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Holding the Fort

My HC left this morning for a training session in New Mexico. Today has been crazy. I'm not sure if it is a result of him being gone or just a Monday or what. But come on! We were late getting up this morning. Erin has had a bad cold for a few weeks and it is on the downward slope with a bit of sniffles and coughing/asthma. Which means lots of breathing treatments and less sleep for me. So I'll try to quit blaming it on the kids and admit that I didn't get up when I heard the alarm and everyone was late. Ian had a bit of weird eye goop this morning in one eye, but we wiped it off and kept on. Erin's appetite is off due to sickness, so coaxing her to eat is time consuming and futile. So I spent the morning cleaning and finding blue play doh in strange places. My HC texted to say that he had to check his bag in because our tiny suitcase was too big to carry-on. I'm pretty ticked about that. Besides the cost, it was a pain in the butt to fit everything into that tiny suitcase. If we were going to check, we would have packed everything we wanted into a larger case...argh. But he made it to Texas and said he'd text when he got to NM. Meanwhile, Erin was fussy, the dog got into the shed outside and mutilated a bunch of stuff in boxes and had it strewn everywhere.
I finally sat down to finish Gosford Park and sew a couple of quilt squares.
Then I got a call from the school nurse. Ian's eye was red, swollen and itchy, they think it might be pink-eye.
It would be best if I came and picked him up and took him to the doctor. I called the doctor. They said "tomorrow morning ok?" I mentioned his kindergarten program tomorrow night and asked how long he would have to be on meds before he was out of quarantine. They said to bring him in, they'd fit him in somewhere.
So I got Ian from school, loaded his bike into the Jeep and got him from the nurse.
We got into the doctor rather quickly (shocker!), then went to the pharmacy.

Then we hit another snag. The cream the doc had prescribed wasn't in stock, but they would have it by tomorrow after 1pm. Argh! 24 hours of meds before tomorrow night? Yeah right. I called the doc, who called the pharmacy, who checked. Insurance didn't cover the other choice. On to Plan C. The doc was busy and had to sign off. We waited for over 45 min at the pharmacy. Since Ian has pink-eye, he is contagious. Trying to get him not to touch anything in a crowded, small town pharmacy? Nigh impossible. Erin's whining, squalling and meowing didn't help either. But of course everyone there thought she was cute as a button. They weren't holding her squirming, gymnastic little body, either.
We finally got some eye drops. The ones you have to put in every two hours the first two days? Then every 4 hours for 5 days after that. While Ian is awake, not during the night, thank you Lord! So no school tomorrow. If the eye gunk is drastically reduced by tomorrow night, we may make it to the kindergarten program/reward assembly. Otherwise, nope. As for Wednesday, how can he go to school when I have to give him drops every 2 hours? No one else at the school will/can administer them. And 5 days after that, every 4 hours? Argh! Oh well, I just hope that no one else gets pink-eye!

My HC landed in NM. They are an hour behind us, so that's neat. It looks flat and pretty, with mountains in the distance. Ian was disapointed that there were no cactus in the picture. My HC said he'd keep looking. I told him to eat well, because isn't there supposed to be some phenomenal Mexican food in NM? Mmmm...yeah yeah, thinking with my stomach.

He did end up having Mexican on the 70 mile trip from the airport to his hotel. And I haven't heard from him since, so he must be busy and having a good, educational time. :) Because that's what training sessions are for: learning. Right? We'll see, because really, it's all about hotels and restaurants. Mmmm... We at home will take this time to feast on cantaloupe.

An Interesting Week

This week has been interesting. Really interesting. It seems as if I've won some kind of sweepstakes through Redbook Magazine. It is my "grown-up" magazine that I get, though I am suspicious that my HC also reads it when he's bored. You didn't hear that from me. April was it's Sweepstakes Every Day month or something and I entered everything. I guess I was bored. Well, I got an email saying that I won April's Work It Out sweepstakes and I cannot for anything remember which one that was. I remember there was one for workout videos and one for athletic shoes and a few more that has something to do with 'Working It Out'. I guess I'll find out when it gets here in 3-6 months, like the email said.
Another interesting thing that happened. We opted out of Ebay and decided on CraigsList for selling our Xbox stuff and for the Kelty Kids Child Carrier (which we only used once for Hiking Devil's Den and then my HC was so sore from toting Erin around he vowed never to use it again! And we didn't.) Yesterday we got an email about the xbox stuff. Then came a flurry of texts resulting in a sale last night! It only lasted 8 hours before it was sold and we are very pleased. Now we are waiting to hear about the Carrier. Please, Lord let it sell!
These things, of course, will go into our Florida Fund. We are hoping to make a vacation-type trip sometime this summer. And my HC will be coming this time, too. Woo hoo! It was so bleak without him in January. Everything is always funner with Daddy around, as the kids will attest. And Mommy is a little more fun with Daddy around, too.
There are 26 days of school left and Ian is becoming increasingly difficult to get out of bed and to school in the morning. Sigh. At least we have the weekend to look forward to. Relief! Another Friday is almost over.
I am watching Gosford Park right now and finding it hard to do with Erin crawling over me like I am her personal tree/trampoline.
Everyone is almost better, just some lingering coughs.
The garden is doing very well. Some peas showed up, as well as a couple of watermelon and cucumber. The morning glories are sprouting up as well. Now we'll see if they get big enough to actually climb the fence. We'll see.

Fried Ears

The weekend was an incredibly busy one for us. Do you ever get those [incredibly rare] days when you just feel energized and actually get a whole list of stuff done? Then you spend the rest of the week wondering why you can't feel like that all the time and have a Donna Reed-esque life? Well, last weekend was incredible. We put our entire garden in, ironically the biggest one to date. We had said that we weren't going to do a garden this year, but we are forgoing the weed mat (waah!) and got the seeds very cheap at the local farm store. We did spring for chicken wire to put a barrier between the yard and the garden, to signal the dog to stop (it doesn't exactly keep her out).
We also changed our garden menu a bit. We are not doing corn this year, since it has been set upon by Japanese beetles every year and we only get a 1/2 gallon baggie of shucked corn total after they've finished with it. And we didn't plant anything that we didn't like this year. In the past, we've always planted okra since we love pickled okra. But there was never enough ready at the same time to pickle. And this year I am not making cucumber pickles because we have approximately 27 jars from last year that no one will touch. I am trying, but there was that one mushy jar....yuck. And I have discovered, by a majority vote, that no one else likes zucchini. And no one wants to eat any more zucchini bread or muffins. Ever.
So that saves me a bundle of work right there. So I get a break from pickling, harvesting gigantic okra that is inedible and shredding pounds of zucchini to freeze that no one will eat. I feel better already. Am I REALLY the only one that likes zucchini?! Really?!
I was outvoted again when I suggested opting out of the tomatoes. Phooey.
So this year's garden menu is: (drum roll)
Early Alaska Green Peas [along the whole back fence]
Maxi Beans (green beans) [3 short rows, bush style]
Carrots [a short double row]
Tomatoes (100 and Rutgers) [5 plants total]
Strawberries (Quinalt) [2 plants]
Crookneck Squash (yellow) [3 hills]
Cucumbers (burpless) [3 hills]
Cantaloupe [a short row]
Watermelon [4 hills, with 3 plantings in each hill]

Keep in mind that half of our garden is watermelon, since they need a lot of space.
We are hoping that the peas will shoot up and cover the whole 6 foot back fence, since the lot behind has been turned into a gravel parking lot...whee.
Personally, since we are not doing weed mat this year (bigger garden = more weed mat= too expensive...), I am hoping that a mulch truck will stop at our house and ask us if we need a ton or 2. In the meantime, we'll be out weeding....

So we spent all weekend outside, with the kids going in and out, depending on how many flies they wanted to let in. My HC got fried around his tank top and then burnt weird the next day, so from the back it looks like he was wearing a sports bra. It's a really good thing he can't see himself from the back. Try to smother a laugh or he will find you.
So all my lotion has been used up for the Greater Good (translation: HC). Erin's little pigtail part got red and she has a nice farmer's tan. Ian's nose is a bit red and my ears are fried to fire engine-like proportions. And I am sore all over from raking and shoveling and hoeing. My HC only had to do the rotor tiller, don't know what he has to be sore about. (I am only pouting a bit; watching him till with that thing was enough for me.) Erin also loved a few earthworms to death and pulled one apart ("Mommy! Wum boke!")

In addition to the garden success, my HC mowed and weed eated the front and back yard. We scrubbed all the winter muck off of the siding (as high as I could reach with the scrub pole), cleaned out the yucky corner of the house/yard, cleaned out the tupperware cabinet, cleaned out the shed, cleaned up some stuff to sell on Ebay, did all the laundry, etc. Still can't believe we did all that. Boo yah!

So you'll have to forgive me if I don't have any pictures, because I left my phone inside while I was performing all that manual labor. There's not much to see now except for dirt and hills, anyway.

But as with soreness, the after-effects remain. Now I have garden fingers, because my left hand is all scraped and rough from planting and there's dirt stuck in my nails that will just have to wear off. But I got me a garden, man!

Easter

We had a pretty good time this past Easter weekend, even though we missed the family. Saturday night we colored our eggs. We told Ian that if the Easter bunny liked our colored eggs, then the Easter bunny would leave treats. And in our house, the Easter bunny hides the baskets, because bunnies are skittish and like to hide. And Lily sleeps inside, though she sleeps hard enough that we could hide the basket under her, but she would smell jelly beans and go nutso. She has acquired a real taste for jelly beans. The Starburst kind. If you trick her with generic, she tastes it and will spit out a sticky, goobery mess wherever she happens to be. And people tend to step on sticky, goobery messes around here. Namely me.



On Sunday, we had our Easter dinner (our piglet ham, I meanly called it. I apologize. It turned out to be a good, solid ham and I shouldn't have mocked it.) And, of course, The Hunt. The kids and I put a bunch of plastic eggs together inside while HC cleaned up the yard (a constant endeavor with an energetic young dog). We got 55 plastic eggs assembled and counted and waited inside, where every second seemed like an hour. Finally, Daddy was ready! And then Mommy had to take pictures. Groan!





We hid and hunted eggs until everyone was tired of it (it was rather windy; a normal spring Oklahoma wind of 20-30 mph).

And later, my wonderful HC started tilling my garden plot!!! Woo hoo!

A little Wii Before Bedtime

Yesterday was a pretty busy day. I got an entire pile of quilt squares finished, so there's a pat on the back for me. Ian had his class Easter party yesterday, since it's supposed to storm today. He is so finished with school it's not funny. He's just not interested in school or homework or the mean kids in his class. But he is interested in the class trip to Fun City on April 30. It's sort of like Chuck E Cheese, but not quite so crowded and a bigger playplace. I am still working through the logistics of substituting their pizza for him. Hopefully it won't be so bad and he won't feel so bad about having to have homemade with a tiny scrape of cheese on it. Hopefully he'll be excited about playing and not worry about the food so much.
We played outside a lot yesterday after school. The only way to bribe Erin back inside was with a popsicle. Boy are we glad that it's warm enough for popsicles! It was pretty windy yesterday too, so we had a definite need for conditioner at bathtime, not to mention finding half of a green fruit snack tangled in someone's hair (no, it wasn't mine, thanks). Also got the sandbox sand out of the back of the Jeep and set up the sandbox for the season. The kids were ecstatic. Unfortunately, none of the sandbox toys from last year survived rough play and/or Lily through to this year. So that's on the list. but from the looks of the sink, they didn't have any problems at all. You can always tell when the kids have a good time; there's always evidence left for me to clean up.
















And you didn't even get to see the tub. But you can imagine. Then my HC and Ian had a bowling competition with the Wii. And as you can see, Ian paid Erin in Easter candy to distract Daddy long enough for him to win. Let me tell you, the kid can Wii bowl. But he is very encouraging to everyone else too, especially if they get a gutter ball. But he doesn't look very sympathetic, not with that oh-boy-I'm-going-to-win twinkle in his eye. Stinker. But that's ok, because after he went to bed, I got to bowl and I beat Daddy too. ;)