Summertime and a big scare

We had a cool repeat of a Cub Scout summer activity last week. We got to camp out on the Keys field after a game. So early in the week I went to the box office and got our tickets and tried to get our meal packs but this year there were no veggie options so it was just tickets.

My grandpa had major heart surgery and is now recovering. My Dad and Mary went down to Richmond to be there for the operation and a bit of the recovery process. I wanted to go and I wanted to not be intrusive. I wish I knew the right thing to do.

I can't quite explain what my grandparents Rumford mean to me but it is something much closer to parent than grandparent. This is probably because we were at such a formative age when we began to live with them and perhaps because they represented a sense of unshakable reliability after our parents divorce but there is also something of the social stability of the conservative lifestyle that they so nobly embody. I love my grandparents so much and their aging and surgeries like this scare me in a way nothing else in life has.

I see aging and transience all around me. I am now middle aged and its normal. One of our High School classmates died last week from a heart attack. My co-workers are closer to my kids ages than to my own. We have attended our share of funerals over the last few years. I garden and kill mice in the garage. I am nearly too old to reproduce anymore. I totally get that time passes and that things change. I am almost always completely ok with that. Something about my grandparents though represent a bedrock for me though and risk to them is seismic in my heart.

Grandpa is fine. He seems to be recovering well. He is a tough old bird.

Long may he be so.

David is working on a new guitar project. He got a cheap Chinese knock off Gibson (a Chibson hahaha). He is turning it into his perfect Gibson, a more scalloped body, new and vastly different pick ups, various hardware changes... other things I don't entirely get or tune out in favor of my own more comprehensible thoughts...

It looks so cool and even though we have had several days of a massive amount of sawdust everywhere in the house, I am loving it.

I think that he should start doing this semi-professionally. If we had a million billion dollars he would get an apprenticeship to be a Luthier. As you know he is good at all the things. See past blogs for plumbing, painting, carpentry, electrician, mechanical and computer successes. He is particularly good at things that he loves. He loves instruments.

I love nature and pizza and small Kuehnerts. I have been taking the kids on dog walks and have been following Kiernan's lead with the cookbooks. We made some pretty darn good margaherita pizzas. We made small ones as an experiment and then like them so much we made more. This was a lunch of 3 consecutive pizzas. We kept going until we used up all the mozzarella.

The day of the Keys game arrived.

Not very many boys showed up. I am concerned about the overall health of our pack. The boys that did show up had a blast though.

Megan lasted for many more innings than last year.

Next year she will be a scout too and will be able to stay for the whole shebang.

She and daddy went home. David set up a tent in our bedroom so that she got to camp out too.

Kiernan and I watched fireworks.

He got a new patch.

We pitched a tent and set up chairs to watch Big Hero 6.

We got a batting helmet full of popcorn and he and another boy made booger jokes at one another.

"Why do gorillas have such big nostrils?"..."Big fingers!" hahah (eewww).

He was quite ready to sleep in the next morning but we had to be out by 7am so we got up and ate some doughnuts and struck camp and made our way home.

I went straight back to bed.

I was therefore well rested when Aunt Lore showed up that evening for babysitting. 

We = mom and David and I. We went to see Neil Gaiman.

Mom made us a picnic dinner.

We love Neil Gaiman.

It was a lovely evening.

He read to us and answered questions and was generally enchanting.

We got home late and tired and slightly bug bitten but happy.

We all died out hair blue. Megan with purple stripes and me with purple tips.

Even Kiernan joined us this time.

Pictures disapear for the rest of the week as I had a medical thing. I have polycyctic ovaries and every once in a while one of the cysts blows. It hurts very much and makes me nauseous. It makes bending over impossible. It makes sleeping unlikely. It makes me thing really hard about going to the ER.

Last time I went to the ER. Last time it sent me into panic attacks. This time was just like last time but I knew what was happening and so I talked myself several times daily out of going to the ER.

On Friday we went to the ER anyway, it was for David though.

David had been to his gastroendrologist to make his typical yearly probing appointments and they told him that his blood pressure was high. They said he should keep an eye on it. He ordered a monitoring cuff from Amazon. He got it the next day and checked his pressure that night (Wed). It was really high but he figured he was using it wrong and left it on his desk. The next night it was even higher (Thurs) and he decided to talk to mom about it and check the machine numbers against her checking with her nurse gear. Friday when he got home from work he checked it and it was even higher (int he 200s) and mom checked it and sent him straight to Urgent Care.

Urgent Care kept him for a recheck and then called the ambulance to take him to the ER.

He had no symptoms, no chest pains no shortness of breath none of that stuff.

He called me as I was leaving work and I met him at the ER where we learned that he was not having a heart attack or a stroke or any kind of kidney failure but that in fact his genetics were catching up to him.

We stayed for a few hours and they medicated him down to normal(ish). He is no longer to eat salt.

If you know some tasty low sodium recipes please send them to me.

It was scary.

He is ok.

Thank God for modern medicine.

Thank God for no heart attack.

On Sunday we went to the beach.

It was going to be Saturday but we were all too rattled about the blood pressure to leave the house.

On Saturday night I loaded up the car and on Saturday morning I loaded my family and took them off to see the sea.

We ate beach food. We got sun burn. Some of us rode rides.

We splashed in the waves and hung out and it was beautiful.

I got swooped upon by a Thrasher stealing seagull. Both the kids did perfectly with obeying and the water.

I even found parking in the shade.

David drove back and the rest of us slept or daydreamed all the way to the Bay Bridge. Traffic was amazingly good for a Sunday in July.

The beach is good for blood pressure.

Megan had her Kindergarten evaluation. She knows 26 sight words and has no separation anxiety issues. She was happy and chatty and more than ready for school.