The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Let me tell you about my weekend.

There were some good parts, including some very good parts. We had my birthday dinner on Sunday night and it was great. I love lamb chops but we don't get lamb very often because it's so expensive and not always available. Grill the lamb on the cast iron grill plate over a fire in our fire pit and I'm in heaven. We had onions and mushrooms sauteed in olive oil with a splash of red wine and red potatoes with it. I meant to make green peas too, but somehow that never happened. To drink there was an Israeli Cabernet Sauvignon. It was a great meal and everybody liked it.

The next morning the little girls got up, DC signed the cards for herself and her nieces and they sang Happy Birthday to me before giving me the cards. Then I got my present from Hubby, a long black skirt with ruffles, eyelet and lace, and a black top with sequins at the neckline.

We went to the beach with the kids and I took pictures of them enjoing themselves (usually I forget and the camera just sits in my purse). The weather was nice. Sunny but not nearly as hot as normal for the Okanagan. Over the course of the weekend we got a lot of yard work done and seeded the side yard.

But there were bad things too. On Friday when I was walking from the office to the deli to pick up the meat and challah I slipped on a little mud in a depression in the sidewalk. I caught myself without doing a face plant but I jammed my big toe straight down into the bricks and I think I broke it. It's all bruised and for the first 2 or 3 days it ached all the time and sent sharp shooting pains when I moved my foot in certain ways. I've been wearing flip flops continuously and it has helped. The pain is mostly gone but I still can't clench all my toes on that foot. The big toe and the one beside it just don't bend when I try to tell them to.

The baby barfed on the drive to the house. I've discovered that you cannot mix her, a bottle of milk and a car trip with any kind of curves. She also had a screaming fit for about half an hour in the middle of the first night. Nothing was right, she wouldn't be comforted. Finally, she lay down like a newborn (on her tummy with her butt in the air) and fell asleep in about 2 seconds.

I spent all of Shabbos day suffering from serious stomach cramps that seemed to come out of nowhere, to the extent that I practically didn't eat.

We drove home fairly late on Monday (arriving back in the city at 11:30 pm) and when I woke up Tuesday morning my left arm was hurting and itching. I looked at it and was shocked. My arm is swollen and red from my armpit to my elbow. It appears to be a spider bite and I know we have black widows at the house because I've seen and killed them, so I'm kind of worried that it may be a black widow bite! My arm is warm to the touch, itches horribly and aches in a way that reminds me of when your leg falls asleep and you hesitate to move it because you know it's going to hurt in a sharp, aching way before the pins and needles sensation starts. It feels heavy and a little on the weak side, although I can still use it normally.

And then there was the ugly. We were driving merrily along on the freeway (on our way to the Okanagan) when everything came to a screaming halt. The highway was actually closed from Bridal Falls to Hope. I think it had something to do with the road flooding, but we never saw it. We had to take Highway 9 across the river and come at Hope the back way. You take a 3 lane freeway and put all that traffic on a single lane highway on a holiday weekend and it's ugly.

So, there it is. My weekend. Now I'm going to go to bed because my arm is killing me. (Yes, I'm planning to go to the doctor tomorrow.)