with friends
I've been feeling pretty lonely lately. My family is wonderful and I'm super grateful to get to spend so much time with them, but they've got their own stuff going on and and it's not fair to ask them to fulfill all my emotional needs. So while I admit it does make me a little nervous, I'm happy that we're starting to be able to get out and do things with other people. Yesterday we took a hike with some homeschool co-op friends who we'd missed so much over the past three months, and it was delightful!
in Nashoba Brook
We walked in the Nashoba Brook Conservation Area; we'd never been there before but will definitely be going back. The river itself is the best part, with bridges and rocky pools and marshy segments making the walk along it endlessly interesting. But it had some competition in a man-made cave. I would have guessed it was a root cellar, except it was a little more complicated than you would really need for that; I understand that it has a mysterious reputation in local lore. In any case we had fun exploring it.
the only time I'll ever use a flash is in a cave
The whole family came along—a pandemic bonus! Leah enjoyed talking with Kelley, but not as much as Scout and Blue liked playing with our friends' dog. We walked two miles; the three dogs must have covered five or six.
getting some training in while we stop to play
The kids got plenty of exercise too: when he has friends to run with, even Lijah can cover some distance without complaining! And I exercised my socialization muscles. A great morning all around.
raising the stakes
When I started gardening I scoffed at the stakes offered for sale at the hardware store. Close to ten dollars for a length of wood? Ridiculous! I just used all kinds of things I scavenged here and there: branches, broken tool handles, marking stakes picked up from parking lots in the spring, old hockey sticks... Then later I came into possession of a bundle of proper garden stakes and I realized that they were actually pretty good. They're cedar, so they last, and they're cut with attention to the grain so they stay straight year after year. I had eight—so I've been using them by choice for all my staking needs. For the tomatoes especially. This spring one of them broke for the first time, from rot, and at the same time garden expansion meant I needed more, so I was forced to consider if I needed to actually buy some for myself.
Maybe I will one day. But for now I've found another solution, one that I can't believe I never used before. See, I have some power tools, and also lots of old lumber, and it takes maybe 45 seconds to turn six feet of old pressure-treated decking into two or three top-quality professional-looking stakes. A run through the circular saw to strip a one-by-one length, then zip zip on the miter saw at a 45° angle for a little point. I made some yesterday to stake up the corn which, unexpectedly, mostly blew down in a violent thunderstorm the other night. Not all the stalks broke. I don't know how long my new homemade stakes will last, but they look pretty nice now and even if they do fail to go the distance I've got plenty of wood to make some new ones next season!
a bird yesterday
Yesterday morning we noticed a striking bird on the top of the apple tree in our front yard. It was smooth and sleek and light brown, with a little crest on its head and black markings around its eyes that looked like super cool 80s wrap-around shades. It was the shades that made me want to look it up, and without a go-to birding resource we looked on the internet and found the All About Birds guide from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It took just a very few questions before our bird's identity was revealed: cedar waxwing. I still don't know very much about birds despite them begin all around us, so I was glad to find a resource for telling them apart. Of course then I wanted to go back and ID some other birds I've noticed over the last couple months, but I guess I didn't remember enough details because I wasn't able to pin them down. Also I had to register in order to do more searches, and then once I did the tool would load so I had to do the other searches in a private browsing window. I'll keep trying, but we could also always go back to the methods we've used in the past: texting our friends who own birding books.
this Fourth of July
This past week we spent some time practicing music for a patriotic singalong that they recorded Thursday with Grandpa. He wrote an arrangement and sent us the accompaniment track, and the boys worked hard fitting the songs they knew into the medley and learning some new ones. It was fun, but it also felt a little strange—inappropriate, even—to be belting out "Colombia the Gem of the Ocean" just a week after celebrating the fall of the Colombus statue in Boston. Overall Independence Day has a strange feel this year: the red, white, and blue has maybe a little bit of a different meaning.
To be honest, I'd be happier to fly a black flag, or a red one, or rainbow. Right now at least when I someone displays an American flag I can't help but see it as possibly a statement against Black lives or LGBT rights. Those "thin blue line" flags that are all over sure don't help. Which is too bad! Because while I'm not really into the idea of the United States as a national identity, I do happen to have a lot of neighbors who live in the US... and theoretically it's nice to signal that we've all got something in common and can care about each other. As we celebrate the Fourth of July this year—socially distanced, of course—that's what I'll be thinking about as I sing about the red, white and blue.
moments from the week
the yard's bounty
Moments from the past week.
champion rhubarb
Nashoba bridge
playing with fire
and playing with water
celebrating the 4th with big guns... and with friends!
strange pandemic shortages
With the Covid 19 and all we figured we wouldn't be getting out to pick berries this year, so we want to make sure we're taking good care of the ones we're growing here. And after all the strawberries got eaten by an animal that got through the netting, we want to make sure the blueberries are protected! I've never netted them before, but since the pandemic has also given me lots of time for gardening they're doing better than ever, with lots of fat almost-ripe berries that are apparently very tempting for squirrels, chipmunks, and robins. A few days ago I built a frame to put netting on, but our supply didn't quite cover it and on Sunday I headed out to the hardware store to buy some more, plus some chicken wire to run around the bottom for extra security. They didn't have either—no chicken wire or bird netting of any size. OK... today I went to Home Depot, where I was sure to find at least chicken wire. Nope: they were cleared out of both items as well, plus pressure-treated 2x4s, the other thing I wanted to buy.
The flour shortage I can understand, and the toilet paper thing has been explained to me in a way that I suppose makes sense. And both of those supply chains are pretty much back to normal now anyway (except that Market Basket has mysteriously stopped stocking whole wheat flour or bread flour, boo). Now I guess everyone is gardening? It seems strange to me, but I suppose it shouldn't be unremarkable that other people have planted berries and, I guess, started raising chickens for the first time? And the hardware stores didn't anticipate this? Whatever reason it's happening, I hope the supply gets sorted out soon because I hate seeing all those almost-ripe berries disappearing! Plus the frame looks pretty dumb with the netting stopping three feet short of the ground...
boating
We took the canoe out this morning for the first time this year. Usually I'm the one to push for the boating, but I'm kind of a lump these days so the boys had to ask me more than once before I got going. Of course, once we were out on the water I was so glad they'd made me do it.
the best of life
The trip could even be counted as homeschooling, because yesterday we were doing some experiments on what sinks and what floats, which led to a discussion of boats and an engineering challenge to create something that could float a brick in our wading pool. Elijah took to it with a will, and put together a beautiful craft.
boatbuilder
The mast and flag was added after the brick trial. He found that his boat had enough buoyancy to hold the brick but not enough stability, so every time it tipped over—rather than improve it he thought to repurpose it as a conveyance for small plastic toys. He tells me the letters on the flag are just random.
Making the boats was challenging, and all three of us who attempted it found it hard to keep our seams from leaking. Funnily enough, we had the same problem with the canoe this morning: since last year a crack opened up in the bottom towards the bow which we found to let in water at a rate that, while not enough to feel like an emergency, was enough that we didn't want to try any long crossings. That was fine, though, since we had a perfectly satisfactory alternate activity available.
the best part of boating
And of course the swimming is better when you do it on purpose. Plans are afoot for swift repairs, because the boys want another boat trip soon!
climate control?
It is possible for our house to stay cool on hot summer days. Or coolish, at least: cooler than outside, enough to make the children disinclined to get off the couch when it's steamy outside. Without air conditioning, that seems like a win. Of course, if takes a little action on our part. We need to have the right windows open at night, with the fans going—that's easy enough. First thing when we get up we need to open the doors to bring in that lovely early-morning air, the coolest of the day. Then—and this is the hard part—we have to close up the house at the right time. The windows and door facing east are easy: as soon as the sun is above the trees we can feel the heat pouring in that side of the house, so the curtains there make an immediate perceptible difference. But often, even as the air outside gets warmer and warmer, it's hard to close the other windows because we don't want to lose the breeze. If we don't, often by 3:00 it's clear we've made the wrong choice.
That's what happened yesterday. We were tricked by the misty overcast, and distracted by the forecast afternoon thunderstorms, and we left everything open all day. It wasn't super hot, but it was humid, and before long the mist burned off and the sun started burning in... and the house sure heated up. Worse, while we heard some distant thunder the five minutes of light rain that fell didn't do much to change the outside temperature.
We'll try again today, and since the forecast calls for sun and heat we'll be more focused on the job. It only got down to about 70° overnight, so that's our starting point. We'll close up the house after 8:00, and see how we do!
becoming that which I despise
In the past I've felt a little superior to people who put their bikes on the car to drive to the trail. Why do that?! A bicycle is a way to get places, I thought. Before the pandemic we went lots of places by bicycle, with some of our rides being fun and exciting and others just a way to get somewhere more quickly than walking. Now, though, there's basically nowhere for the kids to go, so all our rides are recreational, and we're kind of tired of the routes around here. So we're doing this.
at least they both fit easily
That was yesterday afternoon, when Harvey and I drove to the Burlington Landlocked Forest. It's our favorite place to ride these days, as we develop our techical off-road skills. We're lucky to live near lots of varied and beautiful forests, but all the paths in our neighborhood are made by walkers for walkers (except for the ones made by four-wheelers, but that's another subject). In the Landlocked Forest we found a whole network of trails laid out by mountain bikers to follow delightful swoopy lines over the small hills. There's challenge too, since lots of the paths pick out the most tricky routes up steep slopes or along ridges. The forest isn't that big, but the landscape is wonderfully varied: smooth-floored pine woods, meadow, swamp (with long boardwalks to ride on!), rocky deciduous forest... and lots of little hills, up and down, up and down. On of our favorite spots that we did yesterday is a tiny valley where you ride a switchbacked path down one steep side, cross a bridge over a stream, and switchback right back up the other side. I wanted to stop and take a picture but it was incredibly hot and humid and, when we stopped for a second, crowds of bugs descended instantly. Better to ride than document, anyways.
Of course, we could ride there from home. We have done, once. But driving lets us really push ourselves on the trails: I could barely keep moving forward by the time we got back to the car. That's how we mountain-bike bros do it! I did tell Harvey, though, that we're working on getting stronger so we don't need to do the drive. It might be a while though... car-biking is so much fun!
moments from the week
at home in the water
Moments from the past week.
deep woods cycling
if you lie down with dogs...
inspired by Dr Suess
the boating lifestyle
they encourage each other
inspecting the dam
further cycling guilt
It's not about driving to trails this time. Yesterday I took a good bike-only outing by myself, while the kids and Leah were away swimming (we haven't yet thought of a way to swim to the pond so that's fine). And today we didn't go anywhere. But we're seriously getting into this off-road cycling, and it's taking up kind of a lot of time. I was out for well over two hours yesterday afternoon when I could have been cleaning the house or baking some dessert (maybe it was a little hot for that, but we're also low on dessert so). Today was supposed to be a rest day in our training, but we thought we might try out a little practice on technical features... and that turned into three or four hours of riding on our brand new bike park in the back yard. Super fun, but maybe my building energy would have been better put to use finishing the deck or making the benches for the new picnic table.
We've got a ride with friends from our homeschool co-op planned for tomorrow morning. We'll do some cleaning first thing—today we did get an hour of solid work in on that this morning before we devoted the rest of the day to play. But then it'll riding in the woods all morning and riding in the backyard (and practicing bunny-hops on the street) all afternoon. Harvey asked this evening when we'd fit in our school work. I told him the cycling was school work. That made sense to him—we're working really hard on it! But I do feel a little guilty that I'm not devoting myself to less-frivolous pursuits. Oh well, at least we might be able to shoot some video tomorrow and make something to show off in our weekly "what have you been working on" co-op Zoom meeting Wednesday morning. And then maybe next week we'll be more productive.
negative feedback loop in sourdough
When it's hot I don't like to bake bread. I just can't stand to run the oven that much! Of course I do when I have to—we can't live without sandwiches—but there are certainly fewer loaves made to have with dinner. That means I'm not always thinking about the sourdough starter as much as I do when I'm making sourdough every two or three days, or as much as I need to in order for it to be totally healthy. Too often over the last month I've forgotten to feed it, which is never good, and even worse when the heat means that the little critters in there are dividing faster than they do in the winter. With less frequent feedings the wild yeasts in the starter are doing worse and the sour bacterias are doing better (or so I've been told). The last time I made bread with it—pizza dough, to be precise—I ended up with a very slack dough with no gluten development to speak of. That was frustrating, and it made me even less likely to want to deal with the starter. A spiral of failure. Today I'm going to dump some of it and try and get back on a regular feeding schedule. I'm confident it'll work if I can keep to it... but I'm not really good at keeping to things these days. After all, there's so much cycling to do!
summer vacation
The boys are just coming to terms with the idea that we won't be going camping in Maine this summer. Leah and I haven't missed a year in Acadia since we've got married, which of course means none of the kids have missed at least two nights camping in Bar Harbor every year of their lives. So that's kind of tough. As Zion has said more than once, "stupid Covid." But that isn't to say that everything is terrible. Sure, we're stuck at home. But with everything the way it is, home is actually feeling pretty vacationy!
our life these days
At least for Leah and me, the thing that does the most to make every day feel like vacation is getting to eat outside at least two meals every day. Breakfast outside in Bedford isn't much less special that breakfast outside on the Cape, and our fire is just as good at suppertime as any we've ever had at a campsite. Sure, we're missing out on all the delightful attractions of those locations—but we have our own kitchen! (Young people: when you get old you come to appreciate kitchens at least as much as beaches.) And of course we have some serious flexibility in our work hours that's letting us take as many exciting outings at the pandemic allows. The dogs have walked in every woods inside a 30-mile radius, and we've done plenty of cycling and even some swimming. Only one boat trip so far this year, but we've got that leak patched up now so more of that will be coming. So while Covid is indeed stupid and we're really going to miss camping with our friends, things aren't entirely terrible around here. At least we'll always have smores.
our backyard farm bike park
As I mentioned, we built a mountain bike park in our yard a couple days ago. We were watching some videos, and we wanted a chance to practice some skills without having to go all the way out to the woods, so it seemed like the thing to do. And it was super fun! The only sad part is we couldn't leave it up because it would kill the grass, and we want grass for other things. But before we took it down this morning, Harvey and me shot a video.
You can see that it's made out of a bunch of takes, but I assure you that he cleared the whole course a couple of time during the filming—all but the ramp over the table you see him pass by at around the forty second mark. That thing is terrifying! He fell pretty hard on his one attempt at it, and so did Zion's friend's dad who I encouraged to try the course (I felt a little guilty).
We really wish we owned some woods, or at least a hill. If we had a hill I think we'd have already decided to sacrifice the lawn in the name of better rides. Oh well. At leas the real trails are only a couple minutes away.
[By the way, Harvey has come a little ways since his last solo biking video... to say nothing of his first!]
moments from the week
summer cut
Moments from the past week.
slipping, about to slide
Zion tries out the mountain biking
is it good?
more trails
a chilly July morning
some damage
we do this for fun?
Yesterday and today there's a high heat warning out. The Bedford Citizen tells us that the heat index will be 104° and warns that we should stay inside, in air conditioning. Well, we don't have air conditioning, so instead yesterday afternoon we went for a hike. It was very hot.
this is what it was like
But amazingly enough, we survived! And we even had fun... a certain kind of fun, anyway. We found some places to put our feet in the water, and the dogs went swimming. The boys played in the root cellar cave we passed along the way. We got plenty of time to talk to each other as we moved along. And when we got home, our house felt pretty cool in comparison! I think sometimes our culture tries to define "hard" as the opposite of "fun"—or maybe the other way around. But that's silly: just about everything that's fun is actually hard too. Certainly exercise is always challenging. I'm not much of a gamer, but I understand that video games involve a fair amount of grinding. Sitting on the couch watching TV? Maybe that's not hard. But that's not an option for us, so I guess we have to hike!
not so hot here!
pickles!
We like pickles at our house. When they're part of a meal we're limited to one each, because our production levels don't support the kind of consumption that we'd have absent that rule (I know the damage the boys can do from those times when they have free access to a jar of store pickles at my parents' house!). Still, we try and make a lot each summer to last us through the rest of the year. Yesterday morning our entire stock was limited to three dill spears in one jar in the fridge, so it's a good thing that we have cucumbers growing. Yesterday we picked enough to make the first few jars of 2020 pickles.
the finished product
Sadly, the cucumber plants are also suffering from what probably is bacterial wilt. Besides the 13 or 14 pickling cukes we processed yesterday we've had four or five delicious slicing cucumbers to eat, so the planting wasn't all in vain. And we'll probably get more before the plants succumb entirely. But it's so sad to see such a promising row of big healthy plants—plants just covered with flowers and baby cucumbers—melt away into nothing we can eat. Farming is a hard business, especially when you're bad at it like I am! Oh well, at least I can console myself with a single pickle at suppertime.
our newest amazing cyclist
Elijah learned to ride a two-wheeler back in April. One problem with being a third child is that your accomplishments are less marked. When Harvey first succeeded on two wheels he got many words and a video; Lijah had to make do with a three-word caption on a weekly pictures post. But his achievement is no less impressive! Unlike Harvey, he had to work for a while to learn to ride, but he did the work with determination for a good solid week (with some kind and helpful coaching from Harvey's friend Jack). For his first couple months on two wheels he was prevented from taking any long rides by the fact that, you know, we hardly go anywhere—and when we do it's off-road, which is hard when you're riding on 12-inch wheels. So that was my fault. Monday I finally got his 16-inch bike up and running, and he celebrated yesterday by taking a nine-mile ride to the Farmers Market and back.
everybody moving at Lijah speed!
I admit I had some trepidation going into the outing, but I didn't say anything to Elijah! I just asked him if he wanted to ride this time, and when he said yes I just kept things moving in that direction. I fully expected that I'd be putting him and his bike into the cargo bike after a couple miles—there's plenty of room, so that would be no problem—but he kept going: two miles on the flat, then another couple on the gentle rail-trail grade up to Lexington Center. He got there with plenty of energy left to play hide-and-seek around the Old Belfry and buy a baguette for himself at the market, and then to ride the whole way back with nary a complaint, but for a few mentions that his butt hurt. I was very impressed, and I let him know it! His brothers also remarked on how natural he was on the bigger bike. It turns out all his problems with going in a straight line over the past couple months were just because his knees were practically hitting his handlebars.
There's some kind of a lesson in there, I think. I mean, besides the lesson for me that I should have worked harder to get him an appropriately-sized bicycle in a timely manner. Here's this kid who had never ridden more than a mile, who had run off the sidewalk and crashed into a telephone pole the last time he biked off our street, and who was just for the second day riding a bike where he couldn't put both feet on the ground at the same time... and I had him ride on the street and the busy bike path? Am I crazy?! Possibly. But my thinking was that Elijah really wants to keep up with his brothers, and while he also values being the baby a lot of the time he has some real skills and capacity. By just assuming he could do this thing, I showed him that I trusted him to do the work, and he did! And as it happened, his first big ride was significantly bigger than Harvey's. I guess now we need to get him a mountain bike!
(And I promise you that, in that picture above, I was just out of the frame ahead of Lijah. Leah took it. I'm not totally irresponsible!)
BOOM!
Last night I had just said goodnight to the kids when I noticed that light rain had started falling, so I went out to put the bikes away (it's supposed to be part of the boys' cleaning up chores, but mine was out too so I can't cast stones). All of a sudden the world was split open by a tremendous boom and I about jumped out of my skin! It trailed away into rumbles that made me think it was thunder rather than a nearby house exploding, but I still wasn't sure. I ran right back inside to find the kids fully awake and pretty upset. Zion had his flashlight on and was checking for smoke or fire—he thought it was a house exploding too, and maybe our house. After a shock like that nobody could go right to sleep, so we all came downstairs. Of course I still had to put the bikes away, and as I was doing that I got to talk to all the neighbors who came out to look around for signs of explosion damage, then I went back in to talk with the boys. For some of them their main feeling was distress; for others, excitement. Either way it took a while before anybody was ready to try bed again.
The strangest thing about it all was that we didn't even have the rest of the thunderstorm: we had a few other distant rumbles but nothing more, and it never even rained hard (right then—we had lots of rain in the middle of the night). The only other time I've ever heard thunder that loud was when the building next door was hit by lightening. We looked around for a strike, but didn't find anything. You know how they say you shouldn't swim when you can hear thunder even off in the distance, because you can get lightning way far away from the center of the storm; clearly we've now learned you should never swim at all. Exciting!
everyday outings again?
It's been a long time since we went on an outing that wasn't an adventure in the great outdoors. In former days we used to go shopping, visit playgrounds, and spend lots of time at the library. Oh the library! How we miss it! Well, the library is still closed but the playground has reopened, and kids aren't barred from stores any longer, so yesterday we took a trip to the center of town just like old times. One difference, of course, was that Elijah rode his own bike: up the hill for the first time! We played on the playground for good long time before doing a little shopping at Whole Foods and Marshalls (for shorts: two out of three boys had holes in the ones they were wearing on the trip). When we got back Mama asked the kids what it was like going into a store for the first time in four months; pretty much regular, they said. It still feels kind of like a milestone.
Another milestone was returning (almost) the last of the library books we checked out back in March. While they're not letting us in, the library is now open for curbside pickup, so the book drop is back in action as well and they're sending us overdue notices for the books we've had for four months. It felt strange looking through them as we bagged them up to take back: we've read some of them so many times it felt like we owned them, while others, read once back in March, reminded us of how much time has passed since all this started. We used to go to the library at least once every week, often twice! We miss it. I'm psyching myself up to use the online catalogue and put in an order for pickup, but that's just not how I want to find books. We really want is to be able to browse the shelves again! The town just cancelled all town activities through the end of the year, so it doesn't look good for that. We're ready when they are.
moments from the week
playground!
Moments from the past week.
water dogs
balance beamers
pickle makers
tourist things
he bought it with his own money!
love those dogs
summer delight
stress, relief
It remains hot here, so we want to be swimming. But there's also this virus thing that makes it a little more complicated and stressful. Our favorite swimming hole is Walden Pond, but even when we're not in the midst of a pandemic going there can be complicated, because there's a limit to how many people they let in before they close the gates until the crowd thins out. In ordinary years it's to keep the beach and trails from eroding too badly; now, obviously, it's to help us all socially distance. And of course the capacity is smaller that usual. That's all to set the scene for Saturday morning, when we planned on getting an early start, bringing the canoe and a lunch to the pond, and spending some hours there. Only "early" is relative, because when I checked at quarter past eight I found that it had already closed. At 7:36.
That was a blow, but we didn't despair: almost certainly it would reopen before lunchtime. So we started packing up, in between all the other work of the morning. Laundry and things. I was only checking Twitter—where the closings and openings are posted by @waldenpondstate—every fifteen minutes or so, so it wasn't until 10:20 that I saw that they'd reopened all the way back at 10:07! Luckily we've gotten somewhat better at getting out the door since back in June, and we were on our way in moments. We made it to the boat launch parking lot at 10:39, and were able to squeeze into what I was sure was the last parking spot available (no: one more family, better still at squeezing, came in after us). There was still lots to do before we could jump in the water—getting the boat off the car, changing into swimsuits, getting lifejackets and picnic supplies together—but we could take our time on all that. The stress and hurry was over!
It may seem silly to endure so much stress in search of relaxation, but I think it's worth it. After all, it's not like there's anywhere else we could go that would be much easier. Certainly nowhere closer! And once we were there, our stress—mine, anyways—just melted away. I enjoyed a leisurely conversation with the actual last family into the lot, who reported a very similar morning to ours; we paddled slowly across the pond and our boat didn't leak at all (unlike last time); we swam and floated and ate a peaceful lunch. I got to do some quiet reading, and even read aloud a little from our chapter book to the boys as they sat in the shallows (a first, for sure!). Harvey and Zion even piloted the canoe back across when it was time to go home, while I loafed in the bottom not even looking where we were going. It was a good time. We may even do it again one day.
boat lunch
too much!
Saturday evening after our delightful outing to the pond I was talking with Leah about how well-adapted the boys are to the sun, since they eased into it by being outside every day all spring and into the summer. They're basically sunburn-proof, I said. That was after we'd been at the pond for two hours in the middle of the day and all three of them had a delightful healthy glow. Well, yesterday we went back to the pond, and this time we stayed there for six hours: all the way from 8:30 until 2:30. As we finished our lunch I suggested they take a little break in the shade—there were places where they could be in the shade and still be sitting in the water!—but they were having too much fun. They were feeling great, and talking about what all they could do the next time we came. Could it be tomorrow? As we made our way back to the car, though, I noted how red they were looking. Harvey scratched an itch on his face and found that it hurt some. And we were all super tired.
As it turns out, the sunburns weren't actually very bad. All the redness was gone by mid day today. Hooray, but it turns out sunburns aren't the only thing to worry about from a full day of sun exposure: between the heat and the dehydration and all the exercise, all three boys were totally wiped out today. And worse than wiped out, downright sick, with almost feverish symptoms. Zion threw up a couple times in the morning and slept for an hour in the middle of the day; Harvey threw up after supper. Leah and I tried all day to get liquids into them: water, gatorade, lemonade, chocolate milk. Lijah and especially Zion couldn't find anything to their taste—trust Zion to worry about taste when he's dehydrated and throwing up. As the symptoms kept on towards bed time I started to wonder if they could have actually picked up a bug of some sort at the pond. After all, they were around people more than they had been any time in the last several months! But right now I still do think it's just dehydration and heat exhaustion. "Just"? That's plenty! Zion told me this afternoon that he's never going back to the pond again. I hope he feels better in the morning!
hard labor
The boys were prostrated by a day at the pond; I survived that fine, but barely made it through a half-hour of vacuuming this afternoon! While the days have been hot lately it's been getting cool enough at night that we haven't had any problems keeping the house cool, at least until 3:00 or 4:00 every afternoon. But there's still latent heat in the air or something, because if we so much as turn on a burner the kitchen becomes an unendurable sauna. And it turns out the vacuum cleaner puts out just as much heat! If I could have avoided running it I would have, but there are these dogs. It was getting so we couldn't see the rug anymore with all the bits of chewed-up pencils and plastic bags they'd strewn everywhere, to say nothing of the dirt they track in from their delightful romps in many local mud-holes. So I cleaned up a bit: it took, as I said, about half an hour. Then because of the heat I had to rest of the couch in front of the fan for 45 minutes. Some people get lots of things done in a day. I'm not sure how they manage it! Maybe they have air-conditioning.