Weekly Mileage #176 and All the Rain

I'm not down to the keto level of low carb yet, but in general, I'm feeling better. More energy, less brain fog, less day time sleepiness, better nighttime sleep. There's still room for a lot of improvement, but at least I'm not feeling nearly as crummy as I have been.

Monday I went grocery shopping in the morning and tried unsuccessfully to find a new kayak for Sunshine. She's grown too big for the blue one we bought a few years ago and was riding pretty low in it last Monday at Scouts. Walmart.com claimed the store in town had one sit-in and two sit-on-top kayaks in stock.

I went in (after parking by the garden center and then finding out that the closest doors were closed to the general public and having to walk to the door farthest from the sporting goods section), couldn't find any, and went back to the car. I checked the site again, downloaded the app, both still claimed there were in-stock kayaks. So I parked a little closer and went back in. This time I was able to find an employee to talk to- there was no one around the first time I went in. She said, "Yeah, no. We don't have any kayaks in stock. We get one in every once in awhile, and it's gone right away." Stupid, unreliable website inventory reporting. I could have saved myself a decent chunk of time and energy if I'd known that. Oh, and you can't call the store to check on inventory in stock- you have to go in and talk to an employee.

When I got home I checked around some more and no one has kayaks in stock (bikes are hard to find as well). Understandable, but a bit annoying. I'll have to keep an eye on craigslist in the off season and see how many people list the kayaks they bought this summer.

We had heavy rain in the afternoon and evening as we got the edge of the hurricane moving north. We're far enough inland that we rarely get more than the outer edges. No damage and we didn't lose power.

Tuesday after music lessons Jeremy and I went to a couple local shelters, checking to see what dogs are available (shhh! we haven't told the kiddos yet!). The kiddos have been wanting a dog for years, and we were just about ready to get one when I got pregnant with River, then Ocean, and then I just didn't have the energy to deal with a dog.

But I'm feeling like we're in a better place for it now. Unfortunately, like bikes and kayaks, there's not a lot of dogs available because so many were adopted during the early part of quarantine. I did find a rescue organization up near DC with a lot of dogs available, but they also charge high fees. Call me cheap, but part of why I've resisted saying yes to a dog is the cost. We didn't find one yet, but we will eventually.

shards of plastic resting on the screen, the walnut resting in the lower right corner is the culprit for that particular hole

I also climbed up on the RV roof with Sunshine to patch the vent covers. We'd noticed the holes when we went camping in June, but kept forgetting to take care of them. All the rain we've had recently had us worried, and rightly so: a fair amount of water came in and got the dinette cushion wet.

All three vent covers had holes in them- they're so cheap. Our trailer vent covers never had problems and we had it a bit longer than we've had the RV. These are absolute garbage. The holes got bigger as we were patching them! We did the best we could, and it should hold till the replacement covers arrive. I made sure to get covers made by a different manufacturer, so hopefully they last a lot longer.

used clear FlexTape to fix the holes and cracks, but it was almost disintegrating as we did it

I didn't hit my deadline to get my batched posts finished, so I spent some time working on them. By the time I got done running around on Monday, I just wasn't feeling up to sitting in front of my laptop and writing.

Wednesday morning I took Ocean in for his every 6 month ear tube checkup. His right tube has fallen out and the hole is healed, so that's good. The left tube is still in place, so we'll go back in 9 months to make sure it's out and healed. As long as he doesn't have any further problems with his ears, he won't need another set. Yay!

Ocean was ridiculously excited to go to this doctor appointment. He's only left the house a few times since the middle of March, so any excuse to leave is a big deal for him. I asked him if he was excited for a big adventure and he said he was excited, but it wasn't a big adventure. 😂

After his appointment we stopped by Harris Teeter to ride the green dragon (he'd been talking about it a few days earlier), then got an ice cream cone at the McDonalds drive thru. He had a great time and tried hard not to touch everything, but I think he's just a tactile child. Even with reminders and gloves that I changed a couple times, he was still touching things. It wouldn't be a huge deal if he kept his hands out of his mouth, which he is getting better at, but there's still room for improvement. So he'll continue to stay home for the next while.

I worked some more on the batched posts. I added two posts to the line up (pushing one back and squeezing an extra one in), which made more work for me, but it works better with the timeline of publishing my posts.

Thursday I started the day with a bike ride, but I was trying to keep my time down and I think I expended too much energy. I felt a bit off the rest of the day. I have to remember moderate exercise, not hard exercise.

Ocean got stung by a wasp Wednesday afternoon/evening. He and River have each been stung before in the last week or so, along with my sting in June, which is more stings than we've ever had here. We have super aggressive wasps this summer for some reason.

Anyway, Thursday afternoon I looked at his arm as he scratched at it and noticed it looked a bit red and swollen. I felt it and it was warm to the touch. I took off the band aid (that he'd insisted on putting on the night before) and the sting site looked a lot worse. The first time Ocean and River got stung, it was just a small red dot that healed quickly, but this one looked like when I got stung- angry and kind of nasty. I gave him some allergy meds and spread cortisone cream on his arm and monitored him for the next 12 or so hours.

I'm worried, but not as worried as I'd be if the reaction had shown up a lot sooner. It was at least 12-18 hours after he got stung that we noticed the reaction. But it does mean we'll have to keep a close eye in the future if he gets another sting. He needs his 5 year checkup still, so I'll bring it up then and see if we need to have an epipen on hand just in case. By the next day, his arm was no longer swollen or warm.

I finally found a kayak, in stock, in town! It was a bit more expensive than the mythical kayak at wally world, but we'll take it. It's better than waiting a few more months to find one once everyone starts selling theirs after deciding they don't want to keep it up. I ended up finding it at Dicks- we had one nearby that closed a year or so ago, but I finally had the thought to check if they had another location nearby and realized that when they closed the closer store, it was to relocate to a new shopping center on the south side of town.

We had a storm move through in the late afternoon and it got very dark, with thunder, lightning, and rain. We didn't have any damage or lose power, but I know others did. Apparently there were two tornados that caused some damage- a lot of trees and power lines down not that far from us. Guess we'll have to wait a bit before we try out that new kayak- water levels will be too high for the next while.

Weekly Mileage
Thursday- 10.0 miles biked
Friday- 2.00 miles walked on the treadmill
total- 12.00 miles

2020 totals

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

164.19 outdoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
22.50 indoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
220.0 bike miles towards #365milechallenge
406.69 miles total