Things you never wanted to learn firsthand: The people who design car-seats have clearly never needed to clean copious amounts of vomit out of them on the side of the highway 50 miles from the closest exit in middle-of-nowhere Nevada. Why are there so many crevices?!
(Sigh) The other side of parenthood. Luckily it was still daylight, traffic was light, and nothing but the seat and Heather's clothes got contaminated.
Heather was apparently not feeling well, but after giving up most her lunch she seemed to improve dramatically. Unfortunately, now the car has a lovely eau de sick.
Hopefully a thorough washing of the car-seat will fix that.
Had we any safe way of transporting Heather without it, I may have been tempted to leave the car-seat in the desert--it was pretty gross.
OK, yes, I think apathy does play a role. I think there are a lot of Americans who have their bread and circuses and just don't care about anything else. I also think there are a lot of Americans who think, "This only affects bad guys" and haven't studied enough history to realize why that is a dangerous assumption.
But for me, and I think many others, it's not apathy. I care. I care a great deal about the usurpation of civil rights that has occurred in this country since the end of 2001. And not just the loss of civil rights but the abandonment of any moral high ground we may have held on the international stage.
I haven't flown since 2010 and I won't fly until the TSA is reigned in and passengers are treated with some modicum of respect and aren't assumed to be terrorists. I wrote to all the airlines explaining why I would no longer be a customer. They didn't seem to care.
I don't vote for Republicans or Democrats (if possible). I vote for, and donate money to, third-party candidates. They never win.
I've written actual paper letters to my Congressional representatives and the President with my positions. The only response is a form letter with no indication anyone bothered to read the message.
So I promise it's not apathy. I previously wrote about Outrage Fatigue and what follows fatigue is despair. I think for those of us that do care, our lack of action is mainly due to despair.
What can we honestly do as average citizens that will make any difference?
I may despair in what I can do next to help fix things, but I'm not without hope. I think we are making a difference, though slow. And I think we will eventually rein in the egregious abuses we've seen.
I think, or at least hope, we'll look back on 2001-2020 the same way we look at 1950-1956 and the abuses that were McCarthyism.
Then the important question will be: what can we do to prevent it from happening again?
The Dickerson family had a reunion this year in Cedar City, UT. We stayed in the dorms at Southern Utah University and just happened to be there during the first stage of the Tour of Utah bicycle race which ended right in town and went past our apartments three times.
Throughout the trip I took over 900 pictures, so I did a lot of culling to get it down the 15 I'm using in this post, so don't complain about too many pictures.
The reunion ran from August 4 through August 9. The 4th and 5th was just people arriving and wandering about doing whatever.
The Tour of Utah stuff on was the 6th. As the race wound its way through the mountains there was stuff going on downtown including a booth for the Shakespeare Festival with various costumes and props to try on. Heather fit perfectly in the jester's hat.
The racers got into town in the late afternoon. Here's the main group of racers coming down the road:
Here's the crew that stayed up in the apartment watching on:
That evening a group of us went to watch Peter and the Starcatcher. It's a retelling of the origin of Peter Pan. A little odd at times, but enjoyable.
On Wednesday, the 7th, we went to Frontier Homestead State Park where Heather sat on a horse (statue, obviously). It's a bunch of old-timey machinery and buildings and stuff to look at.
That evening obligatory family fun & games were held, of course. Here's Evan in his cowboy getup enjoying Bingo (run by Megan & Chad) after he won some honey-roasted peanuts:
Erin ran The Price is Right complete with Plinko, which Megan and Chad played:
On Thursday we took a horse- (and mule-) back ride through Bryce Canyon (thanks again Mike!). Mike's mule was appropriately named "Porky" as he took every opportunity to graze at the side of the trail.
From left to right: Megan, Mollie, Jess, Mike, and Tina.Here we are at our rest stop. Left to right: Evan, Tina, Mike, Mollie, Megan, Chad, and Jess.
Jess had a blast. I have a bunch of pictures of her riding with a great big smile on her face.
Riding and taking pictures is easier said than done for someone with very little riding experience. We weren't allowed to take anything with us except a camera, so I picked my 50-200mm zoom lens with a polarizer and hoped for the best. I probably should have taken the 18-55mm instead as with the 50mm widest angle I wasn't able to get any grand panoramic shots, however with the 200mm telephoto I was able to get closer-up pictures of everyone else riding.
The biggest issue was trying to look through the viewfinder to take a shot with the horse bouncing around and me trying to hold on. To compensate, many of my pictures were taken Rambo-style just aiming in the general direction and hoping for the best.
Here's my favorite picture of the few hundred I took while on the ride. I think it's neat how clear the various layers of rock are across the hoodoos.
The next day was checkout so we all spent the morning trying to get packed up and out the door. After checking out we tried to take some family pictures.
Here's the Dickerson grandchildren of 2011. Heather, born in October. Charlie, born in December. And Addie, born in August.
After family pictures we had a round of bowling to celebrate Evan's birthday (with requisite cream-cheese pie).
From there the party broke up and went separate ways. We went up to Provo along with most of the rest for Will's baptism on Saturday. After the baptism and lunch it was time to head home. Heather was starting to not feel well and didn't much like adjusting to hotel rooms so we decided to drive straight through and just get home. So we got home at around 4:30am Sunday completely exhausted.
And if you don't come home in the middle of the night completely exhausted then you're not doing your family vacations right; at least that's what my childhood memories suggest anyway.
Jess' car has a terminal case of busted transmission. The cost of replacing the transmission is more than the car would be worth once installed. So we're probably not going to do that. It's kind of too bad since her car only has ~50k miles; but it is 14 years old.
So we're trying to decide what to do. We had been hoping her car would last until we figure we'll need a minivan, but it's a bit too soon for that, so a minivan at this point would just be a waste of gas. So we're trying to decide if we should go with 1 car for awhile and/or try to buy something used to get a few more years down the road (so to speak).
I was having trouble falling asleep last night partly because a song was stuck in my head.
This is how I pictured my mind looking last night while lying in bed:
There was just the one stupid muppet sitting in the corner singing at the top of his lungs while the rest of me was trying to sleep. It was pretty funny to think about though.
