Jordy Baby

He's not in the Closet anymore. He's living in Hallmark or something lame like that, butt Jordan Kattenhorn spent a whole year holding down the left backside of the house. Alban and I used to harass him about his sedentary lifestyle. Jordan studied like he meant it, spending much of his time sitting on his tush with a book open. When he wasn't studying, he was cooking in the bottom kitchen, much to Alban's dislike. Not because Jordan's food wasn't good, but because Jordan's food was healthy. He even made a healthy variation of biscuits, that were really more like buns.

Now we know what all that was about, Jordan was just getting ready to bare it all just before he graduated.

The pathfinder law is for me to ...

I remember in 1080p clarity an image from my childhood. I suppose that's not too unusual, except that it's not an image of something I actually saw but of something I imagined. In Sabbath school one morning I recall imagining an image of a dark blue soft-bound bible sitting on a dark shelf covered in dust and cobwebs. Every once in a while that image comes to my mind, usually when I think of neglect – the state in which this blog has been for several weeks.

Why the Pathfinder logo? For some reason, whenever that image would show up in my thinking, I would immediately attach it to a tenant of the Pathfinder law. But I just realized it doesn't really fit. The Pathfinder Law is for me to ...

do my honest part

care for my body

keep a level eye

be courteous and obedient

walk softly in the sanctuary

keep a song in my heart

and go on God's errands

nope, nothing there about neglect, but I'm as sure snake skin that a Pathfinder wouldn't neglect his communal blog, and I think it's time someone add that to the Pathfinder Law.

Poison Clinics

Spring-like weather outside is bringing the House to life, or bringing things to life outside the House and they're sneaking in through the floorboards. Whatever the case, THERE ARE ANTS IN OUR HOUSE. Those blurry little black objects in the picture are none other than the elemental-acts-of-God themselves. (Anyone remember Leiningen versus the Ants from high school? Its a short story of a proud plantation owner defending his turf from a blood-thirsty colony of migrant ants.) Although there are several differences between Leiningen's situation and ours, three things are unchanged: ants inherent desire to infiltrate and destroy, man's inherent desire to fight, and ... actually, two parallels was a stretch, three would be silly.

Our first line of defense: ant baits. When these weapons first arrived Jacque referred to them as "little ant houses," Cody called them "poison clinics." Both names have some truth. The term "ant house" is misleading; the baits are like ant houses in the sense that they're structures made specially for ants, but unlike a house, these units are not designed for ants to live in them. The term "poison clinics" is a bit cruel; they're kind of like poison clinics in the sense that they are full of poison, but 'clinic' sounds so Hitler – opposed to the Treaties of Versailles somehow.

Exterminating one of God's creatures might be difficult for some people to agree with regardless of the method or mode. Please don't misunderstand, I've watched the Discovery Channel as much as any Adventist kid growing up; and I've seen Dream Work's real-life documentary Antz. I would be woefully amiss if I didn't say ants have hopes and dreams like every other insect, including us. But when someone comes into your house uninvited and starts carrying off the crumbs from your kitchen counter to their queen and all her sons, lethal force is the only solution.

The purpose of this blog.

"That place is such a piece," Alban said last spring as we were looking for a place to live, "let's look for something else." Three months, four sponges, two trips to the dump, and one dead mouse later and his attitude has changed. "This place is such a piece, but it's also awesome at the same time."

The House in darkness

It's a humble structure. Some might call it a dirty double wide, a fancy box with chipped paint and moldy potential. Others might call it a tribute to life itself, a symbol of the American dream. Still others are unsure.

This blog is designed to confound the confusion. It was specifically bred to dig through the mounds of false rumors covering The West Whitman Estate to uncover the skeletons of truth that lie beneath the crawl space.

Creepy skeletons notwithstanding, the point is ... no one knows; you can't tame nature. Sure you can destroy it and dam it and what not, but the minute you stop respecting it ... boom! You're neck deep in human sewage. Kind of like The Estate. It never ceases to surprise. As David so eloquently put it one night at family dinner, "Living here is like constantly being on the verge of a tickle fight." And no one wants to be on the wrong side of that exchange.