Summer Vacation

I've had to get up pretty early (6:15 to 6:30 a.m.) in order to get everyone ready to get the kids to their swimming lessons by 8:10 a.m. We're all tired and cranky, but we should get used to it by the time the lessons are over next Thursday.

We're quite lucky; this time there are only four kids in the kids' swimming class, and it has two instructors. They spend half the time in the water. Usually there's at least eight kids. I guess no one else wanted to get up early the first day of summer vacation, or perhaps money is too tight this year for some people to take lessons.

We haven't gone to the pool we joined since Sunday (when I took N and K--J was grounded). K fell into my bedroom door (she says) yesterday, and she has a very bad wound on her knee. It's a deep, splattered crack. I sort of wonder if she didn't hit a nail in the threshold. I thought about getting stitches, but it wasn't bleeding a lot, so I didn't bother. Stitches would make it heal with less scaring, but everyone (I think) has scars on his knees. I'm keeping my eye on the cut, though, to make sure it doesn't get infected. Anyway, I'm not taking K to the pool until it starts to get a hard scab. It's been weeping a bit of blood still. We change the bandage several times a day because it upsets K as soon as she sees blood on the bandage.

We've been getting a lot of nice raspberries in the last several days. I made meringue shells this afternoon, and put whipped cream and raspberries into them for dessert. The kids and I liked them. Mr. K wouldn't touch them. It is sort of a light, fluffy, girly dessert.

We've had to run a set of keys across town to the company who's going to manage our rental houses. They've got one house now, and I hope to transfer the other two by July 1. We have to meet a plumber at a different house tomorrow. N and J are complaining a lot about all the rental house running around we are already doing. I am hoping it will be over in early July.

I had a tenant who is behind in her rent by nearly a month each month (she had a mini-stroke a couple months ago, missed several weeks of work, and just can't get caught up) call me and tell me to send her the pay or quit because at the suggestion of a friend, she called the Salvation Army, and they will help her with one month's rent so she can get back on her feet. She has usually been keeping updated on when she thinks she'll get me the rent, so I hadn't sent the pay or quit. I'm glad she's getting help, and I hope she'll get back on track before the management company takes over because I'm not sure they'll be as lax at enforcing the rent due date as I am, and I do believe this tenant is telling me the truth about her problems and not just putting me off the way other tenants do.