Prepare yourselves...this is a long-un, and I don't feel like chopping it up into interesting bits behind LJ tags. Let's start at Friday. One of my wife's uncles has been pretty seriously ill for the last several years with, among other things, emphysema compounded by asthma and some 50-odd years of smoking. Up until the last year or two he's been able to get around and take care of himself for the most part, but his health began to decline and he had to leave his trailer in Westport (on the Washington coast for those not familiar with the area) and move in with my mother-in-law in Seattle, mostly because she's the only one in the family with a spare room and the word "SUCKER" tattooed on her forehead. Anyway, he's been reasonably self-sufficient during the last year-ish. But his health has been slowly declining more and more. He's been basically dying slowly. Well, about the first of the year he took a pretty sudden and severe downturn, to the point where his doctors were pretty confident he had about 3 months to live. And here we are in June. Anyway, back to Friday. My mother-in-law called my wife, asking her to come help with Boo. Yes, that's his name. Well, nickname. Apparently he had fallen out of his bed and wasn't able to get up (little old lady commercial flashbacks anyone?), and she needed help getting him off the floor. Okay, no big deal, the wife loads up the kid and heads up to Seattle. I head off to work, pretty much expecting the wife and kiddy to be home when I get home. I get home to a big empty. So I call the wife. Apparently Boo had been on the floor for somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 days (don't ask, I don't know), hadn't had anything to eat or drink in that time (again, don't know), and had shit all over himself, tried to crawl to the bathroom, in the process smearing black (in other words bloody) shit all over the damn place. The wife had called one of her aunts to come help try and get Boo cleaned up and back in bed. So the three of them are trying to get him up, and he's screaming in pain, and screaming "Help me!" The wife says they need to call 911. The aunt, who has power of attorney and is on some kind of sick power trip, balks until my mother-in-law's boyfriend explains things to her a little more clearly (God I hate my in-laws!). They call 911, the medics show up, shove an IV in Boo's arm, and take him to the hospital. The wife tells me all this, and then tells me she's staying the night up there, because she doesn't want to leave her mom alone while dealing with all of this. No problem. I'll take the kid to Young Marines, and then we'll head up to Seattle for the races. Saturday morning, the kid comes in to wake me up after a nice, refreshing 3 hours' sleep, and we're off to Young Marines. I hate getting up at 8 a.m. Anyway, about 1:00 or 1:30 we finally leave Young Marines and head home. The kid takes her stuff upstairs, and I call the wife. They've been at the hospital all morning, and are getting ready to head back to Ma's place, so we plan to meet there around 3:30. Me and the kid jump in the Blazer and head off to Seattle about 2:30. Just as planned, we get there right at 3:30. I call the wife's cell phone to have her let me in. Stupid security building. The wife answers her phone, and I hear her voice in the background saying "Answer this." My mother-in-law gets on the phone, and says she'll send Mary to let me in. A couple of minutes later I see my wife come sprinting through the inner door, yank open the outer door, turn to run back to Ma's condo, stop, turn, and say "Boo just died," turn, and run back to Ma's condo. So, after about an hour of tears, sniffling, and general uneasiness, it's decided we're going to the races after all, so we all pile into Ma's car--me driving all sleep deprived--and off to Monroe we go. I gotta admit though, stock car races are a hoot live, and figure 8's are a blast in the rain. 5 hours later we're all piling back into the car, and back to Ma's place. Mary's decided she needs to spend the night again (understandably), so the kid and I (why does that sound like a Yul Brynner movie??) jump back into the Blazer and head back to Tacoma. We finally got home at like midnight. I sent the kid off to bed, called the wife, talked to her about as long as it took to drink a glass of water, dragged my corpse up the stairs (after having climbed a bleacher's worth of stairs about 10 times at the races), stripped, and crawled into bed, only to get to stare at the TV, completely unable to unwind for about 2 hours. *insert much infantile kicking of heels and pounding of fists here* NOT FAIR NOT FAIR NOT FAIR!!!!!!!! Which leads us to Sunday morning, 9:00, when the alarm clock goes off to let me know it's time to get up and get ready for church. That was actually a good thing. It was the first moment's peace I'd had in 36 hours. So we come home from church, and I'm planning to take care of the 3 baskets' worth of laundry that needs folding, hanging, etc. I call the wife, and the first words out of her mouth aren't "How are you," or anything like that. No, I get "Hi, bring me the Blazer." Can you say instant asshole? Sure, I knew you could. Yes, in her hour of need, I snapped at my wife. I'm a bad boy. Anyway, after a few minutes of yelling at each other, we decide it's better if I stay home to do laundry, mostly because at this point I feel like I did when I went to bed. I guess the family is really pushing to get Boo's room cleaned out so they can start going through his shit and pick out what they want. Have I mentioned I hate my in-laws? So anyway, the wife informs me that she's staying there again. Oooooooooookaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay. I take care of the laundry, stretch out on the bed to rest and watch TV, talk to the wife a few more times, feed myself and the kid, and here I sit, tippity tapping on the keyboard, thoroughly exhausted, but not a bit sleepy. *resume infantile kicking and screaming* Oh yeah, and Friday night I managed to kill one of our laptops. If I wasn't sure the roof would immediately collapse on my head (or something equally gruesome), my next thought would be "What else could possibly happen?" Bleh. Maybe I should go have a nice stiff couple fingers of bourbon. Say Goodnight, Gracie.
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