Oh, it's raining again. Yippee?
Well, at least the grass is thick and lush and green. Rain has to be good for something, right? At this rate the lawn will have grown well past my knees before it can be mowed again. The impending snowmelt, which has been delayed because of unseasonably cool temperatures, has people worried here in Colorado. Our snowpack is already well above a hundred percent of normal, and every time it rains in the foothills it's snowed in the mountains. We do have normal seasonal temperatures approaching rapidly though (yay!), and that snowmelt will shortly be in area rivers and creeks, likely making them top their banks a bit. I doubt it will be close to the flooding along the Mississippi, but some areas that saw wildfires are going to be a concern because they'll have nothing to stop soil erosion and mudslides if there is even a minor flood.
At home I have a slight concern of my own; I heard water dripping somewhere up near the swamp cooler in the roof. It might have been tapping on an air vent, but I couldn't be sure. I couldn't find any damp spots in the plaster on the ceiling, but there's an old stain there from a previous problem, which is ominous. For those of you who don't live in a dry climate; a swamp cooler is an air conditioner for the desert, of which Colorado is considered high desert/plains. You run a water line up to your roof, which is connected to a machine that looks like an external air conditioning unit. The water drips from the line into the machine, which drips the water onto pads, then uses a fan to circulate the water-cooled and now-moist air down into the house. I was a skeptic when I first moved here, but it works really well and even better than a conventional air conditioner by putting some moisture into the air. Unfortunately it now might be the case that some flashing around the base has been damaged or pulled up by storms and is now allowing rain to leak into the roof. Priority number three, I guess.
The youngest spent the day at home with Dad and I, mostly watching cartoons and playing his DS. He insisted he wanted to go to school, but he threw up last night at bed time and the school rule is twenty four hours. After he finished yacking up his day's intake of toast and water (all we would let him have), he expressed surprise I cleaned out his bucket so quickly. Yes, a bucket next to his bed saved the day and the carpet. Even his Dad expressed surprise at how fast I cleaned it out. No surprise to this Mom. I have had plenty of practice.
Our youngest is unfortunately a yack-machine. He's thrown up more times than I can count or remember; I just know it's unusually often. I can't decide if he's got a weak stomach or is extremely sensitive to nausea. Most of the time the rest of us are unaffected. We eat the same foods he does, he washes his hands well and is clean, I am very aware of expiration dates and we eat nothing that's even mildly suspect. Yet he keeps out-vomiting us by a ratio of three to one. We suspected it might be his medication; the doctor torpedoed that today by saying it was more likely taking it would make him sick than not taking it, like the last two times he was sick.
I think I've narrowed it to possibly hot dogs, raisins, or an overload of heavily flavored chips, all things he had before he got sick. But, understandably, I am hesitant to test my theories. I think what I'll need to do is throw out all the "bad" foods and restart with some gluten-free, nitrate-free, sugar-free foods. All of which will be very traumatic to a kid who loves Chicken McNuggets, Toaster Strudels, and Gummy Bears.
But I think I've reached my limit for speed-cleaning the puke bucket now.
No comments:
Post a Comment