  He's right.  I tell him that he's the most helpful person that I've run into on this day and thank him.  He makes me promise that next time I deliver there, I must either knock on his door and announce my arrival, or at least make a huge racket with the mailboxes again.  

I was in the apartment building for less than five minutes, but it completely made up for the six hours of confusion and frustration that I endured before walking in there.  It's amazing how people can do that...just flip my mood around by doing nothing less than acknowledging my existence...well, and fixing all of my immediate problems and making me laugh.  This is pretty much the exact opposite of what I felt three blocks earlier when a dog tied to a swing set was able to move the swing set all the way across the yard in an effort to maul me.  (Though I am thankful that he was tied up with a durable chain instead of something he could easily break).  

Tomorrow is a new day!