19 Days Until Daddy

If I thought yesterday had some adventures it was nothing compared to today! This morning we left early with our friends Jenny and Carric to go to the Desert Botanical Gardens. I got tickets at the Tempe Library so we could all get in free. Before we could even get going something was leaking from Abby's car seat--yuck! There were some grapes (I think) that had fallen down into the car seat and it was gross. I got it all cleaned up and we were ready to go. (We usually have a very clean car seat by the way!). The Botanical Garden was fun and very hot. We especially enjoyed the butterflies.

The inside of a cactus--not what I expected!

Abby saw lots of geckos today and then she found one in the gift store. Carric ended up buying it for her and she named it Carric. Thanks Carric!
Next we ran errands and came back for an early nap because 5 women were coming over to run through our musical number for tomorrow's Sacrament meeting. Below you see Amelia, Jen, Ariana, Chelsi, Abby and Jenny. There will be one more but she was camping. I love singing with these incredible women.
After we ran through the song Abby and I went over to see Dr. David Schildkret (one of my professors from ASU) and his wife Sue. Dr. Schildkret has been gone for a while and we wanted to make sure we saw him before we move. We had an absolutely wonderful visit.
Then the adventures began. . . and as you can see below Abby found the pool outside and Sue helped her swim! I did not bring her suit, so she had fun in her diaper! Abby then took off her diaper and ran around naked and Dr. Schildkret let Abby come inside for a minute. She of course decided to relieve her bladder a little bit on their carpet! When we finally got her out of the water and I put her diaper on, she really started to freak out. I noticed a rash starting and she was really unhappy. So we put her in their bath tub to help her. As I was leaning over the bath tub and trying to get my crying Abby to sit and soak I felt a sharp pain in my left arm. I looked over and saw a cat biting into my arm and then it let go and hissed and showed me its teeth. It proceeded to scratch my arm and then bit down again, this time into the muscle below my elbow. I think he was trying to protect Abby and thought I was doing something to hurt her. Fortunately Sue then got him out of the room but I was just shocked. I ended up bleeding from about 6 or 7 places, but I was really concerned about Abby. So I held toilet paper on the wounds and tried to help Abby feel better. She finally calmed down and then I realized I was out of diapers. We had used up the ones I brought and I wasn't going to put back on the one that bothered her. So they gave us an old towel and I took her out to the car naked! She ended up running (naked) across their driveway and into the neighbors yard with me chasing behind--she is very fast! We all had a great laugh. So since my peroxide and everything to take care of the cat marks is packed I ran over to the Taysom family to clean things up. I think I might have some cool bruises. What a crazy day!

Bakersfield Motel

The motel I'm staying in at Bakersfield is dirt cheap. It only costs $31/night and that includes cable TV, internet, microwave, refrigerator, and free breakfast. Too good to be true? Well, there are some downsides. The room has a serious fly infestation and these buggers are fast. I can hardly kill them, and certainly not faster than they replenish themselves. I am not sure where they are coming from, since I keep the door closed, but may from the bathroom vent or AC unit. The AC works--that is nice, but the room stinks to high heaven so I stuck a air freshener on it to mask the odor. The fridge and microwave work fine, but the free breakfast consists of day old donuts that are a bit stiff and a nasty tang orange juice that I can't stomach. There is a waffle iron, so that works out fine, but waffles get old after a few days. I really can't wait until we close on the house and I can move out of this motel and into the new home.

I've had meetings at the college all this past week. The folks there seem nice. I'm sure things will work out well. The focus on student learning is a little more intense than I am accustomed. When teaching at the university level I heard, more than once, "get your research done and try to help the students if you have time" or "cut into the teaching prep to finish your research." That is not how things work here. The college reminds me much more of when I taught eight grade. It is all about student learning, which is just fine with me. Still, I do plan to do some research. It looks like Fridays are mostly free, so I'll do my scholarly writing then. In the meantime, I must convince those who think (and one person already asserted this opinion directly to me) that folks with a PhD cannot relate or teach junior college kids. The fact is, I think, that folks with a PhD know their stuff so much better that we can better reach the students. I guess we'll find out soon enough.