thisendoftheswamp

My bladder and I got up at 5:30 Tuesday morning to find The Squire in the den, shaking from head to toe. Cold and clammy but couldn’t decide if he wanted to go to the local Doc in the Box, at the very least, or to the ER. I had a sleeping pill in my hand, planning on getting a few more hours sleep, so I told him he had five minutes to make up his mind, ‘coz if I took that pill he was stuck.

We went.

We actually got seen very quickly, but after several hours I folded my tent and went back home, ostensibly to get some rest. He called me back around 4:30 and said he had that after numerous x-rays and scans they had decided he had pneumonia, and while he had IV antibiotics, he could take pills at home just as well as in the hospital, so they were discharging him. We stopped at Panera for a BLT (for him) and an apple salad (for me), Took half of each home, and pretty much collapsed into bed.

Yesterday – Wednesday morning – The Squire announced he was going to church to mow the lawn. I said several blasphemous things, and he said he’d “just go look around”. We haven’t had any rain for a week, and there is none in the forecast for the next two weeks, so I don’t know how much he thought the grass had grown. He was back pretty quickly. Just walking around the grounds had exhausted him, and he knew there was no way he could tolerate riding around on the mower in the heat.

I’m sure we will both survive this, but as my beat and longest friend has often said of her own husband, “I must love him. I haven’t killed him.”

Yesterday I had the “pleasure” of dealing with three of the most undisciplined children I had ever seen in my life. Never have I been so glad to get out of a grocery store!

The oldest was the ringleader, playing tag with the other two, racing and chasing up and down the aisles, and calling to them. The middle child discovered her shoes slid on the floor, so she would stop suddenly and sail across the bagging area, then turn and do it again. The youngest of the trio just tried to copy whatever the others were doing.

All the time, their father was shouting at them like a drill sergeant. Momma said nothing the entire time. At one point the oldest was calling out to his father, while the dad was in a conversation with the mom. I finally tapped the kid on the shoulder and told him not to interrupt. “Just wait your turn.”

When they finally got to the checkout lane the girl began grabbing handfuls of candy from the lane behind her and tossing them onto their belt, where they were paid for without a murmur. I didn’t stick around for the end of the play, but the clerk who was scanning my groceries said they always acted that way.

Honestly, those kids were poster children for Planned Parenthood. “Don’t let this happen to you.”