Send rum.

(Sung to the tune of "The 12 Days of Christmas")

The first day of summer break I woke not to the birds,
but to a ferocious left calf charley horse. (At 5:40 AM)

The first day of summer break I tried to f'nish painting,
but round me kids kept for snacks complaining.

The first day of summer break my father came to stay,
-yay- we haven't seen him since 'round New Year's Day!

The first day of summer break and already it starts,
the boys lounge, glued to electronics, like old farts.

The first day of summer break and oh boy, woe is me,
the days of summer break number about ninety!

Metal roof beginning

It's happening! They are starting to put on the new roof!

How is it still May?

It probably seems like I rag on May a lot. I guess I do. Even Cheeky Beaky appears to have endured enough May for one year:

I don't feel like it's asking too much to have ONE room in the house be clean and able to be used. Clearly, this room is not it. This is affectionately known as the Old Lady Room. When we viewed the house, it had a very low couch, a stand-up, old-time radio, wingback chairs, etc. It was painted a pink/purple/gray/tan/no color and had roses on the carpet. 

You can see we stuck with the carpet, mostly because when the guys came to clean it the first time they informed us, "that's probably the best quality carpet in the house."

Of course it is.

So we painted and got furniture, kept the drapes, strung fairy lights, and threw our pajamas and underpants all over the floor. Perfect.

That is not the current painting project, by the way. This room was finished two summers ago when we shipped all the kids to various camps and grandparents' so we could work in peace. 

There are two days left of school and I haven't even started painting the actual kitchen yet. Good thing it's essentially just the backsplash area and the soffit and around one doorway. The sitting room is almost done except for an up high part that I can't reach while standing on the bar and I can't just slide the ladder over as the bar is in the way. It'll take Dada reconfiguring said ladder to get that part finished. 

Tomorrow I have coffee with my friend Janet and a dentist appointment anyway, so we'll see how much gets done once that's all finished. Last coffee date of the school year, haha!

If it ever stops monsooning, the guys will be able to finish the roof. Today they began adding some of the metal roofing over the sunroom. I took a picture of it but apparently my phone is once again not speaking to my laptop.

If it ever stops monsooning, I'll get the plants into the garden that I spent hours weeding on Memorial Day. It's still not completely ready for the seedlings as it's hard to weed around cilantro. But it's fun to see self seeding marigolds and borage popping up and stray tomato seedlings sprouting from last year's went-to-waste-on-the-vine. And lettuce. And surprise squash. I think. Time will tell!

As far as storm damage, we've been beyond lucky. Some friends have not fared well at all. We occasionally have ducks swimming in the yard, but structurally everything seems to be holding up well, including our rear mostly-naked-and-covered-in-Sharkskin roof. 

On the medical front, some of you have been privy to (haha, that's funny!) photos on facebook of my morning meds with cookies. Three Nerlynx seemed to work pretty well. Upping this week to four has worked rather less well in terms of side effects. I called my oncology office today and laid it all out. They checked and double checked and now I'm to not take any Nerlynx for the next two days and then start back up with three a day. My appointment is next week, so we'll talk then about how things are progressing. Or not. Thanks to those of you who have been checking in on me and praying against me moving into the bathroom permanently. I quipped to a friend that I'd be finished with my summer reading list in about a week if this kept up. Yes, I'm drinking plenty. Yes, I'm keeping an eye on electrolytes. Yes, I'm keeping my doc in the loop. Yes, perhaps next summer will be diarrhea-free, (third year's a charm, right?) and then I'll celebrate with ice cream every day!

In the meantime, there's no homework which means the boys are reveling in their rediscovered love of screen time as I attempt to finish the painting, Bosley Underfoot is losing his mind every time the roofers show up, the seedlings need separated and popped into the ground, Dada and I have an actual date *gasp* planned for next week, there are two more days of school, and life is good. We are blessed. 

Didn't forget!

And I swear I haven't forgotten the karate pictures, but until Damon is finished with his projects, I don't want to tie up the computer. He is logged in as a guest user, and if I log him out, he loses all his stuff, and if I upload all the pictures while in guest user mode, same deal- I'll lose them all when someone logs out of guest user. Technology! Hopefully this weekend when things settle a bit I can sift through the photos and not have to post them en masse...

The Ides of May

We had sunshine yesterday, real, actual sunshine, for the first time all day in I don't even know how long. So I decided I better start the hardening off process for the garden seedlings. Who knows when we'd get another one? (Actually looks like we'll have two in a row as today is sunny and low wind; don't read it out loud as I don't want to jinx it!)

Those are mostly various types of tomatoes but the yellow-green cheerful looking ones are basil and the tiny ones on the end are salvia, I think. I am never sure who needs to start inside and who can just get dumped into dirt outside, so I try some of each and hope for the best. They seemed to enjoy their field trip, anyway, and stayed out for an entire hour. I hope to do at least that long again today and maybe stretch it a little further.

We've had visitors. Meet Gus and Gertie, the ducks who return to the pond next door each year. Yes, they are sitting in our front yard in what the kids call The Leak. Remember that you can click on the photos to see them larger. I didn't want to get any closer and scare them. Gus saw me and headed for Gertie as it was...

And here's where y'all come in on this, the Ides of May: tomorrow I begin taking Nerlynx for one year. It replaces the Herceptin that I had for a whole year and is supposed to help prevent cancer recurrence.

The number one side effect is diarrhea, yaaaaay. Also there are potential liver issues. While I can prepare for one of those things:

I'm not sure there's really much I can do about prepping my liver. So, all y'all get to pray against diarrhea as ain't nobody got time for that, especially at the end of the school year and the beginning of summer and I already had that last year, thank you very much, and am not looking forward to any repeat performances. Also please pray that my liver behaves itself and I experience no issues. The side effects of liver damage ("call your doctor if you notice these signs") were identical to the side effects of the medication itself: vomiting, tiredness, nausea... I mused to Dada, "how am I supposed to know if it's garden variety vomiting versus liver related vomiting? It's not like it's going to tell me!" Ugh. 

BUT you can do anything for one year, right? And my doc and the drug company are both very proactive about prevention and easing into the med carefully. For example, it's written as a 6 pill a day (and thank you, Jesus, that they are tiny, WOOHOO!) prescription, but starting tomorrow I will take 3 daily for a week. If that seems to work, I'll up it to 4 for a week, and build up to the 6 daily. Alongside the pills, I am to take Imodium 3x a day for the first two weeks. Dada, guess we know which stock to invest in. 

So that's the situation as of right now. Please pray hard as I'm supposed to be at Damon's school three times in the next two days and I can't do that if I'm stuck on the commode, as Nana would say. Pray for him, too, please, as he's overwhelmed with these big projects. We will all sleep well Friday night, for sure!

Happy hump day!

SitRep

It's just after 9 AM. I have a load of boy laundry in the washer, a dish full of dishes but the dishwasher is half full, dinner is in the crock pot, and the cookie dough for Damon's presentation tomorrow is chilling in the fridge. I figured I better blog now before I get busy again with the latest project. What dummy decided removing wallpaper and painting during the end of the school year would be a good idea, again? 

I blame Delores.

Before-ish

The boys are definitely related to me in that they appreciate destruction. Teehee. 

Carrie, and Precious, unfazed by the mess.

The current state of affairs:

Having a hard time removing the adhesive at the top of that wine colored wall where the border had affixed straight to the paint. We've tried the water-and-fabric-softener route, and plain water, and soapy water, and the Goo Gone followed by soapy water already. Guess it's time to tear down the wall and start over.

If you need me, I'll be chiseling away the last  (hopefully) of the dried glue, sanding (yes, Mommee, I have a dust mask), scrubbing, and otherwise dancing around on my step ladder.

At least until it's time to drop everything to run Carrie to karate, bake Damon's cookies and help him put the finishing touches on his presentation for tomorrow and then the wax museum one on Friday, along with the myriad of other things that I hope to cross off my list. Yesterday I got all the sunroom curtains washed and hung outside to dry. They're on the guest bed in the hopes that they'll stay tidy until we've painted, but as we have at least one boy who vaults on big beds to do backflips no matter how many times we've admonished him not to, my hopes are not terribly high for them staying wrinkle-free. At least they smell good.

Imagine with me

If my LAUNDRY ROOM looks this bad, you can envision pretty well what the rest of the house looks like.

Imagine with me a place and time that doesn’t have this much mess and this many activities crammed into 31 days. Somebody please send me there! SOS!

We just did a haircut, so now there is a mess of a different sort:

He wanted fuzzy. I started with a 3 and he wasn't satisfied customer so we went to the 2 and he still wasn't happy. You probably heard the squeals of glee after I finished with the 1 when he exclaimed, "I never noticed how big my forehead is!" And the ensuing peals of laughter.

I imagine that I'd have less mess and less crazy without them, but that smile just melts me. 

And now there's a fuzzy head to rub.

And it isn't mine!

Liam, the Squirrel Whisperer

A week ago (already!) I doo doo doo looking out my back door (sorry, it's how my brain works, haha) and saw Liam and the Bos just sitting there, chillin'. I saw front feet on Liam's hoodie and thought, "that's a really large frog...? Waitaminute. That has a tail." 

Yes, folks, Liam is indeed petting a squirrel.

The story as I heard it was that Bos was not clipped into his tie out and grabbed a squirrel's tail as it tried to scamper up a tree. He dragged it back down by its tail, Liam intervened, and the pictures are of it clinging to Liam for dear life. After being told multiple times that it is a wild animal and that he needs to let it go, he informed me that it wouldn't get off him, he was trying, it didn't want to leave him, he was trying, it won't let go, he was trying...

He finally made it back inside sans squirrel and was sent to wash his hands under supervision. He announced it had bitten him when he finally got it off of him, but there was only a tiny pinprick and no blood so I asked if it could have been a nail scratching him as it left. "Oh, could be." 

So I did what any good mom would do: I texted a nurse friend and asked about rabies. To her credit, she chuckled as she researched and didn't just laugh. According to the CDC, they are almost never to be found to be infected and haven't been known to cause rabies in the US among humans. 

Liam isn't any weirder than usual, so I guess we dodged that bullet. His finger never changed in appearance and he's no different than any other day, so all's well that ends well. Whew. Like I need any more crazy in May. 

And happy nurses' and teachers' week! I shudder to think where we would be without all y'all. Thank you for taking such good care of us!

Aiiiiiiieeeee, it's May!

You know those days where you have a plan and are all set to accomplish everything you think you need to do for that day? You know how those days never seem to work out so that you do actually accomplish said plan?

Today is that day. 

I had in mind that I would accomplish more of this:

The above picture is about a day and a half of wallpaper removal. First of all, why is there even wallpaper? Why not just hand people Sharpies and let them go to town and then paint over it, again and again, around and around we go?

And secondly, why is there wallpaper again?

After shunting all 3Thingz out the door to school, I tackled the dishwasher and the dishes that needed washed by hand. They'd been sitting around since Saturday's party for Carrie. Objects like both crock pots. Don't judge. They were soaking.  And I threw in a load of laundry. And crossed my fingers that the trash wouldn't get blown to kingdom come. Then I left the house. 

 After breakfast out with my girl Zita which was then followed by a trip to Panera for gift cards, I came home to an unscheduled game of 52 Pick Up:

Drat that Ohio wind. I realize we are not the only people who experience this problem. However, I am a rather rabid recycler, which means our bin is almost always 2/3 full or we don't even put it out. So when we DO put it out and the wind is coming from the north or the east out of Mordor, I tend to scream, "are you even kidding me?!" which usually leads into  bad words.

During my impromptu Trash Bash, a dump truck sped along at at least the 50 mph that marks our road and knocked the bin over again while I was right there, I confess I didn't fully appreciate the tiny wildflowers that are dotting our field of dreams mud. I was more worried about sinking, like Atreyu's horse in "The Never Ending Story."

After yanking the recycling bin back down the driveway, still full, and putting it in time out until next week and then stomping my way back inside, I transferred the laundry to the dryer, loaded up my teacher appreciation basket and headed back out. I dropped that off at the school and then continued on to Walmart with its assorted fun and games. 

Now I'm finally home, the groceries are unloaded and the laundry is folded and put away, but the kids are already on the bus en route home and I haven't even started on the rest of the wallpaper:

And somebody is pouting that I never play with him. He's also ticked because he's been sequestered to one room (as he eats everything including wallpaper adhesive) though it happens to be the room where I'll be working next...

Not that it's all about me, but if the Second Coming were to happen anytime soon, it had better be sometime other than in May! 

And so it goes

Any typical school morning finds me asking, "Liam, do you have your backpack or binder or lunch?"
"Yeah."
Dada interjects, "brain?"
Liam stops. "What?"
I crack up.
Liam inquires, "Did you say ears?"
I laugh a little bit harder.
Dada emphasizes, "BRAIN!"
Liam processes. "Oh." 

And guess whose science textbook and notebook have been sitting on the kitchen table since he finished the homework on Wednesday night? Doesn't do you a whole lot of good to do it and then not turn it in for the credit...

TGIF. Welcome to May, everybody.