A Big Cosmic Joke

This is like some big cosmic joke.

Last night was fine: typical, long, with many interruptions for checking blood pressure and administering medications. In between the two bags of blood, he was given a diruetic to lower his blood pressure so he peed through his diaper (twice) and we neeeded to change the sheets at 2am. None of this is unusual; just makes for a less-than-restful night.

His platelets had finally gone up as evidenced by this morning’s lab work and we had a new plan for monitoring his blood pressure (which I’ll explain later), so we were cleared to go pending one good blood pressure reading. Which we still haven’t gotten. After the bags were packed, we were informed we’d be staying another night to make sure the many tweaks to his meds take effect. I had conveniently run out of insulin and, thinking I’d simply be home soon to refill my pump, hadn’t eaten anything. So, my mom, the other regular player in our musical caregiver game, came to relieve me.

Mark, meanwhile, woke up early and filled my station wagon with all our lawn tools to take over to the old house in preparation for today’s showing and tomorrow’s open house. (Had you forgotten about that old house? Yes, we had too — basically just ignoring it since our move and hoping it might disappear. After a month and no magical disappearance, Mark put in a solid three weeks of work, patching nail holes and polishing floors. It just went back on the market last week and we have two scheduled showings plus an open house this weekend so are very hopeful.) Anyway … he was heading over to do lawn work and stopped at a stop sign when — Bam! — the lawnmower backed up and the handle smashed through my rear window. Oh lovely. You know even the ever-calm Mark was dropping f-bombs with that one!

Then (because there’s more), after he cleaned the bits of glass out the car and fixed up the yard, he rented a U-Haul truck to transport the rest of the swingset (which had been frozen into the ground on moving day). Buuuuuuuttttt, turns out it was too tall to fit in the truck. Luckily, there were five guys there replacing the furnace (rememeber that little problem?) so they helped him load it onto one of their flatbed trucks and ever-so-slowly drove it the two miles over here. But (there’s always a “but”), just past the very busy intersection of Coventry and Cedar, it fell off! The entire play structure simply slid off the back of the truck onto the road! Oh man. Thankfully the person behind them had enough sense to keep a safe distance. They all jumped out and hoisted it back up and off they went. It didn’t even break, if you can believe that.

So, here we are, making room in the backyard for the swingset, overseeing the installation of the new furnace, arranging for a major car repair, … and trying to lower Austin’s damn blood pressure. I mean really, it’s like some absurd comedy in which we unwittingly star. Our lives have become something of a joke. Thank god we have a sense of humor.