Category: Weather

This entry was started, oh, about a week ago? With everything going on I’m totally behind on updating, so I figured I’d just upload what I have so far and continue with the rest of the entry tomorrow before I end up with a 10-page novel (who knows, I’m probably close already!).

(Started last Friday) The past week’s been a blur of doctor’s appointments and…stress.

Let me rewind. It thunder stormed, loudly, early morning of the 24th (Thursday). Both the boys got scared when there was a particularly earth-shaking bang of thunder, so they wanted to sleep in our bed. Since I was feeding Alaethia just at that moment I told them they’d have to go back to their beds because all 5 of us wouldn’t fit. I woke up in the morning to get them ready for school and freaked out when neither of them were in their beds. I go to the living room and find them lying on the couch, asleep together. Aww!

Aly turned 4 months old on the 24th. She started sitting up with assistance from her Boppy on that very day!

So far she has begun to grab for things, she constantly teething, sitting up, rubs her blanket on her face when she’s sleepy, sleeps in her crib all night, starting from 11pm or 12am to around 4 or 5am and then sleeps after that till 8 or 9am. THEN sleeps, most of the time, not always (like when I want to take a nap) till 11am. She’s showing signs of wanting to eat “big people food” (the poor thing just stares and stares when we’re eating!) and likes to drink water from cups.

It was also John’s birthday that day. He’d been not-so-subtlety hinting that he wanted me to bake him a cake, and since I was part of the reason his birthday was ruined last year, I obliged. We wanted to take him out to Kumori’s, a sushi place, but he changed his mind at the last minute, as always.

I started making everything around 4 pm. I had to go to Dollar General twice that day to get ingredients for the cake and enchiladas I was making. He got home from work and I took him to Circuit City, where they had the Tekken game for PSP that he was looking all over for. Went to Big Lots to get feminine products and since I felt embarrassed buying only pads (yes, at 25, married with 3 children I still feel odd buying Just Pads at stores) so I looked around the scrapbooking isle. Well, I ended up with scrapbooking supplies only since they didn’t have any kinds of pads I like.

We went next door to K-mart, where they only had crappy kinds of pads so I had to stop by Family Dollar on the way home, since it’s the only other store in the city and I didn’t want to go to Dollar General again for the third time that day. Needless to say, it felt like forever before we got home. Mario actually beat us home that time.

I was tired as hell, and then a little disappointed because John left with his friend and didn’t even eat the food or cake (that he MADE me make him) that I worked so hard on :(. He ate it the next day though, after he got back, so he was forgiven.

Eenan felt fine the next day, so he went to school. Jaylen, on the other hand, still felt really lethargic, didn’t want to eat a thing (hadn’t really eaten well since the day before in the afternoon) because of how bad his throat hurt, and had a fever of 102°. We took Jaylen to the doctor first thing that morning after Eenan left to school.

I had to go through all these calls and stuff since he’d already seen his primary doctor this month, all while poor Jaylen slept on the bench and Mario held Alaethia. The office had to get some kind of permission to allow their new doctor (Alaethia’s primary) to see him that day, or else we’d get charged full price for the doctor’s visits the boys had already had earlier during the week, which would have easily been at least $300.

They told me there was a lot of Strep Throat and Herpangina going around. Most of the kids they’d been seeing recently have had Strep or Herpangina. As soon as the nurse practioner, Edith, saw Jaylen she said, “Oh! He’s even got the Scarletina bumps. I can tell you right now he’s probably got Strep.”

I had honestly not noticed the bumps at all until that very moment. They were tiny and fine little bumps, almost like goosebumps. They’re called Scarletina, or Scarlet Fever, and very common with Strep. Edith prescribed some antibiotics and Mortin and sent us off. She said he should feel better in 24 hours.

We went to leave his prescription at H-E-B, then went straight to pick up Mario’s paycheck. Elda called as we were entering Palmview to let us know she’d already picked up Brandon, so we didn’t have to pick him up after school. I had a nagging feeling we should have just picked up Eenan early, too, to avoid having to rush to get him at 3:30, but thought, ‘Nah,’ so we just kept going. I’m not kidding you, not even 5 seconds later I get a call on my cell from the nurse that Eenan was in her office with a temperature of 101. I frantically called everyone–Jorge, Sonia, and Elda–to see who could pick him up for me until we got there. The nurse gave him some Tylenol with my permission and Elda went for him.

On the way back home we stopped by H-E-B to pick up Jaylen’s prescription and then Dollar General to get soups and Gatorade. Poor Jaylen kept mumbling, “I just wanna feel better…” I felt so bad for him :(.

The first thing we did when we got home was give him some warm soup and Gatorade. He took his medicine and felt so much better while eating his chicken and stars soup. It was such a relief to see him eat something, finally.

To be continued….

You know global warming’s taking it’s toll on the world when New Mexico is ‘yellow’ (65°) and Texas is Flaming Hot Cheetos ‘red’ (88°) on the temperature map on the news. There’s yet another red tornado watch box to the North West of us.

I started this blog yesterday, May 8th sometime in the evening. Obviously I never got a chance to finish it. Now that I’m freshly showered, drank some nice warm chamomille tea to soothe my throat (I’ve got an annoying sore throat), and have Mario occupied with dinner (a sandwich) I’ll try and post as much as possible. I’m going to do this in “chunks” of days since I probably won’t cover everything tonight.

I’ll start from Thursday. The night I last posted we were hurled by a thunderstorm. A bad one. I didn’t believe we were going to get much of a storm, since we hardly ever do when they’re announced on Channel 4. Well, that day I’d been watching the Weather Channel and they mentioned “strong, severe thunderstorms and 40% chance of rain”.

Nah, I thought to myself. Nature wouldn’t do that to me. Not the night before my Yard Sale. Not when all the stuff I’m selling is already outside in nice organized boxes!

Nature hates me. It rained so hard and it was over as fast as it started. Most of my crap was outside, drenched.

I woke up in a mood the next morning. I didn’t sleep much; if I recall correctly I think I slept a total of 3 hours and it wasn’t because of Alaethia. And not only was a lot of my stuff wet (though, thankfully, not as much as I thought would be) but Mario and I got lazy and didn’t work on the signs the night before, nor had I put the neon-colored price tags on any of the merchandise. The kids were in a fairly good mood, though I did have to get after them a few times. Once they were off to Elda’s to leave to school, I started getting everything that was inside the house outside, and woke Mario up to at least help me set up the tables.

Mom came over and watched Aly for me while I waited for Mario. He never woke up. When he finally did, he said he was already late (“Why didn’t you wake me up early?” Can you believe him!?) and couldn’t help, sorry. I could have gouged his eyes out. I ended up having to take down the huge, heavy wooden table down all by myself and had to move it with Mom’s help. I am so grateful Mom was there to help. I couldn’t have done it all on my own, especially with Alaethia. She slept a good long time that morning, but still, we had to keep an eye on her so I did most of the work myself after the tables were set up since Mom was watching her. Noelia woke up about half an hour later and helped me out a lot. Thank goodness she’s very organized–she helped me put things into piles and helped me keep focused. I was so stressed I couldn’t think straight.

I put up signs at all the “main” corners, which made a total of 3 signs. If I’d thought it out better, I would have put signs up at stores, the City Hall announcement board and the post office, but nooo, I didn’t think it through. I didn’t plan much, even though it felt all I was doing last week was for the darn Yard Sale.

People started arriving even before we got the tables fully ready. My good friend Karina from our middle school days came over with her mom and took a LOT of stuff off my hands. The people who usually come to our yard sales came by and were impressed by how much stuff we’d accumulated since the last time we had a yard sale, which was about 3 years ago. The weather was merciful too, thank goodness. It was breezy and overcast until around 3 o’clock. Then it got a bit warm but not to the point where we couldn’t stand it. Jaylen was such a good boy that whole day. He found (yes, found) a brand-new “Dig Out Dino” set Mary had given him about a year ago. It’s a block of clay where you dig out and gently brush away clay from dinosaur fossils. He was so proud that he found all the pieces and had Jorge help him put it together. When Eenan got home from school he went straight into the house to do homework and then played video games. All my babies were well-behaved :).

Even though we were selling everything super cheap and didn’t get to take everything we were selling out, we made pretty good money. Mom didn’t have much stuff to sell, but even she made some bucks. The only bad things about the day was 1) the two ladies (I remember one was pregnant) that came by with a little boy who stole a huge Ziploc full of Spiderman toys and one of dinosaurs. So RUDE. I mean, c’mon. The bags were a dollar each for a huge amount of GOOD toys! The vintage Spiderman toys that I was so opposed to selling in the first place were in there!

And 2) Two of the kittens died. One overnight and the other in the afternoon after I got home from picking up Jaylen. I felt guilty all day thinking I may have run him over, because he was fine before I left, but I don’t think I could have run him over. I would have run over the other one too, because they were always together and slept on top of eachother. Poor things :(. John and I think it’s something genetic having to do with Brushka.

Jorge and Big Mario were outside with us (Mom, Alaethia and I) during the yard sale, so that was cool. We had company. The part I hate about Yard Sales is having to clean up afterwards, after you’re already tired and just want to shower and lay down! Thankfully Jorge and John helped :).

I was so thrilled that Mario was going to be home the next day (Friday) but nope, he had to go in to work since he had a huge system he was working on. I was grumpy all over again. It was easier taking everything out this time since everything was already laid out on the tables. Noelia came out to help again and we made sure to bring ALL the stuff that we didn’t take out the day before. I didn’t sell as much as I would have liked, but we did do well again. What I don’t like about Yard Sales is the people who come to you and ask you to drop the prices even more. That happened several times. A dollar was too much for some of those people!

Noelia, Mom, Alaethia and I sat outside on the front porch (with the fan this time!) and just chit-chatted during breaks. Mario called around 1pm and said he was coming home. Yay! He and Jaylen went to pick up McDonald’s for everyone, which was awesome because I was starting to shake and wouldn’t have had enough down-time to make something to eat. After Noelia left to work the rest of us sat outside and then Elda and Jorge arrived. Jorge ran over a box of toys with his truck. I jokingly told him to pay up–$50 LOL. He said he’d trade his labor (helping me put stuff away) for the cash he owed for the toys :P.

When the day was over we put all the clothes and toys that were left away. Next came the task of separating stuff for thrift shops and giving the clothes to the needy. I felt so lazy though. I was so thrilled that once the Yard Sale was over I could just relax and stress only about normal, everyday things, but nope. Next came worrying about where everything was going to go and getting the rest of the house looking decent. I still had boxes laying all over the place and piles of laundry to fold and put away and dishes to wash that I hadn’t had a chance to do because of the yard sale.

The next day was Saturday, which was the next One Photo An Hour day. I’ll get that, and the days after that, typed up tomorrow. I’m so tired. I hope Aly feels like going to bed now. She’s all hyped from the movie Mario’s watching (he’s sitting on the couch with her while I type this up). She’s so cute. She’s recently started trying to sit up, laughs and squeals (and squaks LOL) all day long. I love how she flutters her big eyes when she’s “holding conversation” with you. She’s also been sleeping in her crib for a little over a week now, which is a Godsend since I’m sick with Jaylen’s leftover cold and don’t want to get her sick.

I feel accomplished. I did good today. I deserve some ice cream. Too bad I already had some :(.

My luck would have it that the night before my Yard Sale we’d get “Strong to Severe” Thunderstorms. It’s been reported that golf-ball sized hail is headed this way, in about 15 minutes. My sweet husband was outside in a t-shirt and shorts running around finding bricks to hold down the tarp that’s covering all the yard sale stuff. Those bags and boxes mostly consist of toys and books–great. I hope they stay dry.

We’re also under tornado watch. It never concerned me before, but after all the severe weather Texas has been having lately (Lubbock, Amarillo, Tulia and the tornados in Eagle Pass) I’m pretty darn terrified. I just hope everyone will be okay. Who cares about the darn Yard Sale.

Eenan’s up. The hail’s here and Mario’s outside in a raincoat watching it. Better turn off the computer before the storm does.