[summer break in 80 days] day 40

8:19 We are halfway there! Though we realized yesterday the count was off. School starts in 6 weeks.

Bonnie called. Her SIL had a baby yesterday. She was only at 29 weeks and her water broke. Bentley Kai was born at 16 1/2" and 3 pounds. Bonnie would love to be there every day but cannot.



9:44 At the MPII playground. Sticky this morning. Ryan finally managed to make it across the monkey bars. These swing which are more difficult.

10:55 I am in a bad mood and Ryan is making it worse. He has to be the first in the pool, fine. But has to be the first out and got upset when I wanted to get out and take some pictures. The water was cooler than it has been and felt good. But I was in no mood to exercise. I read recently that it is better to acknowledge and accept your bad moods. Once I told Ryan I was in a foul mood, he was somewhat better.

11:59 Camera battery is dying and I forgot to bring the other one. I told Ryan we have to drive home and would have thought that I told him I was taking away his toys. Ugh.



Andy is a tourist. I don't know where he learned this from. Every time I went to take a photo, he would stand himself right in the middle. He has never done this before. Funny.


Ryan is happiest when he has a map and can be the leader.

Walking around University of Tampa was nice but hot. I found that the name of the sculpture I posted for yesterday's POTD is Sticks of Fire which
Is what Tampa means. There are a couple of old cannons in the park and Ryan did not want me to get near them. Even after I explained they do not work. "It's too dangerous!"



There weren't many people around. And the river was dirty. Last time I was there, January 2008, you could see the bottom of the river. You couldn't see anything today.



Of course the boys had to walk along the seawall. I was nervous but had to let it go. It is something I would do.

We walked through Plant Hall. It used to be a hotel and the veranda is really nice. The boys ran up and down the stairs a couple of times and we continued on our tour. Ryan said he was hot. Are you ready to go? "As ready as I'll ever be."

Then we drove through downtown and onto Harbour Island. I forgot that the island is basically one big gated area and if you don't belong, the road returns back to downtown.

We went on Davis Islands (is it more than one?) and drove through to the airport. The boys didn't want to get out so I only took a few shots.

Then we went to Target where I used up the garage sale money on presciptions and chicken nuggets.

My camera is not acting right. I tried to turn on Live View and it only blinks. I wonder if this has anything to do with me trying to find total shutter counts the other day. I haven't use Live View since. Everything else seems to work OK. (I did a reset and it seems OK.)

Andy has lost the battery door to his recorder and it won't work without it.

Ryan's new sticker book is missing half of the stickers.

4:06 Finally home.

I sat and recovered before getting to my photos. I had taken 495 and did manage to get it down to 249 to keep. So far I have edited 7.

[summer break in 80 days] day 39

8:40 Breakfast is done. Ryan and I are talking about silly things. Mostly about Alphabutt and why she named her daughter Panda.

I told Ryan he had to put the stuff away in his bin. He left and was done quickly. But then there were a few things left in the bin. "I can't put them away." Do you want a dollar? "No." What? Ryan doesn't want money?

This week's POTD theme is public art. Hmm... I am not going to be able to do this one. WC has no art and I am not sure I can get the boys (Ryan) into take a drive downtown.

4:20 I think someone drugged my lunch. I fell alseep and gad the hardest time waking up. In fact I was sleeping in my dream and not bring able to wake up. Ugh.

Dark clouds are moving in. We haven't had rain in a few days, I hope we get it today as I am too lazy/forgetful to remember to water my plants.

We got some rain. Not much but enough to knock a lot of the crape myrtle blooms to the ground. Crapes are similar to lilacs in the appearance and fraility of their blooms but without the fragrance.



I went out and took some photos in the front. It looks like something is eating the jasmine. It looks like they have been snipped. But the jasmine under the crape are growing.





7:44 The pain in the bum customer who cancelled her order hours after placing it has sent me another email. She wants to order and has the money. Do you think she found the $12 under the cushions? Or maybe she reads this blog and feels guilty?

Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health (Vintage) is quite interesting. I have gotten through the chapter where he talks about high protein low carb diets. I do think that refine carbs has helped in making me fat. (And all the baked goods in my house this past 2 weeks have been evil.) But I am skeptical that high protein diets work or that they are safe. I don't think they have been looked at in the long term.

9:42 This week's POTD theme is water, not public art. Oops.

[summer break in 80 days] day 38

7:01 Backing up my drives. I have a reminder that pops up every Saturday but I ignore it most weeks. Taking care of things right now.

11:32 Every one is gone. Not that many people but I still managed to make $200. Every one left with a box full and it didn't make a dent. Only a few brownies were eaten after I whined a bit. Ryan hid until only our neighbor Dixie was here.

12:14 One wants to go out to lunch, the other one doesn't and is causing problems. sigh

I had to stop at Starbucks. Lisa forgot what I wanted and brought me a chai lattè. I appreciate it but I had the taste for tea and I am not a fan of chai. It took a while to have it made and the barista (he was a man, are they called baristas?) decided to fill the time to talk to me. I was talked out at the Garage Sale. I have no more conversation left in me.

LifePointe church was out at the corners giving out cold water. Nice intent but do we need all those plastic bottles?



1:21 I just put a sheet over the folding table so the boys have a hide out. Autism knows no age limits for simple pleasures.

4:13 Andy has "moved" to poppa's room. He has been sleeping there so I moved his iHome so he can hear his alarm.

6:37 Some customers are more work than they are worth. One place an order for $6 + $6 for shipping, a whopping total of $12. Then she cancels a few hours later. Deleting the order isn't so bad but then I have to go back and manual mark the items back in stock. There is no profit in her orders as she buy only clearance items.

[summer break in 80 days] day 37

9:58 The family room is clean. OK, clean enough. I have to figure out the best place to set up the tables. I only have over head lighting in the kitchen. There is good light coming from the windows. It will be awkward at best.

10:55 I set up one 6' table in front of the glass doors. The doors are 8' wide so there is still room to get out. I am hoping that I can just use this table and my kitchen table since there is little room to set up more.

I walked into the train table. Ow! I hit my knee pretty hard and said "ow!" a few times rather loudly. Only Andy came to check out the noise. I asked him to kiss it and make it feel better. He did and I was happily surprised the pain instantly disappeared.

3:33 Taking another break. I made snickerdoodle cupcakes. I filled them to full. But they take so good. Next time I will make 30 instead of 24.



Everything is set up for the sale. Then UPS comes with 5 huge boxes for Bonnie. Oh well, an uncluttered house would be too much to ask for, right?

I told Andy to restrict the trains to the train table. He rhen proceeded to fill the train table with trains. There are still more trains.



I was wondering how many images I have taken with my camera. I googled but it wasn't an easy search. On the third search I found the trick and it reads like some video game hack. Anyway, I have take 30,686 in 2 years.

7:01 It's times like these that I really miss Gail. He never minded washing floors and I hate doing it. It's all I have left to do. Mostly. Tomorrow I will probably pull more paper and make sets. I wasted time talking to B for a couple of hours.

8:02 Bath time! One down, one to go.

[summer break in 80 days] day 36

Rain today. At 8:00 am, it looked like it might go north of us. By 9:00, we knew there would be no swimming. So we scheduled our day. Ryan still wanting to go to the chiropractor to pick up his hat he left last week. I tried to get Ryan interested in something like Celebration Station or Gameworks. He couldn't care less. So we went to the bookstore. He agreed to Borders since I had a coupon.

I was disappointed in Borders. There were lots of empty shelves. Are they closing this store or remodeling? This is one of the older stores and shows its age. The info desk now had 3 self help computers instead of people. They removed half of the cash registers and put up display shelves. Still, we all managed to find something to get.

Andy has been acting out Blues Clues. He does a great imitation of Blue. I thought to get him a notebook but since the show is no longer in production, there is little merchandise available. There was one notebook at amazon for $100!!! What? You really think a toy collector will pay that? Andy was happy with a flip top notebook from Borders for $4.99.

2:20 Finally sitting down. My thumb feels better but with the bandaid on I still can't use it to type on the iPod. Darn technology.

I did more cleaning. Bits and pieces here and there instead of cleaning just one full room. Oh well, it all has to be done.

Ryan puked last night right around dinner. It does it about once every couple of months. One time and he is fine. Weird.

[summer break in 80 days] day 35

Got the breakfast area cleaned. Filled up a large trash bag and gave away a stack of handwriting books and a stack of scrapbooking magazines. There are places that could use some more weeding but not this week.

10:39 Washing sheets.

6:30 Guess I was busy doing instead of blogging. Made almond poppyseed muffins. Made nutella brownies too. A bit of a disappointment. OK but not great. Sliced my thumb while cutting up the watermelon. Can't use my DS and can't type with both thumbs on the iPod. Bother.

More computer woes this afternoon. Time Machine kept erroring out. I used Disk Warrior to rebuild the directory and it finally backed up OK. Lightroom also had a corrupted catalog and it could not be repaired. So I lost the work I did in the past 24 hours. Good thing for back ups. I just wish there was a way to back up Lightroom before I shut it down like other apps.

[summer break in 80 days] day 34

10:10 I repotted the plants. The aloe was just about root bound so I moved them to 8" pots. I made a mess in the lanai with the potting soil. I guess I should have reclaimed the bench first. I got all of dad's crap in bins with lids. I need to move the paint and chemicals to the garage. What made him think storing paint on a south facing lanai was a good idea? I wonder if any of the plant foods are still good?

1:45 My room is picked up, mostly. There are some boxes I have yet to go through (since December) but all the toys are out. My room ends up collecting a lot of toys. Ryan helped a lot. Andy had to be reminded to come back and help. I played a game of Bananagrams with Ryan for his effort. Now I need to dust and vacuum. And put clean sheets back on the bed.



6:35 Almost everything on my list was done. I was working on POTD when I got another kernal panic. Feck! This is the second one this week, not good. And Time Machine was having errors backing up so I was in the process of backing up my hard drive with the panic occurred. This computer will be 3 years old in October. I would really like to get another year out of it.

7:09 Hard disk backed up. POTD posted. Now I am using Disk Warrior to hopefully fix the problem.

I've run out of plastic grocery bags. Since I have started using the Reusable Grocery Bags, I only get the plastic bags when I make an unexpected trip to the store or forget my bags. I use the plastic bags for trash in my office. When I was going to Target yesterday, I thought about leaving my bags at home so I could get some plastic bags. But I just couldn't do it.

The boys went out about 7:30. I decided to go out as well and take some photos. Some days I have to make myself do it. I love crape myrtles but their blooms don't make for the prettiest pictures.



Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health (Vintage) is really interesting. Politics has made us think following a low fat, high carb diet is a good thing. Even when evidence show this to be wrong, health officials kept prescribing the diet. I am only a third of the way through so back to the reading.

[summer break in 80 days] day 33

I tackled the magazines I have piles to give away and piles to keep. The give away piles are bigger than keep.

Rain clouds threatened but the winds move them away without a drop. Rain in the afternoon is preferred so it won't interrupt our swimming. The breeze feels good.

Andy chose to take his tube to the pool. So I blew it up while at the playground. Yeah, I could have used the compressor in the car but I think of these things as a challenge. And I probably like feeling dizzy.



10:58 Done swimming. It was great itch relief while I was in there. Now I am itching again. Sigh.

11:58 CFA drive thru and I am hungry! I wonder how long before the boys get sick of Alphabutt?



1:18 Home from lunch and Target. I was in the garden center when the rain hit. Hard. The boys made it to the store but I was stuck. Finally I got bored and the rain let up some so I only got wet instead of soaked. Ryan had taken the cart with my purse and rain. Then he left the cart and purse inside the store while he waited for me outside but under the covered part. Yikes! Another lesson given.

I didn't get any pots because of the rain, I only got two varigated aloe. Cool but expensive at $7.99 for a 4" pot. The boys looked at books and toys but didn't ask for anything today. The school supplies are starting to be set up. Ugh.



7:53. The itching is so bad! I used to get spider bites years ago at the cottage. I never felt them but the itching would start about 12-24 hours after I got bitten. Like a mosquito bite but more intense. I remember one time there was a line of 10 or more bites on the back of my thigh. I started taking my own sheets to the cottage hoping to control the biting. My mom told me that B12 is supposed to keep them from biting. I am not sure if it worked. I did wonder why no one else was affected.

I just looked up spider bites hoping to find some relief and found that I probably do not have spider bites. I think it's bed bugs. Bed bugs! But I thought only dirty and poor places got them. I am freaked out and changing the sheets.

[summer break in 80 days] day 32

8:40 After a slow start, I am up and dressed (in yesterday's clothes) and breakfast is done. Also accomplished, the stack of mail that has been growing on the kitchen counter since dad left. Mail has been opened, junk thrown away and the rest stacked neatly for action and filing. I hate opening bills, it's so depressing.

I want to do some gardening. I am not sure how sweaty I want to get. I will repot the crossandra. I was thinking I should plant them in the ground since they can get rather shrubby. But then I read that they can be invasive so I will keep them in pots to control their spread.

Don't have any potting soil so I couldn't repot the crossandra. I'll get some tomorrow at Target and look for some more plants. Maybe some aloe.

10:31 Done with the pruning today. I stopped when I filled 2 bags. Now there are 7 and our pick up only allows for 6 items. I know they will pick up the extra but I don't want to push it. Saw ants crawling in the vines but never felt the sting. Sometimes I don't and then notice the itching later. (I have found several bites on my arms and legs. The itching is awful even after taking an antihistamine.)

The first crape I pruned is already growing back. The second one is not. It won't crush me to lose a couple as I think I placed them too close together.

The yard is a swamp. Mike had his sprinklers running even with all the rain we got last week. Since he is higher, he doesn't notice the flooding I get. This is the first Sunday I have been out so I didn't know how bad it got. I need some muck shoes. My old running shoes are soaked.

I cleaned up a bit and found two of my CF cards for my camera. I knew they were about somewhere.

5:50 Found Andy's recorder. He ran away covering his ears thinking I was going to yell. But I didn't and he came back. I had to download the manual to set the date & time again.

7:43 Am trying to read Good Calories, Bad Calories. I purchased the eBook version and didn't know know it was thick and tedious. Sometimes puts me to sleep. But what is interesting is that some cholesterol drugs were found to cause cancer in mice. This is considering an acceptable side effect since the benfits are supposed to outweigh the risks. But studies found that reducing cholesterol would only gain a person 1 month to 1 year more on his life based on other health issues. Gail took cholesterol lowering druges for years. He started taking lipitor in the mid 1990s. One of the side effects of lipitor was cancer in mice. More specifically, sarcoma which Gail had. So he took drugs that were only proven to gain him maybe a year extra in life for a cancer risk that he was in the small percentage to contract. It bothers me that Gail's cancer could have been caused by a drug that might not have shown any benefit. And Gail never mentioned to his doctors that the small print does indicate sarcomas in mice. Unanswered questions that sit in the back of my mind.

[summer break in 80 days] day 31

I was enjoying a nice morning snooze when the alarm went off to get my butt moving. Gah!

9:57 Just done with the gardening. Found some large crape branches snapped in two from the heavy jasmine vines. I'd say I was about 3 years late in pruning the jasmine. There are no leaves along the fence, it has grown higher into the trees. It's a good thing I gave up the idea of becoming a master gardener or planning gardens for a living as I clearly don't know what I am doing.

Yesterday I saw a garden wagon at Lowe's. It is bigger and better than ours and is only $99. I put ours out on the curb for someone to take. I'll put a sigh on it later if it is still here. (I did put a sign on it in the afternoon, it was gone within an hour.)

2:11 Being lazy & reading.

9:04 The fireworks have started. I am always amazed by how much money people spend on this stuff. I love watching but I get so impatient between the bursts.