June in review – Adventures in a Messy Life

It is June 19 and I’m starting my post. That tells you about my June so far.

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Week 1

I took practically no pictures this week, which is a perfect contrast to next week where I have all the pictures.

The big thing I remember is going out for dinner with Jeff for our anniversary. We went out for fondue and had a lot of fun eating there, and despite being absolutely starving I still couldn’t eat all the food we got.

It was funny, Jeff was trying to encourage me to eat more, and this is where it gets into the difference in how we were raised and the differences in our ages. His parents were very much raised during the Great Depression when you had to eat every bit of food because you weren’t sure where food was coming from next. So Jeff was taught you clear your plate. By contrast my Mom was not raised with that, and she did not raise me with that. So, I was thinking, I’m starting to get full and I want to enjoy dessert that is coming, so I chose not to finish the meat course. But it was an interesting reminder of our different viewpoints.

Books read:

• Austen-Inspired– Ugh, this was as the title says Austen inspired, the main character is a big fan of Jane Austen and she runs into a situation that is very similar to Pride and Prejudice and decides that maybe she’s living out the story, and keeps trying to make the man who is clearly just terrible into Mr. Darcy, but really the storyline she’s in is Emma. It was okay, but the further I got into the book the worse it got. I am not getting any of the sequels.
• Academic Bride– This was a newsletter freebie I got, and while the plot and characters were okay, it was an overall generic plot, which would have been forgivable if there weren’t SO many typos, AND I think the author used a form generator to fill in names and missed some parts. So at one point a character’s name was listed as Xv#WY or something similar. This happened more than once. At free I paid too much. They did not convince me to buy the next book in the series. I was disappointed because I had read other books by this author I had enjoyed.
• Arrows and Gems– After reading two disappointing books I decided to reread a book I knew I liked and could read fairly quickly. Because I tried starting another book I had but just was not willing to try another unknown.
• I feel like I read another, but I forgot Austen-Inspired was longer than I remembered. It just felt like it was a short book because not a lot happened.

Okay now to week 2, which I will write about after I go buy milk for the week. We had no room in the refrigerator because of the vast amounts of leftovers and other stuff in there, so we finally have space now. I shall return.

Week 2

This is a mish-mash of a week, and I’m going to talk about the pictures all out of order. This is what happens when you forget to start for a long time, and when you upload pictures all at once.

First, we’ve been playing Shadows of Brimstone every week, we decided to play some of the older character classes that we haven’t played as much, which has been a fun thing to do each week.

Then, I’ve been working on sorting out LEGOs, and I printed out labels for them, and had it all out on the floor to work on that, and Leezard decided to lay on them. Which was not so helpful.

For Christmas I had given Jeff a murder mystery in a box, and we decided to work together to figure it out. It had a lot of fun elements in it, and we enjoyed solving it, we were correct in our guess. Now, I’m going to find a friend to pass it on to because it is not really something you can do again because you’ll know the murderer after you’ve done it once.

Okay, so that night Leezard had a seizure. This is important because I had left some of the debris out of the various stuff I was sorting out to figure out where I wanted to put it later. While I was cooking dinner I hid some popcorn in a blanket to keep her busy and from the family room I hear a crunching sound that is significantly louder than I should be hearing.

So I come over and trying to pry out whatever is in her mouth. I reach my hand way back in her mouth, and pull a Nerf dart from the back of her throat that she has almost swallowed, and the whole time I’m doing this she is still actively trying to chew something else that is stuck in the roof of her mouth. This is hurting quite a lot, but I do not want another surgery, because we cannot afford that. So, I’ve got my fingers in her mouth and pop out a LEGO brick separator that is stuck in the roof of her mouth.

I pull my hand out and I’ve got two deep gouges on my left ring finger, and then a couple of smaller gouges on my right hand. I run my hand under cold water, it hurts like the dickens, and grab the first aid kit. I use the disinfectant, get some bandaids on the smaller cuts on my right hand, but the big gouges on my left hands are deep and look like they need stitches, and it’s starting to seriously swell.

So, I look around for my phone to call The Artist who is upstairs. I can’t find it. I drag the dog into her crate and climb upstairs, knock on the door and tell her she needs to drive me to the ER because I think they need to cut my wedding ring off and I need stitches.

We get to the ER and spend over an hour in the waiting room. They are in no huge hurry because I’m not crying or screaming because I think I have a decent pain tolerance. It’s also not bleeding like crazy. They bring me back, do triage and see it’s swollen, but not absolutely scary, take me back to the waiting room, and then I sit there for another hour. Finally we get a room to wait in. At this point we have been sitting there for over 2 hours. Jeff switches off with her, and waits with me while bringing up food. At this point the doctor has come in and decides I need an iodine bath (that’s the bottom left picture). So I’m sitting there soaking my hand in that while Jeff is feeding me food. It is incredibly awkward.

The nurse comes in, decides it has soaked long enough, and my finger has swollen even more, and at this point I CAN NOT FEEL MY FINGER and they have not addressed the continual swelling.

I bring it up with the nurse and she says she’ll ask the doctor and disappears for over 10 minutes, and it continues to swell more, and the ring is so tight now that I cannot move it on my finger, and my finger is growing more and starting to turn blue under that iodine dye. I push the nurse call, and the desk responds and I repeat that I can’t feel my finger and it is continuing to swell around my ring and can someone please cut off my ring.

Finally the doctor comes in and is still reluctant to cut off the ring, and I say, “The whole reason I came to the ER and not the Urgent Care is because I thought you would be better equipped to do this. Cut it off before I lose my finger because I am continuing to swell.”

They also only very grudgingly gave me any pain medicine, and then only a single motrin.

So she finally decided that it was not going to get better and I really did want her to do that.

That night before going to bed I took 2 Aleve hoping it would help with swelling and maybe I would be able to sleep on the recliner (because the theory was I would move around less in my sleep there, that was a lie).

The giant picture is my finger the next day. I couldn’t dress myself because of how swollen it was, and I had not realized just how much you use your ring finger. Even now, almost a week later, with the swelling mostly gone, it still hurts somewhat.

That first day, literally all I did was sit there and alternate putting ice on my finger and not having ice on it. It was amazing how little I could do, and when I couldn’t do anything, how I suddenly wanted to do those other things.

Books read:

Week 3

Okay, it’s now July 5, and I’m finishing typing this up. I just wasn’t feeling like writing, which is ridiculous, but that’s how I was feeling. I’ve been in a reading mood.

This is all going to be told quite out of order.

That middle left picture is the bulk pick-up I ordered to get rid of a bunch of stuff that we needed to get rid of. Our local trash has changed how they do bulk pick-up. It used to be they had bulk pick-up for your neighborhood twice a year. Now, you get to schedule it once a year. It’s been interesting those of us who have lived here for decades have noticed how our prices have gone up and what we get for that price has gone down. They used to do twice a week pick-up, whatever you put out there, and you paid extra for recycling. Then it changed to once a week and recycling was included. Then it was once a week and here is your can that we’ve decided is what you have to use and we’ll do bulk pick-up twice a year.

It’s rather frustrating.

Then Friday night, The Artist was having a bunch of friends spend the night and Superman while friends with them, felt like they would end up doing stuff he wasn’t interested in, so he joined us for dinner and mini-golf. That wonderful giant picture of us there.

We played Zombiecide, which Superman backed on Kickstarter and finally convinced me to play because “Really Mom, it’s not that much of a zombie theme.” (That statement has been proven not true with the second game in the storyline, but that was played in July). Overall, I like the game, and Superman SUPER loves the game, but the theme is zombies and I’m not a fan of zombies.

For our craft at Sunday School, we made a bookmark of the vines as we acted out the Parables of the Workers in the Vineyard. They had fun making their own and giving their projects their own twists.

Then that night, we worked on making fairy houses together. That’s mine in process, eventually I ran out of glue, so I had to quit making my house that night.

And the final picture is from something I tried to do for Leezard to entertain her, but she figured out how to just take it off the tape to the wall and was very proud of figuring out how to get it off the wall and get the popcorn sooner.

Books read:

I need to go get my notebook to find this. Okay, I got it.

• Haunted Grave– finishing up the series mentioned last week. I just realized I need to make sure I’ve added all this to Goodreads. I’m TRYING to actually get this all up there, with mixed results.
• Ghastly Mistake– final book in the series.
• Sunrise on the Reaping– Superman and I buddy read this together. It was fun to do, and we thought it was really interesting to see all of the characters we met in the second book of the trilogy and then realize how OLD they had to be 25 years later and trying to do the math. It was a fun book to discuss.
• Beauty and the Beast– I forget why I decided I wanted a quick read. I think this series got mentioned, so I started on it, and then realized this was a mistake because it’s an 11 book series, but it’s also a quick read because I’ve read it several times so I can skim it and not pay too much attention to it.

Games played:

Week 4

Here are the two completed fairy houses. The giant picture is mine. I took an old birdhouse that had been sitting in our house forever, and turned it into this. Then down underneath we have a scrap of one of the trees that The Artist turned into a very cool-looking fairy house.

Then in the top corner, we’ve got a fun book series a friend of mine wrote that I’m going to have a review up in a few days. It’s a cool new series that will make a great addition for any homeschooler or church library.

Then, the middle left and bottom right are for our Wrinkle in Time book quest. Someone made a Wrinkle in Tea blend, which I really like, and then I’ve been having a lot of fun taking pictures and creating highlights in my phone to share on my Instagram. I forgot how many great lines are in that book.

And then finally, we have the beholders Jeff created from the pom poms we had from our Sunday School craft, which really made me laugh.

Books read:

• Wrinkle in Time– this was our June book quest, and I love this book and most of her books. It’s such a great series.
• Crier Stone– this is a 2 book series vaguely based on Jonah, set in a post-apocalyptic Texas, and I really enjoyed it.
• Rumplestiltskin– I’ve written these down all out of order of the series and that I wrote them in. I like this version of Rumplestiltskin, and it’s a fun take on the story.
• Little Selkie– When reading the series, I usually skip this story, because I just don’t really like the Little Mermaid as a story all that much, and while the characters in this are okay, it’s just not that fun as a story.
• Cinderella and the Colonel– Beauty and the Beast is my favorite fairy tale, but I think this is my favorite book in the series, and the reason I started reading it this particular time as it came up in a discussion elsewhere.
• Wild Swans– A fun take on the sister who has to knit shirts out of nettles to turn her brothers back into humans. I find the ending with two possible endings interesting.

Games played:

I forgot to record this.

And that’s June for you. Now, I’m going to hit publish, and send out my newsletter on Saturday, maybe. I may put it off and just not send it this week. Life is weird right now here in Texas.