Part 116 ~ The Adventures of King Ben & Zeus the Big Dumb Dog

If you missed the start of this series, you can find it here. A lot of things will be the same or very similar.

Last night we were able to stick to the new routine and Ben & I took Daughter to work, then came back home and I put him and Zeus to bed.

After putting stuff away, straightening the house up and taking the bins down for trash day, I had a few minutes to cool down before sunset.

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After sunset I ate some leftover enchiladas and did the night things, then I stretched out on my bed for a minute. Then I woke up a little after midnight….Dang it!

I took my pill and finished getting ready for bed, but I was awake and stayed awake until nearly 2am.

Then I woke up at 3am (I’m almost always awake at 3am… it’s weird)

Then I was awake at 4:17

“Gramma come living room” was sometime before 5:30. I didn’t look at the time until I texted Daughter that we were up, and that was at 5:30.

Sven gave me a bit of a scare this morning. Usually when I pull the blanket up to peek he at least opens his eye to glare at me. This morning he didn’t. He also didn’t open his eye when I slid the cover back on his terrarium. I put my hand in to pet him, terrified he wouldn’t move… I have never been so happy to a have a creature flinch from my touch. He still didn’t open his eyes, the little butthead, but he moved, so all is still well. It wasn’t nice to scare me like that.

We left to get Daughter at 7:15 and arrived home twenty minutes later. Dogzilla had been in the window barking, barking, barking and knocking stuff over. I cleared just about everything… he must have moved into the cleared areas for better vantage?? I don’t know. I do know that he’s getting on my nerves with his clinginess. He doesn’t understand social distancing or personal space.

Ben sat down on the couch, dumped two bags of Words and started going through them. He was either having trouble making the speaking connection in his brain or he was messin’ with me, because instead of telling me what he wanted me to write he’d say “Like this” without pointing at anything, or if he did have an example he’d either hold it far away at a weird angle or try to shove it in my eyeball. Sometimes I think he wants to see if my head really will explode. So yeah… Arts and Crafts Time… Write The Words Time… more coffee for Gramma time. MUCH more coffee!

Daughter heard me huffing and puffing about the Who’s On First routine and came out to take over a little after 9am. She said she wasn’t sleepy. I told her it was a nice thought, but he’d just follow me. She did manage to keep him in the living room with her for a while. Just until I fell asleep.

I felt the bedquake but I ignored it. He wanted tape. He kept saying “Gramma” only instead of saying it louder, like you would to wake someone, he kept saying it quieter and quieter. He was whispering “Gramma. Need tape.” It was difficult to pretend to sleep cuz I wanted to bust out laughing, the annoying little goof! I finally “woke up” and asked what he wanted. He told me he needed tape. I told him the tape was in the living room right next to Mommy, go ask her. He came back with the object that he wanted taped and the roll of tape. “TA DA!” he said and handed both to me. So lucky he’s cute…

More taping followed. Then general bouncing and noise. Gramma wasn’t going back to sleep. Daughter decided to cook some bacon for him to snack on. When she shoo’d him away from the stove he ran outside. I got up and checked to make sure he wasn’t doing damage beyond our property line, then started cleaning up the little messes he’d left… Words all over the couch, dominoes scattered on the floor, tablet and Sittin’ Pillow in chalk area.

Daughter finished cooking the bacon just as Ben was calling for “help”. (I blame Peppa Pig and Miss Rabbit’s Rescue Service.) So I went and “helped” him come in the house. Daughter went to her room to sleep after giving the bacon to Ben and I settled on the couch.

After I gave Ben his noon med I peeked at Sven again. He graced me with a glare so I quickly paparazzi’d him

It’s not a great picture and what’s up with all those scratches and stuff? Anyway, Sven is alive and still a grumpy boy in brumation.

I was surprised when the 2:30 med alarm went off. Daughter generally takes over before the 2:30 med. She did stay up a little later this morning but she’s also off work until Friday night, so…

Ben had me writing “The End” and “A Walt Disney Production” over and over and over… I’ve been writing these two things at least twenty times each, sometimes more, every day for over a week now. Why? I couldn’t tell you. What I can tell you is that it’s driving me bananas! How many copies does he need? How am I doing it wrong so it needs to be done again? Why doesn’t he just do it himself? Don’t know, doesn’t matter.

He had me write “Ben’s Room” and cut it out, with the rounded edges and put tape on the back so he could put it on his door. Then he needed “Mommy’s Room” and “Gramma’s Room”… I did those too. Then he wanted Bathroom, so I wrote it as one word. He got SO upset. He wanted “Bath Room” I tried explaining it was one word, but he didn’t want to hear it. I had to write “Bath Room”, cut it out with rounded edges and put the double sided rolled tape on the back.

At 4:00 when Daughter still hadn’t gotten up, I asked Ben if he wanted to come to my room. He said “Stay living room” I told him he could stay if he wanted to, but I needed to go stretch out because my back was really starting to hurt. That chaise part of the couch has just had way too much use, especially since March. There’s no reason Ben needs to have someone right next to him the entire time he’s awake. He’s almost twelve years old. He needs supervision but not like a toddler. Anyway, I went to my room and not even five minutes later, Ben came in and laid on the bed next to me.

He decided to get under the blanket and rolled over like he was going to sleep. I started poking at him and tickling him, saying “Wake up!” and “I don’t think so.” while he was making snoring noises. Of course Zeus has to start barking his Big Dumb head off every time we play… then I heard “Zeus, shut up!” Well, I guess Daughter was awake.

She came down the hall a couple minutes later and set up in the living room. I went out to get Ben’s water bottle and the bacon Daughter cooked for him. She said she set an alarm for 3:00, she didn’t know what happened, blah blah blah… whatever. That’s what I said to her… Whatever.

Ben and I were just chillin in my room when we heard something against the fence. He said “What was that?” I told him I didn’t know, and didn’t really think much more on it. Zeus was barking, which he sometimes does if people are in the parking lot. I didn’t hear anyone though. So I stuck my head out the window and looked, and our gate was completely down. So I went out to fix the gate. As I came around the corner of the house, the homeless hacker man I’ve been hearing at night was sitting in my yard. OH, HELL NO!! I told him to get out of my yard. He tried to tell me the owner gave him permission to get out of the sun. I told him he was full of shit. There’s no way the owner would give him permission to be inside my yard, to break down my gate. It took him at least fifteen minutes to gather his stuff up and get out.

Of course Ben and Zeus both wanted to come running out to see what was going on. Ben got past Daughter and was on the deck… nowhere near the guy, but he saw the gate open. The whole thing was a complete clusterfuck! Daughter kept saying she’d call the police, but I told her not bother. They wouldn’t do anything anyway. I just wanted dude out of my yard so I could fix the gate.

After dude was finally gone and I got the gate put back and put the piece of wood and other stuff that blocks it up, Ben got past Daughter again and came running straight for the gate. He moved all the barricade stuff and seemed satisfied with that. He wanted to stay outside though. We all stayed outside for another ten or fifteen minutes while Ben was testing boundaries and seeing what else was going to happen.

When he figured out nothing else was happening he allowed me to “help” him back into the house.

That was at 5pm… Ben has been telling me to “get dressed and go to the store”. We gave him his first med at 5:30 and now he’s in the tub, so hopefully things will be okay.

Thanks for hanging out today. It was a very strange day. ALL days are strange at Casa Cuckoo, so not entirely unexpected. Come on by tomorrow… who knows what will happen next?!

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HUGS!

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