Category: Life

In-Laws

One of the odd things about holiday meals with my in-laws is that while the TV is set to the obligatory football game, no one pays much attention.  It seems almost un-American.

Jello for Breakfast

I was at work Tuesday afternoon, when my friend D called and asked me to feed the horses because she was too sick to do so.  “You’re sick too!”  I exclaimed. I had been suffering from what I thought was reflux for several hours, and thought it dreadfully unfair since I hadn’t consumed anything that should have caused reflux.  I was already wondering how I would manage to get through the rest of the day and take my mother shopping after work.  Since I seemed to be getting progressively sicker by the minute, I left work early, called Jack and asked him to take my mother shopping, stopped by D’s  and took care of the twelve horses there and then headed home.  By the time I got home, I barely had the strength to strip off my clothes and crawl into bed.   I’ll spare you the more graphic details:  if you have ever had food poisoning or gastroenteritis, you can probably deduce what they were.  I spent the night in a fever caused fugue state, which broke around 3 am, but left me totally exhausted.

D and I are starting to think we should never get the same food at restaurants, sort of like airplane pilots not eating the same meal on flights. Fortunately, she was able to find someone else to take care of the horses Wednesday morning.  My backup plan was to send Jack, which is so full of fail that I don’t really want to think about it.  (He doesn’t know most of the horses there, and isn’t horse savvy enough to understand things like “Commander, the chestnut draft cross.” He might be able to tell the difference between the black Thoroughbred and the two black Percheron crosses, but I doubt he would be able to tell which of the Percheron crosses was Major and which was Maverick.)

I spent most of Wednesday in bed.  A few times I thought that since I didn’t feel that bad, just weak, I should get up and do something. After five minutes I would give up and go back to bed.  During one of the five minute stints, I brought the laptop to bed, and then found I didn’t have enough energy to do more than watch the Shiba Inu puppy cam.

I am not totally recovered this morning, but at least I have enough energy to type.  I am so glad I am not committed to cooking anything. We are going to one of my sister-in-law’s house for dinner.  Jack will be making corn bread. I may even be able to eat a little food. Or not. Right now, eating jello for the rest of my life seems quite feasible.

Rally


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When I got to the rally at the Colorado Springs Civic Auditorium yesterday, the line already wrapped around the block. I waited anyway, even though I didn’t have much hope of getting a seat in the auditorium. As the woman next to me explained to her little girl: we were there to show support, even if we couldn’t get inside. They cut off the line a little in front of us, but I didn’t mind making the attempt.

I Voted!

Yesterday afternoon, Jack’s brother-in-law called and said that he was at the downtown early voting station, and there were no lines. The downtown center is just three blocks away from where I work, so I walked over and waited less than five minutes to vote. Most painless voting ever, even the time I was organized enough to get an absentee ballot. As always, I was a bit bemused to have to vote to retain judges. (Colorado requires a vote to retain judges in office, even though they are not originally elected by voters.) All the voting stations were full, and the worker who shepherded me through the process said they had been staying busy.

Mimic

Yesterday morning, one of the smoke detectors started its low battery chirp.  I took it down, but couldn’t figure out how to remove the battery.  I didn’t think Jack would think it was a sufficient emergency for me to wake him up before he would normally wake up.  I put it in the mudroom, where I wouldn’t hear it chirp, since the mudroom is on the other side of an exterior door.    When Jack got up, I asked him to remove the battery and it stopped chirping.

Later, when I went out to feed horses, I was astonished to hear the chirp again:  same pitch, but at a more rapid interval.  I was finally able to track the source of the sound: a magpie sitting on a telephone wire.  It must have heard the smoke alarm chirping in the mudroom, through the dog door, and decided to incorporated the sound in its repertory.