About July...

So I woke up before 6am this morning and thought to myself, I miss blogging.

Really, I miss writing. That's half the reason I blog anyway. It's fun to write, and I'm a little less insane when I do it consistently - hence the overloaded handwritten journals of the early 2000s stuffed in random places around my childhood home.

Speaking of which, I discovered my journals from 3rd and 4th grade a month ago. Amazing.

So for the few minutes until the rest of the family awakens, let me begin a three month summary of life with the G's.

July
The babies and I flew to see Big Sis and celebrate our sweet new Baby C. She was tiny and precious and made me have all those feelings about how newborns are such miracles which naturally made my latent hormones say MAKE ANOTHER ONE OF THESE STAT!!! Then it would be time for a feeding or I'd see my sister's eyes after a rough night and my brain would scream back SHOP STILL CLOSED!!!

Big Sis had a rough go of July, so I was glad to get to see her and know that she was recovering from all the craziness. I got jealous of her beautiful big house that made living with your parents and sister's family for a week right after having a newborn somehow not the worst thing in the world. I tried to convince her that I didn't need to see any sights in town this visit, I just wanted to hang out with her and her growing family, and also not die of heat exhaustion. So there were sprinklers, and bubble baths, and a weird board game with a name I forget and lots of HGTV to pass the time. The week was fantastic, but far too short.

Back in our own house, we beat the heat with Camp Nicole some more, and bought a little kiddie pool that our little kiddies loved. Ok, that's a lie. PDG loved it. MDG thought about loving it, decided he hated it, and then after enough coercion decided sure, why not, I guess I could kinda love it.

The weekend before Grandma S came to town, the check engine light came on our beloved Pathfinder. Yes, the one I learned to drive on back in the late '90s. More on that saga another post.

We drove our new vehicle (you're in suspense, aren't you? I knew it! Ha!) to Ocean City where this family of non-water people did the best we could creating beach memories for the future. And it was all well and good until a stupid bug bite on my arm started turning puffy and red with streaks going all over the place. J-Man was sure it was nothing. Grandma S was certain I was dying. I was in the middle thinking it looked weird, but surely it could wait until vacation was over.

We arrived at Grandma S's friend's house in Annapolis on the last day of our vacation where, within 30 seconds of seeing my arm, she was telling me I had an infection trying to get into my bloodstream and needed to be on antibiotics within hours or else I'd be hooked up to IVs in a hospital like someone else I know had to be once before. Even though she's a nurse, it still sounded a little cuckoo, but I listened and sent J-Man straight to the pharmacy as she called it in.

If you're thinking all this still sounds pretty normal, throw in Grandma S having debilitating back spasms and her friend disappearing for four hours right after this moment because her dog was hemorrhaging and all of us hanging out at her house with her three dogs, praying my toddlers don't destroy anything. And, oh yeah, the dog got put to sleep before she got back so she called to insist we cook her food and eat dinner at her house without her. It wasn't the antibiotics making me feel a little dizzy...

In the end, there was swimming in the pool and smores in the fire pit and the swollen red streaks never hit my lymph nodes. July ended as fast as it always does and we moved onward into the final weeks of summer.