Life as a Spectator Sport

4:30am: Get up with Clarence for fourth trip of the night to the bathroom.

5:00am: Alarm goes off five minutes after getting back to sleep

6:00am: Clarence has had his medications, his blood sugar check, his eye wash and eye drops, and his insulin. Breakfast is cooking. Rippy and JoJo are exchanging hisses and yips. JoJo leaps to the shelf over the washing machine and knocks the seedling flat into the hamper of clean laundry I just took off the line.

6:30am: Clarence has had his breakfast and his sponge bath and is being dressed. I still have to pack our lunch and Clarence's blood sugar meter and insulin in the cooler, make sure the paperwork, clipboard and camera are in the file crate, pack up Rippy's leash, his dog food, his dishes and the two plastic jars of water I carry along, and take everything out to the car.

7:00am: We are finally on the road. Halfway down the driveway I remember that DHL is coming to pick up a shipment today, and I have forgotten to leave the boxes for them in the big plastic tub on the porch. I back up and stow the boxes, the waybill and four copies of the commercial invoice in the proper place. I can't remember whether I shut the cats out of Clarence's bedroom. Yes, I did, but I forgot to fill their food and water dishes.

7:15am: Now we are really on the road, more than two hours after getting up (this doesn't count the time I spent last night making today's lunch so all I would have to do this morning was stick it in the cooler). I drove a school bus one year, when Gary was about seven, Katy just an infant, and Shelley and Deborah in between, and I got four kids up, fed, dressed and into the bus in less time than this.

We have a four-hour drive to Richmond, during which we will stop at least twice for Clarence to use the bathroom. That makes it a four-and-a-half-hour drive, and since he has to be assisted, we must find convenience stores and gas stations with single-user restrooms whose doors can be locked. I'm accumulating a mental list of them. Rippy gets walked each time too, though in his case it's mostly just to let him stretch his legs. He is an extraordinarily good traveller.

For each approximately two hours I spend inspecting stores, I must add at least a fifteen or twenty minute restroom stop. Most of the stores I visit in Richmond do not have public restrooms, nor are they in neighborhoods where anyone else has them either. So each trip to the necessary means a drive to somewhere else in town, adding more hours to the day and reducing the number of stores I can inspect in one trip. On Wednesday's trip, I inspected three whole stores. I can hardly break even that way, much less make a profit.

11:00pm: We're back home finally. Before I can go to sleep, I must carry everything in from the car (that's after spending ten minutes getting Clarence in from the car). Clarence must have his third blood sugar check and insulin stick of the day, his evening medications, his evening eye wash and eye drops, his street clothes exchanged for pyjamas, his water jug filled up, and yet another trip to the bathroom. Whatever shoes Rippy carried outside in his excitement to be home must be retrieved. The cats' water must be checked. Rippy's dishes must be brought in and his water filled. If anything is left in the cooler, it must be put away, and the cooler washed. Any dishes I left in the sink this morning must be washed, to avoid tempting ants and mice. I won't do any of my own paperwork tonight.

Sorry, I'm whining again. It helps to write this stuff down, even if just so I can look back at it later with relief when it's over. Clarence does seem to be getting stronger, and he is willing to continue trying to ride with me. My stress-related mistakes seemed to have slowed down, though that is mostly because I now refer to a printed checklist before I leave each store. I never needed to do that before.

I'm going to try renting a wheelchair from the hospital for this weekend's trip, to reduce the time it takes to get him from car to restroom and back. And I've told him that he must start wearing Depends. He is extremely unwilling to do so, but I put my foot down after having to lead him through a crowded convenience store with his trouser legs obviously wet—not to mention what that did to the upholstery of my car.

I don't know what's going on with Mike and Nick. Most of Nick's belongings are still here, along with a lot of Mike's things, and I can't find any indication that they have been here since Monday. Something has made a substantial dent in my new front door—Nick's heavy television getting away from them, most likely—and I don't suppose Shelley is going to reimburse me for the damage even if Nick or Mike own up to it. She also seems to have dumped the cats on me, and no one is willing to acknowledge the fact that Rippy was supposed to have been Nick's dog. I pretty much adopted him when it became obvious that Nick really prefers cats to dogs, but his acquisition was initially due to Shelley's nagging me to "get Nick a dog!" His presence is one more consideration in every decision I make, and if I'd had any idea how things were going to turn out, I would never have taken on a big rambunctious dog, potential sheep-herding capability or not.

So that's life at the moment. Tomorrow I'll be home, turning in the paperwork from this week and trying to get as much planted as possible. Saturday is another long day on the road. The regional offices have requested that the contractors not do inspections on major holidays (not that any of us really want to), so Sunday and Monday are enforced holidays, like it or not. Next week? Anybody's guess.

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RSS Feed PERSONAL Send email to liz at life-as-a-spectator-sport.com Home I'm a mother, grandmother, a computer professional, Democrat, Christian. I welcome politely worded comments and email, my spam filter throws the rest away, so don't bother to flame me WHY 'LIFE AS A SPECTATOR SPORT' "If you're lucky not to live in the gutters of a slum, but still can't afford to take vacations in the Alps, you're part of that enormous middle class who lives life through the medium of the television, further separated from "real" life by air conditioner, by automobile, by dishwasher, microwave and ice-in-the-door refrigerator, by automatic washer and dryer, and all the other appliances and conveniences that make it possible for America to live life at second hand. I'm not sure why Americans decided that televised drama was better than the real thing, that cardboard microwave food containers were an adequate substitute for real dishes, and their contents for real food, or that cooking, dishwashing and face-to-face conversation wasn't worth the effort and time it required. Someone fed this nation a plastic crate of out-of-season tomatoes and told us it was life and we took them at their word, and we're so much the poorer for it that it's hard to know where to start to list the shortcomings." I wrote this a couple of years ago, but I have to admit it's much less amusing than I thought it would be to see the artifical construct falling apart. THE NON-ELECTRIC HOME Cleaning, 1 Cleaning, 2 Cleaning, 3 KNITTING BLOGS Extravayarnza Knitting Heretic Mind of Winter Pie Knits Persistent Illusion See Eunny Knit The Keyboard Biologist Taleweaver's Ramblings TECHnitting Wendy Knits FINISHED PROJECTS -------FINISHED IN 2006------- Peruvian Cap Tutti-Frutti Socks Shelley's Socks Carol's Socks -------FINISHED IN 2007------- Chain Link Socks Baby Surprise Jacket Valerie & Friend Baby Bonnet Rainbow Baby Socks Girls Pixie Hood Mitred Square Heart Red & White Socks Coffee Cup Pot Holder Nubbins Dishcloth Garterlac Dishcloth Suede Booties Kate's Socks Norwegian Sweet Baby Cap Half Thumbless Mittens Red Mittens for Akkol -------FINISHED IN 2008------- SELF-RELIANCE AND THE FUTURE -- Blogs and websites -- Causubon's Book Club Orlov Food Storage Made Easy From the Wilderness In the Wake Listening to Katrina Survival Topics The Modern Homestead The Oil Drum Notes from a Hillside Farm -- Mailing Lists -- 12vdc Power Living on the Land Rainwater Refrigeration Alternatives Old Ways of Living POLITICAL BLOGS and SITES The political sites have moved BOOKS I'M READING How to Grow More Vegetables, etc. Small Scale Grain Raising ARCHIVES February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 August 2008 July 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002 February 2002