While I was in the garden on Saturday, I got stung by something. I’m not sure what it was; I smacked it before I totally realized what was happening. I’m pretty sure it was a wasp or a hornet, though.

I was lucky in that I did not have an anaphylactic reaction. My leg swelled up a bit, but not in any way that seemed disproportionate to the situation. It stung, but didn’t even itch particularly.

However, while most people’s swelling would go down after a day or two, mine continued to get worse. Apparently that’s called a large local reaction. Essentially, my body really doesn’t like being stung or bitten by insects and overreacts to the entire thing. A large local reaction is like your body being a drama queen. I was never in any danger from the situation, but my body doesn’t want anyone to realize that. “I was STUNG, people! STUNG!” Every time my body thinks about it, the story gets bigger and more elaborate. So every time I unconsciously rubbed at or scratched my leg, my body added another layer of hysteria to the reaction.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had a large local reaction. It happens sometimes with mosquito bites, too, and I assume it’s the reason my doctor thought I was allergic to bee stings as a kid.

I’ve taken some Benadryl (which was its own ridiculous story) and have just recognized that my leg will be swollen for another few days and that I’ll simply have to live with the unattractive appearance and itchy feeling.

But, nope, I’m not allergic. Just a drama queen.

We started the weekend with an ice cream party (Sunday is National Ice Cream Day), which is an excellent way to commence pretty much anything, honestly.

I have to work tomorrow morning, but after that I’m hopeful the weekend will include:

• Heading out to the Delaware shore on Sunday.
• Reading on the beach.
• Knitting in the car.
• Spending some time in the garden watering and weeding.
• Doing laundry.
• Checking out Bastille Day celebrations around the city.
• Eating crepes for supper. We should be able to make some with veggies like chard or zucchini, right?
• Returning a few things to the library.
• Tidying up the apartment.
• Catching some zzz’s. And with that …

What are you hoping to do this weekend?

This was a not particularly exciting weekend. On Friday, we went out to eat at our favorite pizzeria, where they have outdoor seating.

Saturday, we watched some bike racing and I started my new knitting project. I did some chores. I went out to the suburbs to make a return and bought some new clothes. I also renewed my library card for the town adjacent to ours and checked out the (relatively) new space for one of the local yarn shops. (I came away empty-handed.)

Sunday, I went to the farmers market, where I was excited to find smoothie bowls had returned to one of my favorite baker’s stands. This week it was roasted peach. Yum. I went to the Cezanne exhibition. It was of his post-Impressionist portraits, so while I’m glad I went, I wasn’t as blown away as I would have been if it had been his Impressionist landscapes. (I did stop by the Impressionists before leaving the museum.) On the way home, I stopped by where Wonder Woman was being filmed. They’d populated a couple blocks with ’80s cars and extras with big shoulder pads and bigger hair. Unfortunately, no scenes were being shot when I stopped by and I decided I didn’t need to wait. I then hit up the pool, the garden, and the park, where Rudi met me after work and where we stayed until after the final notes of “Taps” had faded away.

So nothing overly exciting, but nothing terrible either. Just a low-key weekend.

It’s supposed to be a beautiful weekend here. After a scorcher of a week, we need it. I’m going to try to soak up as much of it as I can. Here’s what I hope it includes:

• Eat outside.
• Watch some bike racing.
• Start a new knitting project. (Nope, still no idea which it’ll be. Game time decision!)
• Stalk Wonder Woman. (They’re filming the second movie in the series here in D.C. This weekend it’s downtown near the White House. They did some filming last month outside the Watergate, where my friend Sarah works and they eventually had to send a P.A. up to ask them to stop watching from the window, since they were in the shot.)
• Pull out my pea vines. They were looking done for when I was at the garden on Wednesday, but there were a few more pods I wanted to give a shot to.)
• Admire Cezanne. (There’s a retrospective of his work at the National Gallery of Art that I just heard about that ends on Sunday. Apparently I haven’t been paying attention to the art scene. But this requires heading to a Smithsonian on a summer weekend on a closing weekend, two things I try to avoid like a bad cold, so I might decide looking at his Wikipedia page is just as good…)
• Do laundry.
• Bake. (I pitted a couple quarts of cherries mid-week, but it was just too hot to turn on the oven.)
• Make daiquiris. (I have a lot of whole strawberries in my freezer right now.)
• Watch the sun set from the park.

How about you? What do you have on tap for the weekend?

As you can see, I did make it out the farm to pick blueberries. The bushes were laden, so that bucket took just over an hour to fill, which I appreciated. Saturday’s rain held off until I was done picking and even then it was just sprinkles (and a rainbow) until I was back home.

I would tell you more about my weekend, but I just spent more than two hours fitting cherries into the fridge from this morning’s farmers market (no fava beans, alas!) and cutting up the last of the strawberries, so all I want to do at this point is go to bed.

More tomorrow!