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1) Have your nieces come for an extended visit.

2) Buy crayons and a coloring book.

3) Be relegated to sitting in a too-small-for-you yellow plastic chair, supervising the coloring, because the 18-month-old twins believe that crayons are teething toys.

...to springrayn!

May you only get good presents!

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I have not read anything quite so powerful as Ambulance Driver's blog for today:

http://ambulancedriverfiles.blogspot.com/2008/05/because-i-cant-say-it-any-better-than.html

I would only add one thing.

When you think of your frustration with your brother, remember another brother, a young man who died alongside four comrades in Baghdad, as they stopped to show kindness and love to some young Iraqi children, sharing some candy, only to have an insurgent on a motorcycle infiltrate their convoy and detonate an IED.

These men and women deserve our highest respect, for they gave their all, that we might continue to enjoy the freedoms we hold so dear and often take for granted.

You do a job I could not imagine in a million years.

You have my unending and undying thanks.

...would Johann Pachelbel really be rolling in his grave, or would he be delighted to see that music continues to grow?



I'd like to believe the latter.

The sun is shining and it's 64 degrees out at noon!

We've been lucky to hit 64 as a high in the last week.

I have windows and doors open. Cats are getting high on O2 on the balcony, and I'm just loving the weather.

AND it's supposed to stay nice through the weekend, continuing to get warmer.

And USA Network is airing an NCIS marathon today. Life is good.

All I need is chocolate and some new books, and I'll be really happy!

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Of course, now I have the song stuck in my head. Not that this is a bad thing....

...is clearly on the right track towards his anticipated vocation.

http://www.money.co.uk/article/1000390-13-year-old-steals-dads-credit-card-to-buy-hookers.htm?article=true

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I love my drugs.

I really do. I can breathe without pain. This is a lovely thing. The meds don't eliminate the pain of moving wrong, but by and large I can sit down or even lay down without too much pain.

However, they make me really sleepy. (Also not necessarily a bad thing.) I took a nap this morning, and I want to take a nap again now.

Granted, I'm sure the rest is helping me to heal. Healing is good.

The fact that the drugs have made me forget that ther'e a whole truckload of things I should NOT be doing isn't good. Hubby yelled at me to go sit down because I wore myself out. He threatened to call S and tell her we needed to cancel the party tonight. I went and sat down.

So I'm going to try to be good for the rest of the afternoon. I have to run out and get some munchies for tonight, but I think I can handle that. I hope.

And I hope the caffeine from my Dr Pepper will kick in, and I won't be so sleepy!

Heartiest felicitations and wacky wishes to my good friend, Doc Awk. Happy birthday, dude! This is your card. :)

The weather here was mostly blah last week--a lot of overcast skies and not nearly enough rain to make them seem worthwhile, and it was chilly to boot. Until Friday. I checked the weather forecast, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was already 54 degrees at 9 a.m. and we had a high of 73 possible.

The cats and I were all suffering from a form of spring fever. I was sick of the cold; they wanted to have their windowsills and balcony back. So I jubilantly set about opening windows upstairs and down, opened the back door to the kitchen (making sure I latched our easily-opened-by-felines screen door), and opened up the balcony door (where they can chase bugs and get high on fresh air to their little fuzzy hearts' content).

It was so nice I didn't care that the pollen count was high enough to trigger repeated sneezes throughout the afternoon. We don't get a whole lot of direct sunlight because our house has southern exposure, so I didn't think that the sunlight was the culprit. And while a couple of the sneezes were particularly hard, I didn't think much of it.

Until Saturday, anyway. That was when I had a general achiness in my chest wall. Which then persisted into Sunday, and caused some shortness of breath. Breathing became...interesting. As long as I didn't move too much, it was, at worst, slightly uncomfortable. The motions of sitting down and getting back up were painful. I didn't think it was anything heart-related; all the pain and discomfort was located on my right side. Fun.

As I reviewed the last few days, I didn't think I'd merely slept wrong. Then I remembered my sneezing fits on Friday. I know how fast those suckers come racing out of your mouth, and I've pulled or strained muscles before when I've sneezed. But those were always in my back, neck or shoulder. This was clearly in my chest wall.

Ibuprofen and naproxen took some of the edge off the pain. Some. I pushed myself to sing in church Sunday night (in retrospect, a horrible idea). Even though it wasn't a song that required a huge amount of breath, singing still needs breath control, and I collapsed as soon as I was done in a cushy armchair out in the church foyer. It was less uncomfortable than sitting in a pew.

I slept little last night, unable to find a comfortable position. Even propped up with numerous pillows supporting my back, once the heavy-duty painkiller wore off, any wrong movement was enough to wake me up.

Ultimately, I decided this was now ridiculous and I needed medical intervention. I had Hubby take the morning off to drive me to my doctor's office. (I can't do much with my right arm because of the pain, which limits my ability to drive.) After the PA examined me, he sent me down to get a series of X-rays done. "Take a deep breath and hold it," the tech tells me. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. I took as deep a breath as I could manage, which wasn't much.

The X-rays confirmed my suspicions: I sneezed especially hard, and pulled a muscle in my chest wall on the right side. I might've even torn it a bit. The PA gave me a prescription for the pain.

Of course, when I related this adventure to my mother, her first thought was that I should've told the doctor that I'd gone to take care of her while she had a staph infection in her lungs. By the point in time that I would've been doing that, she'd been on antibiotics for three days, and I have no other symptoms. I emailed her back to say that there was nothing to suggest any kind of infection, just a klutzy flair on my part for accidentally hurting myself. Aside from the sharp pain when I move wrong and the general discomfort that normal breathing attempts give me, I feel fine.

Unfortunately, Mika is the only one of the cats who's gotten the message that I'm not feeling well. Pa'ani wants to use me as his personal jungle gym. The others want to join me on the recliner (it offers more support than the couch) or pester me to pay attention to them. And, of course, I am the only one who knows how to feed them.

On the plus side of all this, I can't clean. Which means Hubby has to do 98% of the cleaning for my Partylite party tomorrow night! *very careful giggle*

Last night I figured I ought to be a responsible kitty parent and go scoop boxes, although it's pretty darn near the top of my Things-I-Most-Hate-To-Do hit parade. And since I was the only one in the house with opposable thumbs, I was elected by default.

It's usually pretty inevitable that at least one of the cats comes down after me to see what I'm doing, as I mutter fake curses about how my cats with the biggest bladders always seem to pee in the exact same spots. Last night, it was Mika. He really came down to wind around my ankles as I finished up. Unlike my other goobers, who like to choose whichever box I'll be scooping next for their selected potty activities.

I shove the scoop bucket out of the general path to the boxes and turn to head upstairs, when I see Mika's ears perk. And then I hear the squeaking.

Pa'ani must have heard it from the kitchen, so he came down to investigate, too.

And there's lots of squeaking. The boys stare intently in the direction of the noise, and between the three of us, we still don't quite narrow down where the little mousies might be. I can't tell if it's coming from in the wall somewhere--the foundation is a rock wall--or if they've gotten themselves into the ductwork near the furnace.

I listen for a few more minutes, and knock gently on some of the ductwork to see if that does anything. The squeaking subsides, and I leave the boys prowling around the furnace to go to bed.

I'll just let Hubby know when he gets back tonight that we may have guests.

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Mom is laying down in the recliner, pretending to be good and let me cook dinner so that we can go to the HOA meeting tonight.

Those were her instructions.

I then embarked on the search for the fresh corn we bought at the grocery store earlier today. I found it in the left crisper drawer, and took the whole bag (containing our whopping three ears) in to my dad, who was in the computer room.

"Awwww, shucks," I said as I walked in.

"What are you shucking?" he asked, as he turned in his chair to face me.

"I'm not." I handed him the bag. "You are."

He peered in. "Oh! I guess I am."

(All due respect to springrayn's MIL.... *grin*)

Hubby called yesterday to whine about missing me and to let me know that one of "our" kids had lost her grandmother earlier this week. We knew it was possible; the grandmother was on hospice care, if I recall correctly. We also knew that P's mother was having a hard time with her mother's impending death.

Hubby said he was going to look for the obit, because he figured he should go. He called me back later to say he'd found it, but the funeral and calling hours were going to be five hours away, and he couldn't rationalize the expense to the church of ten hours' round trip time and mileage for a couple of hours of funeral service visitation. And then he had a brilliant brainstorm: the funeral and calling hours were going to be in Girard, which is very close to his hometown. He announced he was going to call his mother.

He called me back an hour or so later. He'd called his mom, he explained. Asked if she remembered P from her visits out here and time spent with our kids. Sure, she said. Hubby told her how P's grandmother had passed away, and the funeral was going to be in Girard, and obviously he wasn't going to be able to go.

My MIL didn't miss a beat. "Where and when?" she asked. Hubby told her when the funeral and calling hours were going to be, and she said she'd be happy to go to the calling hours and give P a hug from us. And then he had to get off the phone because he was starting to get choked up because of his mom's love for our kids.

Hubby's youth pastor cluster buddies were suitably impressed this morning when Hubby related that his mom was going to the calling hours on our behalf tonight...especially when they found out my MIL is 70. And she still has a heart for kids.

Hubby called a little while ago; he'd just gotten a call from a delighted P, who was very surprised to see MIL walk into the funeral home. And thrilled that she would come when we weren't able to.

I've always thought I had great in-laws. (Who says prayer doesn't work? *grin*) I'm blessed that my MIL values our kids like we do.