After the second day of GRUB, Beth suggested we all head over to the river for a quick dip. She had hoped we would quick dip yesterday instead of, say, showering at the cabin and using up the water at the cabins. We had a few starts and stops, but ended up at the creek just downstream of the 6th St. Bridge. Not the cleanest of spots, but definitely convenient.

When we arrived, a small group of drunken college boys were flirting with a small group of college girls. And when I say flirting, I mean taunting, catcalling, insulting, and throwing flip flops and dirt clods at them. What passes for flirting these days would most likely have been called assault and battery when I was in college.

Kris and I arrived, and wandered past the mating ritual, down the path to the creek edge. We stood at the stop of the rocks, watching our teammates enter the waterm laughing at the frigid water.

As we stood there, a ball of wet sand came flying at our heads, hitting Kris in the hat, and landing on my shoulders with a wet splat. I turned in anger, as Kris asked, "What the hell?" I knew who threw the ball of sand, having seen the guy throwing earlier, and hollered at the top of my lungs, "You can cut that shit out. Right. Now." They looked a little sheepish, but made no acknowledgement of my yell.

I turned to walk back to the bridge, as Kris did. He continued to the car, as I stopped to tell various teammates who were just arriving what had happened. Dan O cajoled the punks, "Not cool, guys, not cool."

I followed Kris to the car, made sure he was okay, then pulled out my cell phone. I was sufficiently annoyed that a call to the police was in order. 411 worked just fine, and I was connected to the Boulder policy in under a minute. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of walking around as I made the call, and one of the hoodlums saw me talking on the phone while looking at them. They scattered out of the water. Even more tragically, they scattered onto the shore between the cars and the water. Rather than leaving, they hovered, never quite leaving us alone.

After about 10 minutes of trying to relax, I gave up, and walked back to the car. Kris had the trunk open and was arranging things, but I thought he was sleeping in the car and had forgotten to close the trunk. Kris suggested ice cream, so off we went to the Haagen Dazs on Pearl St. My months and months of travelling to Boulder were not for naught!

We arrived back at ye ole watering hole just as everyone was driving away to go to dinner. At dinner, I found out that not only had the hoodlums returned to the water, but had taken up throwing sand clods at our group. One hit Roshan in the head. Another tried "cock fighting puffery" as Mark said, to start a fight. Mark's thought was, "Dude, I'm holding a baby!" Mirabelle would have kicked their collective ass, of course.

Doyle's response was my favorite: "Uh, you know, we roll twenty strong."

Having heard the hoodlums came back to make trouble for my friends because of my actions (ultimately because of their own actions, but pushed along by mine), I was a little sad. I don't want to cause trouble for my friends, especially during these moments of starting to live without fear stopping me. All actions have consequences, I just need to make sure I think of them before I take a stand.

The bummer of the whole situation was, however, realizing I lost $20 when taking out my cell phone to call the police. I had a bill tucked in the phone case. It fell out when I made the call. Sigh.

I'm a big fan of young adult books. The world is still (mostly) innocent. The good guys (nearly) always win. Closure happens in less than 200 pages. The commitment level is low, usually only one or two hours at most (though, some of the Harry Potter books are tomes, and other Dark Materials move slowly).

A young adult (juvi fiction?) book on my shelf for a long while now has been The Game of Sunken Places, by M.T. Anderson. In a moment of desperate need of light reading, I picked it from the middle of the to-read stack and started reading.

The story is about two unlikely friends: one clueless, athletic, and outgoing, the other intelligent, thoughtful, quiet. The two are invited out to a distant uncle's house, where they encounter strange people, unusual beings, a mystery that needs solving and a game that needs playing.

Setting the scene proves difficult, as the first few chapters are slow and a bit tedious, containing slight misdirections which are explained later in the book.

By the middle of the book, however, the boys are in full-game mode, and the action is non-stop. Most of the seemingly random events are tied into the mystery of the house and the uncle, though some are, admittedly, absurd in presentation.

The ending implies this book is of a series of books from the same author. While I believe this book was mildly entertaining, I wasn't pulled into the world strongly enough to seek other books in the series (and thus, can't confirm the book as part of a series).

Mike has been telling me that Maeryn can speak, that she has a vocabulary of seven words. Having never hear an coherent word spoken from her lips, I didn't believe him. Sure, I've heard cooing and screeches that Mike can distinguish as "thank you" and "bye bye," but any normal human would be hopeless trying to communicate with Maeryn.

Today he needed help taking asphalt that had been ripped up from his back yard, to the dump. I'm not sure what it was with the previous owners of houses along this street, but paving over the back yard seemed to be a common theme.

Since Maeryn was still in town (Liza being at camp, and Kate being at the UPA's Board of Directors annual strategic planning meeting), Mike needed a babysitter during his dump run. He brought her over, we chatted, then he left. As he was stepping away, I had approximately nine seconds to distract her enough that she didn't realize the last person in her family had left, and although he was coming back, she had only my shoulders to cling to.

So, distract I did!

Realizing we had no toys for her to munch on, I tossed her into the air a few times (she's heavy - that kid is dense!), then wandered over to her house to find toys to distract her. We spent much of the time in the play room with various toys and books. She was willing to be distracted, being a Baby Klingon only momentarily.

At one point, she was playing with a My Little Pony, and dropped it. It landed between my leg and the arm of the futon we were sitting on. Maeryn reached down, grabbed it, and pulled up. The pony didn't budge, so she looked up at me and said, "It's stuck," sounding like, "Ist studt," in an unbelievably adorable little girl's voice.

I looked at her, and realized I was dumbstruck that not only had she spoken her first words to me, but it was in the form of a complete sentence. I screached in enjoyment and praised her. When Mike arrived home, it was his turn not to believe me when I told him the story.

Of course, the true test would be for something else she wants to become stuck, and have her announce that, too, is stuck. Haven't tried the experiment yet. Having too much fun tossing her into the air and listening to her giggle. I have to do that a lot now, before she becomes too heavy for me to lift.

Even when trying to compliment someone, I have no tact.

Today, at the Toil of Tears team fundraising event, Katie worked at one of the worst tasks I had listed: removing the wallpaper from the kitchen walls. Kevin commented that removing the wallpaper from the kitchen was horribly difficult, as he tried when he worked for me last summer. I can't stand painting over wallpaper (or painting over wallpaper over paint over wallpaper over wallpaper over paint over wallpaper), so off it needed to come.

And Katie went to it with gusto, removing over half the wallpaper by the time she was done.

At the end of the day, when she and Keith and Danger were getting ready to leave, I thanked her for all her help, then commented to Kris, "Katie did the crappiest job."

I wanted to die right then. Instead, I made things worse.

"Uh, I mean she did the worst job ever."

Crap!

"That's not what I meant. I meant the job she did was really bad."

Argh!

"The task she chose to do sucks. It's a horrible task. She did it spectacularly, but it was a crappy task. Yes, that's what I'm trying to say."

Sigh.

Worst compliment I have ever given.

Kris was working late tonight, so I wandered over to Mike's for pizza. We watched a tivo'd version of Hustle that he had, ate pizza and lounged around with Mike and Maeryn. During most of the show, Maeryn was holding onto the edge of the couch and walking back and forth along it, demonstrating she knew how to walk, she just chose not to demonstrate such talents to the giants known as not-Mom.

At one point, she was at the end of the couch where Mike's feet were. She reached up, grabbed his foot, and shoved one of his big toes into her mouth.

I exclaimed, "Ewwww! She has your toe in her mouth!"

Mike looked down, and casually commented, "Yeah, she does that someti... YEH-OWWWWWW!"

Uh huh. She does that sometimes, eh? Does she always chomp down, too?