Lazy, lazy day....

I had a very lazy day today.

VERY lazy.

It was the vacation from the vacation day. Yesterday, I went to the alternate dimension and did my thing (sadly, yet again, still not independently wealthy, sorry), so it was the end of the vacation (I took 35 hours PTO to meet Sic-un's mom. Keep reading) yesterday, but I needed a bit of a de-vacation day, you know?

So today dawned bright and early at 10:30. I meandered about, didn't do anything, then Sic-un got up. We watched MASH (yes, the movie. It's on On Demand). We decided to go to Biker Rags under the pretense of getting out of the house and doing SOMETHING. Sic-un needed a new wallet, I had some cash to spend frivolously, so we went to Biker Rags.
He got a wallet. I bought 2 tshirts, one for each of us. His is a Biker Rags branded t, cute comic graphic of an oldstyle biker that says windshields are for wimps. Mine has a skull and ace of spades with 2 guns on it. Neat design, would make a good tattoo, and I may draw one out of my own.
Then we dropped stuff off at the house, I ditched my jacket and we went to dinner at Outback. The cook there did Sic-un's med-well hunk of beef right, which is hard to do for Sic-un. He spent too many years standing at a grill himself. And the cook also managed a really good med-rare slice o'cow, which is my favorite.
First time eating there. Ever.

No, you read that right. It's the first time I ever ate there. Every time I stopped to eat there in Abq, they were closed. Strange hours for that particular branch. No lunch service. Here, they do lunch.
Any of the restaurants, we like to hit them between rushes. So we hit them about 5ish, right before dinner rush. Good food there. We tipped well, best service I've had at a restaurant here. Really, best service. Other places have good service, but this impressed.


So, a bit of shopping, a nice ride (first pillion of the year!), and really, only one strange thing....



Can anyone explain why this should NOT cause fear of a police state EVERYWHERE?!?!?!? Hate to say it, but God/dess forbid ANYONE learn about ANYTHING from the world around them. Hell (snicker), you just might oppress a budding da Vinci or Raphael, you may turn Dante away from his scribblings. Can you imagine if someone like Stephen Hawking was given a thorough indoctrination into this type of thing? That's how I'm taking it. It's a warning: Teach your kids what to believe in, otherwise, they may have their OWN ideas. And they don't want that, do they?
It's fear based, and it's a distinct reason why I refer to this place as the buckle of the Bible Belt. It's also a good reason to start looking for places where a recovering Catholic and someone the priest tried to drown (sounds good and gruesome, doesn't it? The priest's hand shook and water went up my nose. I was about 6 weeks old. My godmother wore a lettuce green wool coat with large buttons. The priest was smelly, old and had HUGE fuckin' teeth. Thick glasses, greasy hair, palsied hands. *SHUDDER*) can live in harmonious nekkid-ity. Without allergies? Maybe? Art-y place? Warm-ish? Like year-round warm-ish? Non-harsh winters? Tattoo shop willing to take on an apprentice? Anyone? Anyone?

Perhaps if I win the lottery.

Anyhoo, that was the one strange thing of the day.

The vacation from the vacation...
Sic-un's mom was in the area (NC) for a dog show. Not showing, just going. She was to do the dog show thing, go to Sic-un's daughter's graduation (with honors!!! GOOD JOB!!!!), then come and spend 3 days here. SO, her visit was supposed to (really) be from Monday through Wednesday, then she was heading back home.
Except...
She has some health issues that usually don't cause issues in and of themselves except she has a scooter thingy to get around. The scooter thingy, while she was turning a corner, developed a stall and toppled over onto her.

Dislocated her shoulder. Her right shoulder. She's right handed. She walks, when she walks, with a cane. It's her left knee that's the worst. Not good.

So she went hospital and with one thing and another, wound up here installed in our (newly setup!) guest bedroom (new sheets!) with a wheelchair and a non-functioning scooter, 1/2 her torso bruised purple (...Look at your breasts, ladies. Now, imagine the entire bottom half of the right breast and 1/2 of the right side of the left breast looking like you just got the world's worst hickey from the world's largest lips. Seriously wine-stain bruise. Extend that around the ribcage at the side and up the crease of the arm front and back to the shoulder), on pain-killers that would stop a moose in its tracks and made her loopier than a shag rug, uninterested in anything to eat, basically feeling supersuper sorry for herself on Sunday night, and all of the sudden, her health issues became serious shit to watch for: She takes handfuls of pills every day, has to test her blood, take insulin, etc etc etc....

Serious shit to watch for that induces the panicky mantra of please don't die in my house.

I got up between 8 and 9:30 every single day of my vacation. I cooked food that wasn't really eaten, although she did eat more of my cooking than she did in the 3 reported days from NC. I changed sheets. I washed underwear. I was nursemaid and bullier. I was butler. I was fetch-and-carry. I lifted, wheeled, hoisted, braced, pulled, dressed and undressed, usually while she was in the midst of trying to stay awake.

She seems like she's a pistol when she's not laid up. So the key was to not treat her like she was completely helpless, although trying to get her to quit using her right arm was an exercise in futility.

More fun stuff:

She drove down from WA (the state, not the city). DROVE DOWN. She's more helpless than a 3 year old and she fuckin' drove down.
Sic-un, as much pain as he was in, still considered driving her home. He took 2 weeks off instead of 1, like me. So he had the time. However, he cannot, even on the best days, sit in a car for extended periods of time without serious pain. Add to that his strain on his back from moving his mom, and he was in serious danger of having to be taking to hospital himself.

Dad to the rescue.

His dad, of course. Dashing chap, flew down Wednesday night, we made arrangements with the local medical supply house (only one in the region who will!) to look at the scooter thingy on Thursday morning, and they left Thursday afternoon.

His mother was a different person as soon as he bounded into the house to see her.
They're scary-into each other. Seriously, scarily, into each other. Sic-un says everyone should have parents like his. It was a bit of an idyllic childhood for him, parents like that.
We packed them up, got them gone, then we collapsed. It was Thursday night.
Then the next day, I had to go to the alternate dimension.
SIGH.
Not a great vacation, but there is a silver lining of sorts.

I originally took 3 days off, which added up to 28 hours. Hey, 2 twelve hour shifts, 1 four hour shift. 28 hours. The person in charge of my PTO approvals told me I'd have too much to roll over at the end of the PTO year (June 13) unless I took more hours. Why don't I just let her add in the amount of hours I'd typically eat when it flipped over mid-June? I'm getting paid for 35 hours, then working 11.5 on top of it. Nice paycheck. No OT, but it will be a nice paycheck. See?

Silver.

I'd like to meet them when health issues aren't, you know?