Wednesday, June 30, 2010

sunshine-drunk









Liam was sick this Saturday - spiked a fever of 103 out of nowhere. I took this pic of him and it reminds me that while I think of him as a pretty big kid, he's still really a little guy, too.

On Monday I took Thea in for testing. She's had a rash for more than a month - a pretty painful-looking one, too. And though she's two, and life is challenging anyway, I can't help but think that having blisters all over your body must add to the frustration levels. She tested positive to dairy, no surprise, and cats, which she had been negative to twice now, so that was disappointing. I'm still percolating on the cat - it would be nice to get rid of the carpet and vacuum more and see how that goes. But hopefully some cream Thea got will help clear up the rash - if not, it's back for more tests next week. Once again, the frustrating thing about dealing with allergies is the enormous grey areas - no one really knows what causes what, what responses are from what, and when things will flare up. No one really knows anything.

Today I woke to sunshine blasting in the window on my day "off" - what a pleasant surprise. All summer, the weather report has failed to predict these amazing days so you pretty much have to be ready to just hit them when they show up. Unfortunately, I was running a little off plumb, but a couple cups of coffee and a great visit from a longtime friend helped get things rolling.

Victory of the day, for sure, was managing to cajole my lawnmower into action after several days of rebellion. Weeds grow so fast this time of year, and it was as if they had exploded during the past couple days to the point where the kids were pretty much wading to the swing set... not OK. But I splashed some gas on the fuel filter, and up she fired... hurray! It is so silly how satisfying it is to have a nicely mowed carpet of green.

Then it was on to the other two projects that had been languishing of late - the compost bins (thank you Randy for the pallets!) and framing in the fan in the back of the greenhouse. The latter was important because the way I had it set up, the cool air was pouring in from the bottom of the hoop house when it was ventilated and I don't think that helped the plants out, but it would get too hot without some ventilation. So it needed to be fixed. Now the ventilation all occurs on the top half of the hoop house.

Now, it is 10:30 and I'm totally exhausted but amazed once again at how much you can get done when given an entire day, sunshine and no desire to leave your property.

1 comment:

Katie Khin said...

Your children are so adorable. Want kids like them when I'm old enough. :)