The Summer of This Malcontent

Summer started out not with a bang, but a whimper … mine. 

It began with my first case of food poisoning.  For two weeks my poor primary care doc ran every test imaginable, during which time I was so nauseated my only refuge (much to the kids’ delight) was passing out on the couch for hours at a time.  A test finally came back positive for campylobacter – a bacteria found mainly in raw chicken.  Then I got a call from the Butler County Health Department, whose raison d’etre is apparently to convince you, through a series of pointed questions, that you are totally incapable of caring for yourself, your family, pets or potted plants, and probably should not be trusted in the kitchen with a butter knife.  Where have you eaten in the past two weeks?  Did you eat chicken?  Eggs?  Egg products?  Are you in contact with chickens?  (I had to laugh at that one: Yes, in fact, the chickens and I have a deeply personal relationship: I would personally like to wring their necks.)  Do you cook your meats thoroughly?  At this point I considered saying it must have been that one time that instead of bleaching and then washing my cutting boards as I usually do, I licked them all clean.  But they didn’t seem to have much sense of humor.  In the end, nobody else came down with it, and through the miracle of modern drugs, I'm still here.

At Space Camp

Your confidence in the future of the Space Program can only increase knowing Jack's team took first in the Speed Lego Assembling competition.

Other things happened that first month, too, or so they tell me.  Jack went to a week-long Space Camp in Hutchinson, Kan.  It was the first time he’d been away for that long outside of family visits, but we didn’t feel terribly apprehensive after dropping him off.  As Jim said when we left, “Did you see all those nerds?  He’ll be fine.”  While there, Jack designed and launched a rocket, did some other space-campy stuff that filled his schedule from 7 a.m. until 10 or 11 p.m., but he’ll remember it most for the sleep deficit he racked up.  Jack has entered the awesome teenage boy years, when there is never enough to eat, and this injustice is only surpassed by the torture of having to wake up.  Every day.  In Disney World, there’s a ride called Mission: Space, where you get to be a part of a team going into space.  Each passenger has an assigned critical role in getting the ship to its destination safely.  Of course, Jim and the boys do everything out of order, including hitting the HyperSleep button first thing, instead of waiting until after launch sequence.  We weren’t allowed to call Jack during the week, but we texted him in the evenings, and Jim teased him about his responsibilities in an upcoming launch simulation.  “Remember to hit the HyperSleep button,” Jim texted one night.  And with all the anguish that can be transmitted through plain text typing, Jack fairly wailed in his response, “THERE IS NO SLEEP BUTTON!!!!!”

Woody learned to mow the lawn with the zero-degree riding lawn mower this summer.  This is impressive when you consider that at 70 pounds, Woody’s barely big enough to keep the seat pressed down adequately for the safety feature (which cuts off the engine when it’s riderless) to not engage.  Daredevil Woody, who is uncharacteristically cautious around objects with moving parts, approached this task with trepidation.  Unlike Jack or almost anyone else who mows a lawn in ever widening or tightening circles, or who goes back and forth in straight lines, Woody mows the lawn like a gnat, flitting wildly about in a seemingly random fashion.  Except gnats are faster.  Woody never got out of turtle into rabbit.  But we got some spectacular lawn carvings out of him.  Once he carved a Mickey Mouse head, and another time he and Jack cut “I love Mom” into the front lawn (even spelled correctly) with some heavy prodding from Jim.   

Life on the farm changed drastically once, after repainting the exterior of the house, we decided to confine the chickens to their coop and enclosed yard.  Now the front porch is eerily clean, possibly sanitary, and we even managed to get a few tomatoes out of the garden to eat for ourselves instead of watching the chickens peck them all to pieces.

The ducks now reside in a Dogloo, which is enclosed in the old dog run next to Amanda’s depot.  There they have easy access to the water spigot for their eternal baths that never leave them any cleaner, and they can scold Amanda whenever she steps out of her door.  Sometimes they scold her when she’s not even home.  

Midnight, the sole remaining Mammoth Stock Donkey, and Max, the bloated goat, got out once this summer and wandered up to the new neighbor's place.  This isn't too unusual, but what the neighbors frowned upon was that we apparently didn't realize they were gone for two days, and it would have been longer but someone finally called us.  And then we only went to retrieve them because common courtesy demands it.

We didn’t really travel this summer: with the retirement of one partner, Jim’s anesthesia group was a little short-staffed and summer is vacation time for all the partners whose kids are in regular school. 

So naturally, with Jim working non-stop, we decided to begin the renovation of the kitchen.  But first Jim had to finish piddly little projects, like ripping some ancient built-in shelves out of the boys’ room, patching the resulting holes in the wall and ceiling, repainting the walls, and laying hardwood floor in the boys' room.  Also repairing the damaged ceiling in the basement from when the pipes froze and burst last winter because our heater quit working when some darned mud daubers built their nests in the exhaust pipe of the heating unit.

Tearing out the old built ins.

Floor in progress

That done, Jim took out all the cabinets in the kitchen and began building a new custom kitchen island out of quarter sawn oak, complete with dovetailed joints in the drawers.  He also began laying the hardwood floors in the kitchen.  Also, he put in my new gas stove top.  But then his vacation week ran out and it’s been slow going since.  As usual, my main responsibilities include finding tools we haven’t seen in months, and then sighing heavily and looking distressed whenever Jim has to drive back into town (usually multiple times a day) to pick up a single item we can’t find, but without which, all work comes to a halt. 

Dove-tail joints.

The new kitchen island -- mostly done

Laying new floor ... and eating off it.

Rule #1: Even remodeling, NEVER disconnect the TV!

We got started on school in August, and with different grades (Jack’s in 8^th, Woody’s in 6^th, Betsy’s in 2^nd, and Lucy’s into everything), I’m gradually coming to accept school is the only constant.  But at least the kids keep it interesting.  Jack, proving he’s not come too far from the days when he wrote in a book report that he would “recommend this book for people who like to read long books”, signed a letter “Honestly, Jack” after attempting and scratching out “Sincerely, Jack” multiple times.  Clearly, “sincerely” is too tricky to spell with any confidence. 

On one vocabulary exercise, Woody was supposed to select from a list of things that might be considered “ferocious”.  He correctly identified a) a strange dog, b) a wild bear, and c) a hungry baby.  I gave him extra credit for the last answer.  After one sociology lesson where we discussed the growth of the feminist movement, he frowned and asked, “Are there any ‘meninists’?”

Lucy turns 4

Lucy is not in formal school, but that hasn’t stopped her from trying to teach the others a thing or two.  This was a recent tearful exchange:

Lucy: “Betsy said a bad word!”

Betsy: “I didn’t!”

Me: “What did you say?”

Betsy: “Vomit.”

Me: “Vomit’s not a bad word.”

Betsy: “Lucy said it is!”

Me (incredulously): “Why are you listening to the three-year-old?!”

The finished results in the boys' room.  Why did we even bother?

So I guess that's it for now.  Hope you all have a beautiful fall!