Rabies, Rainstorms, and Roses

Part of living well is managing a range of emotions, from serious to silly, from lamenting to laughter. We must pick up where we left off last week, at the Country House. 

I mentioned the kittens that were attacked by a rabid skunk. I mentioned that all the kittens had to be euthanized. I didn’t mention that one of the kittens scratched my husband. After several calls (unhelpful) with the health department, my husband finally found someone at the VA to listen to him and take him seriously. The VA then fought with the health department. After the VA talked to our friend’s veterinarian, suddenly everything happened just right. Now I can say my husband has had his rabies shots.

In March, I bought air filters online, so that I could get the kind I wanted and not have to deal with the people at Wal-Mart. They arrived in this great big box. This box has been a car for “drive-in movie night,” a table for pizza and a movie, and most recently a bed. My husband did not let our daughter stay all scrunched up all night and we quickly vetoed our son wanting a turn the following night (he would have been REALLY scrunched). Simple things like a box can bring more joy than any fancy toy.

We are not an athletically inclined family, so we play Wii sports together. Actually, we are very adept at this either. We do have fun. Madilynn has been beating the rest of us, even though she’s bouncing around. Dietrich is organized chaos in most of what he does, or maybe he does have a plan and the silly behavior is just to throw us off. Either way, the parents need a comeback.

This week we’ve had 45-50 mph winds (mixed with dirt), hail that was blowing sideways because of that wind, and horizontal rain because of that wind. Oh, and all of that transpired over the course of about 15 minutes. 

On a different day, we had an amazing light show. I learned a long time ago the best way to capture lightning is to video it then clip snapshots from that. 

One advantage of the storms is much-needed rain. Our rosebush has exploded in growth over the past week. It’s a climbing variety, and probably now in serious need of pruning. Hopefully, that will also fix the bare spot in the middle.

Dietrich learns many words through reading. The result is often mispronunciation and I have to tell him to use the word in a sentence to figure out what he’s saying. Madilynn says what she thinks she remembers a word being, or what it ought to be in her seven-year-old mind (i.e. the turntable in the pantry is now a cartwheel). Today she was saying that our piplips get bigger when it’s dark and smaller when it’s bright. I was laughing so much I could barely correct her and say, “pupils.” I’m actually still laughing about it.

My kids love creating and will likely soon be featured on my sister’s new channel. Feel free to check it out! Here is a sample of Dietrich’s creativity.