Must be spring

A warm, sunny week (in the 80s yesterday). This coming week is supposed to be rainy and cooler, for which I am grateful, but I have to say this was a nice week. Everything is positively burgeoning (I like that word). Burgeoning means budding or sprouting, but it feels like it refers to the moment when things inflate and explode. Our backyard is burgeoning with dandelions.

Still, I won't plant anything yet. Our official last frost date is May 11th. This coming week it's supposed to get down to 33 one night and 35 a couple of nights, with a few chances for snow showers. Better to wait. In any case, the guy who sets up a portable nursery behind the grocery store isn't there yet, so I'll wait.

I did, however, encounter a wasp this morning when I went out to get the paper. Later, I found one crawling around the garage by the washing machine. It might have been the same one -- I might have brought it in with me. I wouldn't have seen it -- in fact, I probably would have stepped on it, barefoot, but Sillers was helpfully sitting there staring at it. So I put a big jug of Simple Green on top of it. Goodbye wasp.

Also, Rocket Boy went hiking yesterday and came home with a tick crawling in his hair. He found it and pulled it out before it sunk in. It seemed to be dead, so I just set it on a piece of paper while we watched the NewsHour. After a while I noticed it was waving its legs. Euw! I crushed it with a pencil eraser. Then I took its picture. (Then I flushed it down the toilet.) This is probably a female Rocky Mountain wood tick, carriers of Colorado tick fever, and less often Rocky Mountain spotted fever, tularemia, and relapsing fever. But not lyme disease. No lyme disease in Colorado.

The joy of insects. Maybe I'll just stay home and not open the door.

Other than being warm and pleasant, it wasn't a great week. The 10 mg dose of Mounjaro is Kicking My Butt. This week, in addition to feeling sick as a dog for a few days, I also had mental health symptoms, which I hadn't noticed before: I got so so crabby. (This is an official recognized side effect of the drug, just not one I had experienced previously.) I practically bit Rocket Boy's head off a couple of times, even though I was completely aware of how unreasonable this was. He wasn't doing anything wrong. I was just discombobulated by the drug. It made me very unhappy, because I couldn't make the bad feeling go away. Until I think Thursday, when I was suddenly normal again.

This is probably the place for the Mounjaro report

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight last Sunday: 222
• Weight this morning (after 42+ weeks on Mounjaro): 221.6

So much for my goal to lose 1 pound a week for the next 2 months. I mean, I'm happy to be down a little more. Maybe in a month I'll hit 219, which would be exciting. But still, when you think how sick I was this week, and how crabby, and how little I ate...

It's OK. Maybe it's better to can the 1 pound a week goal. As I reminded my book group, I'm on this drug for blood sugar control. Weight loss is an added benefit, but not a guarantee. Plus, I am down 33 pounds in 10 months. I could easily have been up UP 33 pounds, well, let's say 13 pounds, during the same time period. OK. 

It was a decent cooking week. Monday, my book group met at Lecia's and she had food for us, so Rocket Boy fixed salmon and rice and broccoli for himself and the boys. Tuesday we had nacho cups; Wednesday we had Brenda's sticky tofu (Teen B's favorite -- I make it once a month for him); Thursday we had Grandma Peg's goulash (Teen A's favorite -- I make it once a month for him); and Friday we had a carrot tart, which was pretty weird, but can't win 'em all.

Saturday (yesterday) I made oatmeal cookies. First cookie baking since Girl Scout cookie season! Before I could bake, I had to make a quick trip to the store for missing ingredients. Butter, raisins, and quick oats cost me $18. Quite amazing. It was a four-pack of butter, and I do buy expensive butter (Vital Farms), but still.

Now, I have to think of what to have next week. It's hard to cook when you feel awful and don't want to do or eat anything, but I soldier on.

Speaking of finances, we continue to meander through the days. My car's timing belt ended up costing over $1400, so that was a chunk of change to come up with, but for some reason Rocket Boy's social security went up (and the twins'), so I had a little extra money to spend. Also, Rocket Boy received a single unemployment payment (about $650), even though he supposedly hasn't been approved. We decided to spend it (on the timing belt) and hope it doesn't get clawed back. Then our tax preparer finally appeared out of the woodwork and finished our taxes. We're getting money back from all three places (fed, CO and MO), for a grand total of $2498, so that will be helpful (next year will be a different story, but that's next year). I'm still trying to figure out whether I should start taking social security -- all the calculators say I should, but I'm wavering -- and whether we should start taking distributions from our retirement accounts. We need to meet with a financial advisor. But for now we're just going from big bill to big bill, like, "How am I going to pay this? Oh, OK, fine. How am I going to pay that? Hmm."

On account of being so sick, I didn't get a lot done this week, but I did take four walks and do three stretch videos. I also spent a lot of time on genealogy. Ancestry.com is soooo fun. I feel as though I could be on it all day every day. I don't think I'd ever run out of relatives. 

I was also able to help Rocket Boy find some of his relatives. He did the DNA test recently, but got very few results, very disappointing. However, he found someone else's tree that seemed to have a lot of information about his mother's uncle who emigrated to America in the 1920s. The thing is, this guy had two daughters, but we were under the impression he had a son. Plus, he was born in the wrong place. Finally, while Rocket Boy was off hiking yesterday, I delved into this conundrum and discovered that it wasn't his great-uncle, it was some other guy. I found the real great-uncle, definitively, and a bunch more relatives besides. Two new second cousins for RB! That was fun. And four third cousins for the twins. They live on the east coast, so we'll probably never meet them, but it was still nice to uncover more family. I've found that naturalization papers are particularly good sources of information.

Political tasks:

Monday: I felt too sick to do much of anything. I decided that the sign I put in the window on Sunday would have to count. It's hard to see most of the time, but at certain times of day, in certain lights, it's visible. It said, "no tariffs on penguins" with a picture of a penguin.

This week was also Boycott Walmart week. I rarely shop at Walmart, so it's not difficult to boycott them. The Target boycott continues, as well (until April 20th, I guess). Fortunately the twins have not asked me to take them to Target recently. If I decide I need more Easter candy, I can go to Walgreens.

Tuesday: Still felt terrible, but my letter to the editor of the Daily Camera was published, so that counted (even though I also counted it last Tuesday, when I wrote it and sent it in).

Wednesday: I wrote an email to Senator Michael Bennet about the SAVE Act and asking him why he didn't sign the letter from Senator Alex Padilla urging Trump to revoke his stupid anti-voting executive order. I like Senator Bennet, but he has been WAY too conciliatory with Trump supporters recently.

Thursday: I tried to write a comment on the HHS website, but could not figure out how to do that, even though I did it once. It's possible that they've gotten rid of their comment section. Instead I wrote a postcard to RFK Jr., telling him I thought getting rid of NIOSH right when Pres. Trump plans to increase the production of coal was a BIG mistake and to please rectify it immediately. As soon as I finished writing it, I got in the car and took it to the post office. I also wrote a BlueSky post about this. 

Oh, and I changed the sign in the window. It now says "Only you can prevent oligarchy" with a Smokey the Bear logo.

Friday: I felt better this day, but I couldn't think of a darn thing to do. Everything felt hopeless. I kept telling myself, "Don't feel like that, you know you have no power, that's not the point," but I still couldn't come up with anything. 

Finally I decided that I would pray. OK, bear with me for a moment. I know that sounds like a weird thing for me to do. But I thought, if everything I do is pointless, how can praying be any more or less pointless? In any case, it's a form of reaching out to the Universe, and if nothing else, it's a way to reach out to myself. When I'm feeling bad about something, I sometimes pray before I go to sleep, and it helps me sleep. I don't know why. Anyway, after I turned off my light that night, I prayed (silently) for a long time. It was a confused prayer -- please don't let the SAVE Act pass, please don't let DOGE fire more federal employees, please make Trump not be so retributional, please let the Republican senators be true to their consciences, etc., etc. I also prayed for strength to be able to go on fighting. Then I went to sleep.

Saturday: I considered going to the Tesla protest in Superior, but I didn't go. It's OK.

So now it's Sunday, my official day of rest. We all went to bed too late last night and I had trouble sleeping, so I slept very late this morning, till something like 9:30 or so. So I feel pretty awful today. Teen B and I went to Starbucks early, right after I got up and fed the cats, maybe 10 am. I got my usual cafe mocha and it had the desired effect of cleaning out my system, but I can't get the effects to stop, so that's unpleasant. Rocket Boy was interested in doing another hike this afternoon, but I can't do that if my digestive system won't calm down. I'll see. It's about 3:30 right now -- we could go in an hour or two, maybe. It was supposed to rain this afternoon...

We have an interesting week ahead of us. It's testing week for the twins. This means...

• Monday is a normal day of school, but in the afternoon Teen A and I have dentist appointments, our first with the new dentist and also our first in about 18 months. Dreading this.
• Tuesday the kids go to school at the normal time and take the SAT, but they're both off in the afternoon.
• Wednesday the kids are off regular school, but Teen A has to go to TEC in the afternoon.
• Thursday the kids go to school at the normal time and take the CMAS science test, plus Teen A has to go to TEC in the afternoon.
• Friday they are both off school and they don't go back until the Tuesday after Easter.
  

 It's almost like practice for summer vacation.