The Best Laid Plans

Opal is quite fond of watching the birds and squirrels frolic on the deck. She shows absolutely no inclination to actually go outside - thank goodness - but she will spend hours every day in this exact position.

I had grand plans for this week, but they've all been derailed by a rather horrendous summer cold. The running joke is that if I didn't like kissing my husband so much, I wouldn't have caught it. Even my grandmother rather solemnly told me this morning that, "that's what you get for necking with those boys!" In my defense, he wasn't showing any symptoms at the time.

The good news - being this sick is an excellent excuse for staying in bed with my iPad to catch up on the ebooks I downloaded from our library.

The bad news - I went back to the gym on Tuesday for the first time in months to restart my exercise program. (This was mere hours before the first tickle in my throat started.) Not only did I have to miss a class I've been wanting to take for more than six months, but I also worked hard enough that my body hurts. Normally I enjoy this sign of hard work, but right now...well, let's just call it all bad timing.

So here are a few random things, and we'll all hope that I'm back up and normal in a day or two.

• We received a letter in the mail a few days ago to let us know that the Princess has qualified for the gifted program, EEE. (Extended Educational Experiences)


• I am, quite naturally, enormously proud.


• I can't help but also being a bit worried. One of these days I will have to write a post about my own conflicted feelings about my experiences with the 'gifted' label. It's not always good, folks.


• Thank you to my mother in law, who whisked the girls off for some fun at the pool today.


• When I posted the picture of the cats a few days ago, I should have given you the punch line. My husband's only request when we decided it was time to add a new cat was that we not get any more black pets. You will notice if you look back that I managed to bring home a tortie and a grey. Ha.


• Can I just tell you how glad I am that we brought home two new cats? I think the kitten would have driven us all nuts if she didn't have another young cat to wrestle with constantly.


• I'm back on my thyroid meds. Back in December I went to see my doc to tell her about the food allergies, and we decided to drop the pills for a while to see what would happen. After all, I had not noticed any improvement on them until I had my allergies straightened out. Alas, I went in for a follow-up test this week and my TSH level has gone back up by two points since then. It's still in the normal range, but the fact that it's rising is a definite sign that I need the pills.


• Granted, I have felt like dog doo for much of the last few months, despite having been a very good girl on my allergy diet. Hopefully this will be the last little puzzle piece to fall into place.


• The cicadas are making me nuts. The last time the 13 year cycle hit was prior to our marriage, and as I was living at the family farm I didn't notice them so much. Living as we do now - surrounded by trees - we don't dare go outside because they are so loud. They are actually drowning out the dreaded highway noise!


• Odd fact for the day - I like donuts, but I certainly haven't ever eaten them often....maybe twice/year or so. (They are, of course, off of the menu permanently now.) So why is it that I now dream about them ALL of the time? Strange.

Time for another nap.