Return to Moab

On Thursday morning we woke up to find snow on the ground, and no signs of the storm letting up. So we decided to load up the dogs and head down to Moab to find some sun. We spent our time playing cribbage, tossing the Frisbee around and playing the guitar. All in all, it was nice to enjoy the warm desert air. Here is the visual documentation.

Crazy dog person

I’m a crazy dog person. I didn’t realize how often I narrate the inner monologues of my dogs. I verbalize Moses’ thoughts the most because he “expresses” himself more than Aspen, and he can be a pain in the ass. He’s a very vocal dog, to put in mildly.

Aspen’s thoughts aren’t as interesting, since I’ve deciphered she only has three things on her mind: food, ball and walk. Food takes up 75 percent of her thoughts, so that’s not as fun to comment on.

Moses, on the other hand, has all sorts of issues going on. He’ll want food, need to go out, wants you to get off the couch, sometimes wants both of us on the couch so he can snuggle with us, can’t find his bone, etc. Kent sums it up as “just being a douchebag.”

So what it all comes down to is that I frequently verbalize the inner workings of a douchebag. If that doesn’t make me crazy, I don’t know what does.

Marriage

Right after we got married, all of our friends asked me if the relationship changed. I would usually reply with a smart-ass comment, such as “Well now we file our taxes together.”

Change usually has a bad connotation when describing a relationship. You don’t want things to change because you love each other, and you don’t want anything to disrupt that. I knew there wouldn’t be any surprises because we’d lived together for almost four years. In that time, we’ve moved together multiple times, raised two dumb dogs and worked together at different restaurants.

Nothing has changed, ultimately. We’re still just two goofy souls sharing a life together, so the core of us is still the same. But since we were married, our relationship has evolved. I just started noticing all our lifestyle alterations recently.

It’s the small things that come up. Such as shopping for groceries and deciding that we should eat healthier, and then reluctantly put back all the crackers and chips in exchange for fruit and vegetable snacks. Taking vitamins in the morning, encouraging each other to exercise and doing yoga every other day. Or talking about canceling the cable because we could be spending our time more productively — plus it will save money (and with instant Netflix, and the Internet you can get by without it anyway).

And you can tell Tyler wants to take care of the household. Every week he sits down and makes sure we’re sticking to our budget, saving enough money and that all of our bills are paid for. This is a far cry from the boy who used to not want to monitor his spending because it would stop him from living in the moment.

None of this actually struck me as an evolution of our relationship until he picked up his guitar a couple weeks ago. When we come home from work I’ll pour myself a glass of wine, he’ll have a beer and he’ll practice a new song he’s trying to learn. I’ll sing along and tap my foot to help him keep the right tempo. He’s even teaching me to play a song right now.

Seeing the guitar permanently stored in our living room reminded me of seeing Steve’s guitar propped up with sheet music in the office. Just like his dad, he is constantly learning how to do something else. I’m sure sometime down the road he’ll want to learn how to build a dinghy too.

So I’m loving evolving with one another. We already aren’t the same people we were a year ago, and when the next decade passes it will be interesting to see who we are individually and as a couple.

I think it’s safe to say we won’t have any record deals in our future though.

Knife sharpener

Tyler brought home a knife sharpener from work last night. We’ve been smashing tomatoes, and other delicate produce for some time, and I wanted to enjoy a sandwich with more than just tomato skins.

I don’t know how to sharpen knives. My dad used to take all of the kitchen knives downstairs, set up the wet stone on the reach-in freezer, and methodically sharpen them all on a regular basis. The front door of my room opens to this spot in my parents home.

Sometimes I’d be in my room reading, listening to music, or doing my high school homework when he’d start his TLC for the knives. I’d usually embrace this distraction from my high school studies, lean against my door frame and blather with him for a bit.

“You know, you’ll have to get yourself your own a knife sharpener someday,” he told me.

I told him that I probably didn’t need a lot of kitchen knives in my dorm room for the coming fall, so I could probably do without a sharpener for a while.

He sighed.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said.

I didn’t get right away what he was saying. I just let the comment pass and continued on with the conversation by taking it in a different direction.

But now watching Tyler set up the sharpening stone, placing the knives next to it, and hearing that steady scrape improve the blades one stroke at a time — I understand what my dad was trying to tell back then.

I’m happy to have my own knife sharpener.

Moab

To get away from the winter weather, Tyler and I packed up the dogs and took a camping trip. Instead of heading immediately west to the warm weather in Moab, we decided to check out Gunnison National Forest. We didn't want to be around a lot of people (Moab was site host for Jeep Week), so we decided to brave the chances of a camp site being thawed out already.

We found a spot down a Forest Service Road outside the mining town Somerset — which is along 133. We had the river right next to our campsite, a nice fire, and plenty of space for the dogs to explore. It was so nice we thought we'd stay there the whole time.

I woke up to raindrops hitting the tent. When we finally worked up the courage to leave the warm shelter — mostly because we had to relieve ourselves — we discovered that it was sleeting, so our tent was covered with snow. For the record, Tyler can move pretty fast in the early hours of the morning with the right kind of motivation.We threw everything in the back of the truck and took off to Moab to dry off.

We stopped in Delta to repack, and grab a hot breakfast at the Stockyard. Did you know Delta is the city of murals? At least two buildings on every block along main street have a mural painted on the side.

When we arrived in Moab, the first thing we did was set up the tent, and in less than 45 minutes all of our stuff was dry.

After setting up camp, we took a long walk down the road to check everything out since I had never camped there before. Here are some pictures from our hike.

Later on we cooked some burgers for dinner. We were a little overzealous with the amount of toppings, so once you wrapped your hands around the burger, there was no setting it down again. It's always amazing how great simple food tastes when you've been camping. Tyler declared our burgers the best camping burgers ever. Here are some pictures showing his excitement.

The next morning we picked up and headed back home to winter. Hopefully summer will decided to join is here in the Vail Valley sooner than later.