Very warm pool!

 Our pool is super nice right now! Usually there is a little bit of a shock getting into the water but not now. It is probably 85 degrees in the pool. We have been doing a lot of swimming, or at least the kids have.

I continue to be a lifeguard when the younger kids are in the pool. They can be reckless and silly.

My kidney stones still aren't doing anything unpleasant. I have an appointment to see a specialist next month. Earliest appointment I could get.

I have another minor medical issue which is annoying. I am trying to be grateful for medicine and health care. I AM grateful.

Kevin is a very well rounded person, way more than I am. I have numerous areas where I am completely clueless. I am also really good at some things, of course.

Anyway, Kevin LOVES to be efficient. We are talking about our heat pump (which also provides AC) and it is 20 years old. Probably will need to be replaced soonish, and when it does, we need to decide how much to pay for efficiency.

Kevin has a big project now where he is wrapping various pipes in insulation in the basement to prevent leakage of cold air. Our upper floor, especially our boys' room, is often rather warm in summer. The AC doesn't quite manage to keep it chilly enough. It is the farthest away from the heat pump and piping. Plus there are three boys sleeping there so yeah.

So Kevin is buying insulation and wrapping pipes and twisting and contorting to get to the pipes and it is all very admirable.

I am sure it will help.

What else?

Naomi broke up with her boyfriend. They were going together for four months and came to the mutual conclusion that they aren't compatible. I liked the guy quite a bit, but totally agree that there were areas of incompatibility that were serious enough to cause a break up.

It is wise to use intellect when making decisions about romance. I keep hearing about people with MAJOR differences who stay together and it isn't a good idea. Marriage is hard enough without some epic disagreement about life. It doesn't have to be anything moral, either. It can just be about major preferences. Like I probably would not have married Kevin if he had said he really wanted to live in  New York City. I am not a big city girl.  Kevin and I have a lot in common and that has definitely made married life easier for us.

It is hot. It is July. It is good.

My Body is Broken (Not Really)

 I like the Lord of the Rings movies from a couple of decades ago. In the second movie, the Two Towers, a king named Theoden gets beaten up by baddies and expires dramatically in the arms of his niece, Eowen. Before he dies, he says, "My body is broken" which is a far more elegant way of saying "I'm dying" than it could be.

Anyway.

I have kidney stones. Joy! I had a CT scan yesterday and kidney stones! Three!

I am not in pain from the stones I don't think. I do have massive lower back pain but I am pretty sure it is from not stretching and sitting strangely a lot.

I went to chiropractor this morning and got adjusted and I think it helped some. My body is fractious about me sitting strangely and not stretching. So I need to work on that.

Re the stones, maybe they will pass normally. Best guess is that I have had them off and on for more than six months now. 

I watched not one but two Titan submersible documentaries in the last week or so. Fascinating and crazy making. The guy in charge, Stockton Rush, was arrogant and stupid. He was also rich and well connected and had an authorative tone AND had a degree in engineering so he should have been smarter.

He wasn't a materials engineer. Not that you had to be to know that they were headed for complete collapse of the carbon fiber hull, which did of course happen, killing Rush and four other people. Carbon fiber is NOT a good material for the ocean depths! It is light and cheap, though.

Wow, the stupidity! The arrogance, the hubris!

For some reason I am noticing "people dying in stupid ways" the last couple of weeks. The news is full of info about three men who jumped over a waterfall in ... California, I think... and didn't come up. Rattlesnake Falls. I mean, they drowned.

The waterfall was pushing the water down and so they couldn't get to the surface. Some crazy gifted diver managed to retrieve all three bodies which was noble of him.

Last but not least, a 24 year old wing jumper died in the last few days. Wing jumping is insanely dangerous.

Stockton Rush was quoted as saying that all of life is risky and if you don't want to take any risks you might as well just stay home and never leave the house.

But that is a false argument, I think. There are risks and there are RISKS. Jumping off 50 foot waterfalls is super risky. Wingsuiting is risky. Ignoring signs that your carbon hull is failing is suicidal.

Life is definitely not entirely safe, ever. Riding in a car can result in a crash and death. But car riding or driving (when one is in charge of one's faculties) is way safer than diving 13000 feet to Titanic, or wingsuiting, or leaping off of waterfalls.

Speaking of cars, our Angela is learning how to drive. She drove me to and from the chiropractor today and did a good job.

Late June

 Finally getting ridiculously hot, starting tomorrow. Temps in the 90s! Our pool has been struggling to maintain 80 degrees or so, but after a few days in the mid 90s, should be far warmer still. Hooray!

Me and Rose, obviously!

She turned 11 this month. I will have Bday pics at some point, maybe. They are on Kevin's camera and don't get downloaded all that often because we are busy :-).

So yes, our baby is 11!

Miriam and Joseph had Juneteenth off, and today they are working from home, so we have had more people bumping around then usual, which is fun and a little weird. Usually it is "just" the four youngest kids during the day as Isaac and Joseph and Miriam are at work during the weekdays.

Speaking of Angela, age 17, she and Kevin have gone out most days this week to practice driving. Yes, it is that time, for Kevin to teach a kid to drive.

I am currently watching a documentary called: Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster. Very fascinating along with being very sad. People were stupid. The guy who owned the Sub, who died in the implosion, was stupid.

He was reckless and made big engineering mistakes and five people died, including an eighteen year old boy. Heartbreaking.

Not much else. I continue to write. I am enjoying a break from homeschooling the kids.

Oh, Lydia has taken a second part time job so is working quite a few hours now (like 50+) a week. She was sick and off work last year for awhile and needs to build up her savings. I am proud of her for being willing to work so hard. Part of me feels sad that this is necessary, but this is also life. When I was her age, I was putting in incredibly long work weeks in graduate school. I was young and strong, and so is she.

So yeah, summer is nice, pool is nice, I am grateful.

Pool open and other stuff

 

May was relatively cool, and we only opened the pool this week. It is now a blistering 73 degrees in the water. That is too cold for my blood. Rose and Daniel are full of vim and vigor, though, and have gone swimming three times. The first time the water was 65!

I always watch them, even though they are excellent swimmers. But they are young and not always as careful as they could be so yes, I think they need a parent keeping an eye out.

I took Daniel to his well teen checkup last week. He is a chunk and the pediatrician said something about how maybe we needed to keep an eye on his weight.

If he was my first son I might be nervous, but given that his older two brothers grew like crazy during puberty, and were far too thin, I am very happy Daniel has some stored calories to fuel his growth. He is fine.

I also had a doctor appointment. My latest A1c was 6.1. I am up to 2000 mg of metformin a day.

Sometimes I get really whiny and tired of my eating limitations. And then I pull myself up by my metaphorical bootstraps and remember how blessed I am that there are a bunch of things I CAN eat.

Maybe if I reach 95 years of age I will just start eating lots of carbs. At that point, maybe it won't matter?

That's a long way off.

Anyway, it was a good week and I am thankful the pool is open. Our latest book is doing well, in spite of Amazon having some issues with the ranking. Every Kindle book that has ever sold a copy, or is in KU and had at least one page read, has a ranking from Amazon. This changes over time, of course; new books in the P and P variation niche usually rise to at least #5000 quickly. When we released this latest book 9 days ago, it sat at #30,000 for several days. That ... is not right. Amazon sometimes has trouble with things getting hung up, and it does matter because Best Seller Banners in various catagories help drive sales.

Anyway, finally Amazon pulled together and the book rose to about #1100. That isn't bad, but usually our books hit at least #500. So yes, still not quite right.

Whatever. We are selling quite a bit and people like the book so I am going to be happy with that!

 

Another Teen in the House

 

Daniel turned 13 this month. Now we have four teens again. 

Here he is playing with a gift from my parents, a Lego gear bots toy. He loves building things. 

One of the things that is nice for Daniel is that he has two older brothers. He is stranded in the midst of numerous sisters, and he likes and loves them, but the big boys, especially Isaac, are willing to chase Daniel around and tackle him and do boy things.  To be clear, Daniel LOVES this.

We have some new friends at church who have only one son and multiple daughters, and the mother has said to me that she appreciates that Daniel and her son will wrestle and chase and be rough and tough. Most boys thrive from some rough and tumble.

Hmmm, what else? I am toiling away on another book and it is coming along but sometimes it is boring to write.

However, the only way to make progress as an author, or at least for this author, is to work every day on it, or at least almost every day. I occasionally have something else going on, but almost every day I settle down after lunch and work for a few hours.

And I do enjoy writing.

It has been a cool week and today it is rainy. Kind of dreary, really. We will have warm temps eventually. So far, the pool is closed because it seriously hasn't been warm enough to open it.

This means lots of frogs are growing in our pool. Our kids keep going down and saving them and releasing them.

We may have an extra bonus bunch of frogs next year.

Octopus! And other things

 

The first full day I was in St. Croix, Kevin and I went snorkeling and Kevin found this octopus. I was out of shape and didn't swim for more than half an hour, but he spent a full hour and a half interacting with this octopus and taking lots of pictures.

He or she was an amazing creature. We have seen octopuses before, but always in holes or crevices. This dude or dudette was on a rock, camoflauged initially, though he flared white when Kevin got too close and curled up his tentacles to look bigger.

He had a mollusk and Kevin, once or twice or thrice, stole the mollusk and moved it, and Mr. or Miss Octopus swam down and retrieved it. Totally totally cool.

There are so many amazing creatures in the waters of St. Croix!

Ok, back to our life here in Ohio. It is cold this week! When I got up this morning, it was 48 degrees, which is chilly for late May!

We have also had a lot of rain and wind. Kevin put some tomato plants out and some of them were snapped off. Sad!

We have had a mild illness moving through the house for a couple of weeks now. It comes and goes. That is kind of annoying but no huge deal.

When I was in St. Croix, I had a strong desire to purchase a Major League Baseball subscription but it s $150 or so and I hesitated.

The very next day they had a half off sale and I jumped on it, so now I can watch the Detroit Tigers. They are doing very well this year so far. The main announcer is very good.

Busy busy busy week

 A few things.

 Our big girls have moved into a new apartment! It is very convenient to Naomi's job and pretty close to Lydia's job so that is good. It is also way closer to our house which makes me happy. It is about 15 minutes away instead of 30 minutes away.

We have a virus floating through the family. Some people are fine. Some people are a little sick. Some person (Isaac) has felt rotten for a few days, poor guy.

I finished editing our new book, which comes out at the end of the month. Yesterday I worked really really hard and my brain is fried. But I got it done! Which makes me very happy.

Daniel, our 12 year old son, is growing like a weed. He is in the middle of a growth spurt and is literally growing an inch every two or three months. He is currently a little over five foot five inches. His two big brothers are over six foot tall. No idea where Daniel will wind up. He has a different body type than his brothers, so maybe will top out at five foot eight or nine like his parents. We will see!

In the middle of all this busyness, we are mostly sorted after the vacation. The food situation has been a bit odd, with people coming and going and our big girls' stuff in our refrigerator. Lydia is gluten free so needs a different diet than us. It is all good, but we still don't feel totally normal.

Are we ever normal?

Anyway, busy week.