dragonlady7

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Actually, for being uhhh 67 or so, my mom is doing generally fine. A chronic tendon problem in one ankle, other minor issues that mean she has a regular orthopedist she goes to, but overall doing just fine, so I won’t complain in general. 

But this morning she suddenly had such terrible back pain that she had to have Dad bring her to the emergency room. Where they sort of looked at her, and were like, oh you didn’t do anything to cause this? Huh and sent her home with a muscle relaxant. So of course she immediately called her ortho, who was like oh yeah come on down to our next available appointment… mmm… two weeks from now.

Yeah.

So she’s laid up for the moment, and I’m sure Dad’s taking care of her, but well, she does all the food wrangling in that house. Middle-Little has already volunteered to bring them takeout tonight, and I’m sure there are leftovers in the fridge for a day or so, but after that, well. 

I’ll be in town but without a car, so if she needs more help than that, well– I mean, Dad’s not an infant, and is currently doing just fine healthwise (better than any other 75-year-olds of my aquaintance!), but it would be a major adjustment for him to have to do more than some pretty basic cooking. He knew how before they got married, but Mom doesn’t like people messing around in her kitchen, so he’s just left it to her for uhhhhh 42 years, and if she doesn’t tell him what to eat in a meal he’ll often just skip it. 

Mom of course has a million things to do and is mad about being laid up, and has already texted me fretting that she’s on assignment to cook several things for turkey slaughter this weekend. So, likely I will be stepping in to do that, which is fine– that’s the sort of thing I wind up being in charge of. Actually the dynamic winds up being that I go see to Farmkid and then my sister does the extra cooking, but we’ll see how that works out. I hope Mom recovers quickly but who even knows, since we don’t have a cause. Sometimes these things happen but that doesn’t mean they’ll clear up on their own…

Sighhhh one last day at work. I’m spending it shooting and editing photos of used equipment for my coworker to list, but I also rearranged some of the backlog of the stuff I’ve done that for, and found a box of expensive Hasselblad antiques that I shot and edited literally six months ago that he hasn’t got to, so it’s hard to feel like my work’s really… necessary, here. But, whatever; it’s all he wants me to do today so it’s what I’m going to do. Even if that means I’ll have to reshoot it all in February after he can’t find the photos anymore.

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laundry, right. it’s almost criminal to use a tumble-dryer when it’s nice out, your clothes wear so much less and your electric bill is so much lower. 

i checked my weather app. cloudy, in the 50s, but low chance of rain. i looked out the window. it’s pretty grim out there, but not audibly raining anymore, so. fair.

go put a load in, do indoor work. load finishes. bring a second load down and start it while i haul the first one up to the line. collect myself, sort clothes (a few delicate things hang indoors). 

step out the door. glasses instantly get misted. it is currently raining lightly.

i check my weather app again. “Nope,” it says, “no more rain today!”

I think, okay, this must be the tail end of it then, that I’m still getting– I putter around a little, decide it’s abating, and go ahead and start hanging up the clothes. A little mist is fine, if it’s passing; sometimes a tiny bit of rain while your clothes are on the line can really soften them up, so I don’t mind.

I finish putting the clothes up, and do a tiny bit of yardwork. Bent over, grubbing around in the dirt.

I stand up. The back of my shirt is stuck to me, soaked through. It is raining harder.

Fuck it. I take the clothes back down and bring them inside. That other load is going to have to sit in the washer a while.

I check my weather app again, double-check that it knows my location. “Zero percent chance of rain,” it tells me.

I have to wipe the rain off the screen before I can put my phone away.