Since We've Been Back...

It's been an eventful couple weeks since we got back from Disney.  In recent years we've vacationed right before back to school, which is always a LOT to come back to, and while this should have been better, it ended up being almost as crazy.

The first day we were home, I was in the bathroom that evening and heard a weird noise.  I looked up at the fan and saw something sticking out of the vents.  It was moving around up there and making awful clicking noises against the plastic.  It looked like an alien trying to escape, and it was freaking me out!  I eventually decided it must have been a ground beetle, based on what little I could see, but I have no idea how it would have ended up in our vent unless a bird dropped it there or it did a ton of climbing/flying.  It was in there for a while and I watched it until I was confident its body was too big to come through, but finally I went back up and it was quiet.  I vacuumed up the dust that it had knocked out with its legs, so even if it was still there resting, hopefully that scared it off for good.  Or maybe it just died up there.  Realistically, since we just got home that day, for all we know it could have been up there for a while and finally crapped out.  It did make me nervous that it could have chewed through something, but I'm still not sure how to take that fan down and check.  Thankfully we haven't had any return visits so hopefully that's over.

The legs are in the middle, the stuff on the right is the dust it pushed out.

Monday I went back to work, and when I woke up on Tuesday morning, I had a really sore throat.  I was maybe a little congested and later did have the post-nasal drip I expected from the sore throat.  I was a little tired, but didn't feel terrible otherwise.  I did start feeling a bit worse that night, but it was short-lived.  Of course, that spawned a bunch of meltdowns from Jacob, who is extra nervous about catching anything and having any other delays in his recovery.  I was sent off to the basement for the better part of a couple days.  He was absolutely freaking out the first day, begging me to take a COVID test, but I refused to test until much later in the day because I didn't want to test too early and get a false negative.  I did test in the evening and it was indeed negative, but I was still stuck in the basement.  I slept down there a couple nights, which actually wasn't that bad.  The first night I was joined by Carter.  He had gotten Taco Bell that night since I wasn't really feeling good enough to cook (and wasn't welcome upstairs anyway), and he took a chance having some dairy.  He's been avoiding it for a few weeks since it seemed to make his ulcerative colitis symptoms worse, but he just wanted some cheese on his taco and a quick dip of nacho cheese, so we figured we'd see if a Lactaid pill could help offset it.  Well, pretty quickly after that, he threw up.  Well, crap.  Was it the pill or the dairy, was it a stomach bug, or did he actually have COVID?  He threw up the last time he had it, so that was a little nervewracking.  Thankfully that was the only round of vomiting and he slept well in the basement bathroom on all the blankets.  He tried the pill again another day and was similarly nauseous but never got sick, so I guess we're done with those for now.  Anyway, over the course of the week, all four of us tested (some twice), since there were a few other cold symptoms floating around, as well.  No positives, thank goodness, although my cold is still hanging in there.  I mostly feel okay, just some lingering congestion and maybe a couple days of extra tiredness here and there.  

When I was feeling a little better on Wednesday, I went to Aldi to pick up a few things for dinner.  I happened to see a few social media posts about this magnetic board, and for $10, I decided I needed to get it.  I've been wanting to do something like this for years, and a magnetic board felt like a fun way to do it, since I can change it up seasonally.  It was a nice little activity while I was quarantined!  I'm waiting for Carter's name to magically change to "Farter", of course, but so far so good.  It's so cute and I love that it changed up my stale dining room decor a bit.   

When I got sick I was really nervous that it would prevent me from going to my family reunion that weekend.  I already had to miss one due to our trip, so I definitely wanted to make it to the other one.  It was also my last chance to see my parents before they left on a 2-1/2 week trip to Europe (their first (only?) river cruise!).  Thankfully my cold wasn't that bad by Saturday, and I had a really nice time at the picnic.  I even met a cousin (my second cousin, I believe) who lives in California but is just a few years younger than me.  Man, I wish she'd have been around more when we were kids!  I had some really interesting, fun conversations with my dad's cousins, and it was great to see my aunts and uncle, too.  Carter had baseball tryouts that day, so the boys had to miss it, but it was actually a really pleasant day on my own, despite three hours of driving.

So, yes, Carter had baseball tryouts for a travel team.  I'm not sure I'm up for that since next year is a really important travel year for Jacob and Craig will likely still be working for the Knighthawks (more on that in a minute), so I don't know how we'll manage when they conflict.  But it's important to him and we sort of just want to see if he can make it.  He tried out for another team this week, as well, although he prefers to play for the first one.  He seemed to do well at both, so I guess we'll see.  His August sandlot season got canceled due to too few kids signing up, but he'll be back to house fall ball next month regardless.

Jacob has had a bit of a stressful first couple weeks home.  In addition to worrying about my illness and his leg, he was going down crazy rabbit holes assuming he had other things going on.  I can't even remember the crazy things he was suggesting, but suffice it to say it was a lot to deal with.  He's addicted to ChatGPT and I think that has been making things worse because he's constantly looking things up and I think it's putting other ideas in his head.  I did get him to up his new anxiety med dose after his follow-up with the meds nurse.  She encouraged him to try to get up to a therapeutic dose, because the half a dose he was on was clearly doing nothing.  I do think he's been a little calmer on the health front since, or he's at least been distracted enough by other things.  He was particularly panicking the other day because he was still having fatigue, and he insisted he wanted to go to the doctor.  He wanted a cortisol test, a sleep study, and general blood work--although I'm not convinced he'd get much more than the blood work.  In the midst of waiting for the afternoon sick appointments to open up, he talked about acupuncture, and I said that I was aware of a couple places we could look into.  We were miraculously able to get an appointment for Friday and that seemed to calm him down a ton.  Of course, it ended up getting postponed to Tuesday, but the fatigue was a little better on Thursday and Friday so he's laid off the doctor visit demands for now.  Tuesday should be really interesting, though, not just for him, but also for me who has wanted to do acupuncture for my smell issues.  

As for Carter, he finally had his GI follow-up on Wednesday.  We had a very nice chat with the doctor (and then with another doctor), and they explained a lot of what's going on and what we can expect.  He started the steroid right after we got back from Disney, and it seemed to help almost immediately.  We asked about the odds that he'll be able to eat dairy again, and the doctor was hopeful.  He said that both the Cdiff he was treated for and the ulcerative colitis can strip the body of that enzyme, so it's possible it will recover once his intestines do.  They also started him on another drug that seems to be a longer term ulcerative colitis drug.  I don't love adding another med to the mix (we're like a freaking pharmacy these days), and was sort of hoping we could do the steroid first and see how he did, but given the "moderate" severity, I guess they figured the extra boost would be worth it.  Thankfully he seems to be tolerating it well, and he excitedly told me this weekend that he had a completely normal poop, which has been a rarity over the past few months.  Such a weird topic, I know, but it's how we roll here now.  Interestingly, today when he went, he called me up because there was "white" in his poop.  That's a new one, but I guess it beats the blood I've become accustomed to looking at.  It was super weird, so I pulled out the plastic knife I keep in the bathroom cabinet (it was originally to break up Jacob's giant toilet-clogging poops years ago and I never took it back out) and carefully dug in.  At first I thought maybe it was fat from the leftover salmon he ate yesterday that seemed to have a fat pocket (based on a photo he texted me, anyway), but as I dug in a bit more I realized the one piece was a perfect oval.  It was sort of rubbery and seemed to have a couple layers.  I'm thinking it was one of his pills that was only partially digested but stripped of the red outer coating.  I'm not sure why it wouldn't have dissolved and digested properly, but I guess we'll keep an eye out and ask the doctor if it keeps happening.  But I'm happy he seems to be feeling better, and I hope now he can start gaining some weight, maximize his puberty growth spurt, and get stronger for baseball.

This Tuesday was an exciting day for Craig because it marked the new era of the Knighthawks.  After a very stressful summer worrying the team might fold, they were officially sold to the Seneca Nation.  It had begun looking very promising in the last few weeks, and last Friday was technically Craig's first day working for them.  He got a promotion and a nice raise, which was even better.  But it's such a relief to have the team stay and to have some really promising ownership.  They have other businesses, so any Knighthawks' financial losses shouldn't be super problematic, and lacrosse is so dear to them as it is the "Creator's Game", so it's sort of a labor of love, so to speak.  The tribe president is so excited about it, and he seems like a much more personable guy than the Knighthawks' previous Native owner.  Curt had his upside--like the Dominican trip and the indoor waterpark Christmas party--but he was sometimes hard to read and asked a lot of Craig.  President Seneca seems really nice and genuine, and it sounds like he'll be a bit more hands-off and let the staff do their jobs.

Carter and I went to the press conference.  In order to be there, I had to do a work meeting while we waited.  I was also supposed to do my therapy appointment via Zoom before that, but I accidentally forgot to bring Craig a dress shirt since his was trapped at a different dry cleaner that didn't open until later, so I had to cancel that appointment to go back home and grab it.  Craig had been working hard for the prior couple weeks (including when we were in Florida) to get everything set up for the press conference, and it was exciting to see it all come together.

The news had come out from the Senecas on Monday, so there wasn't any big surprise, but fans were super excited about the new ownership and you could feel it from the ones who attended the event.  Craig was the press conference emcee.

It was a really cool, uplifting event, and I really have high hopes for this season.  It will be nice for them to have a dedicated staff, rather than one they shared with the Amerks (and always came in second place with), and it will be nice to have ownership that even cares that they exist.  Not that the Pegulas didn't, but particularly once Kim Pegula fell ill, you would have pretty much never known who owned them.  This should be much better, and it's oddly nice to get back to the Native presence.  One of the fans mentioned that the team felt like it was missing part of its identity without the dancers and Native influence we had under Curt, so it will be neat to have that connection again to the origins of the game.

Craig was relieved to have that event done, but there was no rest for the weary because he had another job to jump into immediately.  He was managing the Collegiate Box Lacrosse National Championship tournament, which was being held in Rochester.  He's gone to it for a number of years since the Knighthawks co-managed a league of four teams with the Buffalo Bandits.  This year, because of all the uncertainty, they didn't run the league but did send a couple teams to the event.  For years it was in California, then last year it was in Utica, and this year it came to Rochester.  Craig had offered to run it since it meant a decent payday when he wasn't sure if he'd have a job.  Once all of this ownership stuff happened, I'm pretty sure he wished he hadn't, but he did a great job getting everything set up, and the tournament seemed to go well.  But it meant working later Tuesday and Wednesday evening, then long days Thursday and Friday, and an early morning half day today.  It was a lot and he absolutely came home and napped afterward.  Tomorrow he's back off to Buffalo for another event, the I-90 Cup, where the Jr. Knighthawks will be playing.  So, suffice it to say, he's had a very busy week, but in the long run, he'll be in a really great spot once everything calms down.

Otherwise, I'm still picking up the pieces a bit from the harm our travels did to my flowers.  It didn't really rain while we were gone and my watering backups didn't seem to be enough.  It decimated my zinnias, but some of them and the other plants have recovered a bit.  Still, I've been battling some rather raggedy plants lately and trying to keep what I can alive in the midst of an "abnormally dry" pre-drought.  Our grass is dead--I don't think Craig has mowed the front since we got home, as only a couple weeds are growing--and we're going on heat wave #3 of the summer and second since we've been home (although we missed part of the last one).  We did have a couple cool days after that, which left the pool a bit chilly, and then we had a week of wildfire smoke that kept the solar heat limited, but I think it should recover this week to get a couple swims in.  My garden is kicking out cucumbers pretty good, and I've gotten a handful of beans and tomatoes.  I have one zucchini coming but only had one pepper and zero pumpkins.  My lettuce is done but I might plant a random spouted baby potato that accidentally got left behind in my pantry.  My black raspberries are done and my hydrangeas are fading fast.  I noticed my Autumn Joy Sedums are ready to bloom, which is really a sign of that last gasp of summer.  Sigh.  I'm sad that it's getting dark much earlier now, too.  I'm just not ready!  I still want to plan one more fun thing, ideally a family thing, but at minimum a roller coaster trip for Carter and me.  I wanted to do Hersheypark and Knoebel's, but the end-of-season Six Flags/Cedar Point season pass sale is taunting me again because all parks are included now and we could go anywhere next summer.  Carter has a church Darien Lake trip coming up so I'm half tempted to just bite the bullet so he doesn't have to pay and I could chaperone, too.  Decisions, decisions.  But stay tuned!

I'm sure I'm missing a couple things, but hopefully that gets us caught up on most of it...for now!