Weekly Mileage #157 and Chicken Coop Renovations

The mighty River! I may or may not have made him repeat his first jump 4 or 5 times till I got a good shot...

Sunday night I was up till 2am with River, who had a really bad earache. It was just in one ear, and it came on pretty suddenly, so I knew we were just waiting for his eardrum to burst. After some painkillers + hot compress + a blessing he was finally able to fall asleep. In the am, I checked his ear, and sure enough, crusty crud in his ear indicated his eardrum had ruptured. And he can't hear as well either because of that hole.

As painful as it was at the time, I'm glad I had a similar experience a few years ago, so I knew what was going on (recognized the signs) and wasn't super worried, just a bit frustrated because there's not a lot you can do while waiting for it to rupture. At 12:30am Jeremy offered to run to Walmart in search of ear drops, but Walmart is no longer open 24 hours and had been closed for hours by that point. There's so much we take for granted in our society. It was also somehow a bit disconcerting to realize that while we have this pandemic going on, there's still other illnesses happening and we may not be able to treat them as we would in the past. Especially since I'm very reluctant to go anywhere near a hospital right now.

The boys have had multiple ear drum ruptures, but this is the first time River complained about the pain- in the past, they never seemed to notice it. Shortly after mine ruptured, I think Ocean's did also, and I only knew about it because of the crusties around his ear the next morning. I guess they don't feel it as much when they're younger? Also, why does it always seem to happen at night?

The last time he went to preschool, his teacher had a tangram set out that he had a lot of fun with, and when he found this little travel set, he happily sat down and started playing with it. The grumpy face is because I was taking pictures :)

On Monday, the governor canceled school for the rest of the school year. It had been canceled for two weeks, which would have ended on March 27th. I guess being decisive has it's benefits. Everyone knows we're done. We picked up Ocean's change of clothes from the preschool, because that's done. Kinda silly we did his IEP amendment now, since he won't be having speech therapy for the rest of the school year, either.

Monday afternoon the kiddos FaceTimed with friends in the afternoon and Sunshine had a Scout troop meeting via Zoom in the evening.

Tuesday we did music lessons via FaceTime. We didn't do it last week because Sunshine was supposed to go to a career day sponsored by the local community college last Tuesday so we'd canceled music lessons that day. The career day got canceled and we just left the day empty.

Sunshine really likes driving the tractor, and the boys like getting rides.

Wednesday we moved the last bit of wood from the chicken coop area. On Saturday Jeremy cut down two smallish trees in front of the chicken coop because they've been growing out over the garden, taking advantage of the open space and unfiltered sunshine. Since we need that sunshine for the garden, they had to go. One got hauled away on Saturday, but we left one for later.

I feel like I'm coming down with a head cold. I'm not sure if it came from Ocean (who has finally mostly gotten over his cold) or detox symptoms or too many late nights. It could be any or all of them.

good thing there was no sound- Ocean was totally whining the first part of our hike because he wanted to run ahead and I told him he couldn't (the trails were too crowded and I didn't want him running headlong into another group)

Thursday I worked on some zip bags I've been stopping and starting for awhile now.

Friday I hiked with the kiddos, which turned out to be a bit more exciting than anticipated. The trails were more crowded than usual (ie, we saw 6 or 7 groups instead of just 1 or 2), and as we walked down one trail and came up over a rise, Sunshine and I realized we were seeing a full moon. We promptly turned us and the boys around and waited a bit. She was far enough down the trail that I don't know if she saw us. Sunshine and I definitely felt awkward as we caught up to her and a friend picnicking at the ruins of a house. We continued on after a short hi and tried not to dwell on it. We do have questions though. How did she not know she was right on a trail? Admittedly, there are a number of trails that all converge on those ruins, and maybe she thought it was a ditch? I don't know. I've always gone into the trees, not away from them. Anyway. An interesting experience.

After our hike I worked some more on my zip bags. After doing three different ones, I've decided I'm going to try something different- these were too time consuming and fiddly to be good additions to my shop. I need items that I can scale the production of, and those weren't it. I did find some patterns for some simpler bags that I want to give a try.

I've been carrying around this ziplock baggie with my supplements in my purse, but ziplock baggies don't last

so I made this bag to carry them in

it's not perfect, but I learned a lot from making it and the other two (I haven't photographed them yet). before I sewed it all together, I engraved the 'I Can and I Will' on the front. I thought it was rather appropriate for the bag that carries my supplements that help me stay as healthy as possible so I can be a functioning person.

Initially, I didn't think our schedule would be that impacted by all the social distancing measures. But it has been. Wednesdays were the only day of the week that I had a chance of staying home. Every other day there was always at least one or two activities to get us out of the house.

Mondays Ocean went to preschool and speech therapy, I went trail running and hiking, maybe did the grocery shopping, Sunshine had Scouts. Tuesdays we went to music lessons, maybe ran an errand on the way home. Wednesday and Thursday we might have a doctor appointment or hiking, or something.Wednesday nights Jeremy and Sunshine went to D&D.  Thursday evening was YW. Friday was speech therapy and play group. Saturdays were busy with Scout activities, errands, and other things. Sunday was church and whatever meeting I had that week. Throw in chiropractor, orthodontist, and other doctor appointments, and any other outings we might plan, and we were busy people.

River found this hole at the base of a tree

Now we do Scouts and music lessons virtually. Jeremy and Sunshine do D&D online. We meet with our YW classes online. We've even done a virtual playdate. Thankfully, we can still go out for hiking and trail running, but only if it's not raining (which it has been more frequently than I'd like).

I'm used to working from home with kiddos running around- I've been doing it for the last 3-4 years. Jeremy even works from home a couple evenings each pay period, doing time sheets. But that's different from trying to take conference calls during the day with kids running around, yelling in the background. At least everyone is else is in the same boat.

The employees with his company are supposed to be reading and doing training stuff when they're not working in the office, but Jeremy has yet to touch any of it. All his time is taken up with the admin side of things. As team lead, one of his daily tasks (including Saturday and Sunday) is to check in with each member on his team, make sure they're where they're supposed to be (not more than 2 hours away to get paid for working) and still healthy. And then there's the constant schedule changes, timecard questions, and all the other questions people come up with.

So it's all a bit more stressful than I anticipated, and the hike we did on Friday was the first time the kiddos had left the house in two weeks. We shoo them out to play and ride bikes in the yard, but it's not the same as actually leaving the house and going somewhere.

I will say this, despite all the stress, I've managed not to stress eat chocolate or candy. I started eating low-carb just in time, just before all this started, and I'm still eating low-carb (not quite keto). Despite the stress, I've managed to stay away from carbs and sugars. Yay me!

Saturday we tore out a third of the chicken coop floor. I'd planned on rebuilding it that day, but once we got the rotten flooring off, we saw how wet the floor beams were. We discovered some drainage issues after I built the coop, and water used to pool in front of the door. Oops. I've learned my lesson there, but the damage was done. We've corrected the drainage issue, and now that the weather has warmed up a bit, it was time to fix the floor before one of us broke right through. I'd put random scraps of plywood over the worst of it, but it wasn't going to hold forever.

we found two massive wolf spiders under the floorboards

Anyway, I decided to let it dry out over the weekend, and hopefully it will improve enough for me to get the floor in soon. After we tore the floor out, we unloaded some cinder blocks from the trailer and put them where the big brush pile used to be, next to the chicken run. I'd planned on putting a green house there years ago, but when we started piling up brush and stuff there, that got put on hold. Now it's time to revisit that idea.

I've been thinking about all the news available regarding the pandemic versus what things must have been like with previous pandemics like the Spanish flu and the black plague. For all our advances, there's still so many unknowns, and seeing all the doom and gloom reports so readily available is not good for mental health, regardless of how accurate those reports are or aren't. I'm not sure that the information age is helping us out there.

There is a sense of unreality, like we're in some movie or book. In my case, it's not helped by the fact that I had just finished reading a zombie apocalypse series (not my usual fare, but interesting) just before all this happened.

Weekly Mileage
Wednesday- .62 miles walked outside
Wednesday- 10.00 miles biked
Thursday- 2.00 miles walked on the treadmill
Friday- 2.05 miles hiked
total- 14.67 miles

2020 totals

12 hikes towards #52hikechallenge
0 kayak miles towards #365milechallenge

54.47 outdoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
8.00 indoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
90.0 bike miles towards #365milechallenge
152.47 miles total