Bound to happen

Well, I've come down with my annual back-to-school sickness, a bad cold that's left me feeling like a wrung-out dishrag. A cold in this heat is just the worst! I stayed home yesterday on what turned out to be another sweltering hot day. Heat indexes were up around 112 degrees again. I've never been so sick of summer as I am this year. We always think of colds and flu as being a fall/winter thing, but when 700 students come back all at once, the time of year doesn't matter; illness will spread.

It could be worse. Last week one child after another showed up in the office to see the nurse throwing up and with diarrhea. Several of the younger ones (kindergarten especially) soiled their clothes. They couldn't pay me enough to be a school nurse! Or any kind of nurse, really. 

I'm feeling a bit better this morning so back to work I go. 

Under the weather, but happy

I've been home sick for the past two days. There seems to be some kind of stomach bug/cold/virus thing going around and lucky me, I caught it. I'm actually feeling much better today but given how upset my stomach was all day yesterday, I dared not go back to work yet. I barely made it to the bathroom in time a couple of times, and had I been at work it might have led to some terrible embarrassment.

I've been doing some of my work from home, though. Yesterday one of the assistant principals emailed me and said, "I hope you feel better..........STOP WORKING FROM HOME!" Haha. Had we been talking in person I would have told her that now that our evil principal has been fired, I don't mind keeping my work caught up from home. The guy they sent from the district office to get us through the rest of the month (as the interim principal) is beloved by the staff and students, and I don't mind the way I would have with the wicked witch! I wouldn't have lifted a finger from home for her. What a relief that she's gone; even though I won't be there next year I'm happy that the staff will no longer have to suffer under her. 

Next week I'll be spending a morning at my new school, training with the outgoing secretary. She's retiring after many years in the position, and she's told me through email how much I'm going to love it there! Everyone has been so very kind and encouraging and welcoming already, and I don't even officially start for two months! This may end up being the school I stay at until I retire, with any luck. I'm happy.

Speaking of happy and good news, I decided to weigh myself yesterday and check in on how my diet is going. I've lost 23 pounds since January! Slowly but surely, I'm getting there. By the time I start the new job in July I'll have to have some new clothes. Everything is starting to get loose on me, especially pants. I certainly won't complain about needing new clothes!

Now, as promised, here are some garden pictures. Have a great weekend, everyone!

The marigolds, tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers in the main bed are starting to grow!

My "Marvel of the Four Seasons" lettuce is looking good right now. 

This is the bed in front of the porch, where I've planted two cherry tomatoes and three pepper plants. Zinnias from last year are resprouting in there, too!

You can't tell in this picture, but our young fig tree is almost shoulder high. Still no sign of a fig yet, though.

The bananas on the side of the porch are growing like mad.

For the first time in all the years I've had it, it looks as if the pomegranate tree is going to produce fruit this year! It's taller than the roof and absolutely loaded with flowers and developing poms. Fingers crossed!

Catching up

 I'm home sick today. After almost two weeks of dealing with shortness of breath, a dry cough, chills, and a general feeling of being unwell, I called the doctor Tuesday afternoon and made an appointment for yesterday. 

I was pretty sure I didn't have Covid, because I'd taken two at-home tests that were negative. The doctor confirmed that it wasn't that (thank goodness) but just as I expected it was an exacerbation of seasonal allergies that led to an exacerbation of asthma. He also thought I might have the beginning of a bacterial infection in my lungs. I came home with prescriptions for prednisone, antibiotics, a new inhaler, a nasal spray, and a note excusing me from work for the rest of yesterday afternoon and today. 

One thing the doctor noticed worries me a little. My blood pressure was very high, particularly the bottom number. This was very unusual. He didn't seem too worried about it, given that I'd been feeling so bad and struggling to get good deep breaths, but it bears watching. One thing I didn't tell the doctor is that when I left work the hour before, I was very angry and upset. The office women were being horribly rude to me (they were mad they'd have to cover my desk and the front door while I was gone). Normally I can shrug off their toxic behavior, but when I'm not feeling well physically that becomes harder to do. On Tuesday when I first made the appointment and let everyone know I'd have to leave for a couple of hours, the principal overheard one of them going off on me about it and he was pissed. He called me at home that night and told me he intended to address their nasty attitudes. He said, "You work way too hard to be treated that way." Apparently he hadn't had time yet (yesterday morning) to talk to them, and when it was time for me to leave for the appointment they were incredibly rude about it. I was in tears when I left, and plenty mad, too. I'm so glad the doctor told me not to go back to work afterwards and to take today off too! Let them suffer for treating me like dirt! Hopefully by the time I go back on Friday the principal will have addressed the problem with them. In any case, I wonder if getting so emotionally upset had anything to do with my crazy high blood pressure reading? Gregg thinks it's definitely possible. When I'm not feeling so physically poor I should be able to ignore them and let it go, like usual. I don't expect things to change much, but I've gotten very good (most of the time) at shrugging it off.

I made a mistake in taking the first dose of prednisone with dinner last night. I probably didn't get over 3 or 4 hours of (broken) sleep. I'll be taking today's dose as soon as I eat breakfast! I already feel a good bit better despite the lack of sleep--prednisone is like a miracle drug for me. My eczema clears up, my allergies dry up, and I feel much better, fast, whenever I take it. I've decided to get a referral to an allergist and to talk to them about getting a full range of allergy testing and starting allergy shots. We'll see how that works out.

I meant to post last week as my spring break was winding down. They had the plant and flower festival at the farmer's market, and I went out and bought three blueberry shrubs to plant over by my raised garden bed. I got two of the variety "Premier" and one of "Pink Lemonade". The Pink Lemonade is supposed to get pink berries instead of blue, and they're supposed to be twice as sweet as the blues. We shall see! My little quarter-acre "homestead" (Haha) is coming along nicely. Even the crabapple tree I planted in front is finally, finally getting some tiny new leaves. It was a bare stick for so long I was beginning to despair that it was really alive and not merely dormant! The fig tree I planted is growing nicely. I expect by next year I should get a few figs from it. In summer garden news, I've been getting loads of lettuce and radishes, the carrots are almost ready to harvest, my tomato and pepper seedlings are ready to be planted out, the potato vines are sprawling all over the place, and my cucumbers and snow peas are finally sprouting. My gardening brings me a lot of joy.

One last thing of note from last week. On Saturday Marla and Martina came over for a couple of hours. I almost canceled because I wasn't feeling too hot, but I really wanted to see them. Marla brought little Carsen with her, too! That child is growing up fast! She'll be four next month and she's got that crazy little kid energy. Between her and the puppy chasing each other through the house, George trying to stay out of the way, and Marco getting excited and wanting to be in the middle of everything, it was like a circus over here for a little while!

She's loved the big aquarium since she was a baby. Gregg keeps telling Marla she needs a tank of her own. To which Marla responds, "And is Uncle Gregg coming to take care of it for us?" :)

This next picture was typical of the visit!

I don't know about Carsen, but Poppy was worn out when they left.

Marco loved every minute of the chaos.

George was a very good boy, as usual. He's been so patient with Poppy, and he's always glad to see Martina and Marla and even little Carsen. Here he is saying goodbye to Carsen when her daddy came to pick her up. After she left, we all had wine and adult conversation.

I've had better weeks.

Sunday afternoon was a day to remember. Marco got away from us, flew up into a tree, and refused to come back. We were scared that he was gone for good!

The way it happened was like this. Gregg was on the back porch working on some projects with Marco riding around on his shoulder. After a while, he forgot he was on there, and without thinking walked out the door to the backyard. Mistake. Marco immediately took off and ended up in a big tree on the edge of our yard. We spent an hour and a half trying to coax him down, to no avail. We offered him his favorite treat (walnuts), we called his pal Georgie to come out to stand with us under the tree, we pretended to start walking back to the house while cheerfully calling for him to come with us, we demanded he come down, we shouted. We even threw a rope over the branch underneath him and shook it to try to scare him down. Nothing worked. The little bastard crawled around on his branch, chewing on leaves and occasionally responding to us with "Hey baby!" "Whatcha doin'?" "Woooo!", and, infuriatingly, "C'mere! C'mere Marco!" I swear he even laughed a couple of times. It started to get dark and he seemed to be perfectly fine with the idea of sleeping up in the tree with his newfound freedom. 

Finally, out of sheer desperation I took a chance on a pretty extreme solution. I went and got the hose, turned the water all the way to the "on" position, set the flow setting on the nozzle to "jet", and I blasted his ass out of the tree with a mighty gush of water. He fluttered down to the ground at our feet, dripping and stunned, and we grabbed him up and took him inside. I couldn't believe it had actually worked. So Marco is still with us, safe and sound, and having learned nothing.

                                          The next day, stealing a sip of my wine.

The rest of this week so far hasn't been much better. Gregg had to visit a dermatologist recently and he found out he has another basal cell carcinoma on his face that must be removed. It's right beside his nose whereas the previous two were on his forehead. All those years of sun exposure on his fair skin are catching up with him. He's been pretty bummed about it. 

Work continues to be busy and stressful with Covid still spreading like crazy around here. Another friend of ours got sick this past week and felt like he had a horrible case of flu even though he's vaccinated and very careful. In fact, it's the friend that helped us get our vaccines relatively early on. He works in a hospital so I guess he's exposed to Covid more than most. At least since he was vaxxed he didn't get sick enough to end up in the hospital himself, though. Just last weekend, an unvaccinated young mother who teaches in the school district next to mine died from it. Her reason for not getting the shot was that she was breastfeeding her youngest child and was afraid it might hurt him. Now he and his three siblings are motherless and her family is begging the community to get the vaccine so no other family will have to go through the pain they're experiencing.  This teacher was healthy and active (she coached volleyball) and was only 28 years old. When are people going to wake up and take this virus seriously? How many more people need to die first? 

Speaking of illness, you might notice I'm posting this at an odd time of day for me. I'm at home taking a sick day. Last night out of nowhere I started feeling like I had the worst heartburn of my life. I was walking around, trying to get my stomach to settle down, and all of sudden I started throwing up violently. It was really strange and upsetting. I feel better today except for a bad headache, but decided to stay home just in case I have a stomach bug. I hope that's all it is. This Delta variant is known to have some unusual symptoms sometimes.

What a week so far, and it's only Thursday!