Friday, August 15, 2008

A Fun Summer ... Not

Okay. This is the time at Wool & Bull when we have a little pity party. This summer SUCKED.

It started out well enough. Kate went to camp for three weeks to clean toilets and wash dishes as a member of the Crew. Anyone who doesn't think that's fun (for the Mother), doesn't have a teenaged daughter dropping candy wrappers and dirty dishes all over the house. I LOVED the fact that she had to cut the grass all the way around the lake with a hand held scythe. I LOVED it when the little boys in the meadow cabins all ate bad burritos and created a truly foul mess in the bathroom -- that she and her fellow Crew members had to clean up. I LOVED it when one of the mean boys locked her in the walk-in dumpster. Strangely enough, she loved it too. She cried and cried when she had to come home and leave all of her Crew friends behind. So, all was well.

After Kate got home, though, she and her Dad went off on a fabulous vacation to England and Ireland. It was their special Daddy/Daughter trip and I was glad for them to have some bonding time. But what did Ally and I get to do? We got to have Ally's wisdom teeth out. She was a brave little soldier, but she developed an infection and it was NOT FUN. Especially, when -- did I mention -- the other half of our family unit was on vacation in Ireland.

When the wanderers returned home, Jeff had lap band surgery, which his doctor (our close friend) had strongly recommended. It was supposed to be an outpatient procedure. It was not. He woke up from surgery in extreme pain and was unable to swallow anything -- even his own saliva -- for a week. Guess who got to empty all the vomit basins? After a week in the hospital on an IV and no progress, the surgeon went back in and took the dratted thing out again. He felt better almost immediately and after a couple of days was able to go home -- a somewhat thinner and thoroughly unhappy person.

After fussing over him for a few days, it was time for the girls to go back to school again! The summer had vanished completely!

Two days before school started, Kate started to take her summer homework seriously. She worked for two solid days with only 2 hours of sleep. My, was she pleasant to be around ...

On my own little procrastination project, the night before school started I finally got out the box of school clothes and started washing them. When Kate tried on her school skirts, they were hopelessly too small -- and so were all her school pants. That's how I found myself at Walmart at 1:30 a.m. the day before school looking for some khaki pants for her to wear the next day.

This summer, I never got around to mulching the yard ... and only did minimal weeding. You can imagine how it looks .... I have made no further progress on the Wool & Bull studio. It looks just the same as it did last spring. I still haven't cleaned out the guest room -- formerly a top priority that has fallen to the bottom of the list. Probably worst of all: I still haven't done any further work on Kate's Civil War Era dress that was promised to her as a gift for her straight A report card LAST FALL. I promised her recently that it would be done by Halloween of this year.

Okay ... pity party and self-flagellation over.

Everything isn't horrible. This summer we FINALLY bought a new couch to replace the 15 year old monstrocity that we've hated since the moment it arrived at our door. It had a rip in the back and two large threadbare places on the seats and three years ago we decided to buy a new one. I'll let you soak that in: Three Years Ago. I have looked and looked for a decent leather couch that the short people who live in this house (all four of us) would feel comfortable on. It has been an almost completely fruitless search.

However, in a stroke of sheer luck, a couch that I had been considering went to the furniture store tent sale and was marked down to $800 ... a Flexsteel solid leather couch! That's $1000 off the regular price!! I talked the family into buying it and rented a truck to pick it up the next day. Now that we've got it, everyone loves it and it looks SO much better than the threadbare disaster occupying the space previously.

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I've been racking my brain for the last few minutes trying to think of just one other thing this summer that has not sucked. Well ... nobody died. I did have a nice visit with my sister and my folks, as reported in the previous blog entry. Other than that, I'm coming up with nothing.

Well, the fall has got to be better. I'm looking forward to crisp weather.

The next entry will NOT be a pity party, I promise. I plan to talk about finished objects. What with all the illness, I've had plenty of knitting time. :)

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