Neurofeedback

I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociative disorder a few years ago. It's been a long and frustrating journey not only for me, but especially my family. I think the word for them would be 'painful'.

In addition to frequent counseling (which has helped - I was lucky to find an amazing counselor from the start), I've been prescribed tons of medicine to help manage the issues I face. After nearly two years of being medicated, I can honestly say that I've never noticed an improvement or actual benefit to any of the medicines. It seems that we're always searching for the right chemical cocktail - the correct combination of both type and dosage and we always fall short. It's been frustrating because while none of the drugs have seemed to do any good, there's been no shortage of side-effects. I think the most frustrating is constantly being tired in the morning. Almost like walking in a fog or haze. The thought of being on drugs the rest of my life was rather depressing in and of itself. There had to be a different option out there.

A few months ago, my wife went to a conference (or seminar) and met a lady who does neurofeedback for a living. I'd heard about it for the treatment of ADD and ADHD. My wife got to talking with this lady about all of my symptoms. She offered to begin treatment. I was kind of skeptical, but had absolutely nothing to lose. She said that neurofeedback helps in that most situations, the 'retraining' of the brain (I don't remember her exact words) is permanent, the brain remembers (one exception being a child going through puberty or new trauman).

It's kind of interesting to watch the process, watch the information on the screen as it happens. As a computer geek, I find it all fascinating. The biggest change I noticed - which was almost immediate - was the internal drive/desire to accomplish things. It was like waking up with a to-do (or honey-do) list at the forefront of my thoughts. For the first time in my life, I was self-motivated to initiate, start and finish projects around the house. This has never happened before.

For me, this change has been incredible. For the first time in my life, I'm motivated to be productive. If I gain nothing else from the neurofeedback, it's all been worth it. I enjoy the satisfaction of doing a job around the house, doing it right and finishing up and moving on. I wish this had happened 40 years ago. There's been no other change in my life that I can attribute to this sudden urge to be productive.

I told her about this sudden change and she hadn't heard of neurofeedback having that effect, but wasn't suprised either. Also, the depression and anxiety have lessened somewhat too. That part is taking longer, but the results are still better than what medication has been providing. I can't wait to talk to my psychiatrist about the neurofeedback. It'll be interesting to see what his take is on it, but I'm sure he'll scoff at neurofeedback as a solution to some of the things that currently plague me. My therapist was thrilled when I told him last month. While he had heard of neurofeedback, he wasn't that familiar with it so I tried to explain it to him (doing a lousy job), and he was all for it saying, "Whatever it takes."

We fear or mock that which we don't know.

It's like when I was in a car-wreck in 2003. The diagnosis and treatment differed depending on the doctor. Some would scoff at using a chirpractor (if the injury was mechanical in nature - wouldn't it make sense that a possible remedy would be mechanical in nature as well?), others would chastise me for using heat on my neck for the pain, while others would warn me against using cold-packs. Depending on the day, sometimes cold would work, sometimes heat would work to help alleviate the pain. I got put on all different kinds of pain-killers, muscle-relaxors and anti-inflammatory medicines, all with little effect. What did end up helping more than the drugs, the therapy, the hot/cold, the chiropractor was simply getting one of those memory foam pillows from Select Comfort. This was on the advice of a friend who'd been in an accident and found that these pillows help. It's nice to make it through the night with NO neck and shoulder pain.

In addition to the neurofeedback, she also let me borrow a set of what we simply call 'The Roshi'. It's a set of goggles with LED lights in them attached to a small box containing the circuitry, controls and battery. They're simple to use, put them on, adjust the intensity to that of your liking and relax.

For me, using the Roshi has helped dramatically with my sleep. For the first time in years, I am able to sleep through the night. Gone are the nightmares I used to experience. Roshi simply allows me to make it through the night having had a much better night of sleep.

My 8 year old son also uses the Roshi and he's able to get a much better night of sleep. Also gone are his nightmares. Also, his sleeplessness is gone. If he does wake up, he usually relocates to our couch and is back asleep.

Here's some information I found at http://www.roshi.com/. I don't pretend to understand it all, but I'm a believer!

The Personal ROSHI Complex NeuroStimulation
System doesn't use the EEG, for its pickup, as does
other generations of ROSHI. Its complex flicker
is programmed to provide the brain with a "mythical"
picture, that of a brain totally at rest and attentive similar
to the brain of a Zen monk, in chips, as it were. ROSHI
induces the brain towards its "listening", not
talking, state.

When the brain is encouraged to "act natural",
it will become natural, given the proper operating
conditions. The pROSHI 'biases' the brain, towards
its native operating conditions, to which other
NFB trainings can be added, contemporaneously, along
the way.

Your brain, upon seeing this 'neurodata', will do its
best to clear up its internal errors and hangups, to
duplicate it. One can use their own NFB system, to
monitor and verify it. The pROSHI data does
not bleed thru, to "contaminate" the real EEG output.
One would only need to monitor and verify its
powerful results.

What this means, is that one can train the Gamma
protocol, using the HEG, Freeze Framer
or Wild Divine, for instance, while the pROSHI is quieting the
brain's baseline, from which it operates.

Playing Taps

Taps is a tune that has always struck me on an emotional level. My father retired after 27 years in the Army, his father served in the Navy (and was stationed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941) and I retired in 2005 after having served in the Air Force and Iowa Air National Guard. Taps was played at my father's funeral in 2005, forever cementing the importance and solemnity of that tune into my conscience. I had managed to 'hold it together' at my father's funeral up until the rifle-shots and the playing of Taps.

My 14-year old son had the opportunity today to play Taps on his trumpet at the funeral of a friend of my in-laws. Apparently, the VFW Post in the small town where my in-laws lived couldn't find a bugler for the funeral and so my father-in-law offered to ask my son. My son was more than willing to help out even though he didn't know this man.

When he first started playing trumpet in the 5th grade, he learned and played Taps for a class-project. It was neat. Over the past 4 years, he's played it on occaision for practice and for his duties as bugler for his Boy Scout troop, so when the call came earlier this week, he was ready.

My wife contacted his trumpet teacher last night to ask for any advice which may be helpful. His teacher was more than willing to offer some advice as he's played Taps many times in the past. The advice was great. We spent time looking on the internet for sound-clips of Taps being played so my son could get a feel for the tempo and feel. We found some which helped and he practiced a couple of times.

We also came across the story of the bugler who played Taps at the funeral of JFK and of the 'broken note'. It was interesting to read about and even more interesting to listen to.

We actually had to pull my son out of marching band practice to go to the funeral. The band teacher was very understanding and supportive of letting our son go for a few hours. My son admitted to being a little nervous - even though he's performed dozens of times in front of much larger crowds. After a 45 minute drive to my in-laws house, a quick change and a quick warm-up on the trumpet, he and my wifed walked across the street to the town cemetery. We got him in postion 15 minutes prior to the start, was given the instructions, schedule, etc. and he waited.

When the time came, the VFW Color Guard snapped to attention, did their three volleys of rifle-shots and then my son started playing Taps a few seconds later. He did it flawlessly, turned 180 degrees and played it again at a lower volume. Again, he did a great job. I was very proud as he stood their with great poise and really did a very nice job, giving the tune and the occaision its proper respect.

As a final military tribute to this friend, I'm sure his family will remember with pride the military portion of the graveside service.

We had to leave immediately to get him back to marching-band practice. He left, feeling very good about the service he'd rendered and very pleased with his performance. I'd asked him years ago that when it came time for my funeral, that I wanted him to be the one to play Taps.

Year Round School

We started our two boys (kindergarten and 3rd grade) in year-round school this year. If we hadn't, it would've meant two different schools with identical drop-off/pick-up times. That's not a scenario that we wanted to deal with. Plus, with our oldest child starting high-school this year, it would've been more trouble than it's worth.

My wife and I met with the principal (both at different times) to discuss the school, the schedule, etc. and we fell in love with it. My wife - who used to teach - loved the school, the cirriculum, the schedule, etc. She couldn't find any red flags.

Getting the two boys to go back to school early was merely a matter of convincing them that while everyone else is in school in October and March, they got two extra weeks of during those months. That's all it took. Knowing that they get to go on vacation in a couple of months is very exciting for them.

This is their 2nd full week and they love it. The came out the first day exclaiming, "This was our best day in our lives!" The enthusiasm is still there. We've already had an intake conference for our third-grader which went well. The information we get home via email or what the kids bring home keeps us fully informed. There's a huge involvement of parents at the school. In fact, I'm volunteering in a few weeks to help put in some new playground equipment. I can't wait.

My kindergartner had his first field trip a few days ago and went to a dairy farm. He had a great time. Today, they're taking all the kids in the school to the Iowa State Fair. That's a lot of kids (K-5) - holy cow, it' makes my eyes bleed. I can't wait to hear all about it.

Omaha!

So we headed to Omaha on Sunday to visit a friend of my wife's and her family. It's been nearly a decade since we all got together so it was good that we finally got to go. Plus, we had the new van to transport us. Coincidentally, this friend was having problems with their PC and my wife volunteered my services to help fix it. The friend wanted to call Geek Squad to come out to take a look, but we told her to wait. No sense in dropping $249 if you don't have to.

It was fun to see them. Our boys and their boys got along famously and were basically on autopilot for the 5 hours we visited. They fixed us a great lunch and right after, I got to work on their PC.

It was the B.S.O.D - or Blue Screen of Death. It was some STOP error reporting an "Unmountable Boot Volume". I tried booting into the various safe-modes, tried booting to the command prompt and it always came up with the BSOD. I tried booting to the utility partition of Dell which did work, but didn't have enough time to wait to run all of the hard-disk tests.

I asked for the original disks that come with their Dell system 2 years ago. They had most of them, but not the Windows XP setup CD. That's the one I needed. They had the install CD's for the modem, printer, monitor and others. Just not XP. All I needed was to get a copy of chkdsk.exe and see what it could find.

Fortunately, they called a neighbor who had an XP Home install CD which they would let us borrow. Booting to the CD, I was able to expand chkdsk.exe onto the C drive (curious because I couldn't do a 'dir' or anything else for that matter on the C drive.) Chkdsk reported some errors so I ran it with the /f/r switches and let it go. It got to about 50% rather quickly and then took about 45 minutes to get to around 75% at which point it reset back to 50%.

Kind of like watching paint dry, but it eventually finished.

I rebooted and XP came up perfectly. They had all sorts of problems - their Norton Antivirus hadn't been updated in quite a while, had all sorts of spyware/adware, PC was running very slow. I did all the updates (Norton, Windows), downloaded and ran Ad-Aware, turned off all unnecesary services, uninstalled a bunch of crap that had been downloaded and installed, defragged the C drive, monkeyed with their virtual memory, removed a lot of temp files. After all that a bunch of reboots and a final scandisk and it was working like new.

They were thrilled. I was glad to help them out and even happier they didn't get stuck with a $249 bill from Geek Squad. I should've charged them $200 and we'd both come out ahead, but it's nice to help out. In return, his wife promised that her husband would come over and help frame and sheet-rock our basement when the time comes. That works!

This is the 2nd Dell computer that I've had to deal with very similar hard-drive issues. Both were Maxtor drives.

While I've never personally dealt with Geek Squad, I have heard horror-stories about their service and end-results. Yikes!

So, I got to do the computer-geek thing, my wife got to catch-up with her friend, my kids were worn out by playing with their boys - it was a nice little day-trip.

On the way out of town, we stopped by the Offutt AFB BX and commisary to do some shopping. We get some killer deals on food at the Commisary and occaisionaly score at the BX. If nothing else, shopping at the BX means not having to pay sales-tax! That rocks! That in and of itself would not pay for the 2-hour drive from Des Moines, but since we were in the area, why not? We brought the cooler especially to put the refrigerated items in to keep cool. Worked great.

We tentatively planned to go back later this fall and spend the entire weekend in Omaha - do the Henry Doorly Zoo and a bunch of other things. Can't wait - should be a blast!

New Van!

Well, not really a 'new' van, but we added a different van to our motor-vehicle collection over the weekend. Our 1999 Plymouth Voyager is still in pretty good shape, however, the A/C died about 3 years ago. At that time, the average estimate was $1200 to repair the A/C. The cost was so steep because whatever component was broke could only be repaired by removing the dashboard and attacking it from that route. We got this story from both the dealer and independent repair shops. Most of that $1200 would go towards labor.

So, we just put up with the lack of A/C for the past few years trying to drive it until it died. Plus, with 140,000 miles on it, we just didn't want to spend that kind of money towards fixing it. Summers sucked at times, but we managed. One of the big problems was driving in the winter - the A/C wasn't there to help get rid of the extra moisture, so we had some issues with fogging.

A non-mechanical issue of not having a van in the Iowa summers without A/C was that all five of my family were forced into riding in the Buick Century or Nissan Sentra if we wanted A/C. With 3 boys, it was mere seconds before it turned into a blood-bath in the back-seat. Rides of any duration sucked as they constanstly fought, argued, poked, prodded, tattled, smacked, pinched and annoyed eachother in every way possible. Did I mention it really sucked?

A couple of weeks ago we ran into a friend who announced they were seeling their 1999 Ford Windstar. My wife started talking with the friend who filled us in on the details. We were pretty psyched. Even though it was the same year as the Voyager, it only had 70,000 miles on it. Plus, the A/C (front and rear) work. We did a test-drive and were pleased with the way it handled, but weren't necessarily in love with the van.

We told our friends that we wanted to think about it, but if they had a chance to sell it to someone else to go for it. As the past few weeks passed, we realized that we really missed the space of a van with the comfort of A/C. I checked a few websites for reviews on the 99 Windstars and spoke with 3 other friends who own Windstars. The reviews were mixed, but the friends we spoke with love theirs.

A routine phone call between my wife and a friend of hers from college on Friday night led to a road-trip for Sunday to Omaha. The realization of 2 hours of constant fighting dampened our enthusiasm. Additionally, the realization that a planned trip to Washington State in October would be so much better in a van. We made the decision to go ahead and purchase the Ford.

A phone-call on Saturday to 'haggle' over the price (coming in $500 under what they originally wanted) and we were set to sign papers and pick it up that evening. We'd be set for our day-long road trip to Omaha on Sunday. We did the paperwork, signed the check and it was a done-deal. The process to transfer a car title pretty much sucks. It's twisted and if you've never done it before, really makes no sense. I'm sure there's logic and wisdom in there somewhere. Anyways, it was really nice to be able to have the money available to buy basically what we wanted and when we wanted to. No need to borrow money from the bank or finance it. Woo-hoo!

After we did the paperwork, I hung around and helped hang some sheetrock for about an hour and then drove the van home.

So, how do we like it? We love it! I've never owned a Ford, never dreamed of owning one, never really particularly thought of owning one so this'll be kind of an interesting experience.

Some thoughts about the van (having owned a Voyager and Caravan in the past)

1. The Ford seems HUGE and just seems 'heavy' to drive. It's not a bad thing, just different. The Voyager/Caravans seemed so much more nimble on the road. I wonder what the weight difference is?
2. The cruise-control is touchy. By that I mean that the slightest incline, the engine revs way up to keep the van at the preset speed. It's noticeable. I don't know if it's indicitave of the Windstars or just symptomatic of its age.
3. For whatever reason, it seems like I'm going 90 when I'm only going 60. Maybe it's just the size of the Windstar.
4. It's cold! That's great....for us. It was so nice to hear the kids complain about it being too cold and could we turn it down. With the rear air, each kid has a vent they can monkey with to adjust or turn off. We can control the rear air from the front or give that capability to those in back. I only wish they had right/left front passenger temp controls. We missed that.
5. We love the extra power-outlets. With a portable DVD and cell-phone chargers, having two outlets near the front rocks! One in the cargo area is great too!
6. It's got a 26 gallon fuel tank! Geez that's huge! I think our Voyager had a 17 gallon gas tank. It may be more, but I don't remember.
7. Mileage was so-so. While most of it was highway, we did about 50 miles in the city. We hate Omaha because it seems they have entirely too many stop-lights and they're always red when we show up. Mileage was roughly 20mpg. I think our Voyager got 24mpg on similar trips.
8. The ride was smooth. It felt more like driving in a big Caddilac than in a van. The bumps were really nothing at highway speeds; you just kind of slowly oscilated up and down until it stopped.
9. Controls always take some getting used to - slightly different locations, etc. No complaints though. the one funky thing was the parking brake which was located on the right-side of the driver seat on the floor - kind of like those you find on a stick-shift vehicle.
10. The radio was okay; the sound is what you'd expect - nothing 'premium' coming from those speakers. It did do great locking onto a station as we got out-of-range as we drove further away from Des Moines. Our Voyager is missing the antenna, so some radio stations just don't come in at all regardless of where you are.
11. No captains chairs in the middle. Would've been nice, but not a deal-breaker. With the flexibility of moving the rear seat to the middle position as well as moving the middle seat to either the left or right as needed, I think we gained some flexibility.
12. It's NOT green! This van is a light-metallic blue and is in great shape. Plus, it's not green! Our last 3 vehicles have turned out to be green (not intentionally). Wow, I really, really don't like green vehicles.
13. It's sounds like an M1 Abrams Tank while starting up. It kind of growls. Again, I don't know if it's a 'Ford' thing. It just sounds big. And manly. I know it's got a larger engine (3.8 liter instead of 3.3), but doubt that's the reason.

Things That Need Attention

We bought the van knowing it has some things wrong with it. We're okay with that. The previous owners were very up-front with that and we took that into consideration when we bought it.

• Will need new front brakes soon. We're cool with that. The previous owner is going to help me with that project so I can learn. I saw/assisted my brother-in-law once before, but a refesher would be great. I don't want to take any chances with brakes; it's just not worth the risk!
• Driver's window does not work. We knew that too. I like monkeying around with electrical stuff, so I'm looking forward to getting that fixed. Local repair shops quote about $150 to fix that. I think I can do it for a lot less.

Our local library has online access to an automotive repair database for FREE! It's awesome. I can login and get repair information (including wiring diagrams) so I can track down the issue/problem with the window. I've got a number of salvage yards in the area that I can go get parts should the need arise.

We're thrilled we bought it. No regrets whatsoever. Hopefully, it'll last us 4 more years - long enough to make it until my oldest graduates from high school. Hopefully.

Home Improvement - Laundry Room

I love owning my own house, but don’t necessarily love all the upkeep and maintenance that goes along with it. Toss in 3 active boys and I’ve got my work cut out for me.

I’ve been on a home-improvement kick for the past few weeks and have been busy knocking out projects that have been waiting for years - sometimes more than a decade - to get finished.

My first project was to repaint our laundry room. Our laundry room is actually in our ‘utility room’ in the basement - the place where the furnace, A/C and water heater dwell. The laundry room used to be on our first floor in a very small closet adjacent to the garage. Iowa winters being what they are - miserably cold - would prove to be a challenge for our washing machine. The outlet hose went into a pipe which was located in the wall separating the garage and laundry room. Whenever it got really cold, the pipe would freeze and any attempt to do a load of laundry would cause the outlet pipe to overflow making a mess. We tried all sorts of fixes, but never came across one that worked. Someone suggested using a kind of heated pipe wrap, but the thought of that between two studs in a wall didn’t thrill us.

Eventually, we gave up and I spent a weekend in the utility room adding everything we’d need to make the connections for the washer and dryer. Everything from cutting into existing water supply lines to add copper piping for the cold and hot water supply lines, cutting & cementing PVC pipe for the dirty water from the washer, installing a new 240 volt recepticle for the dryer, hacking a hole in the side of the house for the dryer-vent. Oh yeah, it was fun. Thank goodness to a large number of books from the library which enabled me to safely tackle the 240 volt outlet.

What was the laundry room then was ‘turned’ into a tiny 5′ x 5′ computer room, which later morphed into a storage closet with white wire shelves lining the walls. It’s been a welcome addition to the house ever since.


Other than moving the washer/dryer to the utility room, we’ve NEVER spent any time or money fixing it up. No need to. It’s purely been utilitarian. The only other thing we added was putting a freezer next to the washer/dryer. A place nobody other than our family goes. The ugly yellow walls and marred grey floor from 30 years ago weren’t really a concern for us. Until last week.
I got a wild hair. I wanted it changed so it wouldn’t be such a dump.













Of course nothing that I do is ever simple. Home improvement projects always have a domino-effect to them. A simple project grows progressively more and more expensive and time consuming as I come across poor/substandard/bizarre (your choice) construction methods and techniques.

It kind of went like this:

Freezer Cleaning & Relocation

• Take everything out of freezer. Bundle in blankets to keep frozen.
• Use my 14-year old son as a pack-mule to help me move freezer upstairs to garage.
• Put in driveway in the sun to help speed the thawing process.
• Wipe out freezer using Windex making it spotless.
• Vacuum the coils and under the freezer.
• Find a new home in the garage, position and plug in the freezer. It works, so wait about 15 minutes for it to get cold.
• Reload freezer, throwing out outdated walleye from Canada, corn from 1998 and other unidentifiable stuff.

Laundry Marathon

• Wash, dry and fold every bit of laundry I could possibly find.
• Disconnect washer and dryer and move out of the utility room.
• Gag in disgust at the discovery of a dead bird in the dryer vent.
• Gag in disgust at the floor which was under the washer and dryer.

Home Depot - Part I

• Head to Home Depot for necessary supplies; cheap paint rollers, acid/etching solution, acid-proof gloves, good water-proofing masonry primer, flat-white paint, floor degreaser and grey basement/garage paint.
• Cringe at the bill of over $120 for these supplies. Mention to 14 year old not to mention this amount to his mother.

Intial Floor Cleaning

• Sweep, scrape and vacuum the floor.
• Gag using degreaser, mop the floor, rinse with clean water

Dealing With Effloresence

• Put on safety goggles and my new cool acid-proof gloves.
• Mix acid crystals according to instructions.
• Fill spray bottle with acid solution.
• Spray acid solution on walls
• Start immediately choking and coughing
• Stop spraying acid solution on walls
• Apply acid-solution according to directions (with a brush)
• Let soak for a few minutes
• Scrub with brush.
• Spray clean water on walls to dilute/deactivate acid-solution.
• Let dry overnight

Wall Painting

• Convince my two kids that it’d ‘be cool’ to help me paint the walls in the laundry room.
• Dress them in old t-shirts so they wouldn’t trash any of their clothes
• Give them strict instructions as to what they can paint.
• Apply the waterproof paint, cutting in around the various pipes, hoses, outlets, etc. Switch to rollers to finish up.
• Smile as the kids are having the time of their life.
• Let dry overnight
• Bushwack my 14-year old into helping do the final coat of flat-white
• Listen to him grumble.
• Let dry overnight.

Floor Painting

• On hands and knees, use sponge and scrub floor one more time.
• Let dry.
• Cut in around perimeter of room, pipes, furnace, etc. with paint brush using the grey paint.
• Using a roller, finish the remainder of the floor. (I think the floor took all of 15 minutes from start to finish.)
• Stand back, smile at the transformation
• Let dry

Home Depot - Part II

• Get necessary PVC pipe, elbows and couplers to rework plumbing of sump-pump
• Smile at paying less than $10.00

PVC Pipe for Sump-Pump Upgrade

• Gag at disgusting sight of sump-pump and its innards
• Unscrew one-way valve (if that’s what it’s called)
• Cut away old, poorly installed PVC pipe.
• Turn off water-heater pilot light so I don't cause an explosion or fire from the cement.
• Measure, cut and cement pipe, elbow’s and couplers to fit.
• Rework support which hangs and supports PVC pipe assembly from ceiling.
• Stand back and marvel and the new plumbing.
• Plug in the sump-pump only to realize that I’d forgotten to cement the new piping to the old PVC. I had only dry-fitted it and forgot to finish that one joint.
• Scramble for towels and rags to clean up the water.
• Remedy problem by cementing PVC pipe and retesting.
• Paint cover to sump-pump. We get an ‘F’ for originality and simply painted it the same grey as the floor. Hey, what else are we going to do - we had a 1/2 can of grey floor paint left over.
• Turn on fan to make sure all flamable fumes are gone
• Relight pilot light switch.

And On the Third Day….

• Reconnect the washer with it’s water connections and electrical connection and the dryer vent and plug it in.
• Test for leaks or problems.
• Start laundry marathon.
• Call this project finished.

It looks SO much better now than it did before. The white paint makes it look bigger and brighter. And cleaner too. While it’s still a utility room, it’s not the disgusting pit that it used to be. The kids were amazed at the difference and you could see their pride knowing they had a small part in all of this. Other than periodic cleaning and upkeep, I hope I NEVER have to do this again at this house.

Lessons Learned

1. I need to defrost, clean and vacuum my freezer out more often than every 5 years. This goes for the fridge too. I think yearly should be nice.
2. I need to move/clean under/behind the washing machine and dryer more often.
3. I need to replace the dryer vent-hose on a regular basis. Finding a dead bird is not a pleasant thing for anybody. Plus the accumulated lint and fuzz. Well, it's just a fireball waiting to happen.
4. I replaced the old water supply hoses with brand new hoses. These were like $13.00 each and have a braided steel covering on the outside. An added bonus is they have a device that shuts them off if one of the hoses were to burst. I like the added peace-of-mind that gives me. The thought of water dumping into my basement does not amuse me. The only downside of these new fancy hoses during normal day-to-day usage are that they severely restrict the amount of water going through them. This means that a load of laundry takes about twice as long because it takes so long to fill with water. Just something to get used to.
5. READ THE INSTRUCTIONS. Inhaling acidic spray sucks.
6. Get the kids involved more often. They want to help (at least the younger ones) - find something for them to do - even if it means the project will take longer or parts have to be redone. I got an hour out of them - no fighting, quarreling, etc. plus they love the fact that they played a part in making the laundry room look so much better!

Springbrook State Park

I absolutely love Springbrook State Park. It was the first state park in Iowa that I went to with my wife. We made a small day trip and didn't do any camping at that time, but I loved what I'd seen. No camping, because we didn't have any camping equipment. It was still fun.


Over the years, I've enjoyed going back a number of times as my family has grown in size. This weekend was the first time that I've been able to take all three of my boys there and share it with them. It's been about 4 years since I was last there to camp. My oldest has been there a number times camping with me and his cub scout den years ago. It was interesting to see what he remembered and what he'd forgotten. We were all looking forward to the 2-night camping excurision with the only downside being that my wife had to work and couldn't make it.


Just getting packed and out of the house to go camping was rather painful. Our plan was to leave as soon as church was finished, pack and make the 50 mile drive. It took about 3 1/2 hours before we'd packed and were ready to go. That 3 1/2 hours didn't include gas and last minute food we needed. Adding to the fun was the challenge of trying to wedge 4 people and their camping gear, good, etc. into a Buick Century. We ended up leaving the fishing gear and wood home. Every possible square inch of space was taken by kids and gear. The true challenge was trying to wedge a tiki-torch into the car without it spilling or leaking fluid all over the place. It was all pretty painful.


Although it was only 50 miles, the drive seemed to take forever. The traffic was light, so traveling down the 2-lane road in Polk and Guthrie Counties was no problem. The boys were thrilled when finally arrived. There weren't very many campers there this weekend which was more than fine with us. We found a campsite located strategically close to the restrooms, camp store, trails and garbage dumpster.


It didn't take long to get the tent set up, sleeping bags in and arranged, etc. I think we've got it down to a system now; the 8-person tent is up in under five minutes, sleeping arrangements hashed out and wrapped up in another couple. We just wanted to get everything setup so that we could hike around the lake. Other than exploring and showing the boys around, our main purpose was to look for wildlife. Hopefully reptiles or amphibians of some sort. Some of the flowers were amazing. The boys were salivating at the swimming beach.

We doused ourselves liberally with 'Off'. My 8-year old says it should be renamed to 'On' simply because insects seem to be more attracted to in than driven away. Soon, we were on our way; 4 males, two 'snake-sticks', gloves, cloth bag, digital cameral and one 12-ounce container of bottled water - we rock!

We ended up making it half way around before we realized it was 8:30 and we were all starving. We did see a few frogs as they jumped from the bank into the lake. Spencer blazed a trail through some really tall grasses and ran into some Stinging Nettles. A quick rinse with water helped remedy that problem and we continued on. The 'big' find was a lot of snail shells. Bleached white by the sun, their former occupants had long since departed. Or were eaten. Time to head back to camp.

We discovered as we were starting to get things ready for dinner that we'd forgotten a number of things; primarily the griddle we were going to cook our hamburgers on. Wow, that kind of stunk. The realization that we were going to use that same griddle for breakfast the next morning kind of put a damper on things. We improvised and ended up simply grilling the hamburgers over the fire on a couple of grill grates we happened to bring along. Problem solved.

The boys discovered a nearby fire-ring with some live coals and managed to transport the coals to our fire-ring, scavenge enough dead twigs, branches and limbs to get a decent fire going. Spencer got a small fire going in a contraption he made out of coffee-cans for his Metal Working merit badge at Boy Scout camp a few weeks ago. We were going to use that to cook our beans on it. I believe it was designed for charcoal, but we didn't bring any, so coals would have to suffice. It worked kind of okay, but we ended up putting the can of beans on the burner of the trusty old Coleman stove. That finished them off nicely. The boys loved the hamburgers - grilled over red-hot coals. Salt, pepper, some diced red-onions and cheese. They lost their minds. I could only get about 1/2 of mine down before I lost interest.

Camping just isn't camping unless there are marsmallows involved. We polished off half a bag. The concensus was that we pretty much like them charred completely on the outside. I like the little bit of bitter taste the charred outside gives it; a nice counterpoint to the sugary marshmallow itself. I discovered a brilliantly simple way of getting rid of the inevitable marshmallow goo that gets all over your hands. Simply, rub some ice on the goo. It solidifies and comes right off. Works like a charm. We thought about doing smores, but too much hassle. Nobody was really interested so no big loss. My homemade marshmallow-roasters made out of clothes-hangers worked great. We always seemed to lose our store-bought roasting-sticks (whatever they're called), so I made a bunch out hangars making sure I burn the varnish/paint of the business end of the sticks.

Spencer made the brilliant suggestion of bringing along some old school-lunch trays that we've had sitting around. They worked perfectly for camping with little kids. After dinner and our desert. we cleaned up, poked at the fire for a while and headed to bed.

It was a nice night, but without a breeze blowing the humidity made everything sticky. An hour of the requisite giggling, fooling around, trying to scare each other and two of the boys were asleep. Austin was up until 2am - claiming it was too hot, the ground was to rough, etc. I slept like crap - waking up every hour on the hour part -due in part to the humidity, barking at Austin to go to sleep and sleeping on a cot which had a support bar right where my hips were. At 2am, I gave him my cot, while I slept on the ground. We slept like babies after that. We should've just started that way to begin with!


We were awoken around 7:30am to the sound of thunder. After the 2nd crack of lightning and rain coming in the tent, we jumped out of the tent, hopped into the car and drove for about 25 miles to stop at a McDonalds for breakfast. Lightning, no griddle to cook eggs...what better excuse to stop at McD's?


Well, the McD's in Perry, Iowa sucked. The decor looked like something from the 70's. They had run out of hotcakes by the time we got there, Austin ran to the bathroom throwing up. He claims it was because the sausage was too greasy. That was a first for him. We couldn't wait to get out of there. In retrospect, we should've just crossed the street and gone to Burger King. It got us some food and got us out of the lightning, so I guess it's all good.


We returned back to camp to find it drizzling a little bit. The forecast on the radio predicted more thunderstorms and rain throughout the day and we decided to cut our expedition short. We hurridly packed the Buick as best as we could and headed for home. By that time, the clouds had cleared, the lightning had stopped and we decided to try a little hiking at another part of the park.


The hike was great - found some ponds, some toads, a lot of deer, tons of snail shells (this time with live snails in them) and had a great time. The 'Off' worked as poorly as it did the night before. We turned over a lot of rocks and logs hoping to see/find snakes, but didn't have any luck. The hike was about 4 miles long (I believe) and the boys did great.

After making our way back to the car, we headed home. Spencer and Jake slept while Austin - who was going on 5 hours of sleep - was completely awake the entire time. Go figure.
A great camping trip to add to our 'Summer of 2007' memories!