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Working on Catching Up on Sleep| | ~Working on Catching Up on Sleep~
I really thought that I would fall into bed and sleep through the night without a problem [Monday night] but it was not to be. At some Weird [of course] hour I got up and came out to the living room and began again to try to deal with my email.
It wasn't as bad as it was in the past, though. In the last year or so I realized I was subscribed to a LOT of newsletters I just wasn't reading, so I unsubscribed to them and that has helped tremendously when I have to be away from the computer for any length of time. The main email address I use for fambly and friends had only 70 emails waiting for me, and that's low, believe it or not.
So, once I dealt with that as much as I could, I left it and went to catch up on some online sites I stalk on a regular basis.
Somewhere around 5 am The Boy got up to pee, and he dropped by my desk to ask me, "You OK?" I assured him I was and he went back to his coffin. At 5:23 am the house phone rang, and I quickly turned around and grabbed up the phone and answered it.
It was The Mother, who was VERY shocked to hear my voice because she didn't know that I was home. She recovered quickly though, and told me to tell The Boy that she needed him at the Mud Hut because The Stepdad was down again and she couldn't get him up. I said, "OK," hung up the phone, and wheeled my computer chair down the hall and yelled at The Boy to tell him.
He jumped up so fast I couldn't believe it, and was out of here in less than a minute.
He returned home quickly [the Mud Hut being only three blocks away] and told me that The Stepdad was on the damned OUTSIDE PORCH ALL NIGHT.
He said, "He REALLY needs to be in a nursing home, but my mother is too soft-hearted to put him in one."
SOFT-HEARTED? 
I don't think so. What can be more freaken terrifying than to be an old person who can't get themselves up when they have fallen and they are outside in the world besides? OMFG, what is she thinking?
I'm not overly fond of The Stepdad, mainly because he's not the type of person who invites you to feel anything for him one way or another. But I don't want ANYONE laying OUTSIDE IN THE ELEMENTS overnight!
OMG, he was so lucky that it was warm outside, which is not to say that he still didn't feel uncomfortable, because old folks tend to feel cold when the rest of us feel just fine. But this is terrible. I want to slap the shit out of her for thinking it would be a bad thing for The Stepdad to be somewhere where they have people to watch over him so this kind of thing won't happen.
So, the day proceeds and I go back to bed and The Boy gets up and then I get up after only a couple hours [which is all I'm sleeping at a stretch until my body gets used to the fact that I am SLEEPING! IN! AN! ACTUAL! BED! again] and The Boy decides that The Kitchen Must Be Rearranged NOW. And a deep clean of the floor in there was going to be done.
We argued about this for a while, because there's no talking to that man sometimes, and I finally threw my hands in the air and said, "Do whatever the fuck you want, because you will anyway," and I went back to bed, because truly, my eyes were slamming shut. I was dead asleep in MINUTES.
See, he gets all these great ideas that aren't really so great for when you are actually working in the kitchen. Women are all about saving steps and they know about the 'Triangle of Work' whereas a lot of men do not, The Boy being one of the latter.
Well, I'm here to tell you that when I got up and saw what he had done to the kitchen, I WAS FLOORED AND SPEECHLESS.
Which is to say I WAS IMPRESSED.
I KNOW!
But I didn't let him know this, of course. He told me he had to run to the grocery store for something for our dinner, and the minute he was gone I got Murray out and took pictures. But in order to really appreciate the pictures, let me show you what the 'before' pictures would have looked like, if he had taken them.
This is a picture of the cats, but you can see in the sides and the background some of the craziness that was our kitchen ==> 11810
Now, check THESE out ==> 11820, 11821, 11822, and 11823.
The Boy still wants to move the microwave off the counter, and for that we need to figure out a way of supplying power to it, so that's still in the future. His ultimate goal, so he says, is to clear off part of the counter so he can do Actual Food Preparation on it, such as cutting and chopping and whatever.
So, let me tell you how I got the wound on my leg while at The Herbowski Spa and Resort [whose motto is "We Don't Need No Stinkin' Ocean!"].
We arrived at The Herbowski Spa and Resort [whose motto is "We Don't Need No Stinkin' Ocean!"] about 3 pm or so on Wednesday. [I was pretty much set to go when Bratsis  and Buttmunch pulled up and Buttmunch [being the youngest] quickly moved all my shit to the car and got it stowed away and we were off.]
Now let me digress a moment and tell you about Bratsis' GPS unit. Her hubby downloaded an additional voice for her, and he chose 'Stewie' from 'Family Guy'. Let me tell you, I laughed my ass off the first time we deviated from the route he was showing us to say, "What the HELL are you doing? This is NOT the route I laid out for you!"
Hysterical.
So, we arrived at The Herbowski Spa and Resort [whose motto is "We Don't Need No Stinkin' Ocean!"] and were met by our Host, Bubba [Sr., but we'll call him plain ole Bubba since Bubba Jr. just doesn't figure into the equation this trip] who seemed a bit 'nervous'. But we hugged him and just talked for a bit and he seemed to remember us from years past and realized anew that we were just people and weren't going to bite him or anything.
I should take a moment to digress and remind you just WHO Bubba and [our hostess] Kay used to be in Real Life. Kay owned the house where the Bratfambly Drunken Orgies Reunions used to be, when not held at the Forest Preserve. She was, at one time, married to 4-F, a Brat brother, but when they got divorced, we kept HER and the kids and let HIM go. Four years later, she started dating Bubba [I had a 'bit' of a hand in this, I'm proud to say  ] and last November they purchased The Herbowski Spa and Resort [whose motto is "We Don't Need No Stinkin' Ocean!"] and combined households, and are presently renting out their respective homes, since they got renters easier than buyers for their homes.
So, Bubba had a house full of people who are not really related to him, but who feel like he's part of the fambly, and he DID know us. It was just his first time as a Host.
Now, to put it bluntly, Bubba is a Clean Freak. He's sort of OCD about it, and there's nothing wrong with that. WE were worried because we didn't want to cause him one extra bit of work if we could help it, and we were on our BEST BEHAVIOR regarding food and drink and spills and leaving our dirty clothes laying around. I knew it was sort of a lost cause when I saw him cleaning the glass ["OMG there's fingerprints on my windows! They are TOUCHING MY STUFF!"] on the screen door before going to bed. But we did as much as we could to be Good Guests because we'd like to return some day.
Wednesday night I was up until like 3 am because the weather was so nice and it was so damned quiet outside compared to The Cave. Thursday we got up, and went outside to drink our coffee [and smoke, of course] and when we had enough coffee we broke out the vodka and [I think] Bloody Mary mix we found in the fridge in the garage.
Now, the back door to The Herbowski Spa and Resort [whose motto is "We Don't Need No Stinkin' Ocean!"] is a bit problematic for those of us who have knee and/or hip problems. The steps leading to it have sunk over four inches, and the first step is a bitch, as they say. And if you can't use that step, the only alternative is to go around the side of The Herbowski Spa and Resort [whose motto is "We Don't Need No Stinkin' Ocean!"] and enter the house through the garage.
Some time Thursday afternoon or early evening, I can't remember exactly [alcohol may or may not be involved], I was trying to negotiate that freaken step. Bratsis came up behind me, and trying to be helpful, said she would give me a push.
The trouble was, I wasn't READY for a push.
My left leg missed the step and my shin scraped along the top step, which was concrete. My right shoulder slammed into the door jamb, rendering it pretty much useless for days [and it's still not back to normal as I write this, which made putting my hair back in a pony tail almost impossible without help. Thanks, Buttmunch!]
The pain was indescribable.
This is a good place to edumacate people, so I'm going to take a second to do that.
Folks, if you see someone who is struggling, don't assume you know what they need. Ask them if they want to be helped and if they say yes, THEN ASK THEM HOW YOU CAN HELP THEM. Do not assume that you know exactly the best way to help them because chances are YOU WOULD BE WRONG. Bratsis had not seen me in a while and I'm sure she was not aware of the fact that just bending and raising my leg up and over something takes me just a BIT longer than it takes other people. Just please be aware that people have physical limitations that cannot be seen. THANK YOU!
[This is not to say that my sister isn't sensitive to people's needs; she is. And this isn't to say that she did this on purpose; she did not. We were all having a good time [and alcohol may or may not be involved] but SHIT HAPPENS, and when SHIT HAPPENS, it tends to happen fast, which is exactly what happened.]
Thankfully, before I left The Cave, The Boy had given me some vicodin to take with me. I took one immediately after the 'fall' and sat there and waited until it hit. [The Boy said to me, "How much did it bleed?" "Not a bit," I told him. "It seeped like my legs did at their worst last year." "Oh, shit," he said. Yeah.]
Well, when the pain abated somewhat I hobbled to the pool, figuring the chlorine would help to clean it out. I think that was a good move, considering I wasn't bleeding [or even seeping much at that point]. It stung like hell, but in the grand scheme of Pain I Experience, it was nothing. I really was more worried about it seeping all over the couch where I was sleeping and thankfully, Bubba had bandages that I used to cover it at night while I slept.
Which brings me to the list of things I was sorry I had not packed, although I had considered doing so. I HAD said to myself, "Oh, throw a couple of those bandages Fiona sent to you in your bag." "No," I said, "I want to pack light, and besides, what could happen?" I guess I found out.
Also making the list of things I thought about but didn't throw in my bag were: My inhaler, nail clippers, an emory board, my backscratcher, and actual RUBBER BANDS, because the hair elastic I was using stretched out and became almost useless.
...to be continued....
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| | | Posted 7/2/2009 12:01 AM - 5 Views - 0 eProps - 3 comments
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