Bad Luck With Bees and the Like

Our family has had more than our fair share of bee, wasp, and hornet stings. But one of us seems to get stung the most. It's happened again. Our second son C got stung by a wasp or hornet or whatever yesterday on his right hand. Now his hand is so swollen up he can't even snap his pants, use a fork to eat, build with his legos, or anything else with it. It just so happens, he's right-handed, so the problem is compounded. He is simply miserable. It's swollen half-way up his arm also, and it stung him on the hand. I figure I need to get him to the doctor to see about the need for an epi-pen just in case it happens again. It could be worse next time!

I took pictures of his 2 hands, the swollen next to the other "normal" size hand as a comparison. He forbade me to put the pictures on my blog. He's embarrassed because it looks "so ugly", he said. Just picture a latex glove that somebody decided to make a balloon out of. That's what it looks like.

I've given him benadryl a few times to help the reaction. If it helps most people to feel drowsy, it's caused him to be either hyper-active/anxious, or maybe he's just over-tired. I can't figure out what the trouble is, but he hasn't slept from it at all. We are, to say the least, miserable from the benadryl as well. It's going to be a long rest of the day.

Silver Lining in the Clouds

I am always hearing about silver linings in the clouds, and a couple days ago, I snapped this picture. It's the view from the front of our house. It was so beautiful. I really needed a panoramic or wide angle camera to get the whole thing.


I am trying to remember to snap a picture of a beautiful sunset also. I see them all the time, but forget to document it.

All Torn Apart

Another old post---

Here's my computer, all torn apart. Not to pat myself on the back or anything, but I saw parts and touched pieces of the insides of my computer that no self-respecting woman should *have* to see. (Some of you may choose to do so, but I didn't have that option!) I was quite nervous about the whole thing, but it's done. I didn't even break it beyond repair! Here's a picture of it.

"Did You Miss Me?" My Daughter's Answer....

Well, it's been a while, I know. Busy? Yes. Planting blueberries? Yes. Quilting? Yes. Bit of the blues? Yes, again. (Stuff I can talk about? No. I guess that's why I haven't been blogging.)

I've been searching high and low for some quilting buddies. I went to a quilting club meeting for the first time, in a neighboring town. I had no idea what to expect. It was somewhat disorganized, and definitely intimidating to be around such experts, but totally fun. It is probably good for me to step out of my comfort zone now and then. I showed them all my completed Spring Quilt and they loved it. (We were going to reveal our Spring Quilts to the homeschool lady's quilting group on June 1st, but I think it's been postponed for a while. I guess there won't be any pictures posted until then. :)

Anyway, I got back home, and there I found my 3 kids, all gathered around me, asking me lots of questions about what I did, what I saw, and where I went. They have never been so interested in me! I guess I should go off on my own more often. It felt real nice to come back to such a nice welcome home. I tried to dole out the hugs, each of them wanting more than I could humanly give in just a few minutes. I'm not an octopus.

I asked my 4 yr. old if she missed me. "Yep. I missed you SO much I thought about missing you the WHOLE time! My brain was just filled up with missing you real bad." (emphasis was hers.) I had to write it down really fast, so I wouldn't forget what she said. It brought tears to my eyes.

On-going annoyance

We've been having trouble with the plumbing in our new house. We have 3 bathrooms, and all 3 had a leak in the shower fixtures. It was just pin-prick holes, but I think that might be worse because we didn't know for quite a while that it was going on. We found the first leak in our master bathroom and then the other two followed. Hubby investigated for the exact cause around the New Year, and thought he fixed them. The faucet was actually faulty, made with cheap parts. Well, thinking they were fixed, we forgot about them, except for the holes in the 3 closets, waiting to be patched. They were still leaking, can you believe it, from another faulty spot. SO, another home in B's closet. Hubby says he will patch them when he's good and sure they are truly fixed this time. I know it's a minor annoyance, unlike a fire inside a wall, but annoying all the same. I think the fact that it's gone on for so long now is what bothers me the most. Two of the closets were bad enough to cause mildew problems as well. So I've got the fun chore of carting the dehumidifier back and forth between the two closets on opposite sides of the house. That thing is heavy!! (They seem dry now so I think the problem is finally solved.) Here's a picture of B's troubled wall.

Rained Out

Well, if you live here locally, you can imagine that Ch's race was indeed rained out. He was pretty upset. He had been so ready: car's gears changed to match the requirements of the track, the weights shifted around appropriately to suit the upcoming track conditions, a new friend ready to come to the track with him, the car washed and mud free. He's had H practicing all week on using his new-fangled stopwatch and marking the times, so he could record his dad's lap times and those of the lead car. The car was even loaded up in the trailer and ready for us to pull out of here today promptly at 2 o'clock.

We were wondering last night if there would be rain trouble. When a weather forecaster on the news predicts 60-80% chance of rain it can mean one of three things. Either they are right on with their predictions, or they have just timed it wrong. The third option is that they missed the mark completely, but that actually doesn't seem to happen much these days thanks to their massive modern computer weather analysis programs. Today, they miscalculated when the rain would hit us. We woke up to tornado watches which included our county. We expected rain to occur starting sometime fairly early in the morning. The race track, a little north of us, said they would call the "rain-out" by 1:00 p.m. if he was going to call it at all. They weren't getting any rain either.

They finally called a cancellation on the race at around 4:15 p.m. and they really needed to. Evidently there was a lot of street flooding there in the area they ended up with so much rain. But I feel like I wasted half of my day, waiting to find out what would happen. I had to keep checking the radar on the computer, and the track's website every so often. I needed to pick up a prescription (a 1/2 hr. drive north of me) and made it there in time before closing, but I've never made it there that late before, and didn't even know when they would close! As it is, I barely made it to the library just 5 min. before closing time. But I'm glad to have the books I requested, since if I don't get them within a few days of them calling that they're in, they will return them to the host library. Invariably, they always come in the very afternoon of the same day I had already visited the library in the morning.

Well, we finally got some rain here at our house. It started raining around 7 p.m. and hasn't really stopped until now. It is pretty late now, after midnight. It let up somewhat a few times, but rained continuously since then. I cannot wait to check the rain gauge to see how much rain we got. It should be quite a bit this time. As I sit here tonight, typing up this blog post, I can look out my front window across to our adjoining neighbor's property, and see a really large spot of water. It's dark outside, but it's actually reflecting the moon light. That's how I know we must have gotten substantial rain because that "lake" has been dry for many months now.

I do worry about our little bitty tomato plants though. They were out in the storm. I didn't think to bring them in for cover but probably should have. They are very small. We started them from seeds. They actually sprouted very well, but may be quite flat now if the rain was too hard on them.

And what am I doing up so late? Insomnia of course, induced by the fact that we are still under tornado watches. It has that kind of effect on me. Ch sleeps like a log and won't even wake up for a security alarm blaring away in his ear. So the burden is on me to hear stuff in the night, like the sound of tornadoes, or kids stumbling around in their sleep, looking for the bathroom. This has happened a few times already in our new house, and it wasn't pretty. Yes, lucky me. The boys both sleep very soundly, just like their dad.