The Plague

Last night around dinner my throat was feeling scratchy...by the time I went to bed, my throat was just killing me. Steve was feeling bad too, and got up in the middle of the night to try to lay a little more propped up. I woke up at 4 a.m. and it felt like I had glass shards in my throat-I couldn't swallow, it was just terribly painful, and from 4 a.m. on I couldn't get into a good sleep. Around 6 something, suddenly my throat felt a little better, my head felt a little stuffy, but I was okay. Steve, however, has been on the couch all day, sick. So I get to the airport only to find out that Chuck woke up not feeling himself either. And then Nathan comes in and says he felt bad last night in his throat/airway/sinuses. We were all fine that day, and we all got some version of sick that night. I don't know if we breathed something that affected us all, or if we all got hit with the same bug at the same moment, or what, but it was a weird little plague attack.

Ty and I flew the Baron today. Instead of boring slow flight, steep turns, stalls and take offs and landings, we took Nathan to Muncie. :) We got back around 11:30, landing as the Mustang was roaring around. When Jim came back in with it, I was standing on the ramp when suddenly this shoe came dropping out of the cockpit onto the ground. We all kind of looked at it for a second, and laughed for awhile about the explanation. Steve C. was in the back of the Mustang, and the left rudder pedal is hard to squeeze your foot into to get to, so he kicked off his shoe so he could fly it with both rudders too. My foot is small enough to do it, but barely, so anyone with a foot larger than a woman's size 7.5 is just fairly well out of luck. Steve's solution of kicking off his shoe still makes me smile. When he climbed out of the cockpit, Chuck took his photo with Jim on the wing, and I was tempted to take one of his feet, but didn't have my camera handy. That was funny.

We broke for lunch, and Chuck dropped me off at Glenndale so I could pick up the Decathlon and take it over to Kokomo. A nice little flight, actually. (As a side note, I am still getting a little kick out of it when I fly the Decathlon or the Citabria after I've been flying the T-6. My feet are left waiting for something more to happen. ;))

When I left Kokomo, it was time to pick up Kaylee from school. She had woken up cranky and kind of mean, causing us to have a little...showdown...this morning. In hindsight, I wondered if she woke up feeling as cruddy as both Steve and I did, and just didn't handle it very well. I still don't know-she says she didn't feel good, but she also never feels good in the mornings, being more night owlish. But by the time I picked her up from school, she was doing quite well.

Kaylee also had a different kind of milestone of sorts today. Last night she was cleaning up her bathroom floor, and she came walking into our linoleum dining room floor with a wet towel. Water dripped on the floor, and she wiped out HARD. I heard her hit the floor from across the house, and she was flat on her back-hadn't even had time to brace her fall. You know the difference between the "wah, I hurt myself, boo hoo" cries and the "Oh man, that's bad" high pitched wail. That hurt. Well, today she said that her rear end was bruised all over, and I asked if I could look at it and see how bad the bruising was, and she said no. (Which of course I respected since she's getting around fine.) Steve on the other hand gasped and said "Kaylee! You fell so hard you...you...you cracked it!!" I believe she did something like snort and roll her eyes. He's working hard to get to that "embarrassing father" role that he's going to enjoy so much. ;)

When I got back home with her, Steve was still sick on the couch, and I actually fell asleep for a little while too, catching up from not sleeping last night I guess. I got Kaylee off to cheer practice, and met the Riders and Jim for dinner. We finished up just after 7 pm, and I went to the cheer place. The kids practice upstairs where you can't see them and nobody can go for most of it, and then come down for the last bit in the gym. So I'm watching, and I see Kaylee's group do a "stunt" where they lift a girl up in a pyramid type thing. Kaylee is a base. She didn't want to be a base, she wanted to be a flyer (the girl on top of the pyramid), but Kaylee is really very strong and solid, and she makes a good base person. Anyway, they are doing this lift over and over, and then I see them toss the girl in the air and catch her in a sitting position. Sloppily. These girls are 6-7 years old, doing a stunt where they toss another little girl in the air and catch her. You hope. Last year they did the pyramid lifts, and it didn't bother me in the least, but kids that size doing that tossing stunt without adults spotting, well, that just does not seem like a good plan. I sure hope that when they do that stunt on a gym floor and not a mat that they have adults making sure the flyer doesn't get dropped on her head and hurt. Cheerleading is supposedly the highest injury 'sport' in the U.S. I'm kind of glad Kaylee's not the one being tossed and caught by her fellow children...and I'm usually really rather laid back about potential injury situations. That one just seems to yell "this stunt is going to work... until it doesn't work". You know?

To end, Chuck took this picture yesterday of me in the back of the Mustang prior to our flight. :)