Up to Fathers Day 2020

I love purple flowers and this early summer heat is being very kind to mine.

Kiernan and I went to Georgetown to find the beginning of the C&O tow path. We have a half baked plan to try and bike the whole thing section by section. It was a very hot day and also a bit muddy. He was not thrilled by the mud but we were both happy to try out the adventure.

Here is a picture that Megan took of her Hamster. Her hamster is named Snowflake. She is by far the longest lived of Megan's hamsters. She is very cute. She was quite young when we got her but is now adult.

We had our first summer cook out.

The plants are all doing really well. Mom has been working like a dog out there and the results have been very satisfying for us all.

The lettuce is sweet and tender.

There are tomatoes on most of the tomato plants.

There are enough herbs that we run to the deck for something nearly ever dinner.

Speaking of running. I took David running to the Francis Scott Key cemetery. It is pretty flat and has a little shade and is not super crowded. Lots of runners use it and I was introduced to it by the women's running group a few years ago. This year because of the Covid-19 virus we aren't doing any group activities but I can still use what I've learned.

We started a cool project. I got this cheap ukulele from Amazon (they are now 45 but that's a virus price I think). My plan was to turn it into something I could use for bardic at Haven and maybe learn some historical sounding things on it.

The first step was to get rid of all the plastic and fishing line.

David has been doing a great deal of cool guitar work.

Being home all the time has given us all this energy for quiet personal projects. The garden has never looked better. I am teaching the kids classics. I'm trying some of my "I might try this one day" projects.

I wanted to replace the bridge with something less square and to make the entire thing a little less modern looking on finish.

I sanded and re-stained (and polyurethane-ed) the body then we used a heat gun to melt the glue off of the body.

I replaced the tuning knobs with something I thought was a lot prettier (some brass and more wood). I stained the wooden tuners to bring them closer to the color of the body. That sort of worked. Not quite right but better than before. I used a walnut stain here.

The kids got a great opportunity. Our neighbors with the chickens went on vacation and hired the kids to chicken sit.

Megan made a spear.

We got lots of free eggs and more adventures than we would have liked. Megan and Pax scared a fox away after it grabbed the red chicken. Then later the same day either the fox came back or a hawk was drawn by poor reds continual loud complaint. There were red feathers all over the yard but she made it.

Megan took to patrolling with her spear.

We kept going over apologies speeches for the neighbors and offers to replace chickens but I am happy to report we didn't have to use any of the speeches because all the chickens made it through until their owners came back.

Fresh eggs are great. Chickens plus foxes are super stressful.

Here is the stained and newly bridged ukulele clamped and drying over night.

I like the color. Its a lot more caramel but I am not sure if you can tell from these pictures.

For the first time our yellow iris bloomed.

I kept working on my water color painting. I am sure that this is a result of being at home more. I feel a ton more relaxed and energetic. My inner introvert is loving it. 

We went to Sandy Point. I packed a picnic lunch and we did a very summer few hours in the bay.

There were very few people there and they had redone the playground.

I tried making some trifle. It was so good. 

We filled the kiddie pool.

I made a way bigger trifle.

Kiernan and I went for round 2 of our biking adventure.

If you are interested in reading more about that go look at this  

We had to reheat and re apply the new bridge because everything sounded sharp. You can see here where I scorched the bottom a bit...dag nab it.

The kids school year was coming to an end and they were missing a lot of the normal fun end of year things and also a few very special  ceremonies.

One thing the school does every year is field day. Every field day they get Popsicle's. The school encouraged us to have field day at home and to send pictures.

Megan made her feelings very clear.

The school sent some ideas about field day events and I made up some as well. Here was our final events list.

1. 2 cups in a jar (a water transfer game - chose your own non rigid water carrier)

2. Geo-dome javelins  (a throwing game)

3. No hands hammock ball (a soccer ball no hands game)

4. foot race 

5. Flip your lid (a spatula lid flipping game)

6. Popsicle time

7. Frisbee field goal (sort of a mini Frisbee golf game) 

8. Family tug of war (everyone against David - we lost badly).

Kelsey had a social distance birthday and we (her friends) each made a letter and took a picture of it until the entire happy birthday Kelsey message was spelled out. Kelsey is so well loved that she even got a fair bit of punctuation at the end of that message. It was great.

I ordered some spiffy new ukulele strings and was so sad to see when they came that they were white. BOO! They sounded amazing but looked so plastic. I was hoping for red like my lyre strings. I thought I was getting red because they are nylegut (a synthetic gut string that I love). I took them back off the project Ukulele and then David did a beautiful job of tying them classical guitar style on to my green modern ukulele. The sound fantastic so it was an unexpected upgrade for that instrument as well.

Kelsey and Michelle have been embroidering and it made me want to try too. I haven't done any embrodery since college so I got some beginners kits form Amazon and gave it a go.

I also learned from someone at Haven about this fantastic kickstarter for 3D printer files that I found really really cool. Its called the Fates End Dice Tower project . There is a designer  (Kim Bourrie) who designed a bunch of dice towers that are available as STL files for 3D printing. A dice tower is a contraption for making sure dice rolls are random. In a game like D&D where everything depends on a dice roll true random throws are very desirable for fair (and fun) play.

We tried out the free test pattern and I was blown away with the quality. Usually an STL file needs a lot of support and a lot of fiddling to get to a solid quality product. This file printed in high detail with very nearly no support and no extra set up whatsoever.

Look how beautiful this roof is. You can see a little bit of the hole on top for dropping the dice into. 

I immediately went back to the kickstarted and pledged 38 bucks for the full set.

I made zucchini bread and strawberry rhubarb pie and crumble

My red nylgut ukulele strings came and David strung them up for me.

They sound so mellow and smooth.

I went with a haven group on a mushroom foray up in the Catoctin mountains.

These are baby Chanterelle.

This is a witches cauldron/recces pieces mushroom.

These are dead mans fingers,

This one is a spiffy expensive and hard to find in nearly all the world except MD/PA/WV (Rishi?)

The first tower finished in about 27 hours with no errors and looking amazing.

We got an email from the school to come by and pick up the kids stuff. So we made a sign with their names and their teachers names and drove up masked to retrieve. We sat in the drop off line with other masked parents waiting to pick up. We got trash bags full of toys and books that they had left plus summer activities for Megan and a 5th grade graduation basket for Kiernan.

Poor Kiernan was really looking forward to 5th grade graduation. They were going to get off before the rest of the kids and parade through the halls while everyone came out and cheered and clapped for them. Last year there was a moonbounce.

None of those things were possible. There was a zoom ceremony and the basket of treats and messages at the pick up.

I spent more time gardening. I planted a lot of flowers this year. I see fewer and fewer bees in the yard and around the flowers. I usually only really focus on food because I am very food motivated but this year I've put some real time and money into flowers. Our bee house in the back is filling up and mom bought us another one. I am also interested in helping out the bats (white nose fungus). So we have 2 new bat houses to put up. This is less trivial as bat houses should be about 20 ft up and free of obstructions. We have lots of tall trees and even a few with not so much obstruction but we must get out the ladder and do the actual mounting.

I was thinking about how much gardening is a normal animal process. I mean like everything else humans take it to the extreme but most animals change their habitats to suit their dietary requirements.

The figs are a big toss of  the dice for us this year. I planted them last year and was worried they wouldn't make it through the winter. They are both thriving though we have no signs of figs. We do have this adorable baby praying mantis to guard us from pests though.

Adorable!

School finished. Kiernan is in school limbo and at some point in July his records will be transferred to middle school.

He is very happy. He really had a lot of trouble with his 5th grade teacher and its shaken him a good deal so we are all hoping that next year will be better. Its hard to imagine that middle school will be easier but hopefully it will at least be more manageable emotionally. 

I used some of the cabbage from the garden to make cabbage rolls.

Megan got a fancy new dress and tried her hand at embroidery. She is down for trying all the things. 

I will say she is not a natural at the sitting patiently pursuits but she loved the stabbing stuff part. haha

The blackberries look like they will be amazing this year.

We tried our very own small D&D game with the kids. We used our new dice towers. The kids loved it. I tried my hand at being DM. 

It was a lot of fun and they want to do it again so I am looking for short kid appropriate campaigns to run for them.

My excellent Father-in-Law sent me a picture of this great saw blade that he just painted.

I have been sending him watercolor pictures in hopes that he would send me a picture of his cool art and it paid off!

That Mr. Kuehnert is so talented and wonderful.

I finished some embroidery.

I took the kids fossil hunting at Calvert cliffs. We met Michelle and Chris there for some nice social distance hangout time.

We found no fossils but the kids got a nice swim in.

Also Megan gave Kiernan a "treatment" by smearing him with sand and mud. They were both very pleased.

The cliffs are down a 1.8 mile hiking trail and boardwalk that leads through woods and swamps and is very beautiful.

Then right past the reeds are the chalk cliffs. There were more people there than I liked but we had enough space to not feel crowded.

We even had a picnic in a WaWa parking lot after. I love WaWa.

I finished another embroidery thing.

It reminded me that I wanted to try some lavender in the garden.

We don't get enough full sun anywhere to let them bloom as they should but we have a few half day sunny spots so I'm giving it a go. If you guys have good lavender advice please throw it my way.

I had an idea. I love the dice towers more and more. As I get and print out more files I am continually impressed by their quality. 

I thought about maybe getting the merchants license and trying to sell some on Etsy.

I thought so even more after I got a request from a family member in Hawaii to sell him one.

I made a dice tower for Martin years ago for Christmas and though it was perfectly functional it was so basic that I couldn't give it to him as a present. I knew when I saw the first Wizard tower that I would give him one. So now I've sent off two and am really pleased with them. They were both really well received.

So I took some pictures and wrote up some descriptions and set up (but did not launch ) an Etsy shop to see how the whole thing worked and felt.

I really think I am going to do it.

Megan got a fancy new wig.

It made me fabulous.

It made David 10X fabulous!

I finished an embroidery. I am thinking about making a family quilt with lots of embroidered flowers all over it. I will call it my Covid quilt. ha

Megan was getting headaches and we thought it might be allergies or all the online schooling (I have been getting some too working form home and being on my laptop but i know mine is from  allergies and eyestrain). To be on the safe said we took her to the optometrist.

He eyes are fine. No glasses for Megan. She was disappointed. She quite wants glasses.

The deck tomatoes look great.

The yard tomatoes are doing fairly well and the cabbage and peppers are thriving.

The beans and peas are climbing like gangbusters.

Poor David got stung by a hornet.

We went on a nice hike on a new trail. It was pretty flat and had some nice views.

I found myself taking pictures of mushrooms.

Poor Davids leg got worse and worse.

Fathers day came around. 

David has started being able to have coffee and chocolate (a sure sign that his Crohns is doing better) so I got him a few months of a coffee club for Father's Day.

I tried Charcoal sketching... needs a lot of work and is messy and fun.

I made oatmeal raisin cookies (his favorite) and  we had a nice quiet fathers day. Unfortunately we had two failures. 1 the washer died and 2 the lawn mower died. This was a  bit ridiculous but I guess things tend to happen all at once and we've been so lucky to keep our jobs and our pay so with that plus the stimulus checks we were able to afford a replacement for both. I guess its exactly the sort of thing that stimulates the economy buying a new washer and a new lawn mower right now.

So for Father's day David got appliances.

Both of us got the call that work was opening back up again. We are on limited schedules with some time at home and some time on site.

I'm back to my robots.

I was so anxious the weekend before going back in. I couldn't eat and I slept about 5 hours total the whole weekend (perfect for concentrating around heavy machinery let me tell you). It was better after I got there. All my months of no or limited anxiety came to a screeching halt!

We've been so lucky. Mount Airy had more than its fair share of corona virus because of the nursing home . We have been fine though. I'm afraid of getting sick or worse being asymptomatic and of making other people sick. I was at the post office (mailing a dice tower to Hawaii) the other day and there were no pens. I asked the lady ahead of me in line if she could see any and she offered me hers. I declined and I think she was offended. I was so afraid that I would make her sick. This kind woman who offered me her pen and who I appreciated so much. I think she thought I was being a snowflake or a snob but all I wanted to do was not infect her. I don't know what I am picking up out in the world or on base. I hate that I may have hurt her feelings.

Mom has been going out to BLM protest. She even went out in a crazy storm to make her voice known.I fully support her in( this is what democracy relies on) this but I worry that she is endangering herself. She is our highest risk family member.

I meanwhile retreat into my projects and my anxiety. I paint marbles for ancient games.

I start the great waffle project (more to come on this I hope).

I rediscover my first college age embroidery inspiration.

I talk to the kids about social justice and police brutality and the great British baking show.

One of Kiernan's 2 summer learning projects is fancy baking (his term). The other is programming video games. He made Sticky Toffee pudding. He wrote a hello world program.

I now hand the keyboard over to Kiernan for a Sticky Toffee Pudding update

(Are you saying ^ i'm not a word?)* spell check does not like the word Kiernan

Sticky toffee pudding, just to be clear, isn't pudding. Unless you are British. Sticky toffee pudding is tasty, although difficult to follow the recipe to the Paul Hollywood. there is actually about as much dates as there is toffee, if you do the recommended 2  drizzle. yum.

We are sheltered and so fortunate.

I pray for understanding and peace and count my blessings. I also get it that thoughts and prayers have become a joke because people us the phrase instead of taking action. I also know as a person who prays quite a bit that it is not a meaningless phrase.

I hope to do more. But I know prayer is valuable too.

In other news the mower came. Oh man its so cool.