Part 126 ~ 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.

The evening routine went fine, no problems. Ben and I took Daughter to work then came home and I tucked him and Zeus in bed. They both got kisses last night.

Sunset time

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There weren’t any dramatic clouds, but the moon was visible at the end… just a tiny sliver, two days old.

I did my Night Things and was going to have an early bedtime but Younger called me. She was having a Moment. Being out of work is not only a financial worry, it gives her too much time to think and to listen to the Depression Monster in her head, telling her she’s not good enough, everything she does is wrong, etc… So I talked to her until 11pm or so. I tried to help, but it’s like I tell her all the time, SHE has to work on herself. She needs to distract her mind when the voices are mean, because they lie. So anyway, bedtime after 11:00pm.

The yelling run-by was at 5:30am. I stayed in bed, against Royal Edict, hoping I could convince him to join me. Fifteen seconds later he was at the door “Gramma! Come Living Room!” popping my hope bubble. I dragged myself out of bed, grabbed my stuff, noticed I had brown crusty stuff on my arm (konked out with chocolate in my mouth again. Stupid “OFF” switch), and headed to my appointed place.

I had somehow turned off the morning med alarm, so when I noticed it was 6:54 I first, fixed the alarm and second, got Ben’s meds ready and delivered. Then I uncovered Sven and turned his lights on. I made noise with his terrarium cover to make him move something to prove he was still alive. He cracked an eye approximately one millimeter, and closed it immediately.

Then I got myself and Ben ready and at 7:13 we were out the door to go get Daughter from work.

Dogzilla was in the window when we pulled into the driveway. He met us at the door with a ball in his mouth, wiggling and whining. The Shepherd heritage was strong in him this morning, the whining wiggle dance was effectively not letting us get past him.

I grabbed his collar, petted him, told him he was good and headed to my room, knowing he’d follow. That allowed Ben and Daughter a few seconds to go where they wanted to go. Ben went to the couch, Daughter went to her room.

“Gramma! I need help! Fix it!” Oh, that tone and urgency in his voice… it spikes my heartrate and makes me feel so anxious. The problem was YouTube related. He wanted to watch the end credits from Penguins Of Madagascar. I typed it in, found some videos, but none of them would play. I tried other videos… nothing. It kept saying to sign in, so I signed with my gmail and still no videos would play. I tried restarting it… nope. (Ben had gotten tired of my poor results and demanded my tablet, which he was unable to get for himself… “I need help!”) Finally, I uninstalled the app and went to reinstall it, but the password for the parental controls was wrong. Which was really bizarre since it’s my same Amazon password. We were locked out of doing ANYTHING with the tablet except using the apps already there… couldn’t even deregister it.

I went into my Amazon account from my phone and was able to deregister it from there. We’d had problems before with this tablet… Daughter set it up when it came and then one day it was showing up as unregistered. She was sleeping at the time, so I registered it. Now it’s back to being registered to Daughter’s account.

Ben continued to use my tablet until I noticed he was watching Ladybug and Cat Noir, that’s on “Neffix” so I started it on his tablet, moved his earbuds to his tablet, and went to plug mine into the charger.

Daughter stumbled out of her room around noon to use the bathroom. Ben and I were in the middle of an Arts and Crafts project and I was doing a little Huffing and Puffing in frustration over the usual things. Daughter asked if we were okay… Code for “Do I need to get up and take over? Please, No!” I told her we were good… Code for “Ben is trying to see if he can make my head explode, but it’s the usual stuff. No assistance is required.” Relieved that she could, she stumbled back to her room for more sleep. She is off tonight and tomorrow night, but has that meeting/training thingy tomorrow morning 8am to 11am.

Daughter relieved me from Couch Sittin’ Duty around 2:45. Ben followed me to my room. YouTube still wasn’t working on his tablet. I just gave him mine again. Younger was texting me and I was too tired to deal with my phone, his tablet, him yammering and Zeus… being a Big Dumb Dog in the middle of everything. Ben eventually took my tablet and went back to the living room. Ahhh… time to relax!

Uh, no… sorry… I could hear Ben telling Daughter to go to the store. When she asked what he thought he needed, I yelled that I was getting up, I was going. Dang it! I swear Ben has a photographic memory. He lost the spring on his $1.00 toy airplane launching gun thingy and he’d asked me several times earlier for a new one. I told him I’d get it when Mommy woke up from her rest. I gave him the neon chalk that was delivered today, and hoped that would be good enough, that he’d forget about the $1.00 toy. NOPE!

Little stinker remembered so I was off to Rite Aid for a $1.00 toy. Daughter wanted more cough drops anyway. I was smart and bought three of the gun thingies, one for now, two for The Stash. There’s also that other Cars car he HAD to have, waiting in the mailbox. He hasn’t mentioned the car since I ordered it. Into The Stash. I’m also expecting the BIG box of chalk sometime today. That, he’ll get tomorrow or Saturday.

Ben is in the living room making Happy Noises. Younger is going to stop by… maybe… for brown sugar. Partner’s birthday is tomorrow so Daughter is going to make a Carrot cake. I hope they save a piece for me. Yum!

Thank you for hanging out with us today. It was a pretty chill day and hopefully the beginning of a new routine of chill! Even on chill days, something is always happening. Come by tomorrow, maybe YouTube will be working on Ben’s tablet again, maybe Daughter will have interesting stories from the thingy, maybe we’ll have Carrot cake! There will definitely be hot coffee and cold Sweet Tea, and there will be laughter… always laughter…

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HUGS!

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