And They Say You Can't Go Home Again....

There are definitely times when I think it would be useful if I could clone myself! As I mentioned in my last post, I've been incredibly busy. My lunch with my Executive Director ended up being postponed to this week because we didn't have time last Thursday!

I did go to the doctor and the news was all good. She said all my blood work was normal. I'm not anemic and my thyroid was normal. The stress test results were normal too (meaning that I didn't have any kind of problematic heartbeats during or right after the test and that my heart rate slowed back down afterwards within the appropriate time frame). She feels that I'm not getting enough exercise and told me to do a half hour per day, every day. I'm trying, but it's not always working out that way. I think it will take a while to get in the habit and to manage to fit it around everything else.

Dear Child had her Kindergarten Graduation (which was very cute) and only has 2 days left of school. Tomorrow is a field trip and Thursday they pack all their stuff up to bring home and get their report cards.

My summer schedule is going to be insane. Mondays generally home with all 4 girls. Yes, four. This summer my oldest granddaughter is joining us, as her mother is working Thursday to Monday (and my Number One Son works Monday to Friday). Tuesday and Wednesday my daughter-in-law is off and has all the girls. The catch is that my son-in-law (the one we share a house with) has to take our 3 with him at 7 am and drop them off with her on his way to work! This should be, um, interesting considering that I spend about half an hour on average from 7 to 7:30 am talking to Dear Child, stroking her, tickling her, anything that will wake her up (while not putting her into a grumpy mood). Then we normally leave at 8 am. She moves fairly fast once she's awake but she's very hard to wake up (her father's daughter). There is No Way I want to get up at 6 am and start trying to wake her. I have a hunch she may be going in the van in her nightie with food she can eat in the car! Thursday and Friday are my son-in-law's days off and he gets all 4 girls here.

So, on the surface, it looks like I'm getting a break over the summer because I'm only responsible for one day per week instead of the current 3. However, my 4 year old granddaughter is registered for 2 or 3 weeks of summer camp (and the baby is registered for a week, as of today!). The older camp kids eat lunch there and finish at 1 or 1:30 pm; the littles finish at 11:30 am. That means on Tuesday and Wednesday I can only work until 11:30, go downstairs, pick up Boo Boo, hang out in the building until the older group finishes, pick the 4 yo up too and head home. Meanwhile, my own child will be happily playing with her niece, half an hour or so from home. Mondays should be even more fun. I'll be doing multiple pickup and hanging out at the centre for at least 1.5 hours with the older girls too. And I still haven't decided if I'm going to try to put DC in camp for a week too! The best part of that is that it would be an Orthodox kids camp instead of the community centre one, so it's in a different place and I don't know if it has the same pick up time ('cuz you know I'm good with being in 2 places at one time, see cloning comment above). I've been putting it off because I haven't checked with all her friends' mothers to see if their girls are going and which weeks, etc.

Anyway, to get back to what happened over the past few days, Dear Child complained of an upset tummy on the morning of her graduation and threw up in the car on the way to school. Into a plastic Safeway bag. The kid gets brownie points for not getting anything on her Shabbos clothes because they were all supposed to be dressed up for the graduation. I ended up taking her to my office for a couple of hours and we just took her to school in time for the event itself (I talked to the teachers and that was the decision as we didn't know if she was sick or just nervous and we didn't want her to miss the graduation).

After the graduation party I took DC home, we threw things in the car and I headed off on a 4.5 hour drive with a kid who had already been car sick once that day! Yes, I gave her Gravol and she had a fresh bag handy! Baruch Hashem [thank G-d], things went well and we arrived without incident and in enough time that I accomplished about 2.5 hours of intensive yard work before Shabbos. It was the first time in about 7 months that we've been to the house, so not too surprising that there was a lot to do!

Shabbos we just hung out, went for a long walk with Dog (who is in 7th heaven whenever we go to the house) and she played some with the kids next door. And yes, I did warn the mother that she might be sick. While she felt fine (no aches or pains, no fever, no further queasiness) she did develop the runs intermittently on Shabbos and Sunday. When she had to go, she really had to go. Within about 30 seconds. I was terrified of putting her in the car Sunday afternoon for the long car ride back to the city because I wouldn't even be able to pull over to the side of the road in that kind of time frame.

I did about another 4 hours of yard work on Sunday, some by hand and a lot with my neighbour's heavy duty weed whacker that you hold with 2 hands and swing kind of like a scythe, while holding down a button on the side and squeezing the trigger all at once. Do you think that was what the doc had in mind when she talked to me about exercise? By the time I finished I was in serious pain from my back, arms and right hand. When I say "finished", I mean I did all I could do but had to leave one of the side yards for next time. I ended up talking to Hubby and Eldest Daughter on the phone and the decision was to stay over Sunday night and come back some time on Monday. She worked something out for her girls and we just stayed and relaxed. I left a voice mail at work and that was that.

I took DC into town Sunday evening to buy a couple of things from the store, including a small pack of pullups for her to wear to bed and in the car, just as an insurance policy. She still had 2 more bouts, one about 11:30 pm Sunday, the other at 6:30 am on Monday, so it was a smart thing to do, although she's been out of that sort of thing for ages. We stayed until 4 pm Monday, then headed back and she's been fine. Whew!

My son-in-law took today off to do some work on their van so I worked the whole day and went back for some more time this evening. Now I'm not short any hours, even though I didn't work Monday. I'm really tired though and I'm covered in giant, itchy mosquito bites. At least 32 at last count. I don't think they liked me cutting the grass. Either that, or I just taste really good to them. So, I'm off to bed. Tomorrow is payday and Wednesday, so we'll see just what I can accomplish.