ER, Horses, and Valentines

We are still reeling in the waves of Amelia’s mission call. I remembered some friends from Sidney are from Baton Rouge, both of their parents live less than a mile from the mission home! One of the MCO Rehearsal Coordinators (Jennie Dildine) son served his mission there. We are working on getting her passport submitted. 

Fergus is being an absolute butt-head lately. He is attacking Wally and Eve without provocation. I watched him strut in from outside and make a beeline to Wally who was sleeping on the couch, he leapt up and started aggressively attacking poor Wally. Fergus is spending most of his free time locked inside his kennel. Amelia reminded me that he was acting that way when he had an ear infection. Justin took time out of busy season to take Fergus to the vet on Wednesday. The vet confirmed there was no ear infection or reasonable cause of pain that would make Fergus act so aggressively. Looks like the next step is getting the boys dogs neutered and Eve spayed. Monday night Evelyn picked up Fergus in the kitchen, he growled when she picked him up. I warned her to put him down, which she did but next to his kennel. He went in his kennel when she reached in to pet him (a regular occurrence). Fergus locked on her wrist and gave her quite a nasty bite. She screamed and rushed over with blood pooling from a puncture wound. I wiped off the blood and instantly knew we were headed to the ER, the layer of fat was pushing through the skin preventing a smooth closure. Justin wanted to try skin tape, the wound was in exactly the wrong place and too deep. Evelyn was in shock, shaking and crying. She nearly fainted when I washed out the wound to inspect the damage. Off to the ER at 10:15 pm. Sure enough the doctor concurred with my analysis, the wound needed stitches because the sub layers were not neatly returning to their proper places. She was a trooper with the numbing shots and 3 stitches. I was very glad the Dr tried numbing gel first, it did not work well enough to do the stitches, but the gel did dampen the horrible shot that hurts more than the wound. We got back home after 1 am. I hope Evelyn learned her lesson to not bother a growling dog. Talk about natural consequences. 

We slept in a bit the next day, I arrived to school with 5 minutes to spare before my first class showed up. Evelyn had a band concert Tuesday evening. She figured out during band class that she could play with her wrist wrapped up and do just fine. She did a fine job playing the tubular bells. She is so short that watching Mr Burton is a challenge from the back of the band.  

Wednesday I got to help Mrs Harp with her Mercy Watson Toast Party for the 1st graders. She has not hosted a toast party in at least 3 years because the students did not earn one. She was so excited to finally have a set of students that earned the party. Officer Martin and I staffed the pig adoption table. That was so fun! Students chose out a pig to adopt and then named their pig. A few firemen had students playing pin the toast on Mercy. The last center students got to eat toast with butter! Josie was invited to 4-H by one of her besties, Kara. Kara and her brother are the in equine 4-H chapter so get to ride horses and take care of them. Josie adores Kara horse, Katie. She tries every other day to convince me to buy some land just so we can have some horses. I felt unsure about adding ANOTHER activity into the mix, it gets so busy my brain can’t keep up. Everett is now in tennis so has practice each day with matches starting soon. Everett also had two theater performances this week before one of the shows. He had to direct his own skit and then act in someone else’s skit. 

Justin is totally digging his Meshtastic devices. He now has like 4 devices, including one he assembled. The boys also used Everett’s old computer as a base to build a new Linux computer. 

I was in quite a funk Friday, and honestly, Saturday too. Life feels heavy lately, too busy to even breathe. The feeling at school is borderline oppressive. Several students freaked out in my class worried about ICE raiding our school. What a thing for an 8 year old to worry about. Evelyn and Phillip had homework to get done on Friday. Evelyn spent 9 hours raging off and on wasting time instead of getting 20 minutes of homework done. She just sat at the table raging, walking about raging, upstairs raging, putting off the simple task. On the other side of her Phillip wasted the same amount of time working on filling out 3 research worksheets that should’ve taken 10 minutes. Justin exploded and yelled at the two, I wheedled and tried to help out, it was a draining experience. Evelyn finally turned into an angel around 10:15 pm, she got her work done in 20 minutes. So frustrating. 

I got Valentine baskets assembled for my Valentines. That was a lot of fun. Justin got me an entire box of white chocolates…yum. I got Justin a box of nuts. Everett got 50 resin squirrels, they worshipped the box of nuts. It was epic. That evening we watched the new Wicked movie and put together Legos. I made spaghetti and fresh bread for dinner. The bread was especially delicious. I made two loaves, the second loaf needed a few more minutes to crisp up. Those few minutes turned into an extra hour, it was extra, extra crispy. Phillip and Everett got to play games with Ben and Faith for a few hours. Josie went to Blazing Hope with Lucy and Kara to ride horses! That girl was in heaven. 

I was released as choir director on Sunday. We started practicing our songs for Easter that same day. It’s a blessing to move on. Justin took the boys to a Seminary fireside. There is a work around for seminary in 9-10th grades, still no credit so that is a huge bummer. I took Josie to a Primary planning meeting. She was asked to join a stake primary council with other kids to plan a special Easter fireside. How fun is that?!