White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Friday night was a bit busy. More so than the usual weekday evening. Since I had made appointment for Jake, I had to get back to the manor and surrounding territories. The typical traffic nightmare of Friday Night creates a particular dilemma for me. Leave too early and I'll be spending all night in the waiting room with an anxious toddler, too late and, well, I'll be late. The first a major discomfort, the second a major sin in my book. I leave at 1600 and find enough time was squeezed out of the universe so that I can prepare dinners, light the fire, and let the dogs out before clawing my way through to the day-care. I had the staff bring out Jake so that Alexis would not feel abandoned before hammering my way back down to the pediatrician's office. In a fit of sanity, I heated up a plate of pizza for Jake and fed it to him all the way there and for the few moments we had while waiting for our appointment. You see, we were actually 15 minutes early for something that we usually end up waiting 60-90 minutes for. Not a wise move, but it's in my nature to be either early or on time. So be it. At that precise moment, an alien scientist was experimenting with super strings formed at the heart of a singularity while trying to coordinate an inversion at the juncture of time and space. For some reason, we were ushered right into a room and were tended to immediately. The coincidence between these two occurrences was determined to not be a causal relationship. Perhaps though, they were more with Jacob's penchants towards deconstruction of waiting rooms. It is fortunate though. The entire time, he is greatly concerned about the absence of Alexis and their primary target, Mom. Oddly enough, the Mrs tells a similar story of how Alexis nearly had a melt-down on her trip home. She was exceedingly upset that the Mrs had abandoned her brother at day-care. In an interesting side story, the Day-care professionals went into a near panic when the Mrs showed up to bail out the kids and they could not find Jake. I guess he is a regular Houdini. Nothing like a little fiduciary invoked panic to keep things lively.

When Jacob was the willing recipient of prods and pokes by the healer, he was proclaimed to be on the road to a class A ear infection and my suspicions were confirmed. Had we not preempted this, we certainly would have spent a bit of time searching for a willing pharmacy to dispense antibiotics in the hinterlands of Ithaca. That is significantly more difficult than finding a willing vendor of various controlled substances, hallucinogens or test answers from Cornell graduate classes. Indeed, we would bring our own bacterial slaying solution. We got our script for ear drops and Cefzil and out the door we ran on our way to the pharmacy. This, of course, was about a mile on the other side of the daycare. We would be covering the same ground we just went over and then some! Back through the gauntlet and into the queue to wait for our prescription to be covered. Twenty minutes ... what the heck am I going to do with a bored and sick child in a Wallgreens pharmacy. Ah, head over to the toy aisle, of course. He was quite entertained by pointing out all the gifts that would be great for Moi-Moi and which ones would be perfect for himself. We grab a couple of Wiggles books and some junk food. We goof around in some of the aisles and do a little sword fight with a couple of the 'grabber' tools that you use if you cannot reach things. Much levity.

Back at the manor, it was still cold. Apparently the fire I lit did not do the job and the ambient temperature never cleared 60. Uff-dah! I crank up the fire and we get down to loading up the Family Tank for the morning commute to the FOB. Flash forward to the next morning and we are under-way at 0730. Jake is cranky and Alexis is subdued as she usually is on long trips. This time, we take 4.5 hours. Of course, it's mostly because I'm taking it easy on the velocity and we make a couple of stops along the way. The first stop is at the Allentown rest-stop where we get some breakfast for the kids and pick up a few pounds of organic grapes from the farmer's market. Alexis is quite enthralled taken with them and eats most of them. The second stop is at Gibson for the usual 1000 gallons of gasoline. Now at a low-low price of 2.05$/gal. Since we signed up for the discount program at the Flying J, we got a penny off too. Not too shabby, but I'll be happier when it gets back down to the .80$/gal it was back in 1995. Fat chance, eh? Once we make it to the FOB, the kids fall into their true form and begin their command performance of wreaking havoc at the grand-parents house. While they are busy with their activities, I spend some time with Gramps bringing up FireWood to the upper deck. Since we are going to be in house all week, we'll need to keep the place above freezing. We are in the Tundra zone now.

Speaking of tundra, Gramps and I endeavored to move that arctic circle down a few degrees latitude by chopping down a dead tree. The good old chain-saw was in the scrap-can so we had to improvise and use a dull hatchet to bring it down. It would have been faster if we had used a nail-file though. Then, the dull ache of an oncoming migraine showed it's ugly face and I spent the rest of the night in the doldrums.

Sunday, crack of dawn, migraine, church. 'Nuf said. Amish-Dad and I wandered about the turf and surveyed some beaver damage. We kept it low and slow on this day of rest ... just for a change of pace. One of the most exciting parts of the day was observing how much Jake and Alexis liked Grams' ham. They ate more than the usual whole shank that I did. Well, that is a feat worth mentioning. Also worth mentioning is that the pain in my hand has stopped expanding and may indeed have started to recede. This is most likely because I now have numbness, burning and the feeling of 'wet skin' that has started in my left food and is steadily progressing up my leg. Figured that this was coming down the pike. I guess the restful vacation came a day or so too late. Hopefully, the week-long holiday will shorten the length of time I get to enjoy the symptoms.

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 9:16 PM