Back to work

Both the swingset and dryer were delivered without incident on Saturday. It is sooooooooo nice to have a dryer that doesn't take two hours to dry a load of clothes! The swingset is a big box o' lumber and parts and looks rather intimidating. But we'll find some way to get it put together.

Since I was waiting on deliveries, K took J to Little Gym, although it was actually my weekend. He called about 10:20, asking if I was planning on coming there. I said no, I was (at that point) on my way to the bank and the post office, and I wasn't really dressed for Little Gym. I said I'd come if he needed me, though, and he said no, never mind, it was OK. Well, you don't call me and sound like that and then expect me just to leave it, so I called back in a couple of minutes. At that point K said they were just going to come home. J was so tired, he just wasn't in the mood to be there. K said all he wanted to do was lay on the mat, and that's very out of character for J. So they came home early - a first in J's time at Little Gym. We'd planned on going to dinner for K's birthday, but I said that if J wasn't in the mood for Little Gym then (mid-morning), he wasn't likely to be in a mood for dinner later in the day. So we thought, OK, lunch. K asked J if he wanted to go to lunch with mama and daddy. J's response? "No, I just want to stay home." So we picked up lunch from Whataburger instead. Not exactly the birthday dinner K had hoped for! We'll catch it some other time, though. Maybe when we do, I'll actually have money and can treat instead of making him pay for his own birthday dinner.

J *was* tired - he passed out around 8:30 Saturday night, which is pretty early for him. I decided perhaps early bedtime would be in order for me as well, and I was asleep by 9:30. (Woo, the glamorous life of the single woman - asleep by 9:30 on a big Saturday night!) Around midnight my cell phone rang. It was K. He'd treated himself to a run to the liquor store for his birthday, and at the time he'd asked me in what order to drink - I'd told him beer then liquor, never sicker, liquor then beer, never fear. Well, guess what? He said I was going to laugh at him - he was sick. Of course I didn't laugh. I asked him what he'd drank, and it really wasn't a lot. He said he'd stopped drinking around 10 PM, and gotten sick around midnight. I said I wasn't sure it was from the drinking, as he hadn't had all that much (and the few times I've been sick from drinking, it's been after an all-night party usually involving Everclear in some form, and lots of it). He said he didn't know, he just felt awful. We talked for a bit and then got off the phone, and I went back to sleep. J was up at his usual 6:30 or so, so I was awake when the phone rang at about 8:15. It was K. I was surprised, I'd expected him to sleep late since I knew he'd been up part of the night not feeling good. He felt worse then. He sounded terrible, and said he'd been up around 4:30, sick again. I told him it sure didn't sound like it was from the alcohol, usually with that you're good and sick once and that's it. I suspect it was the hamburger he got at Jack in the Box, although I have no proof of that. Anyway, I told him J and I would pick up some medicine and crackers and Sprite and be over in a bit.

So I asked J if he wanted to go to the store to get some medicine for daddy. He said, "And a truck for me?" LOLOL Stinker. (He ended up getting a little Buzz Lightyear, which I don't think he's put down since it came out of the package.) We picked up a few things and went to K's apartment. Bless his heart, you could tell he felt not so hot. When we got there, he ate some crackers and drank a little Sprite. J watched TV and played with his Buzz Lightyear while I tried to fix K's DSL (turns out it was hooked up with an Ethernet cable instead of USB, and the USB cable was nowhere to be found, so that's something he needs before I can hook that up for him), and before we left, K was feeling a bit better. Then J started hollering that he was ready to go back to the big house, so off we went.

And yesterday evening J was just grumpy. I knew he was tired - he fell asleep in the car on the way back from K's, and that very seldom happens anymore. He grumped and fussed until he finally went to sleep around 9:00. After he went to sleep, I started to upload some pictures from the digital camera to my online album. With my dial-up, it takes forever, so I got on a cleaning binge while I waited. I cleaned out my bathroom cabinets under the sinks and cleaned off the counter. It positively gleamed when I was finished. Ah, a tiny oasis of cleanliness in a sea of chaos. My whole house should be so clean, or even close. (J saw it this morning and said, "Mama, you put all those (things I had on the counter) away?! Now I have space!" LOLOL) So I tossed, and wiped, and scrubbed, and polished, and finally the pictures finished uploading. I copied a few songs from some of K's CDs that are still at the house, and went to bed around 12:30.

I'd *just* turned off the light when I heard a big CRASH, BANG!!! I thought J had fallen out of bed and hit his nightstand or something. It sounded almost like the slats had fallen out from under his mattress - the thing is, though, that they aren't under the mattress right now because I got tired of them falling out. They're propped up against a wall. Strangely, I wasn't scared, more curious than anything else. I checked on J first - he was still in bed, snoring. ??? Everything in his room was just as it had been. I went through the house one room at a time, turning on lights, looking in closets (not like there's room for anyone to hide in any of them), looking under tables. I couldn't find anything, anywhere in the house, that was in a spot different than where it had been. ??? I looked outside - nothing. ??? I stayed up until almost 2:00 making sure nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary, and then I finally gave up and went to sleep. I still have no idea what caused that noise. If it's my brother stopping by to visit and making his presence known, he needs to do that at some time when I'm not trying to go to sleep!