May
26
We are all of the above. Not all of us, all the time, and not necessarily in that order… but we are busy and hot and sick.
It has been SUMMER here; or at least, very summer-like. A week of 30 degree days and sweet cool nights. It has been GLORIOUS. May Two-Four was one of the nicest holiday weekends in memory, and made us regret not having access to a cottage anymore, but still, we had lots to do and a great weekend close to home.
BDH has been nothing short of awesome around here recently. Work for him is insanely, unreasonably, ridiculously busy, and yet he does it without complaint. The fact that he is away from his little girl so much is so hard on both of them, and makes me want to punch someone, on both of their behalfs. (“Behalfs”. Is that a word? I do not know. If it is not, it should be. I am using it anyway. Grammar be damned.) But he is working hard at work, and then has been coming home and has done some amazing work at home too.
On Saturday, he began cleaning the garage and taking stuff to the dump. Now, uninitiated Reader, you have no idea the of the magnitude of this last sentence. Our garage has been, in recent years, the repository of all the things we don’t want/want to throw out/no longer want to see, and has been stuffed to the limit with boxes and old mattresses and gardening gear and old computer equipment. (And one Adventure Mouse. If I were a mouse, I’d have moved in there too.) But he got up and just started clearing stuff out. Loading it into the truck. Driving to the dump. Clearing. Loading. Driving. Lather, rinse, repeat.
It looks AWESOME. I can FIND THINGS. I can WALK IN AND OUT. From EITHER end.
Sunday and Monday, he carried on with some long-awaited backyard construction he began, for the third or fourth time, the weekend before. I should explain: we began a stone patio many years ago, until we ran out of time and money and motivation. It sat, unfinished, for several years, until Grammy and Grandad came to visit Stinkerbelle when she first came home, and together, BDH and his parents finished up the patio part. Then, a week ago, BDH started construction of some privacy screens, in which he also impaled his finger on a running drill.
(Ahem. Yes. Blood and gore. Slightly more than a paper cut, slightly less than a horror film. Ick. But he’s healing up nicely — there’s not really much you can do for a drill-sized hole in one’s finger except for bandaids, antibiotics, a tetanus shot, and time.)
So Sunday and Monday, the privacy screens were finished, and he started on some stairs from our patio door down to the patio. BDH is a man who has thought he might enjoy doing home improvement stuff, but has never had the nerve to really dive into it. Well, I am here to tell you, he’s doing a FANTASTIC job. I LOVE my patio. It’s as hot as hell, a stone patio on a south-facing house, but it is LOVELY, and will be a wonderful place to sit in the evenings and whatnot.
But it has been HOT, not just on the patio but everywhere, and so we are doing our best to go out and do things but not die from sunstroke or sunburn. It has been a week where I have taken a couple of hours before 11 am to do some yard work, parking That Baby in her empty paddling pool under a tree with some toys, and started to reclaim our gardens. It is slow going, with a busybody toddler getting into everything all the time. But it has been two years since we’ve had any time or energy or money to devote to our yard and gardens, and their neglect is coming back to haunt us. So, bit by bit, I have been yanking weeds, finding what perennials are still alive, and pulling endless weeds from the lawn.
It’s slow. But it will get there, eventually. I have yet to face the vegetable garden, which is in full sun and hopelessly covered in weeds, onions gone to seed (that never grew at all in last year’s wet, cold summer) and wild parsley.
And it is here that I will pause for a Public Service Announcement.
ATTENTION ALL GARDENERS. DO NOT PLANT PARSLEY. IT IS THE HERB OF THE DEVIL, AND WILL GET INTO EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE — YOUR LAWN, YOUR PATIO, YOUR OTHER GARDENS. IT’S INSIDIOUS AND EVIL AND IMPOSSIBLE TO KILL. IT IS THE FOOD OF BEELZEBUB. RESIST THE TEMPTATION AND DO NOT PLANT EVEN A SINGLE PLANT. BESIDES, NOBODY EVER EATS PARSLEY ANYWAY.
You’re welcome.
Okay, so. Back to the backyard. It is as hot as hell. So we have spent the afternoons working while Stinkerbelle splashes in her paddling pool. And, let’s be honest — I’ve spent a fair bit of time standing and soaking my feet in the pool too. And if she splashes me… well, it’s a bonus.
But we’ve also been looking to beat the heat. Last week, we went to the Early Years Centre in the mall, to play with other kids in air-conditioned comfort. But where there are children, there are viruses and such, and that means… both Stinkerbelle and I now have a cold.
She has really been suffering. A cough and an endlessly running nose is not fun in the heat of summer (which it isn’t really yet, but it’s hot enough to be.) Yesterday, she was miserable, and just stood in her pool and cried. But I am a cheap bastard, and don’t believe in turning on the air conditioning until it is absolutely necessary, so there’s really been no other way to stay cool.
Until this warm and humid morning, when our East-Coast raised, heat-intolerant, but endlessly kind and caring BDH listened to That Baby coughing in the early morning and saw me wake up looking fairly miserable, and decreed that It Is Absolutely Necessary. He turned on the A/C, so that we could stay indoors and cool and have a little down time to rest. And then, to make doubly sure we didn’t have to go anywhere or do anything, he dashed down to the store for some lozenges for me and yogurt for That Baby before he went off to work. BDH is once again stuck working late and away from his darling girl, so this is one way he can be sure he is taking good care of us even though he cannot be here.
So here we sit in increasingly air conditioned comfort, playing with playdoh and sucking on lozenges and watching Sesame Street. And later we will have a yogurt snack.
There are many things to be done — gardening, construction, cleaning, laundry. They’ll still be there tomorrow.
