Recipe testing, sinus headaches, lawn mowing, semester's end and other rites of spring

We're having real spring weather, uncommon for Wisconsin - highs in the 60s, sunny, a little rain, so everything is in bloom. Usually we go from cold and rainy to 90 degrees overnight.

Today I tried out another REAP recipe, this is supposed to be a corn and black bean salad, but to me it was more like a corn and black bean salsa - we ate it on chips, and with chips on, as in the picture, along with chicken enchiladas in a creamy green sauce - and it functioned quite nicely as salsa.

The last few days I have been having a lot of pain in my head and neck, like swollen glands, and generally feeling kind of crappy, like it's all too much, it's not fair I have to do this now (whatever it is, conduct intelligent conversation, drive in heavy traffic, etc.) because I feel too sick. On Saturday my throat was so sore, I almost thought I should go get cultured for strep - but I knew it was just not quite that sore. I've also been saying that the way my head feels, I either have a sinus infection, or I'm going to drop dead from a stroke - today I finally took sinus headache medicine, and feel so much better that the sinus infection theory wins - though the meds are wearing off now, and my throat is sore again.

Mowed the lawn at the supper club house today - it was particularly un-satisfying. My favorite thing about mowing the lawn is that I can truthfully say that I never mowed a lawn until I was over 40. Feminism be damned; lawn-mowing is a guy thing. But what happened was that my sons got almost as old as the kids I was hiring to mow the lawn, so I had to buy a mower and learn to use it so I could teach them, and pass the job onto them. Anyways, I never am sure I am doing it right, on our little weedy lawn at the house where we live, and even more so at the nicely landscaped lawn at the supper club.

My son John finished his semester on Friday, and is feeling at loose ends - he has been so busy with school for the last few weeks, and now doesn't know what to do with himself. Today he's in love - with an apartment - the first floor of a house, with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths - a lot more room than the two-bedroom in a 3 story building he's in now. I hope they get it!