shaken and stirred

I am here starting this in the airport in Milwaukee alone. Carol is not coming with me. Might as well get the suspense out of the way immediately.

Earlier in the week when Gilbert swallowed a bit of plastic and we raced him 60km to an animal emergency ward only to find out that this too will have to pass, we found out that he has a heart murmur.

This wasn’t major as we were going to have Carol’s mum house sit for the week that she was on the Rock – actually she is good for Gilbert who is on a diet of no more than 200 calories a day she makes him exercise by constantly playing with him.

We picked her up yesterday morning to show her the run of the place and dealing with Gilbert’s medications and feeding schedule.

Carol was also worried about her gardens – we are becoming the gardening subversives of the neighbourhood as she is tearing out more grass and adding more plants we have half the grass we did last year. We are also letting the area by the road turn into prairie – am sure the person who washes his driveway is freaking – we even have weeds. She suggested that the new plants might want to be watered.

We settled down to a nice afternoon, reading the papers, after a quick trip to R.E.I. to see if there wasn’t a smaller bag that Carol could carry on her walks. I made a couple of books, and tried to find a place for the three months of New Yorkers that I was taking determined to read and leave.

The garden was being watered everything peaceful when there was loud cracking sound.

Raced out back to find Carol’s mum in trying to turn off the back sprinkler had fallen through the plastic window well cover and was in the window well arm bruised facing up trying to say help.

Broke took out the fire escape window in the basement – it needed airing out anyway, got some steps and eased her out through the basement.

She was scraped and scratched but not bad for someone who had fallen four feet on her butt. Being in her eighties though a trip to hospital was in the cards and while she protested and since she said nothing hurt, no x-rays were taken. It seems that they didn’t even do the minor things one see on the sidelines of football games when someone is injured – no checking for concussions.

Feeling that she may feel fine knowing that the next day – to-day could be worse and the fact that she doesn’t know how to drive meant that Carol wouldn’t feel at ease being so far away with no quick way to get back.

I am on my way out she will follow later on.