Alex broke his glasses the other day, and when he was going to go to lenscrafters to see if they could fix it, his car wouldn’t start. It’s been sitting for a couple days now, doesn’t make a clicking sound when the key is turned, lights won’t come on, and his attempts to jump start it were not successful. I’m guessing the alternator is bad, but I’m no mechanic. Here comes an adulting lesson for him! He’ll have to arrange getting it towed to a repair shop. And I’ll have to arrange paying for it over the phone. And speaking of his glasses, when he finally got to Lenscrafters (a friend gave him a ride) he found it was closed because they had no power. Yep, he lost power at his apartment. As did most everyone else in the area, it seems. They had a big windstorm… a “bomb cyclone” and “atmospheric river”… in the northwest and it blew out power to millions. Alex’s power was off for a day and a half or so. 

The soup season continues: Friday evening Beth and I went to set up shop at the show in Columbia City. Due to somebody’s poor planning this year, they have a conflict with a basketball game and the gym was not available for use. So all of the craft vendors were moved into the cafeteria and hallways instead. The Soup Lady was put into an empty space in the cafeteria area, so we were open on 3 sides (just backed up to one other vendor). It looked awful and didn’t seem like traffic would flow very well so we figured the best we could do was get another table and set them up like an L with the shelves forming the back of the booth. It worked well enough, wasn’t perfect but things went ok. The show was steady, we did lose some traffic because of the game, I thought. We sold well, didn’t set any records but did pretty consistent with how that show usually goes. Beth forgot her stool so she was pretty sore by the time it was over.

Beth went to Washington this week. Alex has not been doing very well lately; he’s had persistent low grade pain in his plumbing and recently may have passed a kidney stone, although I suspect it was something else. He’s been to a clinic a couple times and they’ve never found anything wrong with him, but it’s persisted and he’s been super anxious about it for a long time now. I also suspect the anxiety has a lot to do with it, but the pain is real and it isn’t going away, and the anxiety was becoming a real problem lately. So, we made a way for Beth to go out there this week and see him and help him get some answers. Sometimes you just need your mom. So on Thursday the 14th I took most of the day off to drive Beth to O’Hare and sent her to Seattle. She got there fairly early in the day but Alex was able to pick her up, and the next day they went to an ER. After an hour or two, they could tell him that there were no abnormalities they could find, no cancer, no kidney stones, no infection, and they gave him a referral to a urologist which we will try to make when he’s home for break. Beth said it was like the weight of the world coming off him and he seemed so much better when they were done. Still no answers but he seemed more like himself. They had dinner with Scott and Alex showed her around the town a bit, and they went to see “The Wild Robot” which they both loved. Meanwhile, Natalie and I watched the big Mike Tyson – Jake Paul boxing match… which was kind of a joke…. and I raked a lot of leaves, made the other shed door, and made a lot of soup. Alex dropped Beth off at SeaTac early afternoon Sunday, and I headed back to Chicago to pick her up … at midnight. We got back home pretty late, like 3:00 am.

Earlier in the week: on Monday Beth finally went to see a doctor about being sick. She’s felt awful for most of the past week, like a bad cold that keeps getting worse. So, unsurprisingly, at the doctor she was diagnosed with a raging sinus infection. Sounds about right. Hopefully she can get back to making soup soon, because she needs to!

I’ve been sleeping on the bed in Alex’s room for most of the past week. Beth started feeling sick this past week, and it’s been bad enough that starting midweek I thought I better sleep away from her. It’s a bummer to be sick like that with a C-PAP, from what I hear. She’s had a snot river and been running a fever for a few days, but hasn’t gone to see a doctor because she just thought it was a head cold for a while. So on the weekend she finally decided that if it wasn’t better by Monday she would go in. And anyway I’m trying to keep away from her but she’s lousy at quarantining. Even this far after covid.

There was an FCC men’s ministry even today. As with previous events there was a hot dog grill and fellowship time followed by a competition; this time the group broke into teams for a fire-building contest. With the same supplies (hatchet, a few matches, and whatever you could find in the woods) the teams worked to build a fire that could burn through a string held a foot above the ground. Just like on Survivor. I gave a ride to a guy who started feeling ill before going into the fire-building, so I missed most of it taking him back home, but I got back in time for the very end of the fires and caught the worship time and the speaker. And smores around the campfire. 

The first soup show of the season is under our belts. The holiday craft bazaar at the Brethren church in town here is always the first one. It’s smaller, but Beth loves it and the people. It’s been running concurrently with a huge other craft show for a few years, so that can depress the foot traffic, but it’s still always worth it to do the smaller one and get ready for the larger ones. Even with the other show going on, it seemed slower than in previous years, though. We did steady business but not as much as we have done there. In the end, we had a good show, not a great one, sold fairly well, but didn’t set any records. We made enough to pay for the supplies we’ve bought, I think. So the rest of the season should be mostly profit. Hope so, anyway. After the show was over Beth and I spent a long time trying to find the money pouch before finally figuring out we left it at the church… and it was all there when we came back for it, of course. Then we spent a long time trying to get our inventory to tally before coming to the conclusion that we were wrong on our beginning count by a dozen soups. We’re pretty sure anyway, as that was the only thing that made it tally. We were an even dozen off. Had to be.