Usually by throwing up all down your back whilst you’re swaying back and forth gently in an attempt to soothe them when having night terrors, a fever, or general sleeplessness. Either way, fun times. And a change of wardrobe later, I’m up with the sun and the gooey, sick child that never, ever sleeps in on weekends. But, I will say this, since both kids have recently started to occupy their time with mobile ball balancing games, they are able to keep to themselves for an hour at a time before the rage quiting starts. Baby steps. I’d prefer them do console stuff, fewer ad interruptions, by far, and easier to monitor.
I guess this is Saturday July first. Day one of my wife’s year off, and also day one of nine weeks worth of summer holidays for the kiddos. Around these parts this is considered Strawberry Festival Season, and usually there is a big fair set up in town, fire works, food trucks, vendors, stalls, and live events. But due to a scheduling conflict, no rides this year. And the weather forecast calls for rain, and thunder storms from now until Tuesday. Welp! Not much we can do about that. I always have my eyes open for funnel cakes and fish tacos, so I don’t doubt that we will mosey over at some point if the rain holds off, or remains fairly light.
In the back of my head I’m glad for the rain. I can’t recall us heading into July with green grass before, so a couple of extra rain days should do us some good as the hot, humid parched earth of July settles in. The corn will like having some rain, especially if it’s followed immediately by several days of heat, and unfettered sunshine. We don’t irrigate our fields, so very dependent on rainfall. Eventually we’ll get back to a drought situation, and will have to hand water all the vegetable plots, and pumpkins, the peach trees, and apple orchard, cucumber patch, and all the tomatoes and pepper plants. Hundreds of feet of hose to move around, cans full of water, wagons with cisterns, or a full on water truck with pump and fire hose. It’s loud, messy, and hot physical labour. And that’s the easier job there is. Weeding, and pulling buckets of rocks out of the field are much harder. Both on your back, and how much time it takes. Well, correction. Rocks suck, but a few good passes might do it for the season, but weeding last forever. Sprays work on some things, but going in with a hoe, or trowel, and spending hours everyday cleaning up rows works the best. But is highly physically demanding. Tiring, hot, thistle filled work that stains your hands funny colours, and leaves you with dirty feet, bug bites, and a sun burn. Thankless work. Easily the biggest reason I would never own my own farm, or be interested in living off my own land. Awful, hard, soul crushing work. Owning land is a dream, but exclusively farming that land?, myself?, no chance. One acre plot for veggies I like, yeah sure why not. But a whole working farm. No way. Although the commute would be great, the most ever ‘work from home’ job you could ask for. But rigorous and hard living. I’m far too soft inside to weather that hardship.
Both kids are now up, and it has just gone 7:00am. Going to be a long, long summer.
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