Snagged this from Obama’s Flickr stream, which has a bunch of him and Hillary working the crowd in matching clothes.

Is there a public bathroom over one month old that doesn’t have a defaced hand dryer?

I went to the Doctor’s office yesterday because my face was swollen with bugs bites.  The bugs are at plague levels all over town and so my family decided to do the logical thing and leave the comfort of our air conditioned home and go camping.  After two nights in the woods I woke up Sunday morning with two swollen eyes, two swollen ears, lumps all over my neck and some lymph nodes as hard as walnuts.

At one point while I was out trying to play catch with my daughter, a cloud of gnats drifted into my head and I suddenly had them in my ears, in my eyes, up my nose and  a couple stuck on my tongue.  I went a little berserk and ran around spitting and waving my hands closely around my ears and face.  If someone by chance was filming me on 16mm I’m sure the result would not have been far off from one of those odd tribal dances seen by many a sociology students.

I wasn’t the only one at the doctor’s office.  There was a women who had a bite on her lip that had swollen to the size of a nickel.  I don’t know what is going on around here but it’s completely nuts (or gnats I guess).  If you stop in any one place for more than a few seconds outside you get swarmed.  I’ve been riding my bike in circles at stop signs just to keep moving and avoid getting attacked.

Ok so this is not my normal face, it’s swollen in several places:

And this is what it looks like if you stop in one place for a bit:

I’ve been looking at the funnel cloud entry for weeks now and thinking I need to write a post on the floods. Each time I went to write about it, I drew a blank. It has affected my family down in Keokuk, Iowa and Hamilton, Illinois. Thankfully, they, their homes and their businesses are all fine. Here in Fairfield we are far from any river though. And so, it’s been easy for me to focus on myself.

It’s been four months since I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I don’t believe I’ve had cancer since the surgical removal of it three months ago. But because cancer was found in two lymph nodes I am going thru six months of chemo and a year of herceptin.

I haven’t been very emotional about the whole thing. Kinda shut down but trying to focus on the positive and being healthy. After my acupuncture appointment last night I could just feel all this emotion being released. I started crying off and on the whole day today. I mostly cried when I felt the support around me. But, I have been scared about this up and coming chemo.

My sushi delivery was canceled today and it totally overwhelmed me (it’s funny how obsessive I am about my food and what I can eat after chemo). Soon after this call I got another call from a dear, dear friend who offered to make me sushi!

I found out that I have three sessions of yoga/body work paid for by friends!

Tom Stark, a wonderful dear heart, came by today and did some Qigong work with me.

My husband hugged me through out the day.

Fellow Fairfield blogger Missy pointed me to this amazing photo of a funnel cloud touching down in Iowa earlier this week.  I cannot imagine the terror, awe and beauty of seeing this thing for real from my front door as Lori Mehmen did (the photographer).

See Mitchell County press for more on this photo.

Sometimes I’ve thought what would I do if I ever had millions of dollars.  Things like yachts and sprawling mansions never come to mind.  I usually imagine myself being a philanthropist (building schools) and traveling with my family (like to China or Prague).  Sometimes I imagine a really nice watch.

Today I saw something on Boing Boing that would the millioniare Will would purchase in a heart beat.  An ancient Roman D20.  Honestly, it’s way under valued at 18 grand.

So it’s 7pm, and I’m with my family standing with the window open so we can watch and listen in awe to the crack and rumble of an intense lighting storm.  And then we hear a siren.  I run to the Internet (not the basement) and check the National Weather Service.  Yep, there’s a tornado watch in effect for Jefferson county until 2am.

So do I go to the basement now?  What does the siren mean?  I don’t see people fleeing for their basements.  Two weeks ago the siren went off and I went down to the basement, but then it went off for like 3 hours and no tornado.

Dawn arranged to have someone deliver veggie sushi for dinner last night. Yum! I do miss “real” sushi, meaning raw fish, but I like my avocado too.

A day after getting her Henna Tattoo, the top layer being crumbling and Penelope helped scrape it off.  What’s cool is that over the past couple days since then the ink has been darkening.  This is supposed to happen but still it’s cool to watch.

I think this is a toad, but my Google search was a bit inconclusive. Dawn found this one in our (finished) basement. We have two cats in the same basement by the way.

Our daughter took the toad/frog and turned her kiddie pool into his/her new habitat.

I was impressed at how much she put into building the new home. For instance in the center of the pool she put in an unused planter filled with dirt and some weeds. Like a little toad island.