So Ben's Been Getting Back into Shape...

...Which started with him resuming him running the greenway, which he abandoned sometime last year, either when it got too hot or cold, I forget which. He's been at it for about a month and lost about a micrometer of his chubba-chubba (as Henry calls it) and now has to scale back a bit. Monday he went to work as usual and called me to report he was having severe abdominal pain and was throwing up. I offered to come pick him up and take him to the doctor, but he decided to wait it out; manliness and pecuniary issues always make him reluctant to see a doctor. He came home feeling fine, so he chalked it up to a virus. Then at four thirty a.m., he was up with the same pain, so I drove him to a walk in clinic as soon as it opened. From information he found perusing the internet Ben figured he had a kidney stone, but after two and a half hours at the doctor's office (Henry's patience was wearing thin after hour number two), the doctor couldn't say for sure and referred him to a general practitioner. So Ben set up an appointment with somebody, but then the next morning he was hurting again, so we went to the emergency room. I got Henry up (it was way too early to call a neighbor to watch him), and got him dressed and supplied with a fluffy blanket so he could go back to sleep in the car if he wanted. Luckily we live right down the road from the local hospital and the emergency room was all but deserted. Henry and I snuggled under the blanket in the waiting room while Ben had a cat scan. The sun was just starting to rise and Henry asked, "Is it almost morning?" It was a little after six, so I said yes. Anything earlier than that is most definitely not morning. A few minutes later we were hanging out with Ben in his little exam room and the doctor confirmed that it was a kidney stone. We were relieved that it wasn't something worse, but still glum. Poor Ben. Now he thinks he can lord it over me for sympathy because kidney stone pain is comparable to childbirth pain. I just reminded him that I wasn't crazy; when I was in labor I took all the pain meds they threw at me. So now he's waiting for Junior to work his way out of his kidney and emerge gloriously from his urethra. Wheeeee!!!!

Since Ben was feeling okay and supplied with pain medication and was working from home, I took Henry with me to Maggie's place so we could do the grandkid photo we'd been planning. Korah, Wolfe, Zejda and Maddox were there along with Wesley and all the kids had fun for a few hours before we fixed lunch and herded them to the portrait place. We chose this particular franchise because the one where I live has always impressed me. The folks at the location in Greensboro, however, failed to make the slightest positive impression, which is saying something since I usually don't care one way or another about how people run their businesses as long as they get the job done. I could complain about how the computers where customers pick out their portraits were occupied by chicks playing games and checking their email while we waited for the photographer, but since I'd probably have done the same thing (albeit I'd have gotten off the minute a customer walked in) I can't complain too much. We explained what we wanted, a group shot of the kids, but the photographer insisted that she had to take individual shots of the kids. I know it's because they want us to see a nice individual shot and be tempted to buy it, but still, as I explained, we didn't have time to waste for something we didn't want. I thought about asking her about the huge family reunion photo on the wall, "You mean to tell me that you made forty people sit through individual shots just so you could give them what they asked for in the first place?" The photoshoot or whatever you call it, didn't go well. All I can say is that the chick deserved it. Maybe if she'd gotten one of her coworkers to assist her Wesley might smiled in more than one shot. She probably took fifty shots and only ten of them were of what we wanted, and of those ten only one was acceptable, but not with the background we wanted. We made her skip over all the individual shots, only taking time to laugh at the ones where the kids looked silly (I might've bought the one with Wolfe winking like a complete goofball if I weren't so annoyed at the chick). So after that I bought a box of ice cream for the kids and we visited a pet store to kill time, then we stopped by to visit my mom at work before Henry and I drove home. Good thing we made that stopover, because it forced me to take a back way home, thereby avoiding I-40 and the huge wreck in Durham I would've either been in or been delayed by. All in all, a crazy day.

Last night Ben heard something rooting through the trashcan. I'd heard it before, and have picked up trash from some creature dumpster diving for spoiled meat, so I was interested to see the culprit. I turned on the porch light and went back to the window.

I told Ben there was something in the trashcan.

"How do you know?"

"The lid's up."

Then I told him, "It's a raccoon."

"How do you know?"

"He's looking right at me."

The raccoon was staring insolently at me from his perch on the lip of the trashcan, and I ran off to get the camera. Of course, by the time I got back he'd already hopped down and moseyed on to raid the neighbors' garbage. I guess I'll have to get a bungee to secure the lid.

Time for an Update

Because updates are important, even if not much has been going on.

A couple of weeks ago I spotted a white grandma hair on my shirt and since it was a bit long I deduced it hadn't been picked up at Mee-Maw's house (Ben's grandma sports the traditional, professionally coiffed old lady fro), and since it was the same length and straightness of my own hair I knew without having to perform a DNA analysis that it had indeed come from my own head. It was with irritated resignation that I accepted the fact that I'd had a gray hair long enough to die of old age and fall off my head. Then like the next day I found another one. So I'm kind of amused at myself for being a girl, i.e., having a tiny, chagrined desire to stop the hands of time and remain young forever. Believe me, it's not all about the gray hairs-- as my mom and sisters can attest, a bottle of hair dye'll take care of that real quick, but about everything else, my body aging, weakening, falling apart, etc. But as I've never done anything "unnatural" to my hair, aside from that bowl cut back in the early nineties, I've decided to see how long it takes me to go completely white. When I'm really old I want to look like Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies, which means I'd better start exercising more and working on my shotgun skills.

Halfway Through July Already?

It's amazing how fast time flies by when you're busy being lazy. Actually, I've been slightly more on top of housework lately. It's this weird phase I'm going through, getting things straightened and organized, cleaned, laundry done (for the most part). It's very strange to be sitting at night on the computer or reading a book and stopping suddenly in the midst of sloth and wondering briefly at the strange absence of something, then realizing that there's no procrastinator's guilt because I already cleaned up. I'm pretty dang sure this won't last. But so far so good. I mean, if I could somehow keep this up and make it a habit... Yeah, okay, let's not kid ourselves. But still, it'd be kind of cool.

So far the summer's gone by pretty well. Henry and I have been doing a fair amount of swimming, mostly at Ben's grandparents' place, avoiding the sun, as usual. I seriously hate the sun. We went to the lake a couple weeks ago and when I got tired of swimming I sat in a chair with my feet in the water, a towel draped over my head and shoulders and one over my lap. Yes, I looked like a psycho, but I'm too cheap to buy a beach umbrella when a towel works just as well. And yes, I wore sunblock.

Independence Day was fun. That afternoon we went for a long walk to the dragon park and played, then drove over to the Wal-mart parking lot to watch fireworks. We've never done that before, usually we go to Raleigh at the state fairgrounds. We got there a few minutes early and by nine the lot was full. The fireworks there were better than the ones we'd seen in the past, but halfway through Henry insisted that he had to go to the bathroom, so Ben walked him over to the port-a-john, except he ended up using the bushes instead. Hurray for America! (That's what Henry kept saying, anyway.)