covid diary: day 105

just a tree, covered with moss, in a bayou south of NOLA

holli has been working a ton of extra hours on multiple projects lately, which explains both yesterday's lack of blog and today's last-minute fill-in by me (mike). and that's fine. the world is fine. I SAID EVERYTHING'S FINE.

holli went to bed early and i started this entry, then i sat back for a minute and fell asleep on the couch. i woke up about 10 minutes ago and had to ask the kids what time/day it was (what is time anymore?). so let me hack this blog out, with random pics from my phone, and call it a night.

i took the day off, because today was MAX FINALLY GETS HIS BRACES OFF day! we rolled him out of bed at 6:45 (they have one of those in the morning now) and headed to the bustling metroplex that is south bend/mishawaka. we were 20 minutes early, somehow, but after texting that we were there, they summoned him in a few minutes and off he went. i spent the next 45 minutes getting gas and then sitting in the parking lot looking through random pics on my phone, which explains the theme of this post. except for this one:

seven years (two rounds), about two feet of vertical growth

braces suck, but i'm glad we got them for max (and liam). he'll thank us someday (NOPE), regardless of how much he has resented us during the past few years. ah, he's young, he'll get over it, maybe.

after leaving the orthodontist, we made a stop at menards and bought two more ceiling fans, along with about a hundred pounds of bird seed. a few weeks ago, henry's ceiling light stopped working, and we assumed the light itself had gone kaput. we found an attractive yet relatively inexpensive ceiling fan/light on the menards website, so the next time we were in south bend, we bought it. after spending about an hour figuring out which circuit breaker shut off power to henry's room (the previous owners never labeled their breaker box, those #$%^&@#$), i removed the old light and installed the fan. and it didn't work. i thought for a moment, then opened the wall switch and discovered a wire had pulled out from its mounting screw (i'm sure these have proper electrician names, but i don't know them). so i fixed that, and the fan worked. yay me. (ignore the fact that the problem the whole time was the switch, not the light.) the other boys were jealous and HAD TO HAVE THEIR OWN FANS, so now they do. they just have to install them, hahahaha.

bugs on milkweed in the pasture. holli: are they humping? maybe? bugs gotta hump too

i saw this at martin's the other day. only a couple of people on earth will understand this nonsensical reference, and that's fine. i said IT'S FINE.

the green goddess is friends with the psychedelic dragon

our strawberry patch is producing on overdrive, which turns out to be a problem. apparently henry, who wanted the patch in the first place, doesn't actually like strawberries. the other boys and holli don't either, and i'm allergic. so apparently we are growing strawberries to feed the birds.

bird food

i built a bunch of dirt mounds out behind the barn in an area of the pasture that i mowed down, and i planted pumpkins and interesting gourds. the other day i stumbled in a hole next to a mound and heard a roar of buzzes, and off i ran. after realizing i wasn't being swarmed by yellow jackets (i have a bad history of stepping on yellow jacket nests), i reconnoitered and discovered it was a bumblebee hive. i didn't know bumblebees had ground hives (no idea what kind they are), but it doesn't matter. i'm all about the bees. we need to do more to help the bees.

bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

so what's going on in the world? ugh, i don't want to look at anything beyond my five acres. florida announced more than 5500 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, and that's not considering how florida has been roundly (and credibly) accused of misclassifying case and death numbers. SOS. you can't "open up" and claim victory over a virus (seriously, how fucking dumb is that?) by having a huge amount of new cases and deaths. but ron desantis (R-shithead) and florida are trying. not to be outdone, texas governor greg abbott (R-assbag) said that he'd allow local officials to impose certain restrictions (such as mandatory mask wearing) in response to the out-of-control pandemic in his state, which clocked in at 5400 positive tests in the last 24 hours. this was a big turn-around, as abbott had previously prevented any locality from enforcing their own prevention measures. only took the idiot several weeks to figure that out. SOS. i don't even want to talk about the beautiful state of arizona, which i love and desperately want to visit again so i can show it to my kids. especially tucson. but considering what's going on there, it may be years. decades. and that sucks.

henry drinking hot chocolate at cafe du monde, for no reason

so there you are. everything sucks, but nature rules and max's braces are off. save our ship, and on we go.