About 10pm last night, there was a knock on my door. I’m a little nervous answering the door at that time, so had a large teen boy answer with me.

It was the Poulsbo police.

My boys – including my sorta-kinda-adopted extra boy – were all home, watching tv, so while I flashed on the police delivering horrific news to me this spring, my brain didn’t dwell there long.

These gentlemen were looking for a runaway girl with a warrant out for her arrest. At this point, all three boys in the teen boy squad were behind me at the door, so it was pretty funny. “Sorry, officer, we’re kind of an all-boys household here.” I say boys, but they’re 17, 18 and 20 and all over 6′ tall, so really, they’re men.

The officer asked, “Are you sure that there’s no girl upstairs in a bedroom or anything?” I obligingly went and checked – no stray girl in any room or closet. My guys have done stupid things but concealing a girl in their room has not yet made the list.

The teen boy squad had never heard of the girl. Apparently she’s a couple of years younger.

The police indicated they’d received a report that she’d been at our address a couple of hours ago. Huh? The guys had been at youth group at church and I’d been home alone. (Ah, peace!)

After some back and forth, we determined that she’d made a call from a cell phone, and the cell number she called from was Zach’s over a year ago. Somewhere there’s an old billing record still tying it to our house.

News flash! Cell phone billing data is not useful (except for billing), just like it isn’t useful for E911 purposes. Cell phone locator data or GPS data would have been great for detective work, but the police didn’t have that information.

The police thanked us, and we them, and they headed off about their business. I hope they find the girl, and that she’s safe.

I was proud of the teen boy squad; they were uniformly respectful, helpful and positive with the police. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; it’s one of the benefits of living with a clear conscience and a good attitude.

This has been a crazy week and I’ve been completely neglecting my blog. (Twitter is a bit easier because I can find time for 140 characters!)

• Monday: Work all day, fly to Anchorage in the evening

• Tuesday: Get up at oh-dark-thirty for a project deployment, spend the morning providing customer support onsite, then the afternoon prepping for the next one.
• Wednesday: Get up at even earlier oh-dark-thirty for a second project deployment, then go back to bed. (Yeah!) Go in late, coffee in hand.
• Thursday: Work on budgets for next year’s projects. Fly from Anchorage, to Fairbanks, to Anchorage, where my flight to snowy, icy, Seattle is delayed. Make it to Seattle by midnight, and crash on my kind sister’s couch.
• Friday: Creep home slowly on icy roads, work a couple of hours, then take boys back over to Seattle to train station. Wander through awesome indie bookstore Elliott Bay Books, navigate skating rink roads to dinner date at Etta’s Seafood. (Mmm, crab cakes!)

This morning, after coffee and green chile omelets, I’m being lazy. If I could go *nowhere*, I would, but we’re expecting Snowpocalypse v.2, this time with 2 feet of snow and then freezing rain. I need to get groceries today if I’m going to get them at all. All in all, we’re supposed to be socked in with snow and freezing rain for the next week.

I can think of worse things than to be snowed in with my husband while my children are out of town.

Happy stormy solstice, all!

We just finished stripping, sanding and refinishing somewhere between 800-1000 square feet of deck. (We have a wonderful deck, it’s like an outside room in summer.)

I confess, I had three hardworking guys on that task who will be very sore tomorrow, so my job ended up being more coordination and less back muscle. I spent part of the day pruning and tying up tomatoes and roses and weeding garden beds.

I actually have lots of help from our teens on yard upkeep – they mow, weed, and do bigger projects for extra money. When they leave home it’s going to hit us hard.

I think our empty nest home needs to be a condo, one much closer to Bryan’s office. I’d like plenty of room, a garage, a housekeeping service and a nice deck or patio. We can have a ‘garden’ of 4 or 5 containers of flowers and tomatoes, a comfy patio table and a grill, and hopefully a bonus great view.

I’m not quite sure how this will work with dog ownership, but other folks do it. I would prefer to spend my weekends relaxing, rather than working on the DIY and home/yard upkeep projects.

My thermometer tells me it’s 90.3 degrees in the shade here at 4pm – and Poulsbo is a marine microclimate, cooler than most surrounding areas that are further inland or less shady.

I don’t even want to think about how hot my second story, southwest facing bedroom is this afternoon!

Bryan and I have been looking for a portable air conditioner for several days, and everywhere we go, they’re sold out. I don’t want a window air conditioner because then I’d lose my window functionality. I can’t see spending $3500 on whole house A/C when we only need it 10-12 days a year here, and then only in a couple rooms of our house, upstairs facing southwest. The cost per use equation just does not make sense.

On top of the heat issue, my allergies are miserable this summer. Having the windows wide open and all fans on high means I’m constantly sneezing, sniffling and sinusy. My HEPA filter does me absolutely no good.

After some creative research, we finally found this portable room air conditioner in stock at Circuit City. We’re going to grab a salad for dinner tonight and then pick it up

Hopefully we’ll sleep in a cool, allergen free room tonight!

Today was an absolutely beautiful spring day in the Northwest – sunny, warm, slight breeze – heavenly. The thermometer hit 60 mid-afternoon and I put on sunscreen.

Bryan was stuck inside teaching a class today, but Zach and I spent the day on yardwork.

First we went and picked up stone from a local landscape supply place to edge Zach’s pond & waterfall project – his “personal swampland”. We chose about a half ton of mica-spangled slate, plus some additional chunky sandstone for building the waterfall. My back will not be speaking to me again for some time.

Then he mowed, and I worked on getting our in-ground irrigation system ready for the season. I moved a sprinkler head, installed some new higher power sprinklers where the standard ones weren’t reaching well enough, and capped one sprinkler off where we’re getting too much water.

The dogs were fascinated by my digging – if they could figure out how to use a shovel without opposable thumbs, they would! They ate dirt, chased worms, bugs and shadows, and had a great time supervising.

I planted tomatoes and pansies (one of my favorite flowers) in containers – and liberally sprinkled edges and shady areas with Slug-go. We should have beautiful iris and hostas this year if I can keep the slugs out of them. I weeded a couple of garden beds, a never-ending battle.

Then I helped Zach with his pond. I started by making him clean up his jobsite! What is it about teens and projects? They don’t seem to mind working among chaos, and making more as they go. I started setting up his waterfall, building a low retaining wall to back it and aligning the weir with the pond. Our pond liner should arrive Monday and we want to be completely ready to lay it.

At that point, my back went on strike, protesting every time I bent or lifted, so I called it a day. Middle age sucks.

I got a hunk o’ meat ready for the grill along with some fresh asparagus, and we fixed a great barbecue dinner when Bryan got home.

I’m so glad it’s spring!