Attack of 1000 Yellow Jackets.

First off, I wasn't involved.  (I say that because of that pesky bee allergy.)

Secondly, everyone is okay.

Now then, my husband was on a hike with 15 kids and an additional naturalist on an off-trail hike.  That off-trail hike involved flipping logs over to find "the good stuff."  Tens of thousands of logs are flipped in the park yearly.  Never has it been a problem.

Until yesterday.

Hubs was 50 feet out with his group and the other naturalist flipped a log with one of the 9 year old campers.  Hubs said that the swarm was aggressive.  The kiddo was covered.  Hubs actually said that the kid looked like a bee keeper minus the uniform.

He ran over and hung over the kid to shield him while wiping and grabbing handfuls of bees and "crushing them" with his hands.  Kids were screaming.  The poor kiddo Hubs was trying to protect was getting stung time and time again.  Frankly, so was Hubs.  He was so concerned for the kid that he didn't even notice.

Hubs called 911.  The ambulance met them at the trail head.  5 people total were stung, 1 with 3 stings, he had probably 30, his coworker and a little girl probably had 20 each but the kiddo he was trying to help ended up with the most-- 100 or better.

Incredibly, the 9 year old didn't have any type of severe reaction, but out of caution he was transported for observation.  Hubs came home absolutely emotionally exhausted and worried beyond belief for I-.  I gave Hubs benadryl, zantac and rubbed down his stings with Betamethasone.  We waited until 8 PM and when he didn't hear anything, he phoned and left a message.

Thankfully, the mom called back.  I- was doing well, but wouldn't be attending the last day of camp.  (Some observation continuing is my guess.)  She thanked Hubs and said how I- said that Hubs was trying to help him and protect him.

Hubs did for I- exactly what he would have done for K-.  I'm proud of him.

A post of miscellaneous photoness.

Friday we had a big day.  We started out with a sewing lesson, then went on to pick R up for an overnight.  R is K's friend who has a birthday tomorrow.  Since they have sold their house, are building another and are in-between and living temporarily at her grandparent's house, a girl party wasn't to be this year.  We decided to do a reverse party for her.  We had her come on over and enjoy having a birthday girl celebration with us.

We went to the park near the hangar and played on the play equipment, then we had lunch together.

We watched the blimp come in for a landing (look at the guys pulling the ropes) and very soon . . .

 . . . it took off again!

And away she goes! 

Pardon the poor photo, but the hummingbird moths are back.  Hummingbirds were nectaring at the butterfly bush today, too.

A red spotted purple.  Not a typical find for us.  We've also had summer azure as a regular visitor, a monarch fly-by and a red admiral.  The average cabbage whites have been around.

Today K caught a tailless yellow swallowtail.

The cupflower is blooming.

So is the aster.

This was earlier in the week.

This is today.  Hello dinner!

The girls at the park.  R would be the upside down child.

The girls made brownies, by R's request.  They were a bit lavish with the sprinkles, but they were delicious!

Our weekend was good!  We hope yours was, too!

Addiction: Conversations with my brother and an interesting read.

I have never dodged the fact that my brother is a recovering heroin addict.  He is.  He is also bipolar.  I believe that being bipolar has led him to self-medication.  He found solace in heroin-- what he terms simply as, "An old man drug."

My brother was in the full throes of a very major drug addiction for about 9 years.  Over the past 4 years, he has worked to stay clean.  I always know that when he drops off the radar with me that he's into using again.  He won't tell me.  He'll distance himself from me.

About a year and a half ago, my nephew was living with my parents and going to my brother on the weekends.  My mother was helping my nephew get rolling with school.  He came to her at the beginning of third grade with the knowledge of a beginning of first grade student.  By the end of third grade, the teacher and my mother brought him up to the beginning of third grade learning level.  Now, he started fourth grade technically a year behind, but at least it wasn't two.  In the midst of my mom having my nephew, my brother would call or stop by and be belligerent, nasty and foul-mouthed to my mother who, not a saint by any means, was doing her best to try to help him get his son on track with school.  Considering that we had all left the house many years previous, my mom hadn't been pitched into the elementary school set for quite some time.  Still I couldn't take my brother's treatment of my mom anymore.  I simply texted, "Please stop yelling at Mom."  He called and left some big diatribe on my voice mail about how I know how Mom can be and that I'm never to call him again.

So I didn't.

I called his bluff.  If he was that miserable with life and didn't want to hear from me, fine.  It was hard.  Beastly hard.  I love my brother very much.  I have been very close to him.  Both of my brothers took turns going to the university and hanging out with me while I did my thing in the studio and in classes.  The professors knew them, asked after them and one of my professors even made a special point to make certain that my brother Billy was invited to their show opening.  He was 14 and over the moon that Kate, the former Miss Iowa, had invited him to be a part of the occasion.

It was hard to pull away because I know that when I don't hear from my brother, very bad things are going on and I wish that I could fix it.  I also had to make a very important choice.

At that point, I had to put my family first.

When my brother was first trying to kick the heroin habit, my mother phoned me at work and said something to the effect that he was stopping drugs and needed a place to go and she dropped him off at my house.

Pardon me?  I knew nothing about drying out a heroin addict.  We opened our house to him because, as was so plainly figured out, there was nothing in the surrounding distance around us that would offer him anything by way of drugs.  We are in the area of town where they have the highest concentration of city service workers, police and fire.  The well was dry over here.  No heroin to be had.

He hung with us for two days, then made the sojourn to my sister's house.  She helped him through the terribly rough time of withdraw.  He didn't want to do that here.  My sister, after all, had demons that she had fought herself.  She knew where he was at-- in a sense.  I live in a land of the blissfully naive.  Or at least, the land of more naive than I am now.

We pulled him up, dusted him off and for a time that I can't even tell you (probably at least a year), my mom, my sister and I kept daily track of my brother.  We referred to him as "The Eagle" and would ask if he showed up.  I know that I've said it before and I'll say it again-- I went and searched for my brother and beat on doors of houses and apartments, called and drove up and down roads looking for him in an upright or collapsed condition.  I went into places to hunt for him that I should have never been in.  It is by the grace of God alone that I was kept safe.

It is here where I insert that my husband has been on a big Megadeth kick.  A few weeks ago, he went to Gigantour in Youngstown.  Gigantour is Dave Mustaine's project and if you know anything about him or the band Megadeth, you'll know that they were sex, drugs and rock and roll.  After Hubs went and had the time of his life, he wanted me to download the book that Dave Mustaine wrote onto my Kindle.  We could borrow it for free from the library.  (The finances thank him.)  This is where for the FIRST time in our 16 1/2 year marriage, I saw my husband sit down and read a book cover to cover.  (Or the equivalent on the Kindle.)  Since he isn't a reader and read through the whole thing in a week and a half, I decided to take a crack at it.

As of this moment, I am at 67% on my Kindle.  I have read until 1 AM.  To read the book, Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir, I have some explanations into my brother's erratic and self-centered attitude.

Hello heroin!

Dave writes the book in the voice that he speaks.  It is not PG by any stretch.  The window that it provides into what my brother has gone through is one that I've never had.  I have never taken an illicit drug.  I was offered pot on many occasions.  It isn't my thing.  I drank a bit for a few years in college.  It's not to say that I didn't co-smoke a cigarette from time to time.  However, once drinking was legal (sorry) it was no longer fun.  Hubs and I got married when I was 23 and outside of purchasing alcohol once in our entire marriage and I admit that I finally gave away because we never did consume it.  Hubs and I sat with a reality that my brother and sister didn't look at or fully take into account-- we had family history of addiction.  Hubs' family has addiction history not within the confines of his immediate family, but within the branches of the family tree.  I have them in an up close and personal view kind of way.  Knowing that, we decided not to drink.  Hubs' one and only drink was when he was 16.  The last drink I had was just over 10 years ago. I don't state this making us sound like prudes, we just know that the outer ugliness of addiction looks like.  (My biological father is an alcoholic and I saw how he treated us or better said, had nearly zero involvement in our lives whatsoever.)

I don't want that for my family and Hubs doesn't either.

But back to my brother. He has fallen off the wagon and landed at my sister's house very "dope sick."  She worked him through it and the last time she did, it was downright ugly.

The other day, when we were on the boat and trying to wait out the storm that had us surrounded, I texted my brother about the time the same thing happened to him and Hubs.  He texted me back.  Then he called me later.  That's a big move since this is the first time that my brother talked to me as he always had in a very long time.

My brother had called to regale me with the recent antics of his ex-wife and different details about things in his life.  When he mentioned that he has "an open membership to the Country Club" I about choked.  "Look at you.  4 years ago, you were a hood rat and now you have a membership to a country club and I have to guess that there is a polo shirt hanging in your closet."  There was a laugh and he said, "Yes I do.  That would be Liz's doing."

I told him that if he looks at his ex-wife and sees where she is at, she's gone no where despite the education that she received.  She went to school for medical assisting and was very good at it.  She was offered a wonderful job.  She declined.  She could make more on welfare and so she wouldn't do it.  She has remained an addict, doing what it is that addicts do to acquire the goods that they need to "get well."  (As Dave Mustaine said that his drummer would say when needing to get more drugs to combat the effects of withdraw.)  Drugs have taken over her and she's not fighting it.

I told my brother that I know that he will always have demons follow him (heroin and alcohol) and that not every day would be full of sunshine (bipolar), but that I was proud of him for working hard and getting himself clean.  I say this in not an arrogant way, but I think that to my brother, my saying that I'm proud of him means more to him than my mom saying it.  He'd rather call my mom to admit his transgressions rather than me.  He knows that we try to live clean lives and he knows that I'm not being judgmental, but I've stood in front of him and cried for him.

I got a text yesterday morning.  It was from my brother.  Pardon the profanity.

My brother.  He's fighting it.  It isn't going to be a perfect fight, but he's determined not to go back on Seroquel for the bipolar disorder, because it makes him tired and mean.  He's working with his doctor (Hubs' primary care doctor, by my brother's suggestion) to do different blood testing and to not just treat the bipolar, but him as a person.  He has been completely honest with his doctor about his addiction issues.

He is also being honest with himself.

It isn't going to always be easy for him, but I'll take it as we can get it.  I'm all for positive reinforcement.  That text message?  It made me cry.

ETA:  Before it went POOF! and away from the Kindle, I did get to finish reading Dave Mustaine's book.  I told my brother about what I was reading.  "Does it make an even bigger impact that I straightened myself out myself?"  "Since Dave has done rehab 17 times, yes.  I can see where it is not an easy thing at all."

A family day out on the boat.

A lovely day to go out on the boat.

We were (obviously) near one of the Goodyear blimp hangars.

Hubs got a tug on his line.  He said that it started about 100 yards back.

Lookie Loo!  He caught it!

A bass.

15".

And because we're catch and release people, he dropped him right on back out in to the water. 

Not too long after that, we had a few sprinkles.  It was rather warm and humid, so some sprinkles were definitely welcome. 

Hubs decided to tuck us up underneath some branches.  He figured we could wait it out. 

And it kept raining. 

Here is where he is wanting to tell you that he checked The Weather Channel before we left and it said zero percent chance of rain.  He wanted to make sure that you knew he was showing you the zero under our festival of umbrellas.  We were thankful he brought them.

K, not an advertising billboard for Cabela's, is showing that she was going to sew.  As you can see, the floatation device beside her was rather wet. 

And it rained even harder.  It was at this time that K asked Hubs, "Did you remember to close the moon roof in mom's car?"  I could feel the fear running through his body.  It was then that conversation went a bit silent.  Well, and there was a large crack of lightning not too far down from us.

I tried to look the radar on my smartless phone.  After texting several people and calling my mom, I finally called my cousin.  Her husband answered the phone.  "Thank God you answered!"  I explained to Jacob that we were on the boat, the rain was only getting worse, there was lightning and when was it going to stop?  "You are ON the boat?"  "Yes, under some trees."  He told us that it would be just a little while longer and we would be good.  There was nothing else coming behind it.  Why couldn't Mom tell me that?

The thoughts running through Hubs' head ,as later shared with me,  "Oh crap.  If the roof is open in the car, it's going to take at least 2 days to dry it out.  The water is probably up to the steering wheel by now.  I can use my wet vac to dry it out.  Oh, this isn't going to be good." 

And because God has a sense of humor, He decided to poke Hubs in the side just a bit more and make it rain even harder.  It was at this point that we had waited the rainstorm out for over an hour.

Fog started to rise! 

But then, the rain stopped.  For zero percent chance of rain, the storm lasted for an hour and 15 minutes.  We were able to make it back to the car (despite the motor stopping momentarily) and the car-- it was dry.  

It's always an adventure.  Sometimes it is more adventure than others.  Hubs told me, "This is our vacation this year."  I told him that this would make three very wet vacations in a row.  He just laughed.  

Have a great day!

Sparklies for Hannah.

Today is the day that we stop and pick a sparkly out for Hannah.  Anyone who has read Rachael's blog, Tales of a Monkey, a Bit and a Bean, knows that her first daughter left them too soon.  It is today that is Hannah's Heaven Day and the reason why I share my sparkly for her.

K was at science camp this week and today was flint knapping.  She brought home the most gorgeous piece of flint with quartz crystals.

She shared it with me because she knows my love for rocks.  It is gorgeous and sparkly!  Sparklies for Hannah.

God giveth a heat advisory.

We're officially in a heat wave here in Northeast Ohio.  A heat wave for us is 3 consecutive days of 90+F.  Yesterday, my thermometer was reading 97.3 F.  I'm thinking it's just slightly toasty.

I have the house buttoned up and all of the shades down.  Thanks to no trees (not by choice), our house can get a hair toasty.  We have the air on at 76 and it seems to be keeping up just fine.

I decided to make some homemade weed killer because nothing says, "Let's kill some weeds" like a good mixture of organic weed killer and blazing sunshine.  I'm happy to say that my mixture coupled with the help of the big hot ball in the sky has killed the driveway weeds.

I'm embarrassed to say that they were kind of getting out of control.  All that rain we had before fed them like no tomorrow.

I also decided that this would be a most excellent time to wash the bed quilts.  Okay, so the humidity has been high and it has taken longer to dry t hem than what I thought it would be, but after running K's quilt through the laundry twice (thanks to some scab picking resulting in several spots of dried blood and some odd art supply that seemed to have blued the quilt,) they are both clean and the beds are re-sheeted and quarter-bouncing flat once again.  I did K's yesterday and ours today.  Our laundry line run isn't that large, so it maxes out at one per day.  No problem!  Since we have rains and storms coming for tomorrow, all of the laundry has been cleaned and is hanging.  I've found the bottom of my laundry bucket.  Shh.  Don't tell my people.  They're both at science camp today.  They'll find out soon enough.

I will not complain about the heat.  I will embrace it and use it!

Have a great day!

** Though I've posted it before, the weed killer is - 1 gallon white vinegar, 2 cups Epsom salts and 1/4 cup soap.  (I use Murphy's.)  I pour all of this into my pump sprayer and go to town.  Spray early on a hot, sunny day when you expect no rain for at least 8 hours.  It will kill the weeds, but you'll have to pull the deadness out.  It is not Round Up.  You will need to keep up on spraying every few weeks, but at least the critters at your house won't be Round Up Ready!

Tales from the Trenches: Oh Walmart pool. Oh how I detest thee.

I came home yesterday and saw that our new neighbors have subscribed to the Walmart pool movement.  You know the one.  I've referred to it here before.  The one where a blue bag of water sits on the lawn.  The one where I think to myself, "You know, growing up with a pool, you had to have a deck and a fence and locks so that kids couldn't get into it and drown."  At least on theirs, it has a cover to keep debris out.

Still, I detest the blue Walmart pool.  I detest the Walmart pool as much as I detest those blow-up holiday decorations that people pin all over their yards.  (One is one thing.  To have acreage helps.  Around here, we're not even sitting on a quarter of an acre and the houses are mostly ranches.  The blow-ups look like the Stay Puffed Marshmallow Man taking over New York City.)

Hubs and I were discussing this very bag of water the other day.  We were walking and I'm glad to say that other than the people across the street and one person around the corner, we are Walmart pool free in our neck of the woods.  Still, when you really look at it, it is an adult wading pool.  I mean, as an adult, you look pretty silly sitting in a plastic shell.  You look so much cooler sitting in a slightly higher (in this case, though there are ones that are deeper that the one that the neighbor has installed) blue saggy blop of thick plastic filled with city water.  Theirs has a filter and pump and all that.  They are serious about it.  Oy.  Hubs said that he saw them putting it up and thought of me.  I came in and asked if he could hear God audibly laughing.

As a bonus, we have the neighbor next to us who decided to install a wall of wood in his wife's flower bed, right next to our driveway.  Hubs says that's okay.  It'll provide a lovely home to the voles who have taken up residence in one of my flower beds.  Double oy.