Lego flowers

I thought it would be funny to do an old Dutch-style floral painting of a Lego bouquet for Leif.

 

It's hard to tell if my kids are humoring me or if they actually like these things, but I think he digs it.

He’s got a lot of Lego models to choose from, if we want to make a habit of it.

On the easel, progress:

I don’t really like symbolism in paintings, but this is one of those cursed object arrangements that kind of came together on its own. The skinwalker knife and the walnuts are from when I was a kid in Arizona; the gun and the hibiscus are from now. I don't know. I liked how it looked, and decided not to overthink it.

Week #2 with the parks dept. kids was a lot better, with more robot destruction, more laser sound effects, and more deadpan turtle impersonations. I used donated money to buy cases of juice (organic) and cookies (peanut-free) for them, and they cheered when I said they'd be back next week. Three of my old toddler time babies (now kindergartners) gave me violent hugs. I AM WINNING. Remembering why I like my job again.

work/life

The library was a wreck when I got back. My boss could not single-handedly keep up with the shelving, checkouts, book drop, and kids pulling entire shelves of books onto the floor. I spent two days putting everything back in order and then prepped 4 weeks of storytime for 80 children (in day camp groups, with masks). 

If I'm a rusty storyteller, the kids are rusty listeners. They interrupted, groaned, and heckled my book choices. I sang them songs, gave them treats, and sent them back to the Parks Dept.

 

It's going to be a process.

 

Now the day-to-day stuff is running smoothly again, and I’m back to my existential crisis. 

Check in. Check out. Shelve. Help people print.

I've been shopping for houses around Albany, imagining having a property large enough to be a stopping point for family on the way to the lake, and close enough to a university for my kids. I’ll never sell my house here, but maybe snow birds are on to something. 

Check in. Check out. Shelve. Decorate the display cart.

In the slow minutes, I trawl through NamUs and think about local cold cases, like the mystery of the toddler fingers in a ziploc bag, and where someone high on methamphetamine might hide a body. Podcasters, come investigate this stuff. I'm not cold calling these assholes.

Check in. Check out. Shelve. Check the mouse traps. 

I've got to work on this, because the whole "adult with a dissatisfying job" thing is just too stupid.

Back at home, the kids have recovered from covid, but the cat is dying. Two and a half years after her tail exploded and had to be amputated, the cancer (because it was, in fact, cancer) has finally caught up with Moura, and she's in kitty hospice until she needs help passing on. It's very sad, but she lived to the age of 15, and traveled from the wastelands of Bakersfield to the jungles of Maui and the suburbs of Oahu, which isn't too bad for a mean old cat.

It's lychee, sprinkler, and s'mores season. I love the summer a lot, and it's time to shake off the hospital and illness funk and get outside again. Homework: adventure. The good kind, not just parking at Costco.

And another one

Leif has been added to the pile of plague victims building up in our household.

But there have been some good things:

1. Mild symptoms

2. No further seizures 

3. Admin chose me to go to Chattanooga for the ARSL conference in September! They pronounce that phonetically, by the way, which means I am the person they decided was best suited to represent the system at the “arsehole conference”. I am glad to finally be getting recognition in my chosen field.

I’m back in isolation because I don’t have infinite sick leave and need to go back to work now that my symptoms are clearing up, so I have to avoid the kids for 24 hours except to mask up and administer meds/food (doctor’s orders for returning to work), and stay away from them until they have recovered. Their dad is coming back from the renovations to watch them, and he’ll probably be infected within a week, so this is going to go on for a while.

I’ve really enjoyed being home, though, even with the illness circulating and the scary moments. The house is cleaner, there has been fresh bread, time with the kids, and a lot of painting. 

On the easel:

At least I get to plan my ghost and distillery tours for Tennessee while I’m stuck at the circulation desk.

Another one down

Zenny has Covid, too. Low fever, low appetite. It’s not great for a kid who already lost weight in the hospital, but at least so far it isn’t respiratory.

Edit: stratch that, she’s not okay, she’s had a seizure and we’re at the ER

Edit 2: we’re home. With her distant history of seizures after her head injury as a toddler, doctor said covid likely lowered her seizure threshold, and she may have more. She needs constant fever meds, constant supervision until she feels better, no activities that could kill her if she has another seizure (baths, climbing, etc). Poor kid.

What happened is that we were eating pancakes for breakfast, and she hadn’t had any ibuprofen yet because she just woke up and her fever was down to 99.6. Mid-pancake, she said, “I just feel…”  and then leaned back in her chair, eyes dilated, went rigid, and started seizing. I picked her up and yelled for Leif to call 911, but he panicked and started looking for my phone instead of using the one in his hand. I put her on her side on the couch, checked her breathing (not good), took my phone when Leif almost threw it at me, and was trying to call 911 when Zenny suddenly sat up and said, “What’s happening?” 

It’s times like these I’m glad we live 30 seconds away from the hospital by car.

Indestructible

So far this thing is just a headache and a box of tissues. The kids are stuck in the house with me, so far uninfected, and they are loving having run of the place while I yell down the hall for them to at least drink milk with their breakfast cookies. Listening to Leif play Running up that Hill on piano (his favorite thing about this season of Stranger Things has been learning about bad 80s music videos - like this and this), I glued together some foam core and made a shadow box for still life painting.

While we have been enjoying the isolation ward, Mike has been finishing the renovations at my mother’s house, and barely managing not to die. After disconnecting the washing machine from the plumbing, he ran a load of laundry and flooded the kitchen while doing live electrical work. Luckily, the floor is slightly slanted. “You weren’t supposed to tell her about that,” he said to Gavin.

Progress pictures:

Tearing out the gross old counters and sink 

Cabinets removed, wall repairs underway 

Spiffy new cabinets, left-hand counter, and sink

Last night he went to Home Depot to pick up the countertop for the right side of the kitchen, and tried to parasail off the highway.

It says something about the quality of this countertop that it got hit by a bus and still might be salvageable.

Happy to avoiding that scene. I really wasn’t much help anyway.

Damn it

It got me, finally.

Was it the hospital? Grocery store? Working with the public? Who knows. 

I’m boosted, so here’s hoping my antibodies retained their training better than my legs retained karate.

Hitofude cardigan

I finally finished knitting a thing on my lunch breaks. By the end, the rows are so long they take 15 minutes to get across, but it's a really pretty and comfortable pattern.

Hitofude Cardigan on Ravelry

It's going to be back to mittens now. Sorry, Gavin. Sew them all together and make a coat out of them, they're just going to keep coming.

Please don’t

It is mouse season, which is also shrieking coworker season. As the only person who is not scared of an animal you can buy at a pet store, I've been in charge of putting peanut butter in the humane traps and walking the little guys outside to release into the bushes by the dumpster. 

I don’t mind this. What I do mind are the onlookers, who feel compelled to thank me for my service like a marine and then go on to tell me all the terrible ways they've killed small creatures, and all the ways those deaths went horrifically wrong. It is no wonder people are afraid of mice when they are doing shit like pouring boiling water over them. 

If killing a thing is the necessary option, be competent enough to do it quickly or employ a cat like a normal person. Either the average library user is really out there getting pest-removal tips from true crime podcasts, or this is just “poodle in the microwave” bullshit that people enjoy saying to folks who are soft-hearted about animals. Either way, get out of here with your lighthearted animal torture chit-chat.

 

I wished the mice good luck and sent them on their way with tiny maps to the taco truck. As nature intended.

 

Some skies this week:

 

 

wrung out

While my mother is on the mainland for a few weeks, we’ve been doing a pet-sitting rotation and tearing out her kitchen. It’s in the “holy shit let’s just burn it all down” phase of renovation, so I’m kind of glad it’s time for me to go back to work while the guys work on it.

Have fun, stay alive, kids

Zenny is off her pain meds and feeling like herself. She’s not supposed to run, but today she got chased by an angry chicken and didn’t pop her stitches, so they’re healing. Her incisions make her look like she’s been run through with a big fork (one on each side and one in the belly button).

“They’re crooked,” she said. “Call the hospital and tell them we’re not paying.”

It’s just me and the cats for a few days. Some quiet evenings of painting and running after a couple really hard and messy weeks. 

The kids will be going to Lake George with their dad and cousins in July. I won’t be going; work to catch up on, animals to feed, etc. I haven’t been to the lake since my 20s, and I don’t think I will again. But it’s creeping into my dreams, and my music app has been sliding old songs in the rotation, so I’m having some kind of feelings.

The Downtown Art Center is having a figure drawing/painting show this week, and I have 5 pieces on the walls. Here's hoping a few will sell. 

HOME

 She passed her test, they pulled off all her tape and removed the IV, and within the hour we were speed-shuffling to the car, a bit stunned. Zenny was so happy. 

“I get to sleep! No more nurses all night! No more painful tubes! And no more weird tv channels with random shows and ads that play the same thing over and over.” She’s a child of streaming services, she’d never seen cable tv before, and she did NOT care for it.

We got home at 8pm, opened her get-well cards, got a bit weepy, and then crashed into bed for 11 hours solid.

Amazing to be home. What a bad bunch of days for this kid.