Daddy's Truck

Wasn't too long ago that LittleNortherner loved his Daddy's old truck. He liked to sit in the driver's seat and pretend to steer with that big old wheel. He jumped at any chance to go for a ride in the rusty old rumbly truck. It was cool, and he wanted to be seen in it.

That was back in the summer.

Now, in the middle of February - with temperatures consistently in the negatives, LittleNortherner doesn't want to go anywhere near that old truck. "Do we have to go in the truck? The heater doesn't work. There's no radio. The little triangle window makes a whistling noise."

Now, NorthernDaddy doesn't particularly like that whistling noise, either, but he deals with all the other stuff. Interestingly, as he was browsing old Jeep pictures on the internet, he came across this photo: 

 That's about what the truck looked like when it rolled off the assembly line - "Avocado Mist" paint (with no dents), all of the trim in place, and pretty clean looking.

Compare to present-day:  total hack paint job, stuff falling off all over, and generally ragged-looking.

No wonder that LittleNortherner wants to ride in Mommy's car...

Clean Your Room!

NorthernDaddy just wanted to share this picture:

Such a nice kid's room, right? 

NorthernDaddy thinks that all parents know the true picture. Just out of the frame, there is a disaster zone. Foam swords, stuffed animals, and books are all mixing it up with dirty socks, toy cars, and art supplies. There are tokens from board games hiding under the dresser, a handmade hula hoop/flute combo is hanging from the bookcase, and the LEGOs are just plain taking over. (Not to mention the gigantic "storage room" crafted from a washing machine carton.) The only reason that the bed is kinda made up is that NorthernDaddy just couldn't take the jumbled blankets any more.

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This room needs straightening up. No, it needs a good cleaning. Scratch that; it needs a professional hurricane clean-up company to visit. 

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Anyone want to guess how long it takes LittleNortherner to clean his room this weekend?

Stacks

Vermonters are weird.

Specifically, Vermonters are weird because they have a tendency to stack things...like rocks. Walk any hiking trail in the state, peer into riverbeds, or drive the dirt roads; you're pretty much guaranteed to spot a tall stack of rocks.

Beautiful photo belonging to awayfortheweekend.blogspot.com.

Stacking rocks seems a little weird to NorthernDaddy. He's got too many other things to do when he's down at the river: fish, swim, skip stones. Definitely not stacking rocks.

LittleNortherner is the only native Vermonter in the house. Stacking rocks...stacking things seems to be in a Woodchuck's blood. Coming home from work, NorthernDaddy will find things like this stack of game pieces (in his chair, no less).

Who does stuff like this? Does LittleNortherner have too much free time? Should he be handed some extra chores to curb this stacking habit? 

Is there a twelve-step program for people who obsessively stack?

Visitors

NorthernDaddy is trying to remember how this blog thing works....There was some a lot of difficulty uploading photos to this blog in the last few months. There's no official word on the cause, but NorthernDaddy suspects that *oogle might be messing with *icrosoft's market share by blocking uploads that use Internet Explorer. So, this blog has switched to using Chrome for updates - and it's worked so far: photo uploads are rocketing compared to the past.

So....the Northerns put up a trail cam in the driveway. It was hooked to the tree out front for about a month. NorthernDaddy put it up there as a possible evidence collector due to a rash of property crimes in nearby neighborhoods, but there hasn't been a burglary at the Northerns' house yet, so it's not collecting valuable evidence to hand to the police.

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It is collecting photos of the various animals that visit the yard on a regular basis....

This guy spends most of his days in the Northerns' yard. There are many pictures of him on the trail cam.

Darn squirrel heading towards the house! Hope he decided to stay out of the attic and inside of his tree this winter.

This ugly beast shows up on the camera every.single.day.  

What're you looking at, punk?

Time to get that trapping license and order some conibears...