30Days: 1

I'm participating in 30 Days of Lists! Here's the first: goals for the month.

scratch

I'm still itchy.

Friday will be three weeks with these hives, which have definite flare-ups. They're flaring now. They've returned on my chest, on my back, my knees and elbows, my forearms, my thighs.

My legs are bruised and scraped. Covered with tiny bumps. I found a welt the size of a dime on my knee.

I take a tiny tiny pill every four hours to "stop the itching." I take an allergy pill every day. I slather my legs and arms with icy cold aloe vera gel and vitamin E gel. I take a vitamin E tablet along with my itchy pill and my allergy pill.

Hot baths lessen the itch temporarily. Ice packs lessen the itch temporarily. Clothes make it worse. Being outside makes it worse. Thinking about it makes it worse. Not thinking about it means it takes a little bit before I realize I've scratched myself bloody again.

hookin' up

It's been way too long since I linked up to Jennifer's Highs and Lows party. 
So, I'm doing this with my week ending yesterday.
HIGHS

• We had a crazy party in our tiny house with a bazillion people and NOTHING WAS BROKEN. The best part was introducing all of our friends from this part of our life to all of our friends from that part of our life -- and to have them come to us and say we have great friends. To see everyone laughing and talking and eating and dodging the approximately 200 children running around... this is the best part about becoming a grown-up. 

• There was another visit from the tooth fairy this week. Emma lost a tooth while I was in New Orleans, and this week another tooth was hanging on by a thread. I was able to convince Emma that I could remove the tooth painlessly and she wouldn't have to worry about it. There was much hand wringing and fretting but she agreed and two seconds later I handed her the tooth. Her look of disbelief followed by relief and then exhilaration was awesome.

• I slept until 9 yesterday morning. Guilt free. 

LOWS

• This !@#$% rash. I had to reschedule a massage (I know, I know, cry me a river) because of it and I've felt like a leper every time I go out in public. It does seem to be lessening and I may (MAY) have located the cause. 

• While sleeping until 9 is certainly awesomesauce, the reason behind it is not. Fred and Emma are in Massachusetts all week, and I won't be joining them until Thursday night. This is the first time Emma has left me and I spent much of last week alternately ignoring then fighting against various emotions. It certainly won't be the last time she jets off without me, but it's the first and I don't like it. Not in box or with a fox. 

don't blame me if this makes YOU itchy too

Yesterday morning I sat down to tell you something important, a discovery I made about myself and my emotional health and it was a breakthrough! Until I, uh, made another discovery about myself. This one was not great.

It seems that during the night I had developed a rash. A rather unsightly, itchy rash all over my arms, chest and neck. I was not amused. I took some benadryl and called into work. I spent the day alternately sleeping, babbling incoherently at Fred, and scratching. By this point, no one is amused.

I managed to score an appointment this morning at urgent care, so after taking Fred and Emma to the airport, I learned that I am suffering from an allergic reaction of unknown origin and here, take this pill which will stop the itching but also make you both paranoid AND lethargic.

I am not taking that pill again.

So here I am, facing a week without a husband or a daughter, a week free to fill with frivolity and nonsense, trapped by a need to wear long-sleeve shirts and a thick coating of calamine lotion. It seems frivolity will have to take a backseat to sensibility, AGAIN. DAMN YOU, SENSIBILITY.

long days

Apparently it's July.

I've gone to New Orleans for a conference:

There was a 4th of July parade and fireworks with friends:

And a million other things in between: lost teeth, first garden offerings, introducing all of our friends at a BBQ, long afternoons at the pool, s'mores on the stove, reading Harry Potter out loud, thunderstorms in the morning, piles of fruit for dinner.

Summer always goes by so quickly. But this time we're along for the ride.

hopefully this ended my streak

I am a crappy gift giver.

I can never think of good presents for people, or the "perfect gift" is also three thousand dollars, so then I sulk around until the day before whatever gift-giving day approaches and grab the suckiest thing off the shelf and pass it off like, Yeah, I TOTALLY planned this crappy gift. YOU'RE WELCOME.

(I should amend this to say that the above paragraph only applies half the time. The other half I just don't get anything. About a third of the past ten Valentine's and Father's Days have seen me explaining to Fred what went wrong with the present and heresorryhaveabeerloveyou!)

This Father's Day, I was determined to get a present that was awesome and unexpected and not socks. So I bought us tickets to go see Demetri Martin at the Chicago Theater last night. And not only tickets, but fourth row pit tickets. Close enough to see the stubble on the comedians cheeks, not close enough to be covered with spittle from their shouting. This close:

We got drinks that cost more than a week of Emma's school tuition and felt very old until we saw one gentleman that we were pretty sure was older than us. The cane was the clue. Then the lights went down and the music was loud and Fred called me old AGAIN and then Demetri Martin came out and we laughed for nearly two hours straight.

There were six performers in all, and while I can't recommend you run right out and catch them all, I will say that David O'Doherty was my favorite (after Demetri, natch) and Kristen Schaal had one of the bluest sets I've heard.

My face hurt so much from laughing, and I'm pretty sure Fred had a good time. You know, since it was for him and all.

my addiction to caffeine may be problematic

Yesterday's plans for a morning post were thwarted when, while I was still in bed, there was a flash and a pop outside, a swear from the kitchen, and that unmistakeable silence of no electricity. It was storming and we weren't sure if that's what had caused the power outage or if a transformer had blown down the street. It didn't matter -- the coffee pot was in the middle of the brew process when everything went kaput and the morning went downhill from there. The power came on eventually, after we'd left for camp and work, and thankfully, our ice cream was fine. 

This has been a rainy spring/early summer, and while our tomato plants our going bizonkers, I would really like some sun, thankyouverymuch. The storms have risen to a level of annoyance such that, upon hearing an annoying sound outside, I simply turned up the music inside. Only when we determined that the disembodied voice from the sky wasn't an announcement at the pool across the street but a man basically saying, "Get in the basement now, dumb ass," that we paid a bit more attention. 

I'm happy to announce that our trip to the basement lasted only five minutes, at which point the sirens stopped and we determined it was safe to emerge from underground. As luck would have it, a friend bearing wine showed up ten minutes later and the sun came out for a last glimpse before setting.