Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Wet and Cold

"Well, that wasn't my best idea ever," Little Girl said.  She was standing in cut-off jean shorts over her swimsuit, a towel draped around her shoulders, dripping on the kitchen floor.

Giving her a quizzical look, she said, "Going swimming in the rain."

Rain! i retorted. You tried to go swimming in a downpour!

"Yes, I know, which is why I said it was not my best idea, maybe not even one of my better ones.  Taking my bowl of ice cream out there with me, though, that was totally worth it!"

Before i could think of something to say to that, we heard "Achoo!" from the hall.

"Uh, oh, here comes the walking germ factory!" Little Girl said with a grin.

"Achoo!" Bigger Girl said, coming into the kitchen.  Then, "I heard that, and I can't help it, I'm on the tail end of this cold!"

"Well, keep all the ends away from me, I don't want to miss work or swim team!" Little Girl said as she got her own tail out of there.  "I'm going back to the pool, rain or not!"

At that moment, lightning struck so close it was probably in our back yard, hitting the metal overhand again, and the resultant clap of thunder was so loud it shook the house and rumbled on for about 20 seconds.

"Um, never mind.  I think I'll go dry off and find something to read!"

Good idea, i told her as she left.

"Mom, we need more cough drops," Bigger Girl was telling me.

Wait a minute, i bought a bag of 80! i told her.

"Yeah, I know, and that's about how many I've had trying to numb my sore throat, so we need more.  I've been chomping them down like candy, and I think they are about as effective!"

At what point were you going to figure out that they weren't working too well? i asked.

"Sorry, I was desperate, I have to work, too.  And I have a very difficult chemistry lab.  The professor is from Nigeria, and he's very hard to understand.  He has a lisp!  A very good teacher, very nice, but a lisp!  About the only reason I'm catching what he says is that he's so polite, in his country you repeat yourself over and over to be polite and make sure people understood what you tried to teach them.  And I have to get this report done, he wants us to detail every safety precaution and where all of the safety equipment is located and how to use it.  So anyway, we need more cough drops."

How about i get you something more natural to soothe your throat, i'll see what they have at the health food store, and you drink some of that throat soothing tea, i told her.

"Okay, but I hate hot tea in the summer heat.  Oh, well, it's better than drowning.  My body is surrounding the viruses with mucus to get them out of me, but meanwhile the tail end of this cold is going to drown me!"

Let's hope not, i said as she set out to make some tea.



Today is

Abolition Day -- French Guiana

Alcoholics Anonymous Founders Day
    
Army Day -- Jordan

Ball Point Pen Day -- date, in 1943, Biro patented one of the early models of a ball point pen (it was as awful as the other early ones, though!)

Celtic Tree Month Duir (Oak) commences

Dia de Portugal e de Camoes -- Portugal (National Day)

Herbs & Spices Day

Holiday of the Wan Thing -- Fairy Calendar (the Wan Thing arrived in Fairyland this day an unremembered number of years ago and has sat there looking wan ever after, so the Fairies decided to give it its own holiday)

Kuopio Dance Festival -- Kuopio, Finland (exotic dance art by familiar and new artists from around the world on the sunlit summer nights; through next Tuesday)

Midnight Sun Film Festival -- Sodankyla, Lapland, Finland (one of the world's most unique film festivals; through Sunday)

National Black Cow Day

National Iced Tea Day

National Time Out Day -- US, sponsored by The Association of Operating Room Nurses, which want everyone involved in surgeries to take time out before the procedure to verify the surgery site, type, and patient and decrease OR errors 

Old Fort Days and Billy the Kid Tombstone Race -- Fort Sumner, NM, US (fun for all, including a rodeo, dance, demonstrations by Native Americans, and a race through an obstacle course carrying an 80lb tombstone! through Sunday)

Rape of Lidice/Lidice Memorial Day -- Czech Republic and Slovakia/New Jersey, US (in one of the most-remembered atrocities of WWII, the small town of Lidice, Czechoslovakia, was invaded by Nazi troops who murdered every man, burned every house, and sent all the women and children for "reeducation.")

Reconciliation Day -- Republic of the Congo

St. Brigid of Ireland's Day (Patron babies/infants/newborns, blacksmiths, boatmen/mariners/sailors/watermen, cattle, children whose parents are not married, dairymaids/dairy workers, fugitives, midwives, nuns, poets, poultry farmers, printing presses, scholars, travellers; Douglas, Lanarkshire, Scotland; Ireland; Ivrea, Turin, Italy; Kildare, Ireland; Leinster, Ireland)

Where the Wild Things Are Day -- birth anniversary of Maurice Sendak


Anniversary Today:

Alcoholics Anonymous is founded, 1925


Birthdays Today:

Joey Zimmerman, 1986
Tara Lipinski, 1982
Leelee Sobieski, 1982
Hoku Ho, 1981
Shane West, 1978
Doug McKeon, 1966
Elizabeth Hurley, 1965
Linda Evangelista, 1965
Jeanne Tripplehorn, 1963
Michael Burger, 1957
John Edwards, 1953
Jeff Greenfield, 1943
F. Lee Bailey, 1933
Maurice Sendak, 1928
Nat Hentoff, 1925
Judy Garland, 1922
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, 1921
Saul Bellow, 1915
Frederick Loewe, 1904
Hattie McDaniel, 1889


Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Tales from the Crypt"(TV), 1989
"Paperback Writer"(UK song release), 1966
"Tristan und Isolde"(Opera), 1865


Today in History:

Frederick Barbarossa drowns leading his troops across the Saleph River to attack Jerusalem in the Crusades, 1190
The first American log cabin is built, at Fort Christina in Wilmington, Delaware, 1639
Bridget Bishop becomes the first person hanged for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts, 1692
Captain James Cook runs aground on the Great Barrier Reef, 1770
A landslide dam on the Dadu River created by an earthquake ten days earlier collapses, killing 100,000 in the Sichuan province of China, 1786
The Jardin des Plantes museum opens in Paris; a year later, it becomes the first public zoo, 1793
The first Boat Race between the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge takes place, 1829
Myall Creek Massacre in Australia: 28 Aboriginal Australians are murdered, 1838
The first class of the United States Naval Academy students graduate, 1854
Mount Tarawera in New Zealand erupts, killing 153 people and destroying the famous Pink and White Terraces, 1886
Americus Callahan of Chicago patents the window envelope, 1902
The inaugural service for the United Church of Canada, a union of Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregationalist churches, is held in Toronto Arena, 1925
Dr. Robert Smith takes his last drink, and Alcoholics Anonymous is founded in Akron, Ohio, United States, by him and Bill Wilson, 1925
Six-Day War ends: Israel and Syria agree to a cease-fire, 1967
Apple ships its first Apple II personal computer, 1977
The Spirit Rover is launched, beginning NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission, 2003
Twenty inches of rainfall in Escambia County, Florida damages roadways and bridges, and leaving parts of the Florida Panhandle and coastal Alabama under water, 2012
German authorities are forced to evacuate 10 villages as heavy rains swell the Elbe River, breaching its banks, 2013
Heavy monsoon rains cause the collapse of a partially-finished building on a residential block in Mumbai, India, 2013

7 comments:

  1. 80 cough drops. NOT a good idea. She needs to gargle with salt water and take a small spoonful of honey every now and again. Cough drops are fine, but not the way she uses them. Terrible to be sick in the summer and I hope she gets rid of the cold soon.

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  2. I hope she loses that cold soon for your sake. Swimming with lightning? Glad she changed her mind on that.

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  3. yikes! near drowning for both your girls. ;)

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  4. You know what she needs and cough drops don't seem to be doing what they were intended to do. Swimming in a downpour too? You're life is so interesting. It really is.

    Have a fabulous day and I hope wellness visits your home. ☺

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  5. I can sympathize. I came home from vacation with what i thought was a bad cold, but now a week later i think it's the flu.

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  6. Hope she will be better soon.

    Laika & Vaks

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  7. Oh boy - 80!? yeah, clearly they were not effective. I think I read somewhere the most cough drops are not -- that they actually create the need to have more cough drops, so that you keep sucking on them - which in turn? aggravates your throat. so kind missing the point - ha!
    Hope she gets better soon and no one else catches that tail end!
    or, goes swimming when it's lightening! we are having a real doozy of a storm here too. soccer had to be cancelled because, well basically the soccer field = swimming pool!

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