Things I learned this week

1. If you have trouble sleeping, quit drinking tea and soda.

2. Make sure your child knows what "off" is on the valve feeding the soaker hose so you don't have an unpleasant surprise four hours later.

3. A picnic and swim in the river makes a child's entire day.

4. Teenagers are quite hungry when they get home at 3am after a long day of work. Keep snacks on hand for them or there's no telling what they'll get into.

5. When your husband suggests you wipe down the computer chair with alcohol because he unthinkingly sat in it still wearing the same pants he wore in the poison oak, it's a good idea to remember to do that BEFORE you sit on it wearing shorts.

Cameron's arm

I wanted post a quick update about Cameron's arm. He says it still hurts quite a bit but he hasn't missed a day of work and even worked overtime six hours yesterday on the greenchain and eight hours over last weekend doing clean-up. He says clean-up is the easiest job ever and works eight hours overtime each week that he can.

He's not been to the chiropractor yet but has an appointment and is on the cancellation list. His appointment isn't until early September because he's limited to Fridays with his 10-hour shifts.

He's pretty careful of his arm but doesn't feel he needs the sling. Each time I ask him how it's doing, he says it still hurts so I ask him if it's getting better and he mumbles something. So like a man.

Flowers

Roses

Roses aren't my all-time favorite flower but I do love them. Richelle raced inside the other morning and grabbed the camera while yelling that I needed to "come look at something right now!"

What I needed to see was the dew still on the roses. She didn't know how to take a micro shot or she would have done it herself. I wasn't sure if I could take the shot without blurring and she was hoping the dew would show up. You have to look kind of closely to see the dew but it's there.

By the way, the shot at the top of the blogspot of the other side of our narrow valley is one that she took as part of her Camera Badge for Girl Scouts. She was pleased to see that I used it.



Lavender


I have one lavender plant and harvested the first crop a few days ago. Richelle and I had fun putting together bunches with ribbons and hanging them up all over the house. This one hangs above the coat closet in the front entry.

Although it's directly in line with the front door, my dear husband didn't notice it until I pointed it out. Cameron, the only male of my acquaintance to be able to find what he's been sent to get, noticed the lavender straightaway.

A long week

Whew! What a week we've had!! Mike and Cameron are on swing shift so I would do what house and yard work I could before about 11am and then fix lunch before going into Sutherlin for two-three hours to help one of our Boy Scouts work on his Eagle project. He's building picnic tables for the park in town. He started out looking for sponsors for six tables and ended up building eleven. With the help of a professional and a couple of fellow scouts, he bent, cut, and welded the metal frames. Others helped grind the welds and rough edges. I was put in charge of getting the frames painted. My main crew was Richelle and the Scout's little sister who is also in Richelle's troop. Others came to help now and then but it's been over a week and there's still one to be painted.

All of this in the heat. 100+ degree weather. We always get five days to a week of 100-degree weather in August and often a partial week in July but this year we've already had a couple of days that hot in May and now this week in July.

Global warming? Hardly. The Scout camp in the Cascades still has three foot snow drifts and they're not sure just when they can get in there and get the camp ready for campers in three weeks. There was so much snow that many of the wooden tent frames are destroyed. No, not global warming.

Added to working outside in the heat was the cold I had. It started in my head, then moved into my chest where it pretty much made itself at home for a while. All of that together made me tired, tired, tired. I also took the kids to the river to swim a couple of times and while the current isn't very strong there, it's strong enough to tire us out in little over an hour.

Stay tuned for next week's episode: I Was A Leader At Day Camp

Cute

Richelle is one of those people who talk rather rapidly but not always clearly. Mike's always asking her to repeat herself because she slurs words. I frequently ask her to repeat because she leaves out vital information by using all pronouns.

"Dad,doyouhaveanyelectritician'stapeinyourtoolboxIneeditformyproject."
"Richelle, slow down and enunciate!"

"Mom,whydidn'tshelikeit?"
"Why didn't who like what?"

Yesterday, we were at a family picnic with the Boy Scout troop and one of the younger brothers noticed that Richelle repeated a lot. This young lad doesn't use his lips much when he speaks. Here's the quick exchange I heard.

"Richelle, why do you repeat everything?"

"What?"

A couple of other parents me joined me in quiet laughter and the boy didn't repeat the question. Richelle grabbed the handful of chips she was after and ran off without pursuing the issue.

Memory is the first to go

We were sitting around the family room this afternoon talking about Cameron's arm and he mentioned that they saw the scar from the old break.

Whaa?

"When did you break your left arm?"

"Five years ago. A couple of weeks before Melissa died," he says. He thinks, "Mom, you're losing it."

"No, that was your right arm," I correct while struggling with memory.

We had a short discussion about how we know Nick broke his left arm because his Scoutmaster, missing his right arm from the shoulder, called Nick his "right-hand man" and we know that Nick's and Cameron's breaks were almost identical except for being opposite arms. We scratched our heads and dusted off memories and I finally asked Cameron if he remembered which side the casket was on when he was pallbearer.

"The left side.......oh. It was my right arm I broke."

So he did damage the bone when he walked in front of the jitney. The x-rays showed what was either a crack or an old, healed break and at 2am Mike and Cameron assumed it was his left arm he'd broken years ago.

Update...

It turns out he's only bruised. Pretty bad bruise, I'm guessing because it was just very red last night...uh, early this morning...and he's not gotten up yet for me to see. I have a tube of arnica cream and I'll have him apply it regularly.

First, I'd like to make clear that it was his own fault. Jitney drivers are supposed to take ordinary precautions but they do have the right-of-way. It's the responsibility of everyone else to keep their eyes peeled and stay out of their way. There are walking paths painted on the floor to get from one place to another and hysters are careful when they cross them but this happened right where Cameron works.

Cameron was headed to the bathrooms and didn't look around while a jitney was coming to get a load from the stacker. Mike told me that Cameron was in front of the jitney right in the driver's blind spot. The driver was raising the forks high enough to get the load from the stacker, about ten feet up. The fork hit Cameron at the top of his shoulder. Since the forks were rising, if the collision happened a foot farther on, the fork would have gotten him in the head. That's why he was so shaken last night but I didn't want to add that until I knew more.

His supervisor saw the whole thing happen. He yelled loudly and continuously but the noise is bad in the mill and everyone wears earplugs so neither Cameron nor the jitney driver heard him. Mike said, and I'll quote, "It scared Hell out of everybody."

He's going back to work today. It's his Friday so he'll have three days to heal before the next week rolls around.