Summer in 3...2...1

Technically at 11:32 pm tonight, the summer solstice will be happening in the Eastern time zone!!

Woot!

I'm having this go live at 11:31 - LOL!

Who am I kidding - I'm a wimp when it comes to the heat!  

We've got some storms rolling thru right now - bringing some much needed rain!  

Getting caught up from my "catching up" post....

In mid-May, I went on a "Girls' Only" 3 day weekend trip over to the west side of the state with my Mom & both sisters.  I won't rehash it here, but if you want to read about the weekend thru the eyes of Chuck the Skeleton, I posted about it on my Halloween blog... 

The other big news is that I'm going to be a Gramma again!  

Spawn is due mid-October.  We had a last-minute get together / gender reveal at Sis1's house and

It's a girl!  

Pretty sure BabyBoy has no clue what's going on, other than he was laying on her lap the other day and Mama's belly kicked him in the head!  

He has no fear whatsoever. 

1st ice cream!

My first purple coneflower of the spring!

I guess I won't be planting anything in that planter this year, since it's keeping him from digging in my other plants!

We had a family reunion a couple weekends ago. 

The lake was a big hit!

Watch out for crocs, tho!

One of my cousins was pretty smart - she lives out of state and came in to basically meet everyone - she walked up and announced "Hi, I'm Linda - I'm Bill's oldest daughter" - so we all knew who she was - LOL!

So we had quite the awkward last couple days.  In April or May, Spawn's bio dad / my ex told her he was going to come up to visit (he lives in Texas)...in June.  OK.  I never thought anything more about it until I was doing my thing at work on June 2 - and he suddenly popped into my head...June when???

It ended up being this weekend, which I didn't put 2 & 2 together until I told the Spouse and he commented about it being Father's Day.  Whoops!   Anyway, it was a really bad week for him to be here.  I had to work late every day this week because the only other person in my department was on vacation and I had SAR training most of Saturday.  But I figured, oh well - he wasn't really here to see me!  She can entertain him.   He showed up here Thursday afternoon.  

Friday I get a text from the Spawn asking what she was supposed to do with him all day?  LOL!  We (all of us) ended up going to Downtown Detroit Friday night and walked close to 5 miles. 

We enjoyed the Riverwalk and breezes off the Detroit River. 

BabyBoy got to ride the carousel in Rivard Plaza. 

Chuck got to do the YMCA.

We didn't actually see the Detroit Mounted Police this time, but we saw their rig!

We wanted to take the Ex to dinner at someplace that was uniquely Detroit and sadly, Hockeytown Cafe was closed, so we went to Buddy's Pizza instead.

Buddy's happens to be near Comerica Park & Ford Field!  

We couldn't be that close without showing him the big Tiger!

We kind of regretted parking where we did, since it was over a mile back to the car.  Spouse & Spawn were both hurting.   But the Ex definitely got to experience Detroit (in a good way)!  

Looking up at the Renaissance Center, aka the General Motors World Headquarters. 

Training Saturday was basically a refresher of what we learned when we did got SARTECH II certified, since the 2 newest members will be finishing up their certifications next weekend.  We did some land navigation with compasses, area & grid searches, tied some knots and even 2 of the K9s came out to play.  

We all love this picture - it looks like some sort of hillbilly metal music album cover.  

Our Father's Day was pretty low key.  The Ex came by to say goodbye, he was heading home.  Spouse did some much needed work on Spawn's car and we took him out to dinner. 

So that's basically all what's going on here.  Next week is back to work normal hours & I'm going to get my second vaccine shot after work.  I had a nasty reaction to the first one - fever, chills, nausea, etc - hope this one is better!  I wonder if that's because I've already actually HAD covid?  Guess I'll find out - I won't mind being "sick" on Tuesday! 

BYEEEE!

Catching up....

I'm still here!!  

I apparently started a post back on May 8 and only managed to get pics uploaded, so I'll go ahead & make this go live. 

The township put down new wood chips around the playgrounds at the park!

Sis & I went for a 10 mile horseback ride!

I already miss those days when we had to wear coats!

My blood is too thick for this 85+ degree stuff we've been having! 

We were estimating 7 miles - we were way off!

My tiny daffodils are so cute!

One's first corn on the cob requires an extended pinky!

Poor Chuck!

I had a giggle at the grocery store when I saw this personal sized pizza.

A very classy way to ask trucking companies to haul your freight! 

So yeah - I'll get caught up here soon with a real post. 

We're all doing fine here!

The post-Covid post

Also known as the reason I didn't do the A to Z Challenge this year!

I spent over a week like this.

So let's go back to Sunday,  March 28 - I got a text from my office manager at work - someone who was there Friday who had tested positive for Covid.  Woot.  She wanted everyone who had also been there to get a rapid test.  Of course the Spawn was just getting ready to leave for work and the Spouse was at a buddy's house so I wasn't about to drag BabyBoy out to some doctor's office parking lot to wait hours to get tested.  I took the first appointment I could get, Monday at 1:30pm.  However, I was starting to feel some symptoms.  I was tired & achy & felt like I was coming down with a nasty cold.  

I went to get my rapid test and it came back negative, but I still opted to stay home because I was feeling pretty lousy.   Tuesday 3/30 I went to work and kept my mask on all day.  Wednesday I was up early, not knowing which end to put in the toilet, if ya catch my drift.  I took a shower and it literally sapped all my strength.  I couldn't bring myself to put clothes on, let alone drive into work and be productive.  So I texted Jen and told her I was staying home and she advised me to take another rapid test Thursday before I came back.    

The Spawn had been complaining that she had no sense of taste of smell.  She went Tuesday, got tested and her rapid test came back positive.  She had no other symptoms at all.  The Spouse also wasn't feeling well, he mainly just felt like he had a mild cold and still worked (from home) every day.   He decided to go with me Thursday 4/1 and get tested, too.  My rapid test was negative again, but I also took the PCR test, which the lady at the urgent care told me is more accurate.  I went into work that afternoon and again Friday.  Saturday morning, the Spouse & I both got emails that our PCR tests were positive. 

The Spouse was already feeling better, so he only told one other person at work.  I had to stay home for 10 days after my test, (even tho I'd been there 2 days! At least I had kept a mask on.) I spent a lot of time napping with the cats and forcing myself to eat.  I literally had no appetite and could only eat a few bites at a time.  Then I'd get nauseous if I didn't eat!  And the chills were no joke!  Several different times I had to put my feet between the Spouse's thighs and my hands under his arms, trying to get warm!  

Oh and there were 4 of us out at work at one time.  And I checked my email earlier today and someone else tested positive Friday again.  We've actually lost 2 of our guys from Texas to Covid.  The boss man is paranoid and is insisting we all get vaccinated.  Which I don't agree with since nobody knows any long term effects to these vaccines that showed up so quickly.  

I started feeling better around Wednesday the 7th.  We had some beautiful warm spring days and several times I wanted to take BabyBoy to the park at the end of the street, but I would get tired & winded pretty quickly.       

Needless to say, our Easter wasn't very exciting.  We didn't even color any eggs!

At least we had some plastic ones in a tote in the garage so we could at least get some pics of BabyBoy "looking" for them.

Boys should get dirty!

I waited until the last minute to RSVP for a building search class with my SAR team on the 10th.  I wanted to go, but I also wanted to make sure I was feeling up to it!   

I'm so glad I was feeling better (and it was the very last day of my quarantine - oops!) because this was so interesting & a lot of fun!

Crossroads Village / Huckleberry RR is a county park that's got an old steam engine train you can take rides on and a village from the late 1800s.  But since so many places in Michigan are still shut down the village has been closed, but somehow, Pat, the lady at the head of the K9 One search & rescue team (See my post about Halloween Camp - it's the same lady!) managed to get the entire village for us to train in!

First we heard stories about some of the call-outs Pat has been on - she had been in Joplin after the big tornado and had some good ones to tell.  Then we learned about building searches and how to leave markings for other teams saying when the building was searched, any hazards or victims and such.  

So then we got to explore!  We were put into 5 teams and given a sector to search.  The scenario was there had been a tornado and there were 6 missing first responders that we had to find.  If a building happened to be locked, we had to mark it as if it was structurally unsound and was not searched.  The buildings that were unlocked were fair game to be searched. 

Heehee - this is one of the ladies from my SAR team in the village schoolhouse. 

Some of the buildings are usually not open to the public and they use for storage.  I was excited to find all of their Halloween stuff in a barn!

We were not able to search this house!  

Going back to things I should have known from Halloween Camp last year - normally one would expect to be looking for an adult human, since that's what you'd think a first responder would be?  Surprise!  See that teddy bear in my left arm?  That's one of the "policemen" that had been "missing".   He's also wearing a tag that says "I'm OK, just scared!  Help me out from under this debris".  

One of the other bears that was found had a tag that said "skull crushed" and another "broken legs".  

And there were hazards that you needed to be aware of like "broken glass" (a 8x11 photo of a aisle in a grocery store with broken bottles), a photo of a meth lab and a fake pipe bomb, since you wouldn't want to use your radio around something like that! 

So that was quite an interesting & fun day.  I really enjoy working with K9 One - Pat is an amazing lady in many ways!

Coming home from my sister's house one day.  

Pretty awesome!

My one lonely daffodil.

Ugh - I need to work in my flower beds!

But that's about all of the excitement around here.  Saturday was my last day of quarantine, so the office manager asked if I could come into work on Sunday.  I needed to get some invoicing done so accounting could close the end of the month.  I ended up being there over 8 hours, since I had a week's worth of emails to go thru and catch up on planning & also going thru a week's worth of mail that was overflowing my inbox.   And I wasn't finished!  I got some invoicing done, but it was done half-assed and it wasn't actually submitted to the customers for payment until a couple days later. 

Anyhoooo, it's time to turn in for the night.  I am going horseback riding tomorrow (well, today now!) with the sister & a couple ladies from the SAR team and they like to be out early.  

Later!