Friday, April 17, 2009

Colds, Earaches, Spider Bites, Birthday Parties, Easter

OK, well, I might not write about ALL of that today but that's been our life lately.

The P's have been sick quite alot in the past couple of weeks; they've also been hanging out alot at the gym's nursery (the gym that DD and SIL attend). So 2+2 were put together and it was decided that the nursery may be the root cause of these various illnesses.

The last blog I mentioned that Precious had an earache and that was off and on around her birthday weekend.



Precious greeting some visitors. She was a beautiful birthday girl and her mama and daddy put on a nice first birthday party for her, her family, and her friends.



Perfect also had a grand time and was completely astounded that Precious was being allowed to stick her fingers in her birthday cake....



He must not remember his first birthday party.



Then when the partying was over, Precious went back down with another earache and temperature and another doctor's visit. During this week, I discovered that I had a spider bite....on my behind.....the second one I've had in close to the same spot. I think they get me while I'm asleep at the country house. The first time this happened, I went to the doctor and lost all my pride as I'm standing with my pants down around my ankles and doctor has a magnifying glass out examining my behind and saying "Yes, I see the fang marks of a spider."

Since I still had cream left over from the previous bite, I decided I would try to pass on another humiliating experience at the doc's unless I had no choice and needed an antibiotic. This has seemed to work although it's been a slower healing process without the use of an antibiotic, but I'm healing. And no, there are no pictures of this, sorry.

Then right before Easter weekend, Precious broke out in an all-over rash.



So another trip to the doctor was in order to diagnose this bumpy baby. Turns out she is allergic to penicillin now (just like her Grammy). A few doses of Benadryl and her rash was gone and as of Wednesday she seemed back to her old self. Perfect was a bit under the weather though with a stomach virus that he had earlier in the week.

Updates: my computer flies along at the speed of light now. D Computer Guru's suggestion of more memory cards has worked marvelously and the installation was a piece of cake. Now I'm trying to get my router for the laptop in tip-top shape and have a dial-up solution for the country house. It's slow but hey, that's all that's available out there for now...it is the country.

I've added some new blog friends for our entertainment. "My Blog" is J.A. Jance, another author who has about 4 series out now--love them all---three are set in Arizona and one in Seattle--check her out. Then there are a couple of others that looked interesting to me but I haven't delved in them too deeply. I'll file a report soon.

Ok, that's enough for today......I'll save my Easter report for next time.

Until then....Grammy

Friday, April 3, 2009

TGI FRIDAY!

Friday, Friday, Friday, SOOO glad today is Friday. This has been a long week for me starting on Sunday when my computer problems struck. Even though that was worked out by Tuesday night......I'm still recooping from the stress of that.

I have noticed that the older I get, I ALWAYS need a day or two or more to recoop from anything/everything that happens that causes stress. I'm big on all that "take care of yourself", "give yourself some time" stuff and sometimes wonder if I give myself too much time or pamper myself just a bit much......NAW!!

Wednesday was P day and what a day. Papa had abandoned me in favor of the country and his search for old, derelict cars, so I was outnumbered from the get go. Precious was sick. Turns out she had an ear infection and went to the doctor on Thursday for medicine (she's feeling much better today). But Wednesday she was sick and running a fever most of the night.

Because of Precious's needy nature on Wednesday though, Perfect felt a bit overlooked and really hit all his Grammy boundaries hard!

Since Precious was under the weather, we scratched a walk off our list and scratched basement play off the list as well. It tends to get a little chilly down there without the stove on. Since Papa was gone and he has yet (we've lived in this house for 4 years) to show me how to turn on the gas for that stove, there was no way to heat up the downstairs. Need to put that on the top of my next list....1. Learn how to light the stove.

So we were restricted to upstairs activities.



See she doesn't feel good, thumb was a constant on Wednesday.

Aunt Cracker, notice my pack 'n play is gone.....really quite easy, pull the "string" in the middle of the bottom and it all folds up magically....even got everything into the handy carrying bag (except the mobile). But I digress...

Perfect started the afternoon just fine....watching Cars and having a "chip break."




And Precious had a conversation with Snoopy.







"take me away, doggy" Poor thing and this was how she spent the rest of the evening when she wasn't in my arms, standing with her arms up crying, demanding to be picked up. Droopy eyes, runny nose (made worse by crying) and a Grammy, who for the life of her, couldn't figure out how to work the ear thermometer. Who knew to leave the protective cap on---wasn't a protective cap at all but part of the thermometer's "workings".

In the other room, Perfect was constant motion--running from here to there and jumping and falling and yelling. I didn't have a chance to capture his photo but these pictures that his mother took earlier caught the mood.



Yes, I'm a stinker!



Did I do that??



Just let me kiss you and make it all better!



Let's do it AGAIN!



How can you be too angry at this tiny boy? But it took him back a minute when we heard the back door open and I announced 'Finally, the police have arrived to take you to the Bad Boy's Home' but that lasted only a second until his dad walked around the corner.

Hum...maybe it wasn't the computer stress that I needed recovering from.....

Have a magnificent weekend....Grammy

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

RUNNING WATER


Hey you. I have been posting every day, have you noticed? Also, I went back and popped some more pictures in.

My computer is working fabulously now. It is virus protected, virus scanned, cleaned out and up, has a fancy new hard drive (where my Itunes library is going to go live soon) and I was able to download things off my camera. Next up is connecting the router for my laptop, but I put that on tomorrow's schedule.

Today is Wednesday and the P's will be awaiting me when I get home from work today. We have spaghetti and salad and banana pudding to eat. A new Animal Baby magazine to look at. And it's gorgeous outside today, so we may all go for a short walk if we can sneak out of the house without Snoopy. Two babies and a dog is a might much for one Grammy to handle. They tend to move in three separate directions.

Papa headed to the country for two days to take care of some business there. He has bought the new kitchen cabinets for our latest rehab project on the property across the road and since it wasn't raining, figured today was a good time to take them out to the house. He has also been searching for another old car to rehab so tomorrow he is headed to KC to look at one he's found in a farmer's barn. I cringe to think about this. Another story for another time.

Saturday before I fled the country in advance of a forecasted blizzard, I happened to walk toward the barn with Snoopy and noticed we had a little river. We have what is called a "wet weather" creek behind the house and this is the second time in 9 years that I've seen water in this creek.

This is where the "creek" begins...what one would call the head of the river! HAHA.






These pictures are looking down the creek (notice our "bridge") to cross the river.





We even had a little waterfall.



Like I mentioned before this is the second time that I've seen water in this "wet weather" creek. The first time was about 7 years ago. I was home alone with Sydney (my elderly dog that resides in doggy heaven now) and we were in the middle of some pretty bad storms. Since we are so far out from town, we don't hear tornado sirens. When the wind blows, the satellite goes down and our radio reception is crappy all the time inside the house. So when we have a bad storm, we were pretty uninformed (not any more though, Papa has since purchased a weather radio that has been sitting in it's box on the kitchen table for several months now!). But it's there waiting for the next storm to hit.

My telephone worked, however. DD, who was working in Illinois at the time, was calling me every few minutes to give me another weather warning "Union is purple on the weather map"---worse than green, yellow or red apparently and there had been tornados sighted in the area.

This particular storm started with wind and rain and I happened to be in the bathroom when the hail hit. Hit indeed...at first I thought a large tree had fallen on the roof it was so loud, but the noise became constant. I looked outside and saw not marble-sized hail or golf ball-sized hail but baseball-sized hail and since I figured Papa wouldn't believe this, I ran out to the edge of the covered porch and grabbed a piece and put it in the freezer for show and tell later. Come to find out later, this large hail busted out the window in Papa's truck that was sitting in the driveway. BIG HAIL.

So we're being assaulted by this large hail, wind, and rain and DD's telephone calls. She finally unnerved me when she said we needed to get to shelter fast. We have a storm cellar underneath our storage shed in the backyard but this meant going outside in the storm and around the back of the house and climbing down a series of steps to the cellar's door. (In the pictures above, the storm cellar is around the bend from the bridge that crosses this "creek".)

Since it was still hailing, I grabbed a heavy quilt to put over my head to prevent me from getting knocked unconscious by the baseball-sized hail and one of the neighbors finding me laying out in the yard later on. I put Sydney on her leash, another thing out of the ordinary, but I didn't want her to get spooked and run off from me in the storm. Then out of the door we went. Syd was pretty distressed that I was dragging her out in this mess and I was literally dragging her too.

We left the cover of the porch, went around the corner of house and got to the steps going down to the storm cellar. There was our "wet weather" creek that had actually turned in a roaring river and was rising pretty fast. It had already risen about half-way up the door to the storm cellar.

Syd and I looked at each other and made out way back to the safety of the house. I shut all the windows and closed all the drapes and curtains and started to make dinner, trying to ignore the chaos in nature that was occurring outside. DD called and asked why I wasn't in shelter and I said our shelter was about flooded and I chose to take my chances with a tornado rather than drown in my storm cellar. I told her I was making dinner and if I should be blown away, well then it was meant to be.

We all survived that night (except the windshield of the truck) and in all the years since, I have never seen ANY water in this creek until this past Saturday. It sure wasn't the roaring river it had been on that night many years ago, this time it was a calm, quiet little babbling brook. Photogenic and relaxing. Almost like one of those fountains you can now buy for the inside of your house that run on electricity.

Until next time.....Grammy