Yesterday & Today & Opiate Withdrawal

Just had to take a photo of our clematis.  It is flowering and quite striking in appearance.

Yesterday was finally the day to get started weeding out at the Ness farm.  I can move about pretty good on hands and knees, but cannot bend over far enough while standing or stooping to touch the ground.  I am not cleared to be using hoes or other implements like that yet in any large scale way, so this is just the way it is for now.  We loaded up the car, and Piper managed to get herself muddy right before we were going to leave, so she got relegated to the very back, which she took in good humor, just happy to be coming along.

Patti dropped me and the three older kids off, and we got right to it.

It was not fast going, and for the great part, it is a tedious job, but was nice to have us all together, bantering about life in general, while the girls were far enough apart in distance that they could not annoy each other easily.

Claire was amazing.  She was faster than any of the rest of us, and by herself managed to do a couple hundred feet of row, hauled mulch to cover the area around the cabbage plants, and 5 full watering jugs to give them a good drink.

The photo above shows the row I started with.  It is carrots, and the weeds were just as tall as they are.  Add to that, the fact that as plants at this stage, they are fairly insubstantial.

Nell wanted me to post a photo of her NOT working on the blog.  <grin> Ok.  I can do that.

Phoebe was nearly as fast at weeding as Claire was, finishing, by the time we left, only one row less than Clare did.

This shot it to show how the carrots looked before I even started.

Once you find them, you have to clear everything to the sides before you start weeding with a fine touch in the row itself.  The 60 foot row took me 2.5 hours to do.  Gave the kids a bit of a laugh that they were doing so much more than I was, weeding beans and cabbages, but that is ok with me.

So, I have a payment system for them when we are doing things like this.  They do not have a choice about helping or not, but I pay them a buck an hour, and then bonus payments based on how much they do.  In the end, Clare had earned $7.50, Nell had earned $6.50, and Phoebe got $6.00.  They all understood how it worked, and were proud of how much they did.  I don’t give the kids an allowance.  Never have.  But we have always paid them for doing work other than cleaning their bedroom.  Whenever they start saying they want one thing or another, we smile and give them something to do to earn the money necessary to get it.  Right now they are all involved in a contest with each other to see who can save up the most money for our annual trip up north, where they will spend it on trinkets at Side Lake Store, and ice cream cones, if the past is any indication of the future.

Piper ran around down in the marsh for a good three hours before finding a place close to us that was shaded.  The days out there always wear her out.

Before Patti drove us out there I took a pain killer.  It was the first of the day, and I only took one.   I have been cleared to start driving, but was told by the doc to not have taken anything for 6 hours previous.  Before we had gone out to the Ness farm we had spent an hour at the public beach on Tonka Bay.  Only a couple miles from our house, but since I was driving, I took no meds early in the day.  That evening, after all the work, I was still feeling physically pretty good, so I didn’t take any meds in the evening as well.

I learned that was pretty dumb.

Four and a half hours, starting at 1 am this morning, of a migraine that was so bad I was alternating between groaning, weeping, and screaming.  After the first two and a half hours it all got combined with vomiting, again and again and again.  I finally took a couple of morphine tablets, and things calmed down eventually.  Patti was worried about me, to the point where I had to talk her out of calling for an ambulance.  I had no idea what was happening, but figured I would live through it, and it had to stop sometime.  It did, and Patti came up with a theory, researching on the internet, which was confirmed by my pharmacist today.  It was withdrawal symptoms.  I have been on heavy pain meds for nearly a year.  I cannot just not take them because I don’t hurt.  He said that I should cut a bunch of them into small pieces and make sure that I take them here and there to prevent that happening again when I have long periods of time where I do not feel I need pain meds to deal with things.

So today no real working outside.  Just recovering from last night, and then an hour at the beach with all the kids and Patti.  Violet ran into the lake and fell face first in about 18 inches of water before we could stop her.  <grin> Patti scooped her right up, and once baby Violet was done sputtering, she started screaming and laughing and trying to do it again, so she got to walk around in the lake under very close supervision (as in Patti never let go of her again) until the beach closed for the day.

Tomorrow, if the weather holds, I will either get back to the Ness farm, or to the Minnetonka garden.  I need to replant a row of beans that got eaten at the Ness farm, and I still have some tomatoes and peppers to get in at the Minnetonka garden, and some pole beans there as well.  Still not summer yet, but in two days it will be.  Time is passing fast.