Spring Break -- Not Too Bad (So Far)...

I figured me and Lilly would have killed each other by now, at home together on Spring Break, but so far, so good.  Lilly gets bored really fast, and nothing sensible seems to hold her attention for very long.  She usually prefers to remain perpetually active; turning cartwheels, doing flips, jumping around -- basically every kind of activity that's great for staying physically fit, but that also grates on everyone's nerves like you wouldn't believe.  But thankfully, the weather has been pretty decent so far this week, so we have been spending most of our time outside (that is, after we finally drag our butts out of bed at 11:00 in the mornings)!  :P  Maybe tomorrow morning I'll do a little better in the getting-out-of-bed department...the cat meowed me awake this morning around 7:30, demanding her breakfast.  But after I fed her, crawled back into bed like a zombie, and fell back asleep, I ended up having some really weird dreams.  One was that I had some kind of extremely sticky blue-green colored putty on my hands, and that it wasn't coming off, no matter how hard I tried.  I rubbed and rubbed, but it only smeared around and got worse.  Ehh!  And then I had another dream that I opened up a bag of dry dog food, and hidden in amongst the kibble was the handle of a broken comb, baby clothes, and all kinds of weird toys (one toy --a Barbie doll-- was particularly memorable; it was pieced together from a bunch of other Barbie dolls, Frankenstein-style).  Its head had a Latina-type complexion, its body was white, and the legs were African-American!!!  Where that came from in my psyche, or what it symbolizes, if anything, I'll never know!  O__o  LOL!

Anyway, Monday we went down to the trampoline to let Lilly jump and flip some of her limitless energy out.  Then we noticed that some Canada geese were down at the lake.  I zoomed my silly little camera in as far as it would go, and if you look closely in the center of the frame, you can just barely see one of the geese:

So then Lilly decided she wanted to go walking down to the lake to go on an "adventure" and look for "treasure".  So off we went, empty Wal-Mart sack in tow in which to collect our treasures.

The geese didn't really like for us to get too close to them, as you can see from this lousy video I made of them:

And here's a lousy picture that I made of the three geese, before they briskly swam away (again, they're in the center of the frame):

After we inadvertently chased the geese away, we continued onward, scanning the lakebed and banks for treasure.  Treasure to us is basically anything which most normal people would probably categorize as garbage.  Most interesting of all the treasures we usually find are bits and pieces of broken pottery, ceramics, and glassware that came from old homesteads.  This is a "fake lake" (man-made) which was created back in the early '40s by damming a river.  It was originally created for the purpose of flood control, but in the '50s, they added a generator to generate electricity.  (Thanks, Wikipedia...I've lived here all my life and never really knew all the details)!  :)  They drain the lake down in the fall and winter (it ends up looking more like a giant mudhole than a lake), and they let the lake fill back up in the spring and summer, so that's why it still isn't completely full of water right now.

Anyway, back when they created this lake, they simply flooded the water in over top of numerous old homesteads, and you can still find many artifacts from those old homes washed up on the shores.  Pretty cool if you ask me.  It's a great way to pretend to be an archaeologist.  Even if you are 36 years old.  :D  Shhhhh...I'm cleverly disguised as a semi-responsible adult...!  ;)  

Lilly wanted to stop and play at this certain area of the lake that has a lot of big rocks in a stream, so we did.  And she actually wanted me to take a bunch of pictures of her (which is very rare), so of course I jumped at the opportunity.  Here's a couple of them:

Yesterday was more of the same.  More jumping on the trampoline:

And more playing in the stream.  But this time Lilly was a little more daring, playing her own version of that TV show, "Wipeout":

And here's a picture of Lilly taking a break on our way back home after she was finished playing in the stream:

Today Lilly was ornery, and didn't want for me to take any pictures or video of her at all, so I don't have the proof.  But believe it or not, today Lilly the Polar Bear actually went swimming in that freezing cold stream.  Not for long, but long enough to suit her!

As we were starting the long walk over to the place with the big rocks to let Lilly play and swim, we noticed an SUV driving down the little gravel road that runs parallel with the edge of the lake (you can see the road a little in the photo above).  The SUV stopped and parked, and the driver (a man --if you can call him that--) got out and walked to the passenger's side of the SUV, and threw something down off the edge of the road, down onto the bank of the lake.  That REALLY pissed me off.  I mean, it's perfectly fine if it's something like a banana peel or an apple core, or something natural that can rot, but if you really want to piss me off fast, either 1) litter, or 2) leave your shopping cart in the middle of the parking lot, instead of placing it in a cart return.  GRR!  >:{  And if I ever catch you littering AND abandoning your shopping cart in the middle of a parking lot simultaneously, I will simply implode into a black hole, never to be seen again.  I can NOT abide shoddy people who do awful things like that!

But anyway, after I spotted the man potentially littering (Lilly thought it looked like it might be a banana peel that the guy was throwing, but why wouldn't he have just thrown it out of his own car window into the road or the ditch, instead of taking the trouble to get out of his car, walk around to the passenger side of the car, and pitch it down the bank toward the lake?), I started cautiously walking slightly closer to see what other sketchy things he was gonna do.  He got back in the driver's side and just sat there in his SUV for quite some time.  Me and Lilly sat on a log a good safe distance away, and I was sure to make it quite obvious that I was watching him.  If somebody is crappy enough to litter, then who knows what other crappy things(s) they'll do.  Eventually, the man started coughing and hacking really violently for a long time.  It was so weird and gross.  Like, hacking to the point of gagging.  And this is gross, but he also hocked and spit loogies at least two or three times during the whole hack-fest.  I don't really know much of anything about drugs, but my first thought was that I wondered if maybe he was sitting there in his car doing some kind of drugs.  Then I remembered that it's the start of allergy season, so maybe he just had really bad allergies, and that's what was making him hack and cough so bad.  Lilly wondered if maybe he just had a really bad cold.  Who knows.  Anyway, me and Lilly just stayed there sitting on that log, watching the SUV, until eventually, it suddenly cranked up, and began backing up all the way back up the road from whence it came.  WEIRRRRD.  It never did come back while we were there (thank goodness).

Here's a picture of what the SUV sort of looked like (especially in color -- two-tone maroon or burgundy with tan), in case it ever kidnaps anybody.  Just so ya know.  O__o

It sort of makes me wonder, if the reason they backed all the way back up the road was so that we wouldn't be able to see its license plate?  SKETCH.  Anyway, the appearance of the stupid coughing/hacking/litterbug dude put a little bit of a damper on mine and Lilly's fun time at the lake today.  Then, just a little a while after the sketchy SUV finally left, two teenage girls went walking down that gravel road and back once.  Weird.  Gee, I wonder if the yucky dude in the SUV would have grabbed those girls if me and Lilly hadn't have been there, and if the timing had been right?  With all the freako kidnappings and murders that have happened in this community over the past several years, it kind of makes you wonder.  *shudder*

Anyway, as you can imagine, Lilly got really cold really fast in her attempt to go swimming, so after I had my own fun making a little boat out of a bait container, a stick, some rocks, part of a milk jug, and a Gatorade bottle wrapper (hey, the litter was already there, so what they hey), we high-tailed it back home to have a picnic.

I had thought about trying to look and see if I could find whatever it was that sketchy dude had thrown out, but I couldn't get to the other side of the stream easily, the bank that he threw the thing down on was really steep, and there was quite a bit more litter that was already there (so I might have had trouble telling the old junk from the new thing), plus I didn't want him to catch me looking for whatever it was, if he happened to come back.  Especially if it was something bad.  Yuck.

Anyway, tomorrow it's supposed to rain all day long and be cold, so no going outside for me and Lilly.  :(  Perhaps a blanket-fort in the living room is in order.  *sigh*...