I woke up this morning feeling better. It's still miserably hot, but I'm daring to hope that he last vapors of the probably-airplane-caught illness that has plagued my house are on the way out the damned door. (As opposed to the non-damned door. My house has a front, back, and side door. Plus a garage door. I'm not sure which one is the damned door....)

Good thing, too, as I/we need to be in relatively high efficiency mode. Camping trip happening Monday! And family party tomorrow eating up a good chunk of the day. Tidying and packing and washing and making lists etcetera (etcetera, etcetera...) needs to happen today.

Squiddle and Jazzy continue sick. In a particularly snotty way, eww. And Wonderful Husband and myself have, of course, caught it too, if to a lesser degree. Ugh. Maybe it's a good thing that we're not going to SDCC this weekend? On the other hand, this is my prep time for Costume College, so it's not great on that front either.

BUT. I've got everything done for the 1950s Petticoat workshop. Well, 90% done. I have it all stuffed into a bin, the lid taped on so Jazzy can't pull it out and the "take these too on the day of" list taped to the lid.

And I just spent the last two hours on either side of dinner (tri-tip roast with sweet corn, baked potatoes or buttered homemade bread, thank you very much, because sometimes even on sick days I can knock it out of the park) servicing the 1924 Singer 99 in a bentwood case that I picked up from Goodwill this week. It cost me $12.24, and I figure it will likely go for more than that in the Bargain Basement auction. Since I'm not throwing anything else into the charity pot this year, I figure that's good for my contribution, and the machine will get rehomed to someone who appreciates it. I cleaned and oiled it, refilled the grease tubes for the motor, glued one of the wood supports back in place, replaced the bobbin case felt, gave it a new spool felt, fixed the tension, and repaired the cracked wiring. It's still not whisper-quiet, but it runs smoothly now and sews a nice seam.

When I step back from my "any trained monkey could do what I can" mentality, I sometimes feel a bit like Han Solo: "Sometimes I impress even myself." And I think indulging in a little of that feeling is good from time to time. Otherwise you get worn down. But at the same time, a little goes a long way, and there is a hell of a lot I do not know about vintage sewing machine repair.

Still doing the shuffle of recovery. I (mostly) feel fine, but I sound like the living dead. Last night was fortunately better, as I had a guild meeting. Where I was voted and sworn in as Secretary for the next year. On top of running the Block of the Month and a Nine-Patch Exchange and sometimes helping out with Quilts For Kids. As one of my friends in the guild observed, "if you want to get something done, ask a busy person." Well, I expect it'll be good for me.

I'm also pondering which quilts I might want to enter in the quilt show in a couple months. Of the ones I've made and still have, there are five that spring to mind as maybes: the black/orange crane quilt, Wonderful Husband's flag quilt (the show's theme is "As American As..."), Squiddle's dinosaur quilt, Squiddle's sunflower quilt, and I need to pull out and get quilted the top from the round robin last year, since the show would like all those exhibited together if possible.

I'm four books behind in my blogging for the year, and currently working on my fifth, Rilla of Ingleside. I read maybe the first half of Montgomery's Anne Shirley books when I was younger, but I never got to this one, and I think it's a good thing, because I don't think I'd've liked it then. Now, it's interesting and I'm liking watching Rilla mature. Though the baby she's taking care of keeps taking me aback when she mentions things like him being exactly on track, weighing nine pounds at four months of age. Um. My babies were almost ten pounds when they were born. ^_^;; And they don't even hold the family record! I don't think I've ever held a baby that small.

Not much going on at chez Stonham since we've all fallen under the flu crud to varying degrees. Wonderful Husband took today as a sick day. And even Jazzy has a snotty nose and a nice chesty cough going! But none of it is worth a doctor's visit - fortunately Squiddle's fever broke Monday morning, otherwise we would've hauled him in for poking and prodding. And he was miserable enough as it was.

Unfortunately, however, the fact that we're all sick has meant no playgroups and classes for Squiddle this week! So he's been bouncing off the walls at times, which has drained me down further. Today, though, I'm hoping constitutes a turning point.

This afternoon, while both the boys were napping and Wonderful Husband was vidgaming, I did another session of "tame the kitchen garden." The dead bay tree was put in the brown bin for yard waste, as were the ginormous kale plants. The bin is FULL. No more yardwork until Tuesday, I guess. Though I need to examine the bottom of the pot the bay tree was in, since it died of drowning - the pot clearly needs more drainage holes before I use it again.

The hundred-and-seven popcorn plants just started peeping their heads up today, and the peas/spinach/radishes/beets/lettuce/carrots/whatnots in the one bed I've planted are all neatly sprouting. As are the onion sets at my parents' place that I thought wouldn't sprout, so goes to show what I know! Tomorrow we're due for more rain, which makes me happy, but... I'd kind of like a dry week so the back lawn and kitchen garden paths could get mowed. Ah well. Grass is always greener and all that.

I also did a 10% water change on the fish tank this afternoon and will probably add in a few more critters tomorrow. Likely either a couple African Dwarf Frogs or half a dozen ghost shrimp, depending on which one excites Squiddle more when we're at the store....

Squiddle and I got our flu shots today. Hooray! Me on the arm, him on the thigh. He was none too happy about it, but stopped crying within ten seconds of it being done.

I've been chugging along on the current quilting project as time allows. I'm a little over 10/25ths done with the center squares. I'd be further along but last night I hit one of those "if I was making this now, I'd know so much better" moments. Namely, I had fused some hearts on and then topstitched them down. Great. Brilliant. Except the fusible web I used gives my machine fits trying to quilt through what is essentially a layer of glue. So eventually I sighed, ripped out the three hearts' worth of quilting I'd argued, wrangled, and forced my way through, and will be redoing the square this evening, quilting around the hearts instead of on top of them.

Up at 3am pumping milk to try and stay on top of this bout of mastitis. Touch wood, I think I'm winning - my temperature spiked to 101.9 then dropped back down to a more normal 98.1. Unfortunately, I'm still up at 3, draining out all the milk Jazzy didn't get to. :(

So last time, post C-section, I got an infection of the surgical incision. Which was painful, gross, disgusting, and required Wonderful Husband to deal with it because I literally could not even see the infected area.

This time, I have mastitis in my right breast. Which is an infection of the milk ducts. Just as fun and painful as it sounds like. Spent most of yesterday following nurse's instructions and trying to head it off via self-care, only to finally have to go to urgent care and be prescribed antibiotics. Feeling a world away better today.

On top of that, we got a surprise visit from Child Protective Services related to Squiddle's ER visit, yesterday. While I was on hold with the nurse line, waiting to be told what to do! But the CPS visit, at least, seemed to go well and she seemed to think the accident was a non-issue and they would be able to close the case.

To end this on a happier note, I've been rereading my posts from three years ago, and am glad I wrote them because it makes it easier, human memory being the fragile, malleable thing it is, to see the differences between Squiddle and Jazzy.

Jazzy, even at eight days old, is more fastidious than his older brother. He doesn't want to nurse if his diaper is even wet. And this despite being in disposables, which theoretically wick the wetness away, at the moment. And he prefers his nursies in two or three "courses" with a brief breather in between each. I do sometimes have to talk to him and remind him that nursies are tastier than fisties. But fortunately the thumb-sucking of the first couple days seems to've abated. Thumb-sucking is a hard habit to break later. I know. I was one.

Both pillowcases finished, and binding half sewn onto quilt. Did prenatal yoga this morning (have missed the last two weekends due to Comic-con and Costume College). Am trying to scrape together the energy to do anything more today. The to-do list is simple, but consists of several items. We shall see if I succeed.

ETA: Allietare-by-Moonlight quilt DONE, and in the washing machine together with its pillowcases. Pics to be taken maybe tomorrow? About half of my list for the day knocked off; the rest is all outside stuff and may also be dealt with tomorrow.

Yep, as expected, Dr. Arora ordered a three-hour blood glucose test for me. Which needs ten hours of fasting beforehand! So my parents minded Alexander this morning while I took care of that. It involved: blood draw; drink bottle of orange glucola; wait an hour; another blood draw; wait an hour; another blood draw; wait an hour; another blood draw. It was half past one before I was free to go and finally have food/breakfast/lunch. Oddly, though, I wasn't actually hungry at any point. More just feeling like I should be hungry.

On the way home I stopped at the farm stand between home and my usual hospital and picked up the flat of #2 (smaller) berries I'd phoned and asked they put aside for me. They have the best berries. Tomorrow begins the annual jam-making!

Tonight was quilt guild. I got asked if I can take over Block of the Month, as the woman who runs that and the Quilts For Kids group and is Parlimentarian has suddenly been promoted and has to move to NorCal within a month. Apparently this happens every time she's Parlimentarian? Last time it involved her moving to Afghanistan for a year! I told the guild president I'd think about it and talk to Jill about what it involves. I think it's light enough duty that I could handle it, even with chibi #2 appearing in September... the only bit that might be tricky is having to get to the meetings about forty minutes earlier than I currently do.

And my parents are going out of town in a couple weeks, so they've asked us to kitten-sit. That will be a fun exercise in logistics, with two cats of our own and a toddler. But Squiddle was playing nicely (under supervision) with Rey today, so maybe all I have to worry about is how my two cats will react to the temporary interloper....