Part 208 ~ 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.

Around 5:30pm Ben started doing the SpazmaTaz thing. Daughter brought his meds, then I ran his bath. This game of grabbing the front of our shirts and jibber-jabbering while making an Angry Face is getting Super old! It really upsets Daughter, reminds her of her father getting in her face. Ben gets obsessive though, and when he’s stuck, he’s stuck. Sometimes we can redirect, most times he’s stuck and can’t get past whatever it is. Hopefully it’s all just his way of saying he’s tired and uncomfortable, and a good night’s sleep will help. Hopefully!

I helped him get cleaned up, then left him to play. I did my unspectacular Sciencey Stuff and waited for it to start cooling off. The Sun seems to be setting faster. After Solstice we were losing like one to two minutes of light a day. It seems to be accelerating since the Equinox which makes sense, but I’ve never really noticed it before. Anyway, the Sun was no longer visible and Ben was done. Daughter took him to bedtime, him and Zeus both. I took a few more pictures using the “pro” setting. I noticed what looked like rays of sunlight/color extending up. Very cool.

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I did the Things and I did some Stuff and I ate the food Daughter had delivered from Rally’s (Checkers in some places… fast food burgers and chicken) and I relaxed. I was tired but not sleepy yet. I was waiting for it to cool down some more too.

Daughter went to bed at 8pm. I did more Stuff, ate the rest of my food (I couldn’t eat it all at one sitting) and enjoyed the quiet. I heard cars on the road but no yammering of the people. And there weren’t a lot of cars… time slipped away and before I knew it, it was 11:30pm. I took my pill and called it a night.

I woke up to the 6:30am med alarm, plus a bunch of email notifications. A bunch of garbage notifications. My phone can’t give me notifications when I have text messages from my Daughters, but it blows up with crap I don’t care about… at 6:30am in the freakin morning. UGH!! So I got up, cuz I wasn’t gonna be able to sleep anyway… Zeus had been waiting to pounce. It’s wonderful to be so loved by a Big Dumb Dog. I greeted him and petted him then I shoved him out of my way so I could get up.

Daughter and Ben were on the couch, Sven was still covered up, and there was no coffee. UGH!! I turned the coffee pot on, made my pit stop, and uncovered Sven. He was awake, giving me a glare like “bout time…” I got his dish, dumped the old greens, got fresh greens and the last worm. Sven was still in his Judgey Corner, so I moved him to the dish so he could see the worm. He got greens, then more greens… the worm had burrowed down. Then he got mad and got a poofy beard and was giving me side-eye. No one gives side-eye like Sven. After putting Ben on the GLYSB, Daughter opened a delivery box that had Sven’s new, bigger dish. I washed it real quick and switched his food to the new dish… maybe he’d have better luck with the worm. He got it before I could get around to paparazzi him. He claimed the new dish as his own.

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Meanwhile, the Sun had already come up, and the crows were breakfasting on pecans. Whatever was my motto this morning. I wanted coffee and about two days more sleep. I got my coffee and forgot about the sleep. I got myself presentable for public, so I could help Daughter walk Ben around to the parking lot to meet the bus. She sent him to school in his pajamas. They’re cotton shorts and a t-shirt, so I guess you could call it “loungewear”… seemed kinda wrong to me. He added a suit coat and tie, of course. Must have his suit coat and tie. He got on the bus, no problem and waved back at me. I Danced back to the house with Daughter calling me a “weirdo”. I asked “You’re just now figuring that out?”

After opening the delivery box, Daughter went to her room. I fiddled with the cardboard blocking the window over the AC unit, trying to seal it better, then turned it on. Like yesterday, it cycled on for a few seconds every few minutes. It was still fairly cool, less than 70°F (21°C) anyway.

I spent the time Ben was at school doing a whole lot of nothing. I was mostly Horizontal and I just went through my WP reader, email, a few texts and a couple of games. I did walk over to Little Caesar’s to get Crazy Bread for Ben, then the market for ginger ale for Daughter and some stamps for our ballots. I tried to tell her we didn’t need stamps, but she had that look… can’t hurt to have stamps anyway, right right? Right right!

Ben was scanned onto the bus at 1:28pm today. TWO whole minutes early! His teacher called Daughter again today. Ben had another rough day, lots of eloping. And his new “loungewear” shirt is trash. It didn’t even come home. Apparently it got caught on the chain link fence and ripped a little on one of his elopements, then it ripped more when a staff member was trying to fish him from under the tarp covering one of the playground structures. Daughter said the teacher sounded a little nervous when she was explaining about the shirt. Daughter reassured her that we didn’t care about the shirt. Ben came home once without shoes cuz he chucked them over the fence at his previous school. Nothing he does surprises us.

So we were waiting for the bus and wondering what kind of mood he was gonna be in. And we waited, and we waited… they’ve been scanning him off around 1:52pm, so figure the bus passes the house at 1:50 or so. It takes us a minute to walk down the driveway, around the corner and up the alley/street to the bus. So at 1:56pm Daughter was wondering if there was a problem. She always imagines some worst case scenario, like Ben grabbed the steering wheel and flipped the bus and it caught fire, killing everyone in a twenty mile radius. I told her to relax, he wasn’t even officially late, his drop off time is 2:05pm. And that’s what time they scanned him off. Sometimes there’s traffic on the freeway in that area for no apparent reason. We got caught in it once after an IEP meeting.

We got him off the bus, dishevelled and spacey looking. He was asking for his phone, Daughter had his backpack and told him we’d check when we got inside the house… behind a locked door. Using my quick-thinking skills, I walked ahead, opened the door, and stood blocking the mailbox, which contained a package delivered for Younger’s Partner(?)/Roommate. They were gonna pick it up after work and they planned to grab and go. Plus Ben always thinks ALL packages are for him.

Into the house, shoes, socks, jacket and tie removed… water bottle refilled, Crazy Bread and tablet delivered and Peppa phone fished from his backpack, thank goodness! He paced for a bit, Daughter made him use the bathroom and that solved the pacing. He was obviously discombobulated and having a rough time. He hadn’t spoken except to say “phone”… language seems to go first. The heat, and the lack of sleep and the extra stimulation from going to school seemed to have fried him a bit. Daughter and I agreed that we would go with the flow this afternoon/evening. If he fell asleep, we’d let him sleep.

Ben hung out in the living room with Daughter until just before 5pm. I went out to show her something and he followed me back to my room, but I guess he preferred the AC coolness of the living room, or Daughter’s company, because he left after a couple minutes.

Daughter will be cooking his steak soon, then it will be bath and bedtime. Another hot, rough day for HRH and an early bedtime with no wakeup should help him. He has Zoom tomorrow on the schedule but whether he attends or not will be decided tomorrow.

The anthem for all of us insomniacs

Did you enjoy doing a lot of nothing with me today? I enjoyed sharing the day with you! Too bad we can’t follow Ben, like Mary’s Little Lamb, and see what happens there, share Ben’s Adventures… remotely, virtually… I still very much enjoy my two days of School Time every week, and I look forward to more days in the future. We can enjoy the quiet, just relaxing, mellow Adventures too! No GLYSB tomorrow, no work for Daughter either. What kind of day will we have? Will we Zoom, or skip it? Will we have a relaxed or SpazmaTaz day? I guess we’ll find out tomorrow… together. ¡Hasta mañana!

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HUGS!

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