Preparation day

We are going on a little trip, leaving tomorrow, so today is preparation day. The suitcases have been pulled out and the laundry has been done, though the suitcases are not yet filled with the laundry. I'm charging my camera battery and should go buy a new memory card, as my current one is almost full. I never erase them -- I always buy new and save the old card.

Pie has a new cat-sitter who came over to meet him today. We liked her very much and Pie did too -- brushed against her leg and then belly flopped on the floor to be petted. Animals are so subtle. We explained to her that he spends most of his time hiding from us these days -- hiding from the twins because they love him so much, hiding from Rocket Boy because he gives the insulin shots, hiding from me because he thinks I am in league with Rocket Boy (as of course I am). He will probably come out and be very friendly with the cat-sitter, at least until she gives him that first shot.

Our garden that we planted five days ago is sprouting! Here are the first seedlings up: radishes. There's also something else sprouting -- either the cosmos or the cornflowers, of course I can't remember what I planted where.

And here is what the garden looks like overall, with the beleaguered cucumber plants near the end where I'm standing. Beleaguered because they keep getting poured on. I really don't have a lot of faith in the idea of anything growing very successfully this summer, but maybe the weather will calm down at some point.

 At the other end is a half-barrel containing an equally beleaguered tomato plant:

I don't think it's grown at all since we planted it, but at least it hasn't died. The plants in our front yard seem very happy indeed, so they must really like all the rain.

We are going on a driving trip to Mount Rushmore and points nearby. Monday we plan to drive up through Wyoming and see Devil's Tower, before ending up at our hotel in Spearfish, South Dakota. Tuesday we'll see Deadwood and Mount Rushmore and maybe Crazy Horse and Custer State Park before checking into our hotel in Rapid City, SD. Wednesday we'll go south and spend time in Badlands National Park, before collapsing in our hotel in Chadron, Nebraska. And Thursday we'll drive home. It's not as impressive as our driving odyssey last summer, but still -- three states (Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska) is three states. They've been in Wyoming before, but they haven't gone north, just west (or east, coming home) along the southern border. So it'll be different. And the weather is supposed to be good -- warm and dry. We'll probably be too hot!

Kid B's chin is healing nicely, but I'm struggling a bit because I'm on another new drug -- metformin, supposed to help with prediabetes as well as weight loss (a little). I resist the diagnosis "prediabetic," but I just had another "A1C" test and I've gone up since 2 years ago. Two years ago I was 5.7 and now I'm 5.8. Normal is 5.6 or less -- true diabetes doesn't start until 6.5 or so, but I'm in the prediabetic range. If I could just lose 20 lbs, or 50 lbs, I probably wouldn't be, but... Thus, metformin. Unfortunately, metformin has side effects too -- not mental ones, like the phentermine, but intense physical ones. In my case, even though I am on a starter dose of half a pill a day, these include diarrhea, nausea, fatigue, headache, and chills. There is an often-fatal condition that metformin can trigger, called lactic acidosis, and it has some of these symptoms, but so does hypoglycemia, which I might have had yesterday. I woke up this morning feeling like I'd been run over by a truck.

Feeling like one has been run over by a truck is not a good way to start a driving trip. So I might only take a quarter pill tonight and on the trip. I don't know why I have so much trouble with medicine. My body doesn't seem to want to take anything. I don't think this was true in my youth.

Anyway, despite all that, I'm looking forward to the trip. I love getting out on the road, no matter how much trouble it turns out to be. And trouble it will be, with two rowdy little boys, three hotels in three days, and 1000 miles of driving. Wish us luck!