What a long, strange night it was

I am back. The muse is giving me the silent treatment again. She can be so damn tempermental, or that is how I see it.

It has been a long day following a long night. It was really hot and muggy last night. Unseasonably so in these parts. It seems that I have taken my thing with the heat, I just refuse to use the furnace and heat in the months of September and May, I am iffy about October and April, too, but I am willing to reconsider that, to the air conditioner. I just refused to put the AC on for a night. Then again, I am not sure it is working properly, so rather be up every couple hours to hear if it is draining properly, I chose to "sweat" it out.

I got to sleep okay with just the sheet. It did not seem so bad until.....the phone rings at about 12:50 am. You know that cannot be good news. I mean NOBODY ever calls at that time to offer up a generous sum of money or blowjob. It turns out the call came from the Outlaws. An ambulane was there to take my mother in law to emergency because she was having trouble breathing.

The funniest part of it all was that she and the Wife were at the doctor's yesterday morning. He remarked how well the radiation shrunk her tumor and that she should go out and do things, you enjoy the time she has rather than wasting time, wasting away. Okay, her left vocal chord is paralyzed and her talking comes to a whisper. Maybe, now she will actually be forced into listening rather than talking to silence the voices in her head. Nobody in the Outlaw family actually listens, so this may be a positive thing given time, but then again what do I know?

The Wife goes into a blind panic. Nothing like taking what little information you have and extrapolating a negative scenario. The bigger problem that I have with this is that as bad she thinks it can be, I can come up with far worse outcomes and scenarios. I have learned to keep my mouth shut with those. Anyway, she gets herself ready to meet the ambulance at the hospital and calls her brother.

He calls back and she picks him up. I help her jockey cars at 1 am and come back in the house. Somebody had to stay with the Lad. I get back up to bed and notice a light on in the bathroom. The Lad has woken up. He asks where his mother is and says he heard her leave and the door close. I was going to tell him, but when he finished in the bathroom, he went straight into his room and did not reask the question. At least, one of us could go back to sleep.

I must have fallen asleep after 1:30 but heard the papers being delivered around 4 and the car pulling in the driveway soon after. My mother in law is home. She had a panic attack. She woke up with a cough, could not catch her breath, and then took the next step into the panic zone.

Man, those Outlaws. Step 1 for them is always blind panic. Step 2 is helplessness. None of the steps has a basis in logical or rational thought. None of the steps has a basis in observing reality. They all live inside their own heads and when reality collides with their insanity, insanity is always the victor.

As you can see, it was not a good night. It was even worse for the Wife. The best part is that today is my mother in law's 75th birthday. The Wife does not want to celebrate or demarcate it, as that would mean acknowledging that it is probably her last and the last she will spend with us. Then again, miracles do happen. She may decide to last for a while, which I would hope she would do, provided she can handle the pain.

Not a great story, but a story, nonetheless. Just remember my own profound words (Willie can vouch for them as they were uttered on a trip to Florida in February, 1985) "I got color. Not the color I wanted, but color nonetheless." Ciao!