11/9/2009

The country life

Filed under: — Aprille @ 9:20 am

It was a gorgeous weekend, just fantastic, especially for November.  We started an adventure on Friday night, with a trip to Ames to spend the night with Mubby and Skittergramps on the way out to Nanna and Papa’s farm in southwest Iowa.  We explained to Miles ahead of time that we were going to see Mubby, Skittergramps, Nanna, Papa, and Uncle Michael, which he thought was cool, but he automatically added Uncle Tyler to that list and didn’t seem to believe me when I said we weren’t going to see him.

Uncle Tyler or not (though he did have a great weekend over in Lincoln; something good happened in the world of sports, I hear), we had fun.  Miles was a little scared of the farm animals, but he liked the animal toys Nanna bought him, and he had a great time playing catch and peek-a-boo with Papa.

Also, I got to indulge in one of my favorite hobbies related to going a-visitin’:  reading the periodicals of others.  It’s always interesting to take a look at magazines I don’t subscribe to.  At my parents’ house I read Consumer Reports, The Sun, Utne Reader, and Oprah (diverse group, no?).  At the farm I read Country Living, which as far as I can gather is mostly about decorating, but it also has an interesting feature a la Antiques Roadshow where people show things they acquired one way or another and the expert tells them whether the thing is worth $4 or $5000.  I bet more often they’re actually closer to the $4 end, but they don’t feature those very prominently.

Flipping through those Country Living magazines made me remember a really good recipe I got out of an earlier issue during another visit, which I was happy to find on their website.   I’m going to blog it in a new post so I can have an electronic record of it.

We also got H1N1 inoculations.  I have a major injection phobia (not blood draws, just stab-n-squirts), so when Cheryl (aka Nanna) suggested that their neighbor, who is a public health nurse, might have some extra doses, I got that familiar pukey and light-headed feeling.  I knew it was important to do; there have been a lot of people sick at work, some of whom keep showing up, realizing they’re still sick, then going home.  I’m not in the super high risk group, but Miles is, and I don’t want to bring anything home to him.

We went over to the neighbors’ house to visit and get stabbed.  They would have come to Nanna and Papa’s, but we decided we didn’t want Miles to associate their house with pain, so we went there instead.  She set up a station in the kitchen and got her equipment all set up.  I asked for a chair to sit in, due to my passy-outy tendencies in those situations, so she got me one.  Sitting down helped, though would it have killed her to find a chair with arms?  I kind of felt like I was going to fall out the side.

Actually, though, she did a great job.  The injection itself barely hurt at all, and once my blood pressure got back up to a normal level, I was fine.  Her husband did say I looked a little peaked when I got back to the living room.

Miles did okay too.  He howled as he got the shot, but he recovered quickly and was ready to get back to the Legos.  He needs another dose in a month, which might be kind of hard to find around here.  Apparently it’s easier to find the shots in the more rural counties, because the counties with larger cities (and notably the huge hospital here in Iowa City) are using up all their doses on health care workers.  We might have to go back next month for another round of down-home country kitchen immunization.  It’s the same place they make sauerkraut.

2 responses to “The country life”

  1. Skittergramps says:

    I like to read your detailed blogs as much or more than the stories in Utne Reader and The Sun. You’re right up there with Consumer Reports.

  2. Review Guide says:

    That rss feature on your site here is amazing, you should tell more folks about it in your upcoming post. I haven’t noted it a first, now I’m using it each morning to check on any updates. I’m on a very slow dial-up connection in Kentucky and it’s rather frustrating to sit there and wait for such a long time ’til the page loads… but hey, I just found your rss page and added it to the Google Reader and voil? – I’m always up-to-date! Well buddy, keep up the good work and make that rss button a little bigger so that other people can enjoy that as well 😛

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