Quince problems, poison ivy, pizza points, and pumpkins!

Yesterday was an interesting day to say the least. Jay and I decided to take a day to ourselves and went to an area called Muir Valley. It is a little off the beaten path and you can't hear any cars from in that Valley, which is not always standard around here with crags like Roadside and Military Wall. The drive to it goes up over a hill and I finally took the time to check my voicemail since I have no coverage here at Miguel's, but on the hill I do. I had 9 messages. Two were unfortunately from my neighbors back in Exeter alerting me that the Police were at my house (last weekend) and apparently there had been some domestic violence. NOT GOOD to say the least. I did talk to one of the tenants yesterday and she denies it, but her husband is still in jail and I have yet to get my November rent. Just proves that there is always something to stress out about. I've not let it get to me too much though, we'll be back there in less than two months and I'm sure we can work something out. If all goes to hell, I can cover the rent until then. I think my biggest concern is that they have children and I hate to think about how all this effects the kids. After spending about an hour on the phone with my tenant and my neighbor, we headed to the rocks and proceeded to have our best day yet. Jay, unfortunately, sliced his finger open in a crack early on, but I cleaned it out and taped it up and he climbed all afternoon on it anyway. We did a lot of hard routes and I was really happy with my climbing and we finished up just as the rain started. A good old fashioned Midwestern thunderstorm broke out and we got a little wet on our hike out, but it was beautiful and powerful and a great end to a fantastic day, all tenant issues aside. Jay and I are doing so well in our little confined space and we even ran the heater last night and watched a movie. Mmmm. Unemployment and adventure, what a life we have!

I am doomed to get poison oak and poison ivy for the rest of my life. I vividly remember my dad putting little cotton balls soaked with clorox on my legs as a child while sitting on the orange kitchen counter tops and not enjoying it but hoping that the itching might subside. For those of you who have never had it, be thankful, it itches like you wouldn't believe and it always seems to be worse in the middle of the night when all you want to do is sleep. Here at the Red I haven't been trying all that hard to avoid it, because Brutus doesn't avoid it, and I'm not going to avoid him completely, so what's the point? Also, I had it pretty bad in the spring and I usually stay somewhat immune for a while. Not the case this year. What's interesting is that I got a small spot of it one of the first days I was here on my left arm. The next day it developed into a larger spot on my left arm and another couple on my right arm... progressing in the same way that it had in the spring. It has continued to spread (to my hips another place that I wouldn't have likely been exposed and the same place it was in the spring), and tempting as the Clorox treatment is, I started a prednisone taper last night. Thankfully it was the first night in about five that I didn't wake up scratching incessantly. Bonus is that I woke up with lots of energy and cooked Jay pancakes with pear sauce, took out the trash, and now am updating the blog even though I should be totally drained from everything I climbed yesterday. Steroids baby, who needs meth? Hopefully when we leave here I will get to wash the Brutus and stop being exposed to the damn rhus toxicendron and maybe I'll be so lucky to get it again in the spring. I tried homeopathic rhus tox, no luck.

We devised a point system for the climbs we do to "earn" ourselves pizza and the local soda, Ale8one, a Kentucky ginger ale. The night before Halloween we had pizza, which we had earned, and then we had it again the day after Halloween, which we didn't earn but we got on credit from ourselves. After yesterday we made up for our credit pizza and then some, so we had pizza again last night and we still have some credit! Avocado and roasted garlic are some of our favorite toppings, but they have pasta, rice, portobella, jalepenos, artichokes, spicy sausage, bacon...I could go on. Stop by Miguel's for the pizza if you are ever in Slade, KY.



Halloween was a good time and it is the most I've ever seen Jay drink. He was actually being social and starting conversations! We did dress as Ninjas with our friends Jeremy and Kim and Jay even carved #5, our pumpkin Ninja. We laughed a lot and, although not too many other people were in costume, we made the best of things and even recruited our friend Zoe to dress as a Ninja and come to party with us. We had weapons (Jay's was a bow and arrow), and we even had some ninja skills, but I'm sure any true Ninjas would have been horrified at our display. One of the best happenings was Miguel's wife, Susan, could have sworn she knew who we were, but couldn't figure it out. She was a bit miffed but kept trying to discern who were by just our eyes. She was a bit freaked out and I heard her say several times, "there are ninjas out there". Hehe. Good stuff.