I mentioned, a few posts ago, that my son was ill the day Anne and I arrived at his house. What happened is that he was nervous about the condition of his house because he had just moved in a few months earlier. So he had a friend come to help him unpack a bunch of stuff and straighten up a bit. My son works nights, so I imagine he took a nap before picking his friend up but I am not certain.
All I know is that the day we arrived was the first day of his weekend and he took his friend to the McDonald's in Bastrop, TX when he drove her home. He had a sausage biscuit that he said did not
taste quite right but he ate it anyway because he was hungry and he did not want to take the time to complain. After that, it was only a matter of a short time before his stomach and intestines began to revolt. By the time Anne and I got to his door, as I mentioned in my earlier post, he was bedridden and feeling awful.
I went to the local Walmart and bought a thermometer and some medicine. Then I came back to play doctor. My boy's fever was 101 (F). Good news is that he was happy to have his mommy there to take care of him and he was almost well by the end of his "weekend." The bad news, though, is that we did not get to spend the weekend together, we missed seeing one of his two best friends, the cupboards were bare and the house was put away but not quite tidy when we got there.
Fortunately for my son, I am an expert at hand washing dishes, cleaning bathrooms, washing laundry, grocery shopping and taking care of sick children (even 30 year-old children). I was glad for something to do while he slept and Anne played RPG's online with her friends. (I remember when I was young that I needed to leave my friends behind while I went on vacation with my family. Not so in the age of Wifi and RPG's.)
On the first full day we were there, my son was sick in bed and Anne slept till about noon. But I was up around the same time I usually am -- somewhere between 6:30 and 7:30 am. So I drove to the laundromat, and the grocery. I went to the post office, the garbage collection agency's office and so on. I got back to the house before lunch.
It was nice and warm outside and the scenery in the subdivision is idyllic. (See the video clip.) It is peaceful and serene and beautiful, and there is NO SNOW. My car window was down so that I could enjoy the weather and the clean air. So I smelled the smoke. It was the familiar smell of burning brush and it occurred to me that either someone was burning yard waste or there was a forest fire somewhere nearby. I was right. Someone was burning yard waste and I found out who as I drove up to my son's house. It was his neighbor across the street.
Alright. I am friendly. Anybody who knows me knows that I pretty much cannot control it. It is just who I am and it spills out onto everybody who has the misfortune of existing in a space near mine. So when I saw one of my son's two neighbors burning a big pile of brush in his back yard, I parked my car and walked over to meet him.
I now know all about my son's neighbor. I know his name, number of children, home State, where his wife is from, roughly how long they have been married, his ex-Army unit and MOS (occupation code), his current occupation, how big his yard is, etc. I was quite proud of myself for having met this man before my son, himself, had and I wanted to introduce them to help them become friends. So I mentioned the interaction to my son when he woke up. He must really have been sick because he did not pay attention to me. He just sort of shrugged and said uh huh. From that, I determined to wait until he was feeling better before I made the introductions.
The next day, Jerome (the neighbor) was outside in the beautiful Texas weather again. It was somewhere in the 70's or low 80's. Again, I was just driving back into the subdivision, so I parked and walked over to say hi. We talked a little about barbecues and then I went inside. When my son awoke, I told him again about the neighbor. This time his ears perked up right away. With considerable alarm, he asked me to please stop talking to his neighbors. Reminding me that he sleeps during the day and does not want his sleep interrupted by friendly visitors after I left.
Gee, I did not even tell my son that the neighbor offered to come over to take a look at his broken washing machine. I did not have to. Even after more than 8 years of living so far apart, he still knows me just that well.
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