Part 287 ~ 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.

I found this in my comments… pretty funny when you think about 286 of those 500 are since March of this year, and my first post was April 21, 2016.

Moving on… or moving back to where we left off last night… Sunset time. Mother Nature was full of surprises again

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I had been concerned about Ben falling asleep early and us needing to Drive Miss Daisy. I texted Younger to see if she was available to sit with him, but she was working til 8pm. Well… Ben stayed awake, surprisingly, but Younger wound up sitting at the house while I took her sister to work.

What happened is Younger called me in tears around 5:20pm. A manager and the HR person called her in for a meeting. Without going into all of it, she was told there were complaints of a “hostile work environment” and they were sending her home early, and would let her know tomorrow (which is today… Thursday) whether they were going to fire her or not. She was completely blindsided by this meeting. This was the first she was hearing of anyone feeling uncomfortable around her. She has Anxiety and actually had a panic attack at work earlier, which she rode out in her car, so the meeting came on an already bad day. She felt very down on herself and didn’t want to face Partner with the news that she might be out of a job. I told her to come over, Ben was tired enough we could put him to bed and she wouldn’t have to hide how she was feeling. (She loves Ben more than me or her sister. She didn’t want to upset him with her tears.)

I drove Older to the hospital, dropped her off and headed back home to Younger. As I pulled into the driveway Older texted that all the COVID patients had been discharged and her unit was back to taking “telemetry” which is heart monitoring, and general admission overflow. Huh… wha?!? When she last worked on Saturday night, she got new COVID admissions. Now all of a sudden her unit has zero COVID patients? She never did find out what was going on, but we agreed that it was very, very strange.

Anyway, Younger and I talked until after 9pm. She calmed down a little bit, but was actively holding panic at bay. She was scheduled to open at work, 6am, and knew she wouldn’t sleep. She loves her workplace, she is a good employee with several positive Yelp reviews, she volunteers to stay late, come in early… whatever. The complaint(s) against her must have been overheard… her talking to a coworker… venting on break, but unfortunately still on company property. It was never near the customers, and she has never been verbally warned or written up for this “problem” before. She left to stop by a friend’s house who might be able to get her part time work if she got fired, then go home.

I texted with Older after Younger left to let her know what was up. They don’t get along great, but they are sisters and would do anything for each other. Then I did some of the usual, blasted food I didn’t want, made myself eat, took my meds and konked around 11:00 or 11:30pm

I didn’t sleep straight through, but I did sleep. I was awake a couple times for thirty or forty-five minutes, then dozed back off. A little after 5am Younger texted me that her paycheck, generally deposited every other Friday, was already in her account. Did that mean she was definitely getting fired? It broke my heart to read that. But thankfully I was able to tell her that since tomorrow is a Federal Holiday, then it’s the weekend, everyone got paid today. I double checked my bank account, then texted her that my SSDI, paid on the third of each month, was in my account today too. That convinced her. And I was awake, so I got up before The Boys invaded, hoping to use the baño in peace.

Once again, my hopes were dashed. Zeus crashed into the bathroom door and started sniffing. I said Good Morning and sighed… I found Ben huddled on the couch, no slippers, no blanket, no tablet… I sighed again. I got all his stuff, got him covered and put his slippers on his feet. I visited the Coffee Dragon who woke up to do it’s Magic at 5am (Bless the Coffee Dragon!), got my cuppa and peeked out the window. It was just starting to get light, so I went to go see Venus. It was very cold outside so I didn’t stay long. I did make several trips because Mother Nature couldn’t decide what she wanted to wear this morning. The sunrise kept changing. Georgie and Gracie were around but they didn’t stay.

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Ben and I went to get Daughter at 7:15am. She was waiting for us when we pulled up. She said hello to Ben who had his window down, the crazy little stinker, then got in and we headed home. She told me on the short drive home that she’s calling out of work tonight. She has paid time that doesn’t roll over so she’s going to use it, rather than lose it. Especially since her unit isn’t COVID anymore, they don’t need her as badly. Good news to me. No Driving Miss Daisy to worry about tonight.

After fighting past Dogzilla, Daughter went to her room, Ben played with his new trains that came yesterday, and I began my next tour of Couch Sittin Duty. It was a standard Casa Cuckoo morning and things went along as usual. I did check my messages often, waiting to hear from Younger.

She called me at 11:30am and she sounded okay, so I asked what happened. They fired her. She still doesn’t understand… I mean, she understands, but is still completely blindsided by the decision. We talked as she drove home, via Bluetooth of course, and she knew that she was in shock still. She cried a little but knew more was coming. She’s physically exhausted too… she didn’t sleep last night. She was planning on going home to change clothes then drive to a park or something. She wanted to be outside. She was hoping to not wake Partner, who works nights, cuz she didn’t want to talk about it all right now.

I told her she could come here, we wouldn’t talk about it, she could hang out or sleep even. I knew she’d say no, but I wanted her to know she could come here. I told her that getting fired doesn’t make her a bad person, and that the whole reason is ambiguous. That apparently she was at fault, but it’s still very grey area. I told her to text me later and that I knew she’d be okay, and that I love her. She was pulling up at her complex and very nervous. UGH!! I hate that Partner isn’t more supportive, but it’s not my relationship, therefore not my business.

Daughter got up and took over Couch Sittin Duty at 2:45pm. I was exhausted and so far behind on my blog reading. I still hadn’t read all the posts from yesterday, let alone started on today’s posts. I topped up my coffee and headed to my room to get Horizontal. I was followed by Zeus, naturally, but also by Ben. We’ve had to reduce his Adderall because the pharmacy didn’t have the extended release that the doctor prescribed for his morning dose. So we have half a tablet of Adderall that he can take instead of a whole one in the am and a half at 12:30pm. Ben has been jittery, restless and repetitive all day. He’s in a good mood, but he’s having speech problems and he has “ants in his pants”, he is unable to settle for long. Anyway, he followed me to my room and was pacing around the minute area around my bed. Seriously, it’s barely room to walk. He didn’t know what he wanted, or couldn’t articulate it. Finally he told me he wanted me to “talk to Mommy”. Cool. Sure. Okay. Whatever… I went and sat down and talked to Daughter for twenty minutes. Ben had taken afternoon meds at 2:30pm and they were finally chilling him out by 3:20 and I was able to go back to my room and stretch out.

I think I’m going to end an hour early today. If anything major happens, I’ll tell you about it tomorrow. I’m hoping the rest of the afternoon and evening will be calm and relaxed so I can get some posts read. See how all of you guys are doing. I’m counting the hours until The Boys go to bed. Then, I’ll be slipping Zeus some benadryl around 10:30pm so he hopefully won’t freak out when the idjits start with the firecrackers, which BTW are illegal in California cuz, DUH! fires… the ground is still wet from the rain, but still.

Because “it’s hard to dance with a devil on your back”…

Thank you! Thank you! THANK YOU!! To all my WP crew, longtime and recent, from my heart I thank you for hanging out with me at Casa Cuckoo, and supporting me through rough times and cheering with me through good times. This year has been a helluva rollercoaster ride. We’re saying goodbye to 2020, but the ride isn’t over. I hope it gets easier, but there’s a cynic chirping in the background of my head, it gets noisy in there sometimes… Anyway, The Eternal Optimist has the floor, and she, we, I hope we all have a better 2021. HAPPY NEW YEAR! and ¡Hasta mañana!

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HUGS!

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