Purlewe Knits

This is a harbinger of bad stuff to come, at least this is what I’m convinced of. Our clock stopped in June too. (that’s when I miscarried)

So what’s happened so far?

My ankle is trashed. Yep, just when I start running again. I’m 11 workouts into the Couch to 5K running program again. I was really enjoying myself this time, figures. I don’t know the definition of trashed yet. I suspect some sort of Achilles injury. It has just been irritating for the last few weeks, but yesterday it went all wrong. Nothing specifically happened. The evening before I did a fairly hard bike ride and I ran the next morning. Apparently that is my cocktail for disaster (along with the clock stopping anyway). It is swollen, hurts to walk, almost impossible to walk down stairs, and has random sharp shooting pains.

I am really hoping this doesn’t mean we have to cancel our vacation. This year we are planning a bike trip across Missouri. Or at least mostly across it, we are going to ride the Katy Trail. With the girls in tow. I want to think that biking will be good for my ankle, it could be. I can’t walk, but I can still bike right? There would be some irony in that, somewhere.

One of my chickens died too. Our back yard was obviously a bird hell that day. We had a large tree removed to make way for our new chicken coop (again irony) and fruit trees. It was a crazy hot day and the chickens had to be locked up in their run. Ori (short for Oriental Chicken) apparently was too scared to come out of the coop (falling branches and all) and got too hot. I buried her in a Baker’s bag.

Here’s some pictures of the tree and it’s hole. Our yard really looked like a war zone for a few days. One of Ori too. How odd that I took a picture of her the day she died!

tree (click for full view)

workers and stump

no tree

Ori (she was the black and white one)

The tree guys are back this afternoon. Hopefully to finish this time. We are ready to move forward with our backyard plans. Hopefully my two remaining chickens will survive this visit. Hopefully the girls sleep through this visit. Of course the tree guys show up on the day Little Miss one and two decide to nap.

I’ve tried and tried to keep up with the blog thing. It goes okay for a while and then become a burden. This is going to be my last attempt. My domain expires in 24 days. SO, if I can’t make keep up for the next 3 weeks I’m calling it quits.

This past spring has been a bitch though. I should take the time to say that. We tried and failed to sell our house. This is a bit depressing, but I’ve also come to terms with it and living in the city can for sure have its benefits. Farm City by Novella Carpenter has some excellent thoughts along the lines of having some urban agriculture. The house thing just consumed way too much of our time. So we are settling in, for at least another 5 years. It would be nice to have this place paid for before moving so we aren’t in this “can’t buy before we sell situation” ever again. We ordered 8 fruit trees, got 5 blueberry bushes, and 5 chickens. We have someone scheduled to remove a large ash tree from our yard (to provide sun for the fruit trees and chickens), someone else is coming to expand our patio and build a retaining wall, and we are having siding put on the house as well.

Then there was the class thing. I teach online class. With twins (who are now 2 – how the heck did that happen) I do my work at night after they go to bed. I usually teach one class and have about 25 students (that participate). For Spring quarter I signed up for my normal class and a new one. I was having a heck of a hard time getting information out of the woman that designed the new online class when she up and died. Seriously, who does this happen to? I was the only other one to EVER have any (um … 1 week) interaction with this online class so I “inherited” her section. That have me three classes and about 75 students. We added up the assignments I was grading in a week and it was near 500. THAT was a lot of work for “after hours.”

As soon as that fiasco was over we have 2 weeks of family. Three different “groups” of visitors in two weeks. I love them all, but next year we need them to space out their visits a bit. In the middle of that I had a miscarriage. We were incredibly lucky to have my parents here to help with the girls, while Hubby took me to dr appointments and spend a few hours in the ER with me. That was an incredibly trying experience.

So here we are, finally settling in for the spring/summer. Spring is over and summer is here! In full force I might add. We just did a walk around the neighborhood block after dinner and it was a sauna out there. 103 degree heat index. Poor little K was soaking with sweat and little B had to have a shoulder ride from her Daddy to make it up the last hill.

I should have plenty of fodder for the next few days. I’m excited to get it out and see if I can make this stick this time. Tomorrow … what I’ve been knitting and maybe some on my sewing projects.