Juju's Allergies

A Juju Update
I took Juju to the vet last week to get her annual vaccinations and heartworm medication--and also to ask about her scratching, which had seemed to escalate in the last week. For the most part she is in great shape as a full-grown, 55.6 pound 1 year old shepherd mix. Just sick with allergies. The vet said she almost hoped it were fleas or mites because those are treatable--unfortunately, it's just allergies ('tis the time of year, I guess) for which there is no cure-all. So she gave me a spray for the severely itchy areas--like her paws, which she has chewed bare spots on almost all of. I gave her an oatmeal bath. Then she suggested some various over-the-counter medicines to try (like benadryl).

If you know me then you may know that I am not big on taking medicine. I very RARELY take even an aspirin for anything. In fact, I have to be feeling pretty miserable indeed to try something other than drinking water or sleeping to cure a headache. So I felt out of my element in the drug aisle at Wal-Mart trying to figure out where the allergy medicines were. I was looking for things like diphenhydramine and chlorpheniramine--I even feel more intelligent just writing those words! Did you know that there are a lot of different types of medicine out there? Thankfully I was able to find Equate brands of each of these different drugs and have been trying them with Juju. The "benadryl" (diphenhydramine) seems to possibly be working, but Juju's still scratching. I guess we have to wait for the weather to turn colder for the final "cure." I guess it's good practice for being a mother??

Power Outage

We survived about 6 and a half hours of school today without electricity! About 8:40 this morning all of a sudden all of the lights in the building blinked then went out...and didn't come back on and didn't come back on and didn't come back on. It didn't take us long to figure out that an excavator working on the road construction on State Road 26 had somehow severed our power line...whoops! They originally said we should have power restored by 11:30. Whatever. We had some mighty creative teaching going on in the building as teachers found ways to have light in their classrooms. All the candles came out of hiding for those who didn't have windows, or else class was moved to an area of the building where there were windows (like the MRC or church foyer). For myself, thankfully I only had about 3 piano students during this time--and there was no way to actually teach in my room, because even if I'd had a candle it would hardly have been enough light. So for 2 lessons we just sat by the outside door and talked through what to do. For my third, beginning student I used the music suite (with the door open to let in light). It was HUMID outside, too. I noticed this because Mr. Heim had FMT, Junior high choir, and Senior high choir in the music suite with the door open to let in light, which also let in all of the humid air, of course! My music pages were starting to get all soggy and the piano bench was sticky! Thankfully, though, it wasn't pouring down rain like yesterday so P.E. classes could be outdoors. And since there was no way to prepare lunch without electricity we ended up with a hot dog cookout outside for lunch, which I'm told went fairly well. (I went home for lunch and enjoyed the comfort of air conditioning.) My sister and other secretaries were left with not much to do as most of their work revolves around the computer, which doesn't work so well without electricity. The phones worked on battery backup for about 4 hours but then died as well. Thankfully the power came back on--just as school was being dismissed at 3:15!

As a spiritual illustration, I was reminded how much I try to do on my "battery backup" power without plugging into the source of daily renewal of God's Word! I was reminded again of my dependence on Him as the Source of all power. Just as I am extrememly thankful for the electric power I often take for granted, I need to spend time plugging into my Source of spiritual power. Okay, I need to go read my Bible now and have my "God and I" time for the day!

For Mom

Mom, here are the pictures of Tim & Kristen's apartment (and one of the ring and one of the honeymoon hot air balloon) that you wanted to print off!

The Windy City

My "last hurrah" before in-service started on Monday was a day in Chicago on Saturday! Sarah and I left around 7:00 a.m. and drove up north and picked up my friend Jackie Maronic (who lives in the suburbs) for a day downtown!

The first thing we did was take an 11:00 a.m.-12:00 architectural boat tour from Navy Pier. (Well, actually we ate breakfast at McDonald's at Navy Pier first.) Then we walked up and down Michigan Avenue, just looking at various shops on our way to lunch. The above picture is Centennial Fountain, which shoots out over the Chicago River for 10 minutes at the top of every hour. (It shut off before we reached it so we didn't get wet.)

For lunch we splurged at the Grand Lux Cafe, where we had a pretty nice view from the second story.

Then we walked up to the Water Tower place and had dessert at the Cheescake Factory, which is at the base of the John Hancock building. We decided to go ahead and go up to the top and see the view. So we paid our fee and waited in line to get on an elevator to the 94th floor. It was worth the trip--it was an amazing view!

Looking North

East

South (Sears Tower in the background)

West
By the time we got back to the car it was almost raining, but we decided to make one more detour: Gross Pointe Lighthouse in North Chicago. We visited the beach briefly (that's when it really started raining) then walked around the grounds of the lighthouse before driving back to Jackie's house. Jackie said she had never been close enough to TOUCH a lighthouse before so we had to get a picture of that!


We had a quick bite of pizza and a visit with Jackie's mom Kathy before driving the 2 and a half hours home to Lafayette. We didn't get home until past midnight but it was worth it!