Crazy Weather!

This is a crazy week - storms, sun, hot, cool, humid, dry. It never stays one way for long! This morning at the beach, it seemed like it was going to be a postcard-perfect day, but then at around 1, our skies opened up. It was raining so hard that the street couldn't even accommodate all the water and it was running like a river. Now it's all gone and the sun is shining brightly.

Megan is babysitting next door again, so we didn't get to stay at the beach. It may not have even rained there, although there was a huge blob moving across the radar. I'm trying to decide how to spend my time, and that is how I seem to have spent most of it!

Brian has put me into a near panic by complaining of neck pain. He said it started to hurt him yesterday, while he was swimming in the practice. Of course, my blood runs cold and my heart beats out of my chest when he has these complaints. Invariably he produces some new complaint each July, so I can begin to panic for our August doctor's appointment. This year, of course, we have no MRI scheduled, and I would *really* like for there NOT to be one. I am just not up for it. I think it's time for a break. So I am making him lay low. I gave him some motrin, and he didn't go to practice today anyway because he had to get his teeth cleaned.

Anyway, that is it. Life is quite boring and slow right now. I need to get all the humdrum daily chores caught up before we go away on July 6; and I am still trying to decide how to best furnish the guest bedroom, and what to do with the computer set-up and rolltop desk. I am now leaning towards leaving the desk, and getting a smaller one for the computer in the family room. Then we can move back in there when E leaves; just in case we never do this again, I don't want to completely rearrange our lives permanently. After all, we do have the guest room in the basement. I just can't stick her there, it wouldn't be right.

I keep finding things on online sites, and then I wish it were possible to see them in person. I wanted to drive up to Ikea today, but then Brian mumbled and grumbled. Tomorrow, maybe I won't give him a choice. I can't go alone, the packages are huge, and you need someone to wait with your things while you go get the car anyway. Plus, it is a long ride of about 40 minutes. I also found a nice Captain's Bed for pretty cheap at an online store, and they have a showroom in NJ, but it's in Newark. And then I'd have to get a mattress, too. And there is also the option of dismantling Brian's bunk and putting one bed in the guest room. That's currently my second choice, to buying a cheap bed from Ikea and sticking a twin mattress on it.

I also want to get new carpet for Brian's room (his stinks) and he needs a new dresser (his drawers don't slide properly). But I don't know where to go to get it, and then the bed will have to be dismantled anyway, to get it out of the room, and that would be the perfect time to put the other half as the guest bed. So all of these things are intertwined. Buying the new carpet will be like opening a can of worms.

So, in other news, report cards will be mailed out on Friday. The board meeting where we expect approval for E is tomorrow night, so maybe the blog will be a little more interesting after that. I put together a card and a little photo essay and sent it along to C in the Bronx, so he can see our house, pool, beach, and the race track. I also enclosed the church portrait we had done. I hope I don't get a call in a few days saying he's changed his mind!

Saturday Morning

Megan is off to her beach practice with Kevin, and then she is babysitting two new children, referred by our old neighbor, Judy. She won't be able to steal them as regular customers, but perhaps she can become a first alternate when Judy's two girls are unable to do it. She seems to be a preferred sitter for the kids next door, even though the dad told us he came home and found one in bed naked the last time Megan watched them. (He was complaining that it was too hot, so she said 'so take off your clothes!' and, apparently, the kid did!)

I am waiting at home for the air conditioner company to come and check the charge on the new air conditioner, at any time between 9 and 1. At 10, we have the "landscape architect" coming to look at the front of the house, and I am awaiting a call from another electrician. He did call me yesterday while I was working, but by the time I got home and called him, he didn't pick up the cell.

Yesterday was not such a bad day at work after all. I only had one kid shut down and refuse to work, because the math was so confusing. Sometimes they just make it so irrational that it takes forever to explain the simplest thing. The afternoon para is great, though, and even though he is not her charge, I asked her to sit with him, since she was the only continuity in the room. Eventually he did the work and was fine. And that was only a brief 40 minute period anyway. Oh, and I saw the little boy of ambulance/seizure fame. He looks as good as anything, new haircut and all, but his attitude is multiplied times ten. I asked his para what they did to him in the hospital and she just shook her head. I would have loved to see how he treated the nurses!

When I came home, Brian greeted me with the news that there was puke everywhere. While this turned out to be a bit of an overstatement, it did become clear that Molly had had a seizure during the day. There were a few piles of dog puke, and she had peed twice in the same area. It's been a really long time since she had one, at times she was having them twice in a three or six month period, and I can only recall one in the last two years. She seems fine now, and I threw out the mat that was most affected, and replaced it. Can't have a pukey-peed-on-mat for our Fresh Air visit on Monday! Which reminds me, I must get cleaning for that.

In other news, Brian's friend was suspended yesterday, so he didn't really have anything to do last night. There was a middle school dance, but since he didn't have anyone to go with, and the last time he came home smelling like smoke and claiming not to know why, we just left him home and we went out to the local "inn" for dinner at the bar, before Kevin had to pick up from swimming. Megan went to a party up the block for the last hour after she got home, at 10. She's getting her hair cut at 2, and she has to fry 30 tortillas by Sunday night for her Spanish class. I'm thinking of making her use the basement oven. It's never been used, so if there's no additional post by midweek, call the fire department and inquire about us.