A sandwich, gown, some trees, and a snake

This post is to catch up on a wide variety of things. It is not suitable for the squeamish. (I'm closing my eyes while typing most of it.)

While Mrs Notthat and I were touring the rain forests of southern Oregon and northern California, The Boy stayed home. There is little danger of him starving though. Here is a typical sandwich that he likes to make.

 This has been an interesting week for the grandkids. (As loyal readers should know by now, "interesting" almost always involves a hospital and maybe something worse.)

Riley spent two nights in the hospital last week. Darci spent Tuesday night at our house (we made cherry pancakes for breakfast!). Riley was released on Thursday, along with some new medications to hopefully make him more resistant to all these bugs that tend to trigger his asthma. Thursday night he started having stomach issues, and began a series of "cookie tossing" episodes. 

Friday, Darci graduated from preschool (she starts kindergarten in September!). I volunteered to watch Riley while Mrs Notthat, WHM and NCN all went to the graduation, but I was told not to worry - Riley would be fine with them. Two kids before Darci got her diploma (no word on her grade point average), Riley again did the cookie thing, and WHM ended up leaving early. 

Riley's doctor feels that the cookie problems are not related to the new medications, but that he has caught a stomach flu that's going around. Like I said, an "interesting" week. 

Saturday Mrs Notthat and I unwrapped the cherry tree and picked all the remaining cherries. We ended up with a total of about two gallons of cherries - not a huge amount (they will be gone quickly), but WAY more than we've ever harvested in other years. And they are really good. Even IDT tried really hard to get at the cherries through the netting.

Today I spent a few hours trimming our bottle brush tree. This is not my favorite task, but I like it when it is done, so I don't mind too much working on this thing. Just once I'm going to leave it with a mohawk or a mullet.

The most alarming event of the week was that The Boy now shares his room with this thing. It is actually from the grandkid's house - they are letting us borrow it to see if The Boy really wants to have one of his own and will take care of it, and whether I can deal with having this thing in the house. So far it has not been a problem on either front, although today when I took this picture was the first time I actually saw it. I thought it was a tiny little thing, but it isn't. IDT should be a bit more nervous than he is about it. It needs a bigger enclosure, and the plan (in my mind anyway) is for The Boy and I to try to build something suitable for it.

Something VERY escape-proof.

That's it - move along...