Year 4, September 9th-12th, 2019: A New Week Dawns

Justin's 14th birthday! Poor guy, I just wasn't in the mood to make a big deal about it.  I didn't sleep well again last night, so I was very tired but determined to be productive today.  Justin had to mow Grandpa's yard, which, I don't think Grandpa really thought about what day it was, but Justin dutifully did it mid morning. Then he did a little bit of school, promising to do the rest later in the week and even on Saturday.  I should have let him have free rein on his gaming today, but didn't think about it later in the evening. You know, I can still make it up to him tomorrow.  We didn't do cake today because we had key lime pie yesterday and some of us can't eat cake. I did manage to say happy birthday.  Oh, that's why I didn't feel up to doing anything. I went to bed and woke up with a massive headache from eye strain because of vertigo. Yup. It has lessened thanks to essential oils and pain medication, but has not completely gone away.  I found myself telling the kids to go away or just don't make me multitask. I didn't even want to go outside in the sun at all.  So, poor middle kid gets the short end of the stick, again.  I have to figure out when I can take him and his friends to Skyzone, but I didn't want to make all those decisions and communication happen because of my mental state.

Alas, it was a good day all around.  Keturah got up at 11:30am and got right on her schoolwork.  She and Abishai had their electronic time but also had outdoor time. She and I got started on the next volume of Mystery of History and she seems to have studied everything else in a timely manner.  She did put off some things for tomorrow, but I didn't check which ones.  I was too lazy/hurting to. It's a quiet week, so we do have some flexibility with lessons.  I also tried calling the IRS but after being on hold for 1 hr, after being on and off hold with the first intake person of taxpayer advocate service for  20 minutes, I gave up.  I'll try again tomorrow. Supper was birthday lunch leftovers and lots of fresh veggies and fruit. Then I took a shower (finally, I was trying to take one all day!) and Jared took Abishai outside to do things. Meanwhile, I have to help Justin figure out what to wear for '90's night at Crave, plan a birthday thing for him, and figure out what estrogen dominance means.

For that last one, estrogen dominance, I'm going to bring it up with my naturopath first and see what she says.  I do have an appointment Oct 1st, which is before my surgery on the polyps.  It's a bit too confusing for me to figure out on my own. Another set of labs might be helpful since it's been 3 months. Who knows.  But slowly and surely, I'll learn the lingo. Oh, one more thing, I Facebook messenger videod with my sister Stefanie today and she told me all about her and Auggie's visit to the Lego Discovery Center in Boston.  They had a grand time and were treated very, very well, with the employees going out of their way to greet Auggie, who obviously has some issues because he wears noise reduction headphones. Stefanie hasn't had the spoiled life we've had of getting to go to museums and on vacations regularly, so it was a very special trip indeed. And that's why we love Lego! Although, the kids and I think it's hilarious that it takes Stefanie up to 4 hrs to complete a mid level kit (around $40 worth).  Justin said he can complete one of those in under 1 hr.  She does have adult ADD so I'll give her some grace on that. We also chatted about her wedding plans, because although they already live together, her and John want a proper wedding.  But, their proposed date doesn't jive well with our schedule at all, right between the CIY weeks in June.  Eek! So, I'm trying to convince her to go for another date.  Plus, she'll have to talk to Kristina, my other sister, about maybe sending some communication back and forth with me before then so things aren't super awkward when we are in the same room together after not speaking for 10 years (her choice, not mine). This could force Kristina's hand to be civil with me and give me the courtesy of a second chance. I just need to not blow it.  We'll see.  Stef's a great peacemaker. We'll figure it out.

Aw, puppy dog, asleep as I write.

The piano is NOT a parking garage!  But it kind of is, isn't it?

I bet this kid could put a small Lego set together in minutes all by himself.  Today, he hooked up his big rig hauler trailer to the fire truck, added side pieces to the trailer, took all the wheels off his other vehicles, and then hauled the tires around.

Then he sang a song about needing the fire "apartment" (aka department) to come to the rescue.  Watch the videos.  It's so cute!

The parking garage has turned into either curbside parking or a traffic jam.

The last vistages of summer. 85 today, 91 tomorrow!!!  Indian summer as always!  That's why I never rush to put away the outdoor stuff or change out the seasonal clothes. And I try to wait to go apple picking to later in September.  And good news, Ava wants to go apple picking with Benaiah anyway, so hopefully she'll get to tag along with us this year!  It's Benaiah's official last apple picking trip.  Sigh. Lots of "lasts" to get through this year.  I'm glad I have a 3 yr gap to recover emotionally and enjoy each kids' launch into adulthood one by one.

"I'm Zuma! Ready to dive in!"

We put some new water in the pool, so Abishai was very cold when he got out.  So sitting in the sunshine helps.

Sorry, not sorry.  I have to chronicle this journey, too.  It doesn't gross me out, so I'm putting it here and not on Facebook.  Anyway, the blue line going down is the tail of the stitches "thread" that came loose, so I've been gently tugging on it with tweezers to tighten the bottom two stitches (it doesn't hurt at all), making the tail longer and then taping it down.  So far, that method has worked well.  But tomorrow the nurse will take them all out.  Woot! Woot! Then maybe the redness will go away since my immune system hates the foreign body in my body. Still not pus and not even any blood since I stopped wrapping it a couple of days ago, therefore no extra rubbing occurs.  I've been wearing tank tops, too, so that not even fabric messes with it.

Another view with the blue tail under the tape, and if you look closely, you can see how the stitches have worked themselves through my skin like a saw blade, stretching out the original hole of the stitch.  Think of when an earring stretches out the hole in your ear lobe. Otherwise, everything looks good.

Still a little too much red in my opinion, but I hope getting the stitches out will help to get rid of the rest of it.  Good bye Mr. Stitches!  Hello Mr/Mrs. Scar! 10 days post op.

Tuesday started late! Abishai woke up around 5am, so Jared put him in bed with us.  He fell back asleep and slept with me until 9:30am! Wowzers!  I sang him "Good morning to you" while he opened his eyes.  So sweet!  There's not too many of those moments left these days.  I'll take them when I can get them.  So, Keturah ended up being the first one up at 9am! Wow!  She was doing her chores and then getting her schoolwork ready as we were rolling out of bed.  Now, she still didn't want to brush her hair "what does it matter, Mom, we aren't going anywhere."  Sigh. And Justin got up and going as usual.  I went over history and science with Keturah with no problems.  She's doing the final tests in her multiplication book this week so after 3 years, that will finally be done!  Now it's off to finish the last 15 lessons or so in the division book, and then she might be more caught up and we can start the book on fractions.  Woot! Woot!  Meanwhile, Justin is having a hard time remembering some basic operations with equations, which should prove interesting as we get into Algebra.  It's going to be slower going for awhile I think.

Abishai played and had screen time as usual.  Then Daddy took him over to the Smiths because Jared has been getting together with Andrew and Jim, I think to disciple Andrew, who was just baptized a few months ago.  Abishai needed to see something other than the inside of our house, so he went over to Jim's and played with his kids.  It is a school night, but the kids are a little bit older and I hope we didn't disturb them too much.  That let Justin, Keturah, and I to have some quiet time cleaning up supper and reading.  It was extremely hot today in the lower '90s, so I didn't even attempt to send anyone outside today.  Ok, I said "pool" but no one wanted to of course.

I did get my sutures out today and it was mostly a painless process.  A little stingy on the stitches that had some skin attached to it and a touch of blood, but not bad at all.  Now I just got to keep massaging the area and applying all the oils I can think of.  But what was fun was the ride home. Instead of driving south on University Ave, I drove north becuase I wanted to take I-70 east to Post Rd to go back to Aldi's to get the shelving unit I wanted.  Well, I went a bit of the wrong direction at first, but it was easy to turn back around.  While I zipped on I-70 east at normal speed, the I-70 westbound was completely stop and go traffic all the way from the major downtown splits (probably down I-65 south to I-465 as well), all the way to I-465 on the east side.  That's several miles! The southbound lanes of I-465 between I-70 and I-65 are closed just like the northbound lanes were a couple of weeks ago so they can quickly do a lot of repairs to the road.  I can't imagine being in that line up!  After my Aldi's run, I was going home the normal way and bumped into some major traffic between US-52 and Raymond, possibly Troy, St.  So, I turned left at US-52 and went the back way on Davis Road and it worked! I can't wait for construction season to be over!  Our roundabout still isn't done yet!  But at least we didn't have a hurricane like PEI, the Bahamas, and the like.  I read today that upwards of 80%  of the trees in the Cavendish end/area of the PEI National Park were destroyed.  That's 100's of trees!  The dunes must be a mess and all rearranged as well.  Lots of stairs down to the beaches were destroyed.  Whole trees were uprooted including the grass around them.  Lots of farmers lost some or a lot of their crops including corn stalks being completed blown down, potato plants ripped up, wheat blown over, and bean fields destroyed.  Some people still don't have power.  Hurricane Dorian was a nasty one!  It destroyed the eastern part of PEI like Hurricane Juan destroyed the western part of PEI in 2003 I think the article said.  I wish I was up there to see the damage.  It's heartbreaking to me.  Sigh.

Alert! Alert! Foreign object in the house and it's pink!  On Benaiah's bed! And it smells....it smells....like Ava!  Hm,....

Abishai insisted that blankie stay on the pillow on our bed for safe keeping. He doesn't drag it around as much anymore, but it's still needed at bedtime.

Puppy also had to stay in our room so it wouldn't get lost in Abishai's bed.  Abishai also picked up the "prayer bear" and since the voicebox is malfunctioning, it just sounds like it's tooting, unless you hold down the voicebox button.  Abishai thought it was hilarious.

My fall irises bloomed!

Wow!

After my suture removal, I went to Aldi's to pick up that $25 on sale storage rack.  This is the corner that needed the transformation.  This is before.

I desparately want to clear away everything in front of these bookshelves and make them more accessible.

After!  Ah! Much better!  I've been planning this for months!  Just needed the right shelf at the right price!  I did tweak it after I took this picture and put the bathing suits and towels on it, and put the chair pads in such a way that they won't get bleach by the sun.  Win!

After suture removal.  They told me to rub it several times a day to breakup the inside stitches and push the skin back into a flat position.  It's going to be an interesting long ride with this.  But at least it doesn't hurt as much!

Time to put on some more antibiotic ointment and all the oils I can find. 

Wednesday. Oh my word. Busy day.  School was had. Activities were run. We've had some solid school time this week, so that's great! But then, let's discuss the evening, shall we? So, Justin had his small group kick off at the roller skating rink, thankfully, 10 minutes from Keturah's dance lesson.  We left at 5:15 and got home at 8:15.  Traffic was as bad as expected.  And with no a/c in the van, it made for a rough go at it all.  First, we took Keturah to her dance lesson and dropped her off at 5:45.  Then, I continued on to drop Justin off at 6pm to skate. Abishai had fallen asleep because of the car and heat, so I had to wake him up.  All he kept talking about was a Fireman Sam toy.  So, we spent about 45 minutes in Goodwill which is right up the street from the roller skating rink, looking for toys and pjs before picking Keturah up at 6:45.  We bought like 12 shirts and 12 bottoms, with only a couple of them actually matching up.  It was kind of sad to see the outfits separately, but we just happened to find a couple of the matches.  Abishai often mismatches them anyway, so no big deal.  Plus I got some basic one color shorts and long pants that go with multiple things.  We also splurged on the Fisher Price car track that folds down into a flatter track and then fold up for a fast track that we had played with at Nancy's funeral last year. Score!  Abishai was so excited about getting pjs!

Then we drove back over to pick up Keturah.  It wasn't quite a straight shot between the two areas becuase there was a major high way we had to go over, so we drove south on 31 from the theater, turned left onto Thompson, then drove north on Madison, picking up Keturah from the church that is right after the bridge over the highway.  Then we did the reverse to go back to where Justin was.  This time we went into Kroger to get milk, and ended up with tea, too. But that's when it all went south.  Abishai was done shopping.  I was done listening to Keturah commenting on everything when I was trying to find certain items. Then we mistakenly went past the Hot Wheels cars and Abishai lost it!  We literally have 100's of cars and some of them are green like the one he saw.  But, he balled for 20 minutes as we checked out, got our discount at the service desk, and all the way back down the hill to get Justin.  We were 30 minutes early, so we got out of the hot car and let him cry until I realized I could let him watch a video to help him snap out of it.  The other problem was that it was over 90 degrees today and there's no a/c in the van.  So we HAD to go into stores to cool off.  I tried to walk slowly and stay in the a/c as much as possible. I was so over it.  My scar was itching and the rest of my skin was crawling. I just wanted to go home.  And I could have gotten Justin earlier but I wanted him to have fun, too.  Next week it will be a totally different loop since Justin will be at someone's home.  Just about 6 more back and forth by myself and then Jared and and Leah can help.  Yeah!  It was a mommy nightmare, but after sitting in front of the fan in front of the vent, and literally cooling off, I was able to go back out to the living room to finish up the night.  But we made it through.

Neat and sobering graphic about the timeline of 9/11, which I sort of remember.  I was in the student lounge at UIndy when I saw the live coverage of the 2nd plane hitting the south tower.  I will never forget.

THIS.  YES.

It was also suicide prevention week, so For King and Country was sharing the numerous stories they've heard of how their song "God Only Knows" has helped those with severe depression and anxiety.

Abishai asked me to play a game with him, so he had me set up the angry birds and their bricks numerous times according to the cards.  Some of them were trickier than others.  Then he made some towers for me to knock down.

The pancake mix Justin was making started out white, but hen turned blue when liquid was added!  So much food coloring! But they are called Alien pancakes and have marshmallows and sprinkles.  Crazy!

My turn to send the Angry Birds flying!

Alien pancakes.

But they still turn brown when finished.

Why did I not think about going?  I've been following Backstreet Boys' reunion tour for months and didn't bother looking up if they were going to be in Indy!  Whoops! I do enjoy seeing their concert snippets.

We had already vacuumed today and Abishai ate more shredded cheese, so I told him he needed to clean it up.  He got out the big vacuum, of course! What a great helper!

Thursday was quite busy as I tried to catch up with little household business items.  I still didn't try to call the IRS again because I didn't want to sit on the phone again for 90 minutes or more.  I also had a counseling appointment, too.  But I breezed through checking the kids work and Keturah is officially done with the multiplication math book!  It only took us 3 years!!!! (Off and on, and we used some other stuff along the way.) Woot! Woot! Benaiah is still on his retreat with the school until tomorrow morning when he will drive his truck home.  I  hope he stays awake driving home! Then he can crash.  Abishai spent 2 hrs chanting, wash my pjs mom, I want to wear my new pjs, mom, when can I try them on?  And then they were washed and dried and Abishai pulled them out of the basket, tried on a few different outfits, and finally became Spiderman. Everybody kind of did their own thing today and that's fine.  Abishai just wanted a playmate and we were all busy.  But we tried to play some baseball!  And now I've exhausted.  Good night!

Playing some baseball while it was still cool enough out in the shade to do so.  That's about the only break I took today from all the things I tried to accmplish.  Phew!  Abishai does love some sports though!

I think this is blankie's new permanent home.  Abishai said tonight he doesn't want to take blankie to bed because he doesn't want it to be lost in the holes alone the side of his bed.  The gap isn't that large so I don't know where he's getting that idea from.  But at least we know where blankie is at all times and that he can handle life without it 99% of the time.  He didn't even want to snuggle it tonight.  Sad face.  Little boys is growing up.

Red and white necklace Keturah made for our history lesson on the War of the Roses.

Look who is allergic to everything!  It's not me!  Jared is of course! All of his reactions where close to 10 out of 10's.  No duh.  So he came home with a huge packet of "do this, don't eat that when that thing is in season, put your pillow in the dryer to kill dust mites" kind of instructions.  I told him it's his turn to figure out all of this and memorize what does what and dust or clean or dry the pillow etc.  The food to avoid list is absolutely ridiculous.  Good luck figuring it out!

Fascinating.  Now we know who to blame when the roundabout takes too long...

The End