Summer begins

Yes, I know the summer solstice isn't for three and a half weeks, but when school lets out, it's summer. The twins' last final was Thursday, May 23rd, and that would have been Celebration Time, except that the tree trimmers arrived on Friday morning and were here all day Friday and Saturday. 

So today, Sunday, is the first day of summer. In my opinion. Also, the irises have finished blooming and the onions are going to seed. So spring is done.

I'm not going to plant anything until after we get back, so the front of the house looks rather bare.

We're getting ready for our trip to California, sort of. I am trying to take it easy today, because I think I need a day off. It's funny though -- Sunday is always homework day, and I can't get it out of my head that there's some homework somewhere that needs to be done. Is Teen A's Shackleton project REALLY done? Yesterday I took the DVD of "The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition" back to the library, but I "forgot" to take the DVD out of the player, so all I returned to the library was the case. (I think I just couldn't believe that we didn't need it anymore.) By the time I got home they'd already called from the library to tell me, so I had to turn around and go back to the library to give them the actual DVD.

So we are done with Shackleton, except that the project hasn't been graded yet. I keep checking Infinite Campus. Teen A doesn't check -- he could not care less about his final grade. I probably need to chill about it.

There are three days until we leave for vacation. Today (which is mostly over), Monday, and Tuesday. Today, as I mentioned above, is supposed to be a rest day, but it's hard to relax when you have so much stuff ahead of you to do. I've been spending a lot of time tweaking the family trees I constructed for the twins, to explain to them who all these relatives are that we're going to be seeing. The trouble is, they refuse to look at them. Today my cousin Brenda called to check on what she should buy for food and whatnot, and after I hung up, Teen B said, "Who was that?" I said, "Brenda," and he said, "Who's Brenda?" So I ran for the family tree, with him shouting "No, no, I don't want to look at that!" I forced him to look at it, to show him how Brenda is my cousin because my mother and her father were siblings. "You could have just TOLD me," he insisted. And then he crossed out my name on the tree and wrote "Marge" which is what Rocket Boy told the nurse in the maternity ward that I liked to be called, when I was almost comatose after the delivery, and I woke up just long enough to say, "I do NOT" before collapsing again. Thus I am Marge forever more with the twins.

Since Monday is Memorial Day, a lot of things won't be open, and here in Boulder we have the big road race, the Bolder Boulder, plus the Creek Festival is ongoing (Monday is the last day), so no one should try to go anywhere downtown. (Gone are the days when we used to GO to the Creek Festival, and jump in all the bounce houses, ride on rides, get icky things to eat and drink.) Thus I have decided that Monday will be "do things at home day." It will be my day to clean house, throw out food that we're not going to eat, do laundry, start packing, do some yardwork, set things up for the cat-sitters, all that good stuff.

Tuesday will be "out & about & deal with the world day": go to the bank, pick up Teen A's new glasses, return a last few things to the library, drop off some stuff at Goodwill, call my insurance agent... and also do one last load of laundry. And continue to pack. I've already made a basic packing list, just tweaking it.

It's been an eventful week, what with the end of school and the tree trimmers and all. I think the tree trimmers did a good job, though the front and back yards still look pretty overgrown, especially the back. In front, they took out our volunteer Siberian Elm that was getting SO big and should have been cut down 10 years ago or more. Not a good place for a Siberian elm (not that any place is a good place for a Siberian elm, outside of Siberia). I actually felt really bad about cutting it down, because little birds are always sitting in it, and now they have no place to sit. But it had to go, it just had to. And now it is gone.

They also cut off all the dead branches on the honey locust, which now looks like a completely different tree. It looks kind of like a kid who's just had a summer haircut. I think it is much healthier now. The tree trimmer explained that honey locusts are attacked by some kind of bug that "defoliates" them but doesn't kill them. That's why it had so many branches with no leaves on them. They're all gone now and the tree looks happy, but surprised.

After the tree trimmers left, I mowed the lawn. Should have done it before, but oh well. Our yard looks almost normal now.

On the second day, Saturday, the tree trimmers worked in the back yard, on the big Siberian elm that air-conditions our house, and a little bit on the maple. You can't easily tell what they did, but I know they did something, because they were out there for 8 hours (minus several trips to wherever it was they were taking the branches), and the amount of branches and foliage they hauled away was unbelievable. Unfortunately a lot of it is still in the backyard. The head tree trimmer apologized to me: "We tried to get it all, but we just couldn't." I paid him $2200 anyway. And I would hire him again (to work on the rental house's trees).

So, with that, we are done (mostly) with one of our problems. That is, there's a lot left to do in the yard, but I can take over now. It's going to be another summer of pruning.

Still to be worked on: our furnace (which Rocket Boy wants to take another stab at), the furnace and ducting next door, the hole in the patio roof, and the bathroom door. We are expecting to get a call saying the bathroom door is ready to be picked up -- probably right around the time we're boarding the plane on Wednesday. There was some problem with the door, they had to send it back and get another one... whatever. 

I decided to wait and start taking Mounjaro when we get back. I tried to take my first shot on Tuesday... then Wednesday... then Thursday... and on Friday I just thought, what am I doing? Wait until after the trip! So it will sit in my fridge until we get back. I think that's the best thing to do.

Things keep occurring to me. Like... this morning I woke up thinking about Death Valley. We're going to be there in early June... hey, it might be kind of hot in early June! Duh. I looked at weather.gov. Next Sunday, which is the closest I can get to when we will be there, it will be 100 in Ridgecrest, 99 in Trona, 101 in Panamint Springs, 108 at Stovepipe Wells, and 109 at Furnace Creek. Of course, it's a dry heat...