1-2. Most of my notes are of little things, like the time I opened the fridge to find half a tub of cocoa powder mounded over the fresh apple crisp (turned out to be pretty good once I blew the excess off) and the morning Trooper had strangely green poop because the nurse had mistakenly served him slushy syrup when he was sick instead of Gatorade. This was in no way her fault, since the syrup was stored in Gatorade bottles and it was sitting on the counter near the medical notes and meds. But of course WE knew it was syrup and never thought about what someone else might assume... A lesson for us all.
3. Then there was the day that Jonathan fed the dog six chicken quarters worth of chicken fat and I said, "She's going to be up all night throwing up," and Jonathan said, "No she won't, if it makes her sick it'll happen before we go to bed," and I said, "No it won't, because it always happens in the middle of the night." And I was sure to say, "I told you this would happen," when the nurse woke me to tell me that the dog had pooped all over Trooper's floor.
The good news: Trooper's floor is hardwood and Trooper is a sound night time sleeper.
The bad news: The nurse wasn't kidding, it was ALL OVER the floor and it was INCREDIBLY rank, like, you can't even imagine how rank it was.
More good news: My husband has a hard-working conscience and he got up to clean the worst of it, so all I had to do was the final spray and scrub. Well, that and haul out the plastic bags of rancid intestinal discharge as he filled them.
Oh, and I should note that my 'I told you so' wasn't really valid because I had predicted vomit, not crap. But really, who's keeping track of details? I should also note that this isn't actually a Trooper story since all he did was sit up for a brief moment and then crash at the opposite end of his bed when I told him to go back to sleep.
4. Part of my being 'dragged along by life' has resulted in less attention to Trooper's skin care. There are so many life-threatening details that can't be overlooked that sometimes oil can seem relatively inane, but I knew it had gone too far when one day during school Trooper pointed to his leg and said, "Look, Mom, a giraffe!" And sure enough, there were some white scratchy looking marks that looked very much like a giraffe's legs, body, and extended neck.
5. Then there was just last week when I took Trooper to a Bridal Shower Pounding (not a good idea, I know, but it was that or not go at all), where I might or might not have brought the bride's kitchen products in a Walmart bag instead of a gift bag. It was groceries, who knew it was supposed to be in a gift bag? Hypothetically speaking, I mean. Anyway, Trooper kept licking my arm to get my attention, and I kept making him stand behind my chair so he wouldn't be so distracting. Then--and here's the kicker--he heard me refer to my soup as 'thicker' than the other soup. I guess this was a new word for him, at least in that context, and he got overly excited about it. He started saying (loudly) "It's ficker, it's ficker!". Only the 'i' didn't sound like an 'i', if you know what I mean.
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