Happy 1-11-11!

Last night was loads of fun.  I was tired so I went to bed at about 11:00 (very early for me), and the next thing I know Amanda’s waking me up at 1:00.  She said she had just checked on Milly, who had been crying, a few minutes ago.  She said she’d put a blanket back on her, stuck a paci in her mouth and she had gone back to sleep, but she was crying again and wanted to know if I’d check on her.

I walked in and immediately smelled something horrible.  I turned the lights on and saw that Milly had thrown up.  It was on her sheets, her blankets, her pajamas and even her.  It seemed to mostly be made up of raisins.

I called for Amanda to come help, so she changed the sheets while I gave Milly a bath.  Milly was still iffy about being in the tub and stood up the whole time.  She was shivering, but I couldn’t tell if it was because she was sick or because she was cold.

After I put her back down I washed the sheets.  I told Amanda I’d take care of them so she could get back to bed, since she had to get up earlier than I did.  I got back in bed just before 1:30.

Fast forward to 4:00.  Both of the dogs have jumped out of bed and are barking or growling.  Afraid they’ll wake Milly up, I get out of bed to go after them and they figure that means I’ll follow them downstairs.  (I did, of course.)  I don’t know if some snow or ice had fallen outside of what, but I didn’t see or hear anyone outside, which is usually why they growl or bark in the middle of the night.  I let them out to pee and they were fine.

I woke up this morning around 6:30 and thought I’d try to go back to sleep.  Bruce was doing this stubborn thing where he sits at the top of the steps while you call for him to come downstairs to go outside.  He does it to me all the time and it’s just really annoying.  Since I was pretty much wide awake, I got up and nudged him on down.

I got back in bed after that, but Amanda was saying Bruce wasn’t coming and she couldn’t find him.  Still wide awake, I figured I’d throw some clothes on and go look for him.  I had noticed yesterday that one of the planks in our fence was coming off, and my fear was that it was loose enough that Bruce could have gotten through.

Of course, he was back inside before I got downstairs, but at that point I figured there was no point in going back to bed.  Amanda was faced with making the decision to go ahead and leave for work or to wait.  It’s supposed to warm up today, but there’s still a lot of mess outside and most places were on delay or canceled.  She called around to a few people she works with who live near us to decide what to do, since her place of work hadn’t made any kind of announcement about what to do.

While she was doing that I walked outside to scope things out.  My assessment, as I walked to Murrayville Road (the main road near us) and back was that she’d be fine if she could get out of the driveway, but the way the snow had iced over one of the wheels, I wasn’t sure if she could do that.  It seemed like things were melting though, and I figured if she waited an hour or so she’d be able to get to work just fine.

All of that was moot though, as Billy Supplee, who has a big truck, offered to pick everyone up.  Since the main roads were fine and our own road wasn’t terrible, I was fine with that.  It actually works out alright, because I was supposed to pick up my paycheck yesterday, but wasn’t able to.  Once things thaw out, I can go pick it up, which is good because I want to make sure the mortgage check I have automatically going out tomorrow has some funds to back it up.

Zach Dotsey