Summer Cold

I'm getting a cold.  I haven't had a cold for about a year and I forgot how unbearable I can be when I have the slightest discomfort.  I think I get colds worse than anyone in the world.  I really really hate slight discomfort.  This morning I let Sam drive me around and I was complaining because my sinuses hurt and my throat hurts and wa wa wa wa wa wa! And Sam said that one day he was feeling bad about himself because of some lame reason and then he saw a girl at school who is confined to a wheelchair and can hardly move at all and she was singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and that put it all in perspective for him and he saw how lucky he is.  I pointed out to him that 1) that girl probably didn't have a sore throat like I have because if she did, she would not have been singing anything, 2) When someone melodramatically complains that their sinuses feel like someone ruthlessly went at them with a melon baller, they don't want a life-lesson on optimism from their 15 year old boy because that just makes everyone look stupid, and 3) if he ever wants to drive the goddamn car again he will start feeling sorry for me RIGHT NOW.  Somebody needs to teach that boy some empathy, and I think it is probably up to me since I am his mother, but I can't today because I don't feeeeeeeeel gooooooood!

I have been gone again, up at Rainy Lake with the kids.  I only came back for a few days to mow the lawn and go to book club tomorrow night.  Kira caught a turtle under water yesterday.  It was innocently swimming around, being the aquatic animal that it is, and she swam up to it and grabbed it.  It was super mad.  I've never seen a turtle so mad.  Last year she caught a duck by swimming up to it under water and grabbing its feet.  Needless to say the duck wasn't particularly happy about it either.  I've never seen a person so at home in the water, and so unafraid of grabbing wild animals in their natural habitat.  

Sam is becoming one with a 1958 Johnson outboard motor.  I say that because he can sense what the motor needs and what it likes and does not like.  I shifted myself in the boat the other day and for a split second the boat went slightly faster even though the motor was going full speed.  I said, "Hey!  I can make us go faster!" and I threw myself around a little and Sam said, "STOP IT! That's bad for the prop!" which I found slightly insulting.