Blowin' in the Wind

It was a bit of a mentally exhausting week.  I still wasn't feeling good, Jacob has been in a mood, Craig was on the road from Thursday to midday Saturday, and the world continues to feel generally challenging.

Before I get into this past week, here's a picture from last weekend of Carter playing with my old slot machine bank.  We had read about a spelling bee in a book and I told him the story of when I was in the Lutheran Schools spelling bee while my parents were on vacation, and I came in second because I spelled "monstrous" wrong.  I think my parents felt bad about missing it, because they brought me the best souvenir ever: a slot machine bank!  It still mostly works--the reels are a little more finicky--but Carter had a blast with it.  It's always fun when your kid can enjoy a piece of your childhood.

One hard part of this past week was the school mask mandate being dropped.  While most people were making happy posts of smiling faces on social media, I was sending my kids off masked, same as usual.  And feeling terribly guilty about it.  Knowing that you're having your kids do something that most families aren't asking of their kids is hard.  But we had just gotten past a week off of school, so who knows what was floating around.  And if you listen to the anti-maskers, our immune systems are crap after being masked for two years (never mind that they also insist masks block nothing but yet somehow are completely covered with bacteria--shouldn't we have been exposed to that bacteria at least?), so do I really want to expose my kids to that cesspool as everyone's catching everything?  I told them that we'll give it a few weeks, see how cases and other absences evolve, see how they're feeling about things, and go from there.  Carter seemed a little bummed that more people weren't wearing masks, but Jacob was pleasantly surprised how many people stayed masked at his school.  He knows that if he gets COVID it might impact his spring basketball, so he's probably more motivated to wear one for that reason alone.  But as a parent it really felt crappy to not let them be a part of all the joy and smiles.  And then I went to church on Ash Wednesday and was one of only four people I saw in a rather full church who were wearing one--and probably the only one younger than 60.  It was actually disheartening, because I just don't get how no one thinks that it's a risk to be sitting next to people you don't know, whose habits you don't know, and/or to not really care what you might be carrying without knowing it.  I guess it's frustrating because while we don't have any specific reasons to feel concerned, there's still a bit of risk for Craig and me in particular, and if we let up and got sicker than expected, I'd be so mad at myself--just like I was after I took down my mask for a couple conversations and almost got COVID a few weeks ago.  

Speaking of which, I haven't been feeling like myself since I got exposed, and after two and a half weeks of it I was really starting to feel fatigued after long days of head pressure and some dull pain.  Some days it just felt like someone was pressing their fingers into my temples.  Other days the pressure went through my temples, down the back of my head, and into my neck.  Sometimes there were twinges of pain, and sometimes it just felt like the front of my head was extra hot, even though my temperature was normal.  Between wondering and worrying about what it was and having to be functional while working all day, it was really starting to tire me out.  I finally called the doctor on Thursday and got an appointment for Friday.  My doctor decided to start with antibiotics in case I was having some sort of underlying sinus infection.  It wasn't out of the question, but normally a sinus infection is mucus city for me, and that wasn't the case.  Her next step would be physical therapy in case it was tension from sitting at a desk and general stress, but I'm not convinced of that since I had a few days off during break and should have relaxed a little then.  Let's hope the antibiotics work.  I've had moments of feeling almost normal since I started taking them, but most of the time the pain or pressure is still there in some form.  Tonight I made it a point to work out with extra attention to my neck and shoulders to see if I could work out whatever was causing the pain up my neck and into my head.  It seemed to help a little, so I'm just going to have to try to keep it up.  If nothing else, it'll give me some ammunition when the doctor starts talking about therapy again, if I've been doing my own stuff and it's not working.  I don't like feeling off but not having much else to help diagnose things.  It's frustrating and worrisome, particularly for someone with anxiety, but hopefully it's nothing.  

Even though it made Friday a little more hectic since I was solo with the kids in the morning, it was nice that Craig's roadtrip was a day earlier than usual and got him home on Saturday afternoon.  We were happy to do dinner out (it saved us some money to eat in for a change), and Carter loved making his own pizza at the restaurant for the first time in a couple years.  He was very proud of how it turned out!
 

During the meal we watched the girls' varsity basketball team from Jacob's school as they competed in the Section V final.  We followed the game on the way home (including an ice cream stop at Dairy Queen) and they ended up winning a few minutes after we walked in the door.  It was neat to see, even if it won't be his school for much longer.

Sunday was a weird day.  We went to church in the morning, which was fine.  It was weirdly warm, even first thing in the morning, already in the mid-50s.  Once we got home, as the temperature continued to rise, the winds increased with it.  They were predicting wind gusts of 65mph, which is always a challenge for me.  I was doing everything in my power to ignore it, from making lunch to taking down the Valentine's decorations to putting on music through earbuds to drown it out.  The anxiety was a lot and I could not stop tensing up.  In my freakout I finally got fed up with the fact we'd had a puzzle sitting on our dining room table for about two weeks and it was desperately waiting to be done, so I finished it with Carter's help.  It was a fun one, Lego Minifigures! 

Carter and I played a little Wii in the basement, which helped dull the sound of the wind.  But we had also talked about trying to go to a playground since it was so warm out.  Carter has been talking about wanting "climbing season" to start (aka playground season), and since it was a warm day, we wanted to try to enjoy it despite the wind.  The high hit 73, but by that point of the day it was about 65.  I figured if we were going to go out, we should do it soon.  I strategically picked a playground that had zero trees around it, so we went back to the two playgrounds at the Parma Town Hall.  The drive there was a little wild.  We saw a large tree down around the corner from our house, saw a few large branches down and some roof damage, and went through one busy light on blinking red.  The wind was pretty crazy.  Nothing that quite knocked me over, but it definitely made me take an extra step a couple times.  It was good to be back to the playground, and Carter had a blast playing with the other kids.  

The wind was fascinating to watch and feel, and it honestly felt less nervewracking to be out in it than at home listening to the house creak.  I think it helped that we were out in an open area and not near the roar through the trees.   

It wasn't too bad to be out in, but I will say that as the temperature dropped into the low-60s while we were there, the wind definitely made it feel colder.  A hoodie was enough but the sun-warmed car felt nice when we were done, and my ears felt rather windblown.

Hair and hoodie blowing from behind!

In between Carter running around with other kids, he was back to his favorite, climbing!

He also had a blast on the spinner.  Between all the kids and the wind, it was a challenge to keep it spinning!

At one point I climbed to the top of the tower to see how the wind felt up there--luckily it was a very stable structure but still pretty intense--and it gave me a better view of a tree on the other side of the courts that looked like it was taking the brunt of the wind.  

Quite a tilt happening there.  Wonder if it will still be there next time we visit?

Carter was determined to get in some good climbs, and he had to pull his pant legs up to get some grip.  

He was cracking me up with his narration and his short shorts!  He actually did a successful climb before this but then decided he wanted me to record him.  I think he had done a little too much climbing prior and just tired himself out.  Oh, well...it's early in the season and he needs to get back into climbing shape!

It was nice to get out, and fortunately by the time we headed home for dinner, the wind was starting to wind down.  All things considered we made it through okay.  I'm pretty sure we have a very loose shutter on the windy side of the house--I haven't been over there yet but I could definitely hear it and I know we have a couple that are warped, so it wouldn't be surprising.  Our front window, which had extended from a six-inch crack to about a foot over the following weeks, officially extended across the entire window.  Not much we can do about it since the new one is on order but will still be a long wait.  Hopefully it holds okay in the meantime.  That night it became apparent that the houses across the street had no power.  There were no street lights initially, although those came on a while later.  But the whole side of the street as far as I could see was out.  I felt extra lucky we were still on.  The next day, just as I finished cooking my lunch, our power randomly went out.  I don't know if it was part of fixing the other power or what, but it stayed out for a little over three hours.  And since I couldn't figure out how to release our garage door (the rope broke off five years ago), I was basically just stuck in the house on a super dreary, cold day waiting for the power to come back so I could do more work.  It was rather boring, if I'm honest.  Sadly, the return of our power did not bring the power back to the opposite side of the street, and neither did the trucks that were on our street late into the evening.  This morning there were nine trucks at one point, and I saw them loading a new telephone pole back into a yard, so I guess that was the culprit.  Their power came back on sometime after lunch today, probably around 48 hours after it went out.  Five years ago today was the worst wind storm in Rochester history, and we lost power for three days that time.  This one wasn't quite that bad--that one had gusts in the low 80s, and this one tied for 7th with 72mph.  Let me tell you, I will gladly give up 70 degrees in early March if it means we avoid 70+mph winds.  Give me a random March snowstorm any day.  Of course, five years ago, a few days after the windstorm we got hammered with over a foot and a half of snow.  I'll pass on that one-two punch as well.  But I would really like to get closer to actual spring.  That little taste of it was a reminder how nice it is to be outside and feel some warmth!

Now onward to another week, and hopefully a much quieter one at that.