The Summer That Isn’t

 

Although some parts of the country may be suffering from high heat it certainly hasn’t reached Wisconsin as yet! In fact, we continue to rage like early Spring, with daily high winds and off and on rain also almost daily. The constantly cloudy skies are getting downright gloomy! Despite it being mid-June, I still am wearing long pants and long sleeve sweatshirts.

 Late May and June have been months of turmoil here in the Northwoods. Dodging bad weather and not feeling too good, Marc has made repeated attempts to gain ground on the two most looming projects here—the new stairway and finishing the siding on the boathouse—to no avail.

It took awhile for him to figure out all the mathematical angles and trajectory of the stairway given the distance it drops down the hillside. First, he built a small retaining railing for the stairs to drop from. Then he had to remove the two-bolted together railway ties (heavy) from each of the old steps and drag them and all the rebar holding them together up to flat ground. Then he had to shovel out the dirt to make it smooth before he could start fabricating the stringers which would hold the new stair steps. Given that he is working on a steep side hill he found he literally had to tie himself off to keep from sliding down as he worked. By the end of a few hours of work his ankles and knees were screaming in pain.

As day by day passed, he felt worse and worse in terms of body aches. We managed to obtain a buyer for our Hideout RV and on one Saturday he delivered it to the buyers in Tomahawk, around 45 miles from here. After delivery, he kept going to head for home in Waupaca to fix our lawnmower, which had broken down the last time I was trying to mow a few days earlier. While there he broke out in terrible night sweats and bad headaches with extreme fatigue. I urged him into urgent care on that Monday and the doctor highly suspected Lyme’s disease so put him on a high powered antibiotic. Bloodwork definitely showed he is fighting some type of infection although the specific Lyme’s test proved negative. I guess this can be common even though one has the infection. He continued to suffer for much of that week before physically being capable of the three hour drive back to Phillips. He still hasn’t felt like attempting any physical work so things remain at a standstill. 

That’s the latest update from the far North as I’m about to take off for my turn again in Waupaca. I hope by the next update we’ve made progression on these tasks and that the weather finally decides to give us some summer, when the living’s supposed to be easy. Yeah, right!

(wild Columbine)

(wild Trillium)