A Busy Month

It's hard to believe, but the month of August is already two-thirds of the way over. It really seems to have flown by for me as I've been going non-stop for awhile. And you can probably tell by my lack of blog postings lately that I haven't had much time to blog. Well, hopefully the end of the month will allow me some more free time to do writing because keeping up on my blog is a personal goal of mine and I don't think I've ever had a month where I wrote less than five blogs since being on Blogger.

Probably the activity that has kept me busy the most is the construction/remodel work taking place at my mom and dad's. I wrote about it in a previous blog; but for about a week straight, my dad and I worked many hours on the project. Of course I had already started taking all of the siding off the west wall of the house earlier in the month and before my dad and I really started working on it, he also did a good chunk of the demo on the rest of the siding that needed tearing off. But from Monday, August 11 through Sunday, August 17 - our main focus was tearing out the old and installing the new. By the time Sunday rolled around, we would've liked to have been farther than we had gotten, but that's basically how it goes in construction. One of the days we had to take a trip to town to get construction supplies and we didn't leave as soon as we would've liked. Then we spent too long in the home improvement store. And then another day, my sister and her kids were over, so our entire focus wasn't on the project for a good day in a half. Those two things slowed us down, but to be honest, I was pretty happy with all we had accomplished. All that we have left now is to install the vinyl siding, which I was able to start on this past Monday. I figure it should take us a couple of days to have the vinyl completely installed on the house and we can be 100% completed. Of course that's not taking into account other delays that could pop up and further disrupt our progress.

In the midst of all the construction work that was taking place, I developed an infection on one of my fingers which nearly made me take a trip to see a doctor. To make a long story short, it was caused by a bad habit that I still have been unable to shake for all these years - nail biting. Usually when I'm nervous is when I start to bite my nails or a lot of times, I like to trim off the hang nails that develop with nail clippers. I think what happened is I trimmed a hang nail from the side of my ring finger and dirt got stuck in there from work. Then in a matter of days, an infection formed. I will be honest, I've gotten these sorts of infections before, but my fingers usually just got red and it hurt to touch the sore area. But within a few days, my finger would be as good as new. Not this time - my ring finger only got worse and worse and before long, it was puffed up near the first knuckle and the skin was turning green near the side of my finger nail. I was getting pretty concerned, so I got on-line to see exactly what it could be. And wouldn't you know, it didn't take me very long to find out exactly what it was. I had Paronychia and it matched exactly the symptoms I had. At that point, it probably would've been a good idea to see a doctor for it the next day, but I figured I could at least attempt to fix it myself. So I got some hydrogen peroxide out, put some of it around the infection and see where things went from there. A little bit later, I got the nail clippers out and tried to open up the infected area and not before long, pus started to ooze out from one area. I soaked my finger in peroxide a few more times that day and by the time the next day rolled around, it was about as good as new. But that is one thing I have never experienced before - my finger being infected that bad. Hopefully it'll end up being a lesson-learning event for me. That's not really something I care to go through again anytime soon.

Another thing that has been bothering me as of late and started around the time of the construction project is the irritated and itchy skin around my ears, neck, and face. It all started with my ear lobes being really itchy at times and it seems to have progressed further and further to my face and neck. I think it's due to dry skin which is not really much a surprise because we haven't gotten much rain as of late and the humidity in the air has been pretty low. But I don't ever recall having dry skin around my face like this. I don't know if it's a combination of the weather and the soap I'm using - which I've never had a problem with before, or if it could be an alergy of some kind. If it keeps progressing, it's probably going to be something I'll have to get checked out. There have been moments when I can't stop itching and other times when it's been okay. I've been putting lotion on my face now which seems to be helping a little bit. I'll see if it ends up making any difference as the days move along.

So we are reaching the end of August and there's still lots that I intend to do. Hopefully in the midst of everything going on, I can still get out and enjoy the nice weather we've been experiencing. The temperatures have been really nice for this time of the year - hanging out around 80 during the day and in the mid 50's during the night. So that's one thing we can't complain about - although it would be nice if we did pick up some rain. The grass is starting to look quite parched and it wouldn't hurt if we got a nice soaking rain for a change. We'll see what happens as the rest of the month gradually comes to a close.