Mr. K has a conference call tonight

Mr. K has gone to his office to have a conference call with other offices. I think he's mostly talking with people on the other coast. That's why his call is so late; they are three hours behind us in California. He helped get the kids bathed tonight before his call. Now the little guys are almost ready for bed, but no one wants to go to bed.

Tomorrow night Mr. K has four appointments scheduled with potential tenants at our rental house. We'll see how many actually show up. Maybe we'll get lucky and get a tenant. Then Mr. K will begin looking for another rental house.

I had to pick N up from Loreto an hour and a half early today. He had a fall on the playground. He has many minor scrapes and bumps--his cheek, foot, knee, and shoulder. None are serious, but I guess he felt pretty bad.

He's refusing to learn what he is supposed to of the Apostles' Creed. I don't know how to make him learn it. I'm keeping him off the computer until he gets the part learned that he's supposed to.

Humidity

It is humid today. I think it's only in the upper 80s, but it just seem so much yuckier because of the humidity. We did get 0.8" of rain yesterday, which we badly needed. I wish it would rain more or dry out. I put some clothing out on the line to dry, but I think it will still be quite damp at the end of the day.

I took N to his Loreto. It was very crowded. The parking lot was chaos, as was the sanctuary where the kids met up with their teachers. He's supposed to learn the apostle's creed by Friday. I hope his dad will help him. N is like me; we both have problems memorizing things word-for-word. Mr. K and J can do it pretty easily.

J wants me to find her something to eat, so I need to go.

Summer colds

J and K have come down with colds. I think I'm getting one, too. It's bed time for the kids, but they are being good for the moment. J and K are in bed, and N is in their room reading to them. It's very cute.

Tomorrow N begins Loreto. It's his version of Vacation Bible School. It lasts two weeks. J starts Vacation Bible School one week later, and hers lasts for only one week.

N's been invited to a friend's birthday party next Saturday. It will be a pizza party, and then the kids will go see a Richmond Kickers game (the city's soccer team). N doesn't want to go to the soccer game. I'm hoping he won't refuse. He doesn't understand why anyone would want to waste time watching a soccer game. I'm stumped because I don't know why either, but I'm so glad he has the chance to go, and I hope he won't refuse. I have no plans to take him to see any sports, but I'd hate for him to miss the experience just because I find sports painful. He might find that he really likes it. Most people like sports; I'm just an oddball.

Nothing special

We had closing on our mortgage for our rental house tonight. I guess I'll get a check for the mortgage amount some time next week. We'll use it to buy the next rental house. Soon I'll have to start making the mortgage payments, and we still don't have a tenant. Hopefully we'll find one soon. Hopefully we won't have to lower the rent we are asking again.

I picked blueberries this evening until it got too dark to tell the ripe berries from the not-quite-ripe berries. I've eaten a bunch already. I got a lot of mosquito bites while I was picking the berries so I'll probably itch all night.

We still have cucumbers going out our ears, but the harvest is pretty much over. We are at or near the tomato peak. There is still the occasional zucchini, but most of the plants have died. I think I'll have some little eggplants soon.

Tomorrow morning I'll go to the gym. In the afternoon, I'll go to a friend of mine's house who also has three kids. Her oldest are twin girls a year older than J. On the way home, we'll stop by K's doctor for her 15-month checkup. It might involve shots.

Saturday Mr. K is going to extract honey from his bee hives. Everything will be sticky, messy, and chaotic.

Weird letter

Last night I got a strange letter for Mr. K. (I open the mail at our house and only bother Mr. K with certain things. Since I pay the household bills, he seldom sees them himself, regardless of to which one of us they are addressed.) It was from the mortgage company at our duplex. We both own the house, but he's the only one on the mortgage.

Anyway, it was a letter with an attached form. It said that a third party (my name was listed there) had requested information about the mortgage, and that if he signed the attached authorization form, they could provide the information to me. The thing is, I have no memory of calling the mortgage company ever, let alone this month. Mr. K wasn't concerned, but I was. I wanted to find out what address "I" had given them when I requested information about the loan. I got on hold for a very long time. When I finally reached a live person, of course, I had to put Mr. K on so that he could authorize their speaking with me.

Their records didn't have any address for "me," but it looked like a telephone call from me for information about the loan had generated a computer sending Mr. K a letter to authorize them to release to "me" information. I mentioned to the lady that we are in the process of getting a mortgage for another piece of property, so she has a guess about what might of happened.

Someone at the mortgage company we are using for the loan we are trying to get on our new rental house may have called the other mortgage company pretending to be me (not realizing that while I am an owner of the property, I'm not on the mortgage) in order to get whatever information they need. This person would have done this to save time and the faxing back-and-forth of forms needed to request the information properly. The timing is right, and it makes some sense, so I'll go with it.

Just to be safe, I had the lady not record in the computer Mr. K's verbal authorization for them to speak with me last night because she said the authorization would last 30 days. I'd hate it if we were completely wrong about what happened, and someone trying to steal my or Mr. K's identity got through and discussed stuff with them.

I ran the letter and the authorization through the shredder. If I need to speak with them about the mortgage (and I can't imagine why), I'll just get Mr. K to authorize it again.

Only two chicks left

A couple days ago, the littlest of our three chickies died. It was always smaller than the others, and it fell over a lot. I don't think it gained any weight after its birth.

The other two chicks are starting to get some feathers. One is getting a little tail (and so far the other isn't) which makes me think the tailed one is a boy and the other is a girl. I'll check both for a tail tomorrow, though. In reality, I can't sex a chicken until it a) crows or b) lays an egg.

My baby got poisoned

I was making dinner, and Mr. K came in with K and told me he found her eating the berries that formed on my arum. (I had been so pleased with the berries--this was the first time the plant made any.)

Fortunately, I had Poison Control's number taped to the top of an outlet near my phone. Our pediatrician had me do this when J was a baby, and it was good to have it there the day we found J with a toadstool in her mouth. Anyway, I had to wipe the dust off the tape so I could read the number. They looked the plant up while I looked up its scientific name in case there was any question about what she ate. There wasn't.

They told me the berries would burn her mouth and might cause nausea and vomiting. We didn't need to go to the ER because the worst that would happen was she would throw up. They told me to give her a sippy cup of water and keep an eye on her in case she started to throw up.

So far she hasn't thrown up, but we think her mouth has been hurting. From time to time she's started crying and poking at her mouth. I'm hoping and expecting she'll be fine in the morning. Mr. K picked the rest of the arum berries and dumped them over the fence. She's in bed sleeping peacefully right now, and I'm hoping everything will be fine tomorrow.

Harry Potter Comments--Spoilers

I looked back to comments about the book I made in June. Here some of them are (I've tried whiting them out, but I can't seem to match the background color so don't look carefully if you don't want to see them. If you do, highlight them for easier viewing) :

I'm hoping she doesn't kill off Ron or Hermione, but I'm okay with the loss of Harry as long as it's the end of Voldemort, also. I want to see Neville survive with his mind intact and his grandma proud of him, and I'd like to see Snape turn out to be a good guy after all, but it's okay if he dies proving it.

The other thing, besides teen relationships that I don't like is Quidditch. I've just skimmed past a lot of it when I've been re-reading the books.

This book (#7) was better than I expected. Pretty much all the stuff I wanted to see happen did. There wasn't any Quidditch, which was a relief. Harry survived, and he was much more pleasant in this book since he was determined to complete a task and not hung up on his romances. So much was confusing that I've lost track of what happened to all the wand and who all ended up dead. I liked the epilogue 19 years later. It was a nice touch. I was glad the way the loose ends were tied up.

None

It's Friday evening, and I have nothing better to do than use the computer. N is having a friend over tomorrow, but he refuses to help pick up the house. I'm not going to try very hard since N doesn't seem to care.

N refuses to fall asleep. He keeps getting out of bed for various problems. He needs Pepto Bismo. Then he needs Tums. Next he needs Tylenol. Now he has to pee. I'm making (from a mix) a cherry chip layer cake this evening. The layers are cooling now. I think he's planning to beg for cake when it's done.

I'm getting very impatient about my Harry Potter book. My mail isn't usually delivered until the end of the day. I hope it comes early tomorrow. It's going to be hard to avoid spoilers before I get the book finished since I don't have time to read it cover-to-cover all in one day.

I guess I should go see if the cakes have cooled, and if not, go get ready for bed.

Back to normal

Tomorrow we don't have summer camp at the preschool. It's over. I'll be dragging the three kids to the YMCA in the morning so I can work out. I'll have to bribe them with a treat at the vending machine to get them to behave. I get them junk once a week. The past two weeks, they lucked out since they've only gone once a week with me.

N's having a friend from school over to our house Saturday. His mom works so he's not available during the day. I'm hoping N will help clean the house tomorrow so it will be cleaner when his friend gets here. It's hard to have your house look okay, though, when the first thing you see when you step though the front door is a living room with a homemade chick brooder.

I made it to Target instead of playgroup today. I got new oven mitts. Last weekend when Mr. K was grilling some chicken drumsticks for me, he caught my oven mitts on fire. This wasn't the first time he's done that.

I went to the Target with the Starbucks in it so I had some lovely coffee at the store. I had the energy to mop the vinyl floors (kitchen, bathrooms) when I got home and K was napping.

Mr. K and I have dropped the price of our rental unit by $55 per month since we haven't found a tenant yet. We are hoping to have closing on our mortgage next week. Now we are only trying to get $795/month from it. Hopefully we'll get a lot more interest next week after the ad appears in the paper Sunday.

I got an e-mail from Amazon about my Harry Potter book saying they are getting it ready. It is supposed to arrive Saturday. I wish I could stay up all night Saturday finishing it and then skip church and sleep in on Sunday as long as I need. Prior to having kids, that's what I would have done.

N has his appointment next week with the pediatric neurologist about his headaches. A friend of mine offered to watch the other kids while I take him to the doctor. I'm not expecting a lot out of this appointment except perhaps a change in his medication.

Chicks!

I just changed the chicks brooder papers. You might notice I used my least favorite section of the paper to line the bottom. Mr. K will never miss it. As far as we are concerned, the sports section of the paper makes great cage liner. That's the only reason it's included with the rest of the paper.

Two of the chicks have their eyes open now. The one who hatched last still has its eyes closed. When I held them to get them out of the brooder, they were so fluffy, soft, and sweet I wanted to kiss them. Reality set in, and I know they are disgusting dirty birds so I didn't, but I did let my cat sniff one. She was watching with great interest the entire paper-changing process from the other side of the baby gate.

Ramblings

N's air conditioning died yesterday. Mr. K was going to get him one, but he noticed one on the porch of our neighbor (beer in one hand, cigarette in the other). It belongs to our neighbor's "landlord," who sometimes stays there and loves to collect junk. Mr. K was going to see if he could get a deal on the unused window unit AC. We found out today that the "landlord" (actually a friend of the neighbor who bought the house from him and lets him stay for a small rent) will be out of town until Friday evening.

Last night N slept in our living room with the chicks on my loveseat hide-a-bed. (The chicks were in the room, not on the hide-a-bed.) He was up very late, and both he and J were very excited about it. She wanted to sleep there, too, but we wouldn't let her. Anyway, Mr. K went out this evening and found a new window AC unit for N's room at Home Depot. It's cooling his room right now.

Tomorrow is N and J's last day of "summer camp." I will miss the time to run errands with just K, but I won't miss the drive to and from the preschool twice each day. We've got a week without a lot to do next week, and then I'll be repeating the driving for the next two weeks as N goes to Loreto at his church (which is almost kitty-corner from the preschool) and then J starts Vacation Bible School at her church. (The vagueness about the church, and why I didn't call it our church is because, although I attend each week, it is a Catholic church, and I am not Catholic and do not take communion. Mr. K and the kids are Catholic. Calling it my church is difficult to do since it's not my religion.)

My mom is due back from her honeymoon at fish camp next week, and I'm dying to see how it went. I got her a book from Amazon before she left, and I'm wondering if she actually read it. It's called While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West From Within. I don't usually read non-fiction, and when I do, I seldom finish a book, but I got to the end of this one. I'm not sure what my mom will think of it. She thinks I'm nuts and a fanatic politically, and I think she's a socialist (or at least has strong socialist leanings).

Some chick success

Mr. K was running two rounds of eggs in the incubator, three days apart. We lost the only two chicks we got from the first hatching. Since Mr. K set up the bucket for the chick that got too hot (and I had warned him I thought it might be, but he assured me he had checked it), he told me I had to set up the brooder for the new hatching. I used a much bigger plastic tote so there would be plenty of room for the chicks to get away from the lightbulb if it got too hot, and instead of covering the entire thing with a towel, I only did it partially at the light end. Then I left the meat thermometer in there for over an hour on the floor under the bulb to make sure it was warm enough (I had to add the towel to assure it got fully over 90 °F, without it it wasn't doing much better than 86°F). Then I checked the other side of the tote about three inches off the floor, and it was down around 80 °F so I figured the chicks could go wherever they felt it was right. I think when Mr. K had done it, he didn't leave the system in place in long enough to attain its temperature (it was still warming when he checked it), and he only took the temperature at the bottom of the bucket.

We got two black chicks yesterday, and they are still alive after spending the night in my brooder! One more hatched overnight, and it will join the other two this evening. I'm guessing that's all that will hatch, but I think Mr. K will give it another day before dumping the eggs that failed to hatch.

J is delighted with the chicks and says she is the mom.

Chick update--all are dead

The little chick who hatched in the night never did stand up properly. It just died. When I got up in the morning, the chick that had been okay yesterday was dead. I've concluded it overheated in the warmer Mr. K set up for it. It makes me sick to think about.

Mr. K had two sets of eggs that were started in the incubator three days apart. I still hear little peeps from the eggs, but I'm losing hope that we'll actually have success this year. The peeps are getting fainter and farther apart. Sometimes the chicks die in the eggs if they aren't strong enough to peck their way out.

K is in bed. N is in our living room, reading part of a Trixie to J. It's cute.

Happy birthday Grandma

Too bad she's dead so I can't wish her happy birthday. She died a little over five years ago, and I still miss her terribly. Today would have been her 100th birthday.

Insomnia

I'm up again in the night. I'll be sorry tomorrow, but it actually worked out well for my finding enough time at the computer to work on my JDS questions and answers for the Clubhouse. It just gets harder and harder to get time alone at the computer.

One chick hatched two evenings ago, and another hatched in the night tonight. That's what woke me up. I heard cheeping and the sound of something scraping hardware cloth, and for a minute I thought we had hamsters again. Then I realized it was probably a new chick, and I had to get up and see.

It took us three days, but we've finally got the soybean (edamame) crop in and frozen. Mr. K picked about a third of the plants each evening for three evenings and stripped of the seed pods. I blanched them and packed them in zip-lock freezer bags. I think we have 20 quart bags of edamame in our freezer right now. That will certainly last us until next year.

I picked my first tomato yesterday. It was only orange and not yet red, but I wanted to get it before the birds peck it when it turns fully red. It's on my counter to finish ripening.

I have cucumbers going out my ears. I've dumped bunches of them of on friends. Too bad I don't can, but these aren't pickling cucumbers anyway.

I still have a few zucchinis left, but they aren't going out my ears any more. Unless I am crazy enough to plant another plant, I think they'll be done in a couple weeks.

My mom has left for her first trip (which she'll let me call her honeymoon) with her new husband. They're going to a fish camp in Canada where they pretty much drive to what is almost the middle of nowhere, and then they get on a sea plane to actually land in the middle of nowhere at a lake. They'll be staying in a cabin on the lake. There are a couple more cabins on the other side of the lake. The cabin comes complete with an outhouse and no electricity. It also has a motor boat that will be fueled up for them. The sea plane comes back to pick them up a week later. My mom isn't expecting to even be able to hike because this place is supposed to be so overgrown that there aren't any trails. All there will be to do is go fishing, use the outhouse, read books, play cards, and do whatever else the fact that they are on a honeymoon might inspire them to do. They are trapped for a whole week. I don't even think my mom likes to fish that much. I like to fish more than she does, and even if someone would watch my kids, I think I'd pass on being stuck for a week at fish camp. I told her to have a good time, but better her than me.

A moment to myself

N and J are as the preschool's summer camp. K fell asleep in the car on the way home from Target so I put her to bed. I've got a load of laundry going and I a lot of other things to do, but I thought I'd spend a little time creating a new post.

I was sort of ill yesterday. It was just fatigue and achiness. I fell asleep when K was napping, N was using the computer, and J was watching some Nancy Drew from my Season 1 of the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys Mysteries (from the 1970s). I was awakened by the call from Mr. K's office manager, telling me her assistant had just quit by e-mail.

Anyway, I was very tired again in the evening. We got the kids bathed, and J fell right to sleep without getting her vitamin or brushing her teeth. I was too tired to care. N wanted me to read a little Trixie to him, which I often do in his bedroom. I told him I was to tired to go upstairs to his room and I probably couldn't finish a chapter. We read in my bed. I got through a couple pages. I little after 9 p.m., I kicked him out and told him he'd have to take himself up to bed or get his dad to tuck him in. I promptly fell asleep. Mr. K came to bed just before 10:30. I woke up briefly. I slept all night and woke up to my alarm at 7:15. I would have loved another hour of sleep, but that was fine. I had (and still have) a slight sore throat. I think I'm fighting (and winning) the battle against a minor virus. I don't ache at all today.


I feel great now. On the way home from Target, I stopped by a drive-through gourmet coffee place and got a medium cappuccino sweetened with three packs of sugar. Since I don't have caffeine every day, it works wonders when I occasionally get cappuccino. I'm now wide awake and full of energy. Maybe I'll even get some of the housework done while K naps. Of course, the crash will come soon enough, but if I eat some protein before then, I probably won't even notice it.

Anyway, I should take advantage of the extra energy while it lasts.

I'll be more busy

I just got a call from Mr. K's office manager. Her assistant just quit by e-mail, giving no notice. I knew there had been trouble getting her to work the 20 hours a week she had committed to, so I guess this isn't a surprise.

The office manager is going on vacation next month for a week, and now I'll have to re-learn how to enter the invoices. I used to do it, but now they are entered in such a way that they are used to track commission. When that happened, I was no longer able to do them from home. I'll have to spend the weekend at the office, probably, getting them done while she's gone. Also, at the end of the month, Mr. K will need to arrange his schedule so I can go to the office for her to train me how to do the invoices now so he'll need to watch the kids.

Busy weekend

I've spent most of the afternoon working on Mr. K's business stuff. His month end stuff is mostly due by July 15 for last month. Tomorrow I need to bring the sales tax stuff home and figure out what we owe for the second quarter of 2007. I forgot to get the stuff for this weekend, but it worked out fine since there was so much to do with the monthly reporting stuff.

Last night I took N and J while Mr. K watched K and we met my friend Debbie (that I sometimes go to lunch with) at the movie theater and saw the Nancy Drew movie. It wasn't a great movie, and I wasn't expecting a great movie, so it was a lot of fun. It was N and J's second movie ever. Their first movie was a couple years ago--Shrek 2. I haven't been to the movies since then, either. It was very expensive. I think it cost a lot more than last time I was at the movies, but last time we saw an afternoon showing, which would have had cheaper tickets.

For our three tickets (2 kids, 1 adult), I spent $21.50. I got each kids a kid snack thing--small pop, popcorn, and candy. The two of them came to $10.50. I spent $1.50 in tolls getting to the theater and back. I think that's $33.50. How do people afford to date? My friend Debbie goes to the movies and out to eat with her husband quite often (compared to me), but they both work, and they don't have any kids.

Mr. K told me that K spent most of the time I was gone wandering around the house calling out, "Mama! Mama!" Finally he put her to bed. She was happy to see me in the morning, but no more so than usual so I think she forgot I had abandoned her last night.

Happy Independence Day

We don't have a lot planned for today. We've never taken the kids to see fireworks and won't start now.

Mr. K had to work this morning. I went to the gym with the kids while he was gone. When he got home, he wanted the kids to clean their rooms. J did, but hers wasn't so bad to start with. N refused so Mr. K did it for him. He removed at least five bags of trash from N's bedroom in about an hour while N shrieked on the living room floor.

N says this is the worst day of his life and that we owed him at least a thousand dollars for the stuff that Mr. K dumped. Mr. K says he's going to bill N for the time he spent cleaning N's room.

N's doing much better right now. He's out playing in the sprinkler in his swimsuit. Mr. K is running the sprinkler for an hour in the area near our fire pit. We will have a bonfire tonight and make s'mores. I also have a bunch of glow sticks that can be hooked together to wear as bracelets, anklets, and/or necklaces that I got at the dollar store (Made in China) that we'll play with after dark, too. I love glow sticks. At dinner time, I'm hoping Mr. K will grill Italian sausages for us. I have red, white, and blue Popsicles for today, too.

ETA: I need to make biscuits so that we can use whipped cream, blueberries, and strawberries (from the store) to make red, white, and blue shortcake.

Another one gone

Keith's sister left the voice mail message while the kids and I were at "Club Mom" at the mall. Mr. K's grandpa just died. It didn't come as a surprise, though, because Mr. K's dad sent us an e-mail last night telling us Grandpa D had just had his last rites (Catholic) and wasn't doing well.

I had met him once when you could actually talk to him a little, but the times after that, he was just a zombie. I had expected him to die soon, shortly after I married Mr. K over ten years ago. I've seen him at a couple weddings since then, and that was why I thought he was sort of zombie-like. He didn't communicate at all with me.

Ghosts aren't real, but the death of someone I know causes all the others I've known to haunt me again for a while. Fortunately most people I've known are still alive.

My first grandpa died when I was two so I don't remember him, but there's both my grandmas, my other grandpa, my friend's mom, and another woman who was my friend in high school (who died of cervical cancer at 32). I was a couple month's older than she was. Sometimes I dream about her and about my paternal grandma, and when I see them in my dreams, I know something is wrong, but I just can't put my finger on why they shouldn't be there. I feel so greedy when I'm sad about my dad's mom's death because I miss her so much, but she lived to be one month short of 95 so there shouldn't be anything to be sad about. Others die so much younger.

The only great-grandparents N, J, and K have left are Mr. K's two grandmothers. My own grandma met N and J, and she died less than a month after meeting J who was five months old when they met. J was my grandma's first great-granddaughter.

One of Mr. K's six brothers is marrying Saturday. We won't be going home to Michigan for the wedding. It's too bad about the timing of Grandpa D's death. I hope it doesn't take any joy away from the wedding. As far as I know, Mr. K won't be returning for his grandpa's funeral. I was very saddened to miss my own grandma's funeral, but I just wasn't up to traveling that far alone with a toddler and a baby when we had just been back the month before and saw my grandma while she was still alive.