The first week (and a living area before and after)

Ahh, it is so good to finally be moved in! We are all unpacked, nearly every box gone, and this house is now our home.

There's Willow, surveying her new kingdom. The porch is my favorite place to be, and I waste way too much time there.

The living room project was completed with maybe a day to spare. I think it turned out to be a little more of a challenge than the designer or her contractor had anticipated. But it got done, and now those shelves are full of our mementos. We are very pleased with how it turned out. Here are a few pictures of before:

We had a few issues with this space, which almost made us walk away from this house a couple times. At one point I said to Tim that we needed to just keep looking and quit trying to force a round peg into a square hole. We had looked a few times and kept finding the same problems. Tim was very drawn to it, and there were a lot of things about it we both liked, but I really just wanted to find THE house. The one that doesn't make us scratch our heads and go maybe if this was this way, or that was that way, and so on.

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but the layout of this living room presented a real conundrum for us. This was where we would be sitting down for Netflix and footrubs every night, but we could only set up the furniture so far back without running into that bar. We needed to leave adequate space to walk through between the couch and the bar. You can see the outline of the previous owners' 8 x 10 rug in the bottom photo (Brazilian cherry turns darker where the sun hits it). We set up a folding chair just inside that line and realized we'd be staring straight up at the TV over the mantel. That's been a pet peeve of ours for years, and something we were determined to avoid in a house of our own. 

Then there was that big hearth jutting out about a foot into an area already hurting for space. Above that we had those weird built-ins with the empty spaces at the top. Finally, the inadequate lighting and dark color both on the walls and ceiling, made for a very cavernous and gloomy living area.

One possibility we discussed was lowering the fireplace and making it flush with the wall. Even still, a mantel would be about "mantel-high," and we'd still be staring up at the TV, though not as far up. Another thing we considered was putting the TV in the built-ins somewhere, but it looks awkward and lopsided to me. We like fireplaces, and we really would have liked to make one work here. But let's be real, we're not staring at a fire at the end of the day (though it would have been nice to have the option!). So when the designer suggested just taking out the fireplace entirely, we had to agree with that. I love how it turned out. It's not quite finished -- the cabinets need hardware and the counter is getting stained, but I'm already so happy with it.

We had planned to mount the TV in the middle of that space, but Tim decided he didn't want to do that. Instead, he's ordered a stand that will make it a little higher.

We put our heads together with the designer and came up with a plan that included new paint, new lighting, and custom built-ins. We had talked about doing something with the floors, but decided to hold off on that. I'm glad we did because with the new paint color, I really like the floors. The color is Benjamin Moore Pale Oak. The ceilings were all painted white.

We had a bit of a hiccup when it came to the lighting. After the electrician came the first time and put in new LED lights, we turned them on that first evening and it was kind of like womp-womp. Tim and I knew we didn't like the new lights, but we weren't sure what it was about them that bothered us. At first we thought it was just the temperature -- 4000 kelvins. (I now know way more about lightbulbs than I ever thought possible. We found this article to be very helpful.) Was it too cold for a living room? we wondered. I texted my mom and siblings frantically, asking all of them what kind of kelvins they had in their houses. Would it look better when all of our stuff was in there? We were seriously confused. That first night we became convinced the kelvins were the whole problem. My mom told me her kitchen had 3000k lightbulbs, and I had admired the light in her kitchen.

2700 kelvins on the left, 4000 on the right.

The next day, after much research, Tim concluded that while the kelvins might be a problem, the lumens were a bigger problem. The room was still too dark and shadowy, and if the room isn't bright enough, it doesn't matter what temperature the light is. We spent hours swapping out and comparing light bulbs in the kitchen, and analyzing. At some point I got very stressed out and kind of flew off the handle at Tim. About light bulbs. 🤦 It's embarrassing to admit how the decision fatigue affected me. Those vaulted ceilings in the living room are high, and those LED bulbs are expensive and meant to last a lifetime, so there was a lot of pressure to get this right. I composed myself, apologized, and then he told me, "Don't worry, I've got this. I will make a decision about the lighting that we will both like." I said, "OK," and never worried about it again.

He ended up meeting with the electrician at the house and requesting four new bulbs, each with 3000 kelvins and 1200 lumens. It was a guess on his part since neither the designer nor the electrician were able to tell him how many lumens the first set of light bulbs had. This article helped him with his calculations. Whatever the case, we are happy with the end result. The electrician put in the new lights yesterday, and when I flipped the switch I said, "THIS is more like it." We're not even sure the bulbs are 1200 lumens. Tim saw a box that said 800 (but 3000 kelvins!). They're definitely brighter than what was there before, the space is now beautifully lit even at night, and that is worth the pains taken.

I share all of this here, because there was precious little to be found on the subject in blogs and social media, even all of those home improvement and design ones. I know I'm little, but maybe I can help one person.

I'll leave you with a few more photos of our first week here. I know this is the honeymoon still, but I am so happy we moved here. There is this huge group of boys here ranging in age from about 7 to 13, and they are literally an answer to prayer. You can see them outside almost any time of day, living an '80s childhood, running in and out of our backyard and others, playing hide-and-seek, baseball, and shooting one another with airsoft guns. Timmy comes in sweaty for a drink of water, and goes right back out again to play with them. We could barely get him out the door in our last neighborhood because he never had anyone to play with. 

Willow is doing very well with her invisible fence training. We were all skeptical, but she immediately got the hang of it. Today we tempted her at the flag line with family members and bacon at different times. She passed with flying colors and was rewarded with bacon and belly scratches.

And, of course, Tim has been enlisting the help of kids with this thing called yard work. I have not contributed much myself -- yet -- but I did pull a few weeds and I planted a hydrangea in the front of the house. It's a start.

Tim retires from the Marine Corps in a week, and then he has the whole summer off to spend with Delaney. She can't wait.😜

The Beach Calls

The beaches, along with their parking lots and restrooms, opened up last week, but it was a little too chilly. Yesterday had the perfect forecast, and I told Tim, "I'm sorry, I know there's so much to do at the new house, but I NEED a beach day." I thought maybe at the last minute he'd change his mind and go, but he ended up having a very productive day by himself, and I was excited to see what he'd gotten done. It's all coming along, and I'm looking forward to writing that post. His (and to a lesser extent our) evenings and weekends have been consumed these last few weeks with house projects, and the prospect of all that sand was just not enticing enough to pull him away. (He's really not a beach person, if you didn't know. I'd have felt much guiltier about going without him if he were.)

The temperature was just right, the breeze was just right, and so were the waves. I told the kids that since we had neither their father nor a lifeguard there, they were not to go in past their waists. But it was the kind of surf that's very long and shallow, so it wasn't a difficult rule to abide by. They were bodyboarding, and farther out, there were people walking around in water up to their shins. The water was too chilly for my taste, so I just sat at the edge. It was very refreshing.

I stayed until it seemed we'd reached the limit of their endurance and our food, and they were starting to get tired and cranky. I think it ended up being maybe just under three hours, and I soaked up every minute.You beach people know what I mean.

We got back home, recharged a little bit, did some laundry, cleaned up and prepared to clear out again so there could be another showing of the house we're renting for a little while longer. After over a month on the market and no activity, there have been four showings in a week. I'm confident the owners should be entertaining some offers soon. Then we had the boys put on collared shirts, and the girls and I wore sundresses because... for the first time in two months we attended Mass. It was an outdoor Mass, and we set up our lawn chairs like we were there for a concert in the park. Happy day! To be standing alongside the community of faithful again, and receiving Jesus again, was wonderful. I was so, so grateful.  

These last couple months have been...challenging, to say the least. "Challenging" is the word we use when we're trying to be positive. I like to put a positive spin on things in this space, focus on my blessings which are many, and give myself something to look back on and smile. Those things are always there, and in abundance if I'm paying attention to them. But I have to be honest to my future rose-colored glass-wearing self: being a stay-at-home mom has not been going well for me. I know that it has been wearing on all of us to be at home together day in and day out, for such a long time, with very few diversions and the pressure of "distance learning." But exacerbating that is a child of mine is non-compliant and seems to relish friction. I don't have the tools to cope because I am a person who likes to get along with others, has always wanted to get along (but mostly to be left alone, honestly), so I can't relate to the constant desire for conflict. I feel completely inept and ineffective as a parent in the face of this. I have been hurting, and have my children who've had to deal with my bad moods and frustration. We have been working hard to nurture our relationship with this child, and I've been praying for peace in our home.

All that to say, words could not possibly convey how much I needed yesterday.

P.S. Just wanted to share this because I'm so proud of Scotty and Faith, whose recent home renovation was featured in a magazine. You two can come do our kitchen next.:)

Living our best (house arrest) life

The term "quarantine" keeps being thrown around, but I read somewhere that when sick people are told to stay home, that's quarantine. When healthy people are, that is house arrest (except for trips to Lowe's -- everyone in New Bern is at Lowe's). I agree that the elderly and other people at risk need to isolate themselves, and that it would be wise for us to all refrain from shaking hands and hugging for the time being; but this extreme approach of shutting everything down and causing people in "nonessential" industries to lose their jobs, boggles my mind. My cousin shared something on Facebook, a couple paragraphs of which I'll post here because they sum up the ridiculousness and hypocrisy so perfectly:

***

You expect your garbage to be picked up, you expect the grocery store to be open so you can get milk, you expect truck drivers to supply the stores, you expect farmers, meat packers, fruit and vegetable pickers all to keep food in that grocery store.
You expect Amazon to still ship all the things you’re ordering while you sit at home shopping. You expect the delivery driver to leave it on your doorstep. You expect your phone to work, your power to stay on, and your mail to show up rain, sleet, or shine.And most important, you expect the doctors and nurses to be there if you need them.
The whole premise of shelter in place is based on the arrogant idea that others must risk their health so you can protect yours. There is nothing virtuous about ignoring the largely invisible army required to allow people to shelter in place.

***

While it's clear that I think it's high time that things reopen, I can't deny that I am one of the fortunate people who are in no position to complain.

Not a whole lot has changed for me in my little world, and yet it feels like everything has. I have even fewer reasons to put on real clothes and makeup than I had before. I have been been on a break from having to wake up at 6:30, from driving kids around, from squeezing dinner in among their activities, and from Saturday mornings at the soccer field. Not that any of that was so horrible. But all this extra downtime, as I'm sure many can agree, is a gift. Tim was recently chatting on Facebook with a friend from high school who said that once things get back to normal she's telling her kids, "You each get to pick one thing." She doesn't ever want to go back to rushing around the way she was before. Tim thinks nope, everyone's going back to the way they were before. Including us. I have to agree, in our case. It's not that our kids were ever involved in too many things, it's just that that we have more kids than most people.

This is my COVID sweatshirt. It arrived sometime early March, and I've been wearing it nonstop. I want to order every color, and all the tie-dyes and dip-dyes. But that seems a little greedy; how many sweatshirts do I need anyway? However, after discovering random bleach spots all over the lower part of the front (how?!? I don't even use bleach!), I went ahead and ordered a blue dip-dye one. They're on sale (as always, ON has a sale) , and it's tempting because it is the softest and most perfectly fitting sweatshirt I've ever worn.

I've still got housework to do, and I've still got to make sure the kids are doing what they ought to be doing, i.e., doing their school work, picking up their rooms, and stuff like that. I've been filling the hours that remain with:

- More time spent outdoors, either on my porch or on walks or runs
- More time in prayer and spiritual reading
- More time taking care of my body, currently in the form of a 30-minute Daily Burn workout, and stretching videos in the evening (Yoga with Adriene on YouTube is still my favorite for that).

School has been cancelled for the remainder of the school year, so remote learning till June it is! In the absence of classrooms, the kids have been scattering around the house doing their work in a variety of uncomfortable-looking positions.

Annie and I have been working on a stamped cross stitch together. I forgot how relaxing it is, sewing all those tiny x's. Stamped was the way to go for her as a beginner, but I wonder if there's a way to get those stamps off the fabric once it's done. I do not want to make a big pink border around the flowers like it wants me to do.

Since the lockdown began, I think Delaney's life has improved for the most part. She doesn't see her friends in person, but they are never far away when she has Zoom. We finally got a Disney Plus subscription, which after the free trial ended, she has been putting a portion of her allowance toward. She loves The Clone Wars. She and I have watched a few episodes of The Mandalorian, but I'm not feeling hooked. I think I like the Baby Yoda memes better than I like the show that has Baby Yoda. If you're wondering how Delaney took the news of Tom Brady's decision to go to Tampa Bay, I think this photo says it best, despite having been taken a couple weeks before that happened. 

I changed out of my COVID sweatshirt once or twice, and was so thrilled I had to take a picture. I posted this one on Instagram and tagged my cousin Bridget's little resale shop where I had bought it from, back when I anticipated more reasons to want to throw it on.

Annie's been baking more than ever, leaving behind the irresistible smell of the goodies and her special signature of every cabinet door left open. These cookies, breads and brownies are NOT helping me take care of myself, by the way.

They've all been getting way too much screen time, and periodically need to be booted out of the house so they can experience fresh air and sun on their faces. Soon enough it will get too hot to be outside, and we all need to be enjoying it while we can. Two nights ago Tim and I were explaining to Timmy why playing outside is so important. He broke down crying when he said he would want to be outside more if he had a friend. Last night I went over to the new house to see how the paint was coming in the girls' room. Tim told me that a bunch of boys had asked Timmy to play with him, and he'd run off with them for awhile. I pray that this is the beginning of what's to come, that Timmy will have friends he can play with every day. That's a big part of why we chose this particular neighborhood.

Speaking of the new house, it is coming along very nicely. The living areas are all painted, and the kids' rooms will be done by the end of the weekend. At that point I guess we'll be about 80 percent done with the paint. The previous owners, upon listing the house, painted every room, bathroom, closet and hallway the same ugly shade of khaki. Except for the FROG -- that's a nice color for some reason. The ceilings were all a dingy greenish color. What a difference it makes having the right colors on the walls, and white ceilings. New lighting for the living spaces, as well as cabinets and shelving for the new built-ins, have all been ordered and will hopefully be all done before we move in May 28. I've been putting together Pinterest boards with my decorating ideas. Tim and I went to Lowe's this morning, and when we got back we found that our sweet realtor had left us a surprise:

I should be heading over there soon. Tim is doing the boys' room a color that we chose on the spot at Lowe's, so it feels very risky. I had a first choice and a second choice picked out, both by Sherwin Williams, and Lowe's did not have either of them. So I'll get going over there, so I can perform my crucial function of observing and commenting on the paint that he has put on the walls. Till next time!

Happy Easter, everyone! I hope this finds you well and enjoying lots of bonus family time. Currently, I am listening to Annie rustling around the kitchen I just cleaned, getting everyone's lunch ready. After that we'll have a mandatory walk partway around our neighborhood's busier than ever three-mile loop. It is spring break for the kids. I saw this morning on Facebook that this is many families' first day of remote learning. We've been going at it hard for almost a month here, and it has definitely had its ups and downs. I am enjoying the break from it, while at the same time trying to brainstorm ways to make it go a little better once we go back next Monday. Timmy, typically an excellent student, is finding it very difficult to be motivated in a home environment, and I'm worried his teacher is going to show up one day to throttle us both.

Here are a few Easter pictures:

All of the children and grandchildren on Tim's mom's side of the family have macrame Easter baskets that Aunt Jayne and her daughter Lura made.

This is Tim's childhood Easter basket. These baskets sure have grown over the years.

Easter Sunday was also Carolyn's birthday, so we Zoomed with everybody in Massachusetts, singing happy birthday to Grandma and blowing out candles in our own homes. Annie made her delicious chocolate cake with dark chocolate frosting (everything from scratch), and it is decadent. The kids can barely eat more than a few bites at a time, but for me it goes down way too easily! 

Last year around this time, Carolyn was hospitalized for a very rough bout of flu and for breathing problems, so they are taking every precaution when it comes to coronavirus. It has just been her and Tim Sr at home for weeks on end, which must seem really strange to them both, their home usually being a hub of activity. Their kids used to make fun of their overstuffed pantry with its sagging shelves, home to an untold number of non-perishables as well as paper goods (where some members of the family may have liked to "shop"). Once the toilet paper started flying off store shelves everywhere and everyone started isolating, Tim joked that his parents locked the doors and said, "Who's laughing now?"🤣 

Last Easter at our North Carolina rental. Next will be at our own home!

With the world going crazy around us, we managed to complete the purchase of our very first home together. It is undergoing some renovation and painting inside before we move in at the end of next month. We also have a vision for how we want the front of the house to look -- not half hidden by trees and shrubs, for one thing. There's so much we want to do, it's overwhelming. One thing at a time... I will write a new post with some "before and after" of the interior. I am so excited to see it done! There were a couple things about this house that really had us hesitating about buying it even though we loved lots of things about it, it was a good value in a great kid-friendly neighborhood. One of those issues is being addressed right now, with a couple more to follow in the future, and a couple more on the wishlist. Any time I start to feel anxious about the what and the when of getting things done, I remind myself that we've gotten ourselves a beautiful house during what is a very hard time for many; and not only that, because my husband puts my happiness above his own, that house is in eastern North Carolina. We are together, we are healthy, and we are getting ready to move into our own house. It's important for me to keep this perspective when I go crazy wondering what next month, and the month after, and the month after that, is going to look like. 

My new screened-in porch view

There's Something Going Around Part 2

And having nothing to do and nowhere to be, I thought now would be a good time for a quick blog update. I have a little bit of catching up to do because I've been a busy mama and a lazy blogger.

All of this isolation and "social distancing" is for the most part business as usual for Tim and me, hermits that we are. We don't really like people.🤣 Kidding, sort of. But we did have some things that we were looking forward to, that are either cancelled already or not looking good. Delaney was very sad to find out her band field trip to Busch Gardens, scheduled to happen in April, has been cancelled. She, along with the rest of band, had also been working hard preparing for performances that won't be happening after all. Soccer season was just getting underway, and without it, it's hard for the kids not having the motivation to get outside and get moving. Now we are back to just pushing them out the back door when it's nice out. The Bridge Run 10K that Tim and I were supposed to participate in at the end of this month, is a no-go. We were (and maybe, possibly still are) looking forward to meeting my parents in Asheville for part of spring break, and touring the Biltmore. The DoD is banning all travel outside of the local area for active duty and families, but we are keeping our hotel reservation until the last possible minute. Oh, and it's our anniversary today, and I guess I'll be waiting to see what Tim cooks up for me for dinner, because we will not be going out. (And we had just started to spread our wings a little bit, now that we have a child or two old enough to put in charge for a couple hours.)

Now, in what is a very strange turn of events for us all, we are hunkered down and homeschooling for at least a couple weeks; my kids' teachers will be posting all lessons and assignments online, and as long as they are completing the assignments, they will be counted present. Timmy's teacher didn't even miss a beat, and he's been doing school here since yesterday morning. Annie will start Monday, and hopefully so will Delaney. I've got a letter-tracing workbook on the way for Joey. I am so glad we're doing distance learning this time, remembering how many school days were lost after Hurricane Florence and what a big fat waste of time that was. With the Y closed, I've signed up for a trial subscription of Beachbody on Demand, and today Annie and Joey joined me in the entryway for Piyo. We took a walk/bike ride today, and long after the other kids had gone back inside, I watched Joey ride back and forth through the same puddle at least twenty times. He kept telling me he was almost done, but I said, "Joe, you go through that puddle as many times as you want."

And now for the catching up...

I think that last time I talked about our plans here, it was about Tim retiring and us moving to his hometown in Massachusetts. About a couple months ago, we had a change of heart. He is still retiring, but we are staying here. It was not a decision we made easily. It was more like a feeling in my gut that I tried to ignore. But then one night Tim broached the subject, telling me he was really struggling with the decision to move, and that unleashed a torrent of everything I'd been holding back, and how long I'd been feeling like our months here were a long, sad goodbye. The closer the time came, the more I felt we belonged here, but I prayed for God to change my mind if this was not meant to be. Tim was quite a bit taken aback after hearing everything I had to say, and then he said, "Well, it would have been nice if you'd told me this a couple years ago." I know, but I didn't know then! The days surrounding the decision were ones of turmoil and lots of tears.

Tim and I always knew it would be hard to figure out what to do after the Marine Corps, so we just kept putting off making decisions until it was impossible to any longer. We knew it would be hard, but we really had no idea. It felt like groping around blind. This past winter, we came thisclose to purchasing a home in Grafton, Massachusetts, and the only reason it didn't work out was because of some unpermitted work that had been done in the basement, that made it too risky for us. After that fell through, we thought we'd put the househunting on hold because we had no desire to go through this process of trying to figure it all out from so far away. It's too big of a decision, and we are chronic overthinkers. How many more plane tickets were we going to buy so Tim could go see for himself if a place was really where we wanted to live? His parents had room for us to live a few months if need be. Our new plan was just to do nothing and wait till we go there. In that lull, we found ourselves asking again and again, why would we want to leave here? North Carolina feels like home, the kids are settled and happy, the winter is cold enough here on some days... And you know the rest.

We're moving just a couple miles down the road to a subdivision that has many more younger families with kids than our current neighborhood has, and Joey's going to be riding circles around our own cul-de-sac. The closing is scheduled for April 1, and then we'll spend a couple months making it the way we want it before we move in sometime late June. Delaney and Annie will be attending the same middle school that Delaney currently is, and Joey will be going to the same preschool for one more year. Timmy is going to have to switch elementary schools, and he seems to be taking that in stride. We're hoping that the change will mean him having more friends he can see both at home and at school. Having three siblings is great, but he is kind of a middle child here, and he could really use some boys his own age to run around with. We know one family there already: someone I was in a bible study with years ago has three kids who are the same ages as my first three. Two of them are boys, and one plays soccer with Timmy. 

I'll leave you with some of the many pictures I've been taking with my phone, some of which I might have posted on Instagram, but I've taken social media off my phone for Lent. That doesn't mean I don't allow myself to be on it -- just that I can only access it from the laptop. It was too handy on my phone, and it was taking up every spare minute of my day.

Annie went on her first overnight field trip about a month ago. It was a couple nights at Sound to Sea at the Outer Banks with the rest of 5th grade. We spent a whole week talking about what she should pack. When Joey and I picked her up afterward, she had so much to say. She had sustained a lot of little bumps and scratches, bumping into things as they had walked around in the dark. But she'd had a great time. I think her favorite thing about the experience was the food. She talked about the food for two days. (A girl after my own heart.) Within hours of the buses' return, I received a text alerting me that one of the mothers had found lice in her daughter's hair. I had already checked Annie's hair, but now I treated it as a precaution, and let her suitcase sit in the laundry room for three days before opening it. Maybe one day I'll talk about our experience with lice this school year, but it's still too fresh, and I'm just not ready. We dodged it this time, though.

This little boy just loves throwing rocks and pine cones in the river, and he could do it all day. Sometimes he gets me one so we can throw ours in at the same time.

Early this week, photographers came to take pictures of the house that we are renting now, for the sale listing. Later that night, the owner texted us to thank us because she'd seen the photos and they were beautiful. She said she knows how hard it is to keep a house clean with kids around. It was so nice to get that acknowledgment, and I told her so. It may not be our house, but I have loved it like my own, and I for sure take pride in how the pictures turned out.

We had one good weekend of soccer games before everything ground to a halt.

She can still be annoying sometimes. Just yesterday she had one of Tim's flipflops, and she trotted off with it to the dining room, her preferred spot when she's in the mood to destroy something. (Those flipflops had been through two deployments and I should have just let her put them out of their misery!) She still does not know how to act around people besides us. But as she grows out of puppyhood, I like Willsy more and more. I love the way she positions herself just so, in the shaft of sunlight. I love how she sits and stares at me with those ears twitching this way and that, and how she wants to follow me if she hears me pick up my rosary in the afternoon and thinks I'm headed to the porch. She's a good doggo, and even though Tim doesn't admit it, he likes her too. He's the one who always makes sure she gets a little something in her bowl every night after dinner.

The middle school Battle of the Books competition was a couple weeks ago at the community college up the road. Delaney ran over to me and said, "Look, it's Daddy!" It took me a weirdly long time to finally notice he was on that poster and then I laughed. Tim's battalion adopted an elementary school about a year ago, and that picture was originally on the school district's Facebook page. He's famous!

We now have many more hours in the day for brother shenanigans.

Annie made green pancakes for lunch today.

My sister Anna texted us this picture of John-Paul and Rosie after Robert returned victorious from the grocery store. Not a minute too soon, it looks like.🤣

In the car yesterday, I heard R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World As We Know It," and it's been stuck in my head since. I found myself singing it as I cleaned up the kitchen, and the kids were laughing at me. Tim is at work today, still touching all the doorknobs, no doubt. It should go without saying, but I am praying that everybody stays well and that this madness is over soon.

There's Something Going Around...

 February has been a big month for illnesses and maladies lately. I think Annie's 5th grade class has been hit hardest, with kids being home sick with flu, strep and lice or any combination of the above. We had a round of lice ourselves a couple weeks ago, our second in four months.  That's a whole other story. Otherwise it's been a chorus of coughs and sniffles for many days.

After keeping Annie home one day with a fever, I made the mistake of sending her the next day when it seemed like the fever was gone, and she said yes when I asked if she felt better. (I may have also been feeling pressure to have her counted present since she'd already missed a couple days due to lice and fever, and it's only the beginning of February.) That day her teacher became concerned and sent her to the nurse, who took her temperature (98.7) and sent her back to class. The next morning I took her to the doctor, where it was confirmed she had influenza A, despite the lack of fever (98.3 that time) or severe symptoms. She may not have had a fever or severe symptoms due to having been vaccinated, but she could still be feeling like crap and spreading the virus to others who are less protected. (As an aside, there is some interesting research out there that that calls 98.6 degrees, long considered the norm, into question. Since I take my temperature every single day, I know 98.6 is too high for me.)

Tim has had plenty of commentary about sickness and everyone's reaction to it. He scoffs at me every time I bring up the one time I got flu right after he left on one of his deployments (not confirmed!), and how miserable I felt for so long. Even once I was "better," I still wasn't really back to myself for several more days. This morning, after he said something minimizing illness, I decided that he should write a book called The Denial Approach to Wellness. The chapters would be as follows:

Chapter 1: You're only sick if you admit you're sick. Never underestimate the power of mind over matter.

Chapter 2: Take a Motrin and drink more water. That's pretty much the solution for everything. But in the slim chance that doesn't work...

Chapter 3: When you feel a scratch in your throat, go to the gym. Show it who's boss.

Chapter 4: Can't get out of bed? That's why God made Dayquil. I have seen him get up out of bed, where he's spent a night with fever and chills, take a Dayquil, and go to work. Apparently, the world stops when he doesn't show up.

I think that's a good start. All he needs to do is flesh out those chapters and maybe add a few more. He thinks there should be one built around the story of how his germphobe rack mate on the ship caught a horrible GI bug, while Tim who touches all the doorknobs was spared. The picture of him inside the jacket should be the same one hanging up at his battalion, which looks typical of these portraits in which no smiling is allowed, and the result is kind of an angry face.

Annie's class needs to get healthy again because they are all scheduled to go on a two-night field trip at the end of this month that eveyone has paid for by now, and it would really be a shame for anyone to have to miss out.

Now I'm off to go take another Motrin and drink a glass of water for whatever the thing is that I'm NOT coming down with.