About my hiatus....

For my faithful few, here is a status update: I haven't started throwing, yet.

June was consumed by Michael's hospital stay and recovery from meningitis. Then I had to recover from his recovery. When a loved one is sick it takes a toll on this caregiver. There was a wedding in there somewhere too.....I think.

In July we spent the holiday weekend with family. Then I set about sorting and cleaning out the guest bedroom, closet and bathroom. (I turned the bathroom into a temporary storage place after the toilet incident.) This was a very methodical procedure since it included rearranging parts of the garage. I finished the day before our friends Karen and Drew arrived with their little red head Thomas. The kids fell in together like old friends, Mike and Drew wrote and recorded music, and Karen and I...we basked in friendship and the peace that comes from having everyone else in your household happily accounted for elsewhere. We spent a morning at the lake at Oak Mountain and then had a picnic under the trees. It was a nice weekend.

August found us taking our first trip to the beach with the kids. Gabriel and Grace loved the waves. Sean did as well. But he wanted someone to be holding him above them. They tired out easily and so did I. Gabriel began kindergarten mid month. It was more of an adjustment for me to get up early enough to put him on the bus than it was to have him away from me all day. Although, I do miss him.

Here we are at September. My final countdown has begun. I have to be throwing by the second week or I won't make the deadline for the Cullman Oktoberfest. I finally finished the shelf only to realize I could probably stood to have made one more. Then, as I am plotting out the time logistics as to how I can make it to West Point and back in the constraints of the school day with Sean and Grace, Gabriel gets a fever. And not just any fever. I pulled the thermometer out of his mouth when it hit 103.5 and threw him in a cold shower. I rushed off to the emergency room to wait five hours for a verdict. It is the flu and he cannot be around other kids for at least five days. Looks like I will be homeschooling after all. I am too tired to go into the adventure of driving around looking for a 24 hour drugstore all because the second ER doc prescribed a pill instead of a suspension med. Nor will I get into how Tamiflu is not covered by most insurance companies, including my own.

I think my plan of attack for the week will be to install the new dishwasher today, (did I mention the old one's abrupt death in Aug.?), call in an order to Mar-Lynn on Tuesday, hump over on Wednesday, get the electrical set up for the kiln on Thursday and Friday, and finally have dad bring up my kiln on Saturday. I will let you know on Sunday if I made it through without electrocution.