Part 255 ~ 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.

Ben ate pizza, I took pictures…

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Saturday evening was very much like Friday evening, including the DC logo fixation. We managed to get him bathed, dressed and into the car without any Grey Matter Splatter.

We dropped Daughter at work, came home, got The Boys tucked in… blah blah blah… Then the Things, Stuff, email, WP, food and slipping into a Food Coma. Lucky for me Sophie Cat brought me out of the Food Coma by walking on my head, getting in my face and demanding love. Lucky cuz I hadn’t taken my meds, so I did that and texted with Daughter who was having another rough shift. She was assigned as a “sitter” for one patient. The patient was transferred from a locked psych facility because he had Kootie symptoms. He doesn’t have the Kootie but he does have pneumonia, so he needs physical medical care. His mental health diagnosis is Paranoid Schizophrenia, and he was extremely agitated. I’m pretty sure I know who the patient was. I asked Daughter some specific questions, her answer was “I can’t answer that” which is correct, privacy laws and all that. I’m pretty sure it’s a local homeless man that Ben and I would see around when I used to walk everyday, pushing him in the stroller. The guy was always very nice, making his invisible friends move out of our way.

Anyway, dude was agitated, saying things that reminded Daughter of the way her father used to talk to her when he was on a rant. It hurt her, even though she knew it wasn’t directed at her personally. She was tired, and hormonal and ready to be done with work five hours into her twelve. I finally konked out for good sometime around midnight.

And woke at 4am. And woke at 5am. I dozed a little between 5:30 and 6am when the alarm went off. I got up, let Zeus out of Ben’s room and got coffee. My new Coffee Dragon can be set to wake up and do it’s burble and hiss thing, so I’d set it for 5am and fresh hot coffee was waiting for me.

Then I went to look for Venus. There were some clouds along the eastern horizon, which made the sunrise very pretty this morning. And I wasn’t too late to see Venus. It was very, very cold though, so I took a few pictures very quickly and went back inside to thaw my fingers out.

At 6:25am I went into Ben’s room to start waking him up. He was mostly awake, burrowed down in his blankets. I told him we had to go get Mom in a little while, but he could stay in his bed til we had to leave if he wanted to. He said “No bus today” I told him that was correct, no bus. Then he sat up, stretched and said “Good Morning, Gramma!” too funny! I gave him his meds and refilled his water bottle, then went back to the back and forth of photographing the sunrise.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Venus is visible in the first picture. I did see Georgie and Gracie both when we went to get Daughter. Georgie was standing on the roof of the Little Caesar’s and Gracie was in the parking lot in front. I did take a picture but the quality is bad, so I’m not including it.

We’d gone out to the car early again because I knew we’d have to wait for the windows to defrost again. It was 37°F again this morning. When I could see out the windshield, we went to get Daughter. When we got home, I stayed in my seat while Daughter let Ben out. I was hoping to stop him from playing with the buttons on the dash. Either it worked, or he wasn’t interested this morning, cuz he got right out, ran in the house, and closed the door behind him. Daughter and I followed and walked in to him giggling. Much better than the head hitting thing.

Daughter went to her room and Ben, Zeus, and I settled on the couch. We hung out in the living room most of the morning. I did some taping, some fetching, some scripting… just hanging out.

A little after his 12:30pm med, he jumped up and ran outside. A couple minutes later I heard the sound of him pounding on something and I thought he was in the dirt hole, but figured I’d better check. Good thing I did cuz he wasn’t in the dirt hole, he was standing on the half-fence of the “deck” busting the cement on top of the cinderblock wall… and he was leaning way out to do it. It was a dangerous place to be, and he’s not supposed to “break the wall” and he knows it.

To get to him I had to step down into the dirt hole, step back up on the other side, go around the back of the half-fence, step over the second trunk of the Pecan tree (I’m not sure if the tree split into two trunks because it was growing right under the fence… one part inside, one part outside… or if it’s actually two trees growing right next to each other. When the outside part started to lean, I propped it up for many years. It’s a weird tree. Perfect for Casa Cuckoo.) then into the corner where he was. I convinced him to stop and get down by offering to help him. I backed up to him, had him put him arms around my neck and his legs around my waist. I only planned to get him away from the fence but he wanted me to continue on. And cuz I’m not always smart, I did. I stepped over the tree trunk, holding onto the fence for balance, then around the corner of the fence, and holding onto to wrought-iron ornamental fence (the liver bruising ornamental fence) stepped down into the dirt hole, then still holding the fence, took three tries to step back up, out of the hole. It’s about two feet deep and my legs aren’t as strong as they used to be, and Ben weighs about one hundred fifteen pounds… he’s a big kid. Anyway, I made it back to level ground and headed to the side door. It was even difficult to make it up the steps into the house, then over to the couch, where I sat and deposited us both. No injuries… except to my pride for the difficulties. I told Ben he was big now, he wasn’t supposed to be big, he was supposed to stay little. Zeus was of course, barking the entire time.

We settled down on the couch again after that. At 1:30pm Daughter texted me that she was going to sleep thirty more minutes. She’d said she would get up at 1:30pm since she’s off tonight when I asked her this morning. I just wanted to know what the plan was. So when she said thirty more minutes, I text back “K”. What else could I say? “NO! Get up now.” Not worth the attitude and grumpiness. I was NOT surprised when she didn’t get up until 2:30. I was in the middle of doing something and and wanted to finish, so I didn’t look up or say anything. She asked if I was angry, I told her I was doing something. I finished and grabbed my stuff and turned over Couch Sittin Duty to her. I gave Ben his 2:30 meds and went to get Horizontal.

I went out to take my Science Project pictures and was by the back gate and saw Ben headed toward the corner again. I told him he shouldn’t be over there, and breaking the wall was not okay. He climbed up onto the fence and sat there. I told him that wasn’t very safe and asked him to get down. After a few more requests and a few more minutes he got down and came back inside with me.

Daughter asked Ben what he wanted for dinner tonight. He said pizza. He always says pizza, but he had pizza last night, so Daughter offered steak or “orange chicken”. He chose the chicken. She asked if he was hungry then, he said he was, so she popped them into the toaster oven.

It’s just about actual sunset time. No clouds in the west for sunset like there was this morning for sunrise, but that’s okay. It’s still my favorite time of day. Ben is eating his chicken and watching his tablet. Bath and bed will be a lot easier tonight. A mellow, easy night.

I heard this on the radio on the way to get Daughter this morning. Blast from the past.

Not a very adventurous day, except for the piggy back ride. Tomorrow is GLYSB Day, and errands for me. I need to go to the grocery story, and I need to go to the post office. Neither should take very long… hopefully. I’m very glad Daughter is off for the next few days, especially tonight. I hate the mad rush when we have to go get her before the GLYSB comes. Hopefully this recent mellow vibe will continue. I’m thinking about starting to wake Sven up tomorrow too. Come hang out and share our Adventures. ¡Hasta mañana!

.

.

HUGS!

.

.