Odd wrap-up to the weekend. Beth has been having pain in her ear for a few days now, and it’s accompanied with a terrible headache. To top it off, she tried cleaning her ear out with a q-tip and what came out was black. Yeah, black. She saw the doctor on Wednesday and was told it wasn’t infected, but it was full of wax and very irritated. He removed a lump of wax the size of half a peanut, gross. The headache remained but she was up and about until Saturday evening, when it all seemed to go downhill fast. By evening on Sunday the pain and itching in her ear was so bad that we brought her in to the ER. They told her it was swimmer’s ear and gave her some medication, but it was also very irritated and there was some sort of rash inside her ear, and it could possibly be shingles. INSIDE her ear. It’s very concerning. 

Saturday was the un-garage sale for Beth’s work. We got up early and went over to Presby to work it for the day. As before, we were doing child care, checking the kids in at a little play area and keeping an eye on them while the parents shopped. For some reason though, it just never got off the ground this year. In past years there have been huge lines around the building to get in… this year there were maybe a dozen people in line at opening and things never got busy. We only had around 8-10 kids get checked in all day. There were long stretches when there was nobody at all coming in. Nobody is sure why, but maybe the weather (thunderstorms that day) and maybe the deportations going on these days has people afraid to go to things like that. Nobody has any better theories. So anyway we worked until close at 2 and helped pack everything up – there was a lot left over. 

The softball tournament started up this week. We’ll have to win the championship through the losers’ bracket… we had a game end in a way that I don’t recall ever happening like this before. Going into the bottom of the 6th inning, we were ahead by a couple but the other team got a rally going and scored several times to pull ahead. They were still batting when the clock ran out, and as soon as it hit zeros the umpire called ballgame. So sort of a walkoff but not really. And the game next week is do or die….

Wednesday I rented a hedge trimmer because the bushes by the road in front of our house have gotten out of control. Unfortunately I didn’t ask how much the rental would cost before I committed to it, or else I may have just gone to buy one from Menard’s. It was $77 to rent it overnight. Maybe it would have been cheaper during the day if I could have just had it a couple hours, but anyway so be it. I’m sure any trimmer I bought would have had a lot less power than the one I rented. It took the branches of the bushes (all 3 of them) right off in no time, and I was done with it within maybe half an hour or so. And they look really nice. With a pair of hedge clippers it would have taken all afternoon. And it was really hot.