You're Always Doing Something

You're always doing something,

said seven-year-old Rose to me yesterday morning.

(She was home from school due to teacher's-union conference; I was home because Joy's been under the weather, so it couldn't be a babysitter day.)

I'd been swirling around picking up shoes, vacuuming, rinsing dishes, re-allocating piles of paper, my usual morning flurry. I thought for sure this was a comment on my swirling, and wondered if she thought it was a good thing or not.

"What do you mean, honey?" I asked.

"Well," she replied, "Even if you're trying not to breathe and stand as still as you can" -- and she demonstrated -- "you're still doing something, because you're trying not to breathe and stand as still as you can."

She's right. No matter whether you're in full swirl mode, or laid back as can be, you're always doing something!

So, here's a little bit of what we've been doing the past few days.

As I mentioned, Joy has been sick. There was a fever going around the daycare the other week, and we thought she'd escaped, but it seemed to hit her later and longer than the other kids. I was all edgy about H1N1 because she's on the fragile side as far as the co-morbid conditions that seem to go along with the swine flu doing its worst, and she hasn't had the vaccine yet (she's got an appointment today!) But it was just the fever, none of the awful cough and other stuff. She was considerably perked up yesterday and I think we'll have a pretty normal day today.

Speaking of doctor's appointments, I did take her in on Wednesday when the fever seemed to be lasting longer than it had for the other kids, for an ear and throat check since she can't really tell us when those are hurting, plus her pain tolerance is so high. When I got in the car to make the half-hour drive across town, it started making a roar like a Harley. (OK, I know the Harley roar is so distinctive it's patented. But a Honda CR-V isn't supposed to sound even close to a Harley.) The muffler had gone out. So I had to drag Mike home from work to take that car in, and provide me with the other car. Arghh.

I did get to take advantage of a beautiful fall day on Tuesday to put Joy in the stroller and take a run, though. Ordinarily I can't do that because I'm home with her while she's got therapy, but there's no therapy when she's got a fever! The weather has swung between gorgeous and cold-n-rainy, and the leaves have gone from full-peak to mostly-on-the-ground this week. Halloween should be fair and chilly. The girls are going to be black and white Dutch bunnies, as specified by Rose. It did involve some homemade fleece hats with bunny ears made of pipe-cleaner and felt, and I taught Rose how to make pompoms out of yarn so we could have the tails exactly the right size and color. Like I have time for all that! but Rose was very appreciative. Now I just hope that Joy will keep her hat on when we go door to door!

Here is a little bit of autumn eye-candy, taken from our windows front and back.

Here's our burning bush and spirea out the front.

We think this is a Cooper's hawk. Rose had a great view of it from her bedroom window; it sat on the feeder for a long time, which gave us lots of chance to pore over the possibilities in the bird-book.

Time for me to go do my next somethings of the day.