beer and morphine

After living some in Michigan and Boston and Germany, DH grew up in Augusta, along with the families of his mom's many brothers and sisters. I should clarify that "many" in this respect is debatable if you compare to his dad's having nine brothers and one sister. In any case, it ended up that DH and his brothers and several of his cousins spent much time together visiting their grandma and grandpa out on the lake fishing and swimming and hanging out and swinging from trees (Gerald) and heaven knows what else. Like my cousins, and like so many other families, they eventually reached adulthood and parted ways and although they remembered each other fondly and lovingly, they didn't really make much of an attempt to stay in touch. We send most of them a christmas card every year, but that's the extent of it.

And as tragedy so often does, it brought family back together. The first week Gerald was in the hospital, cousin Shannon spent very nearly an entire week there with him, joined much of the time by Beth, both of whom have their own families and jobs to attend to. They sent pots of spaghetti sauce and chicken and dumplings home with DH's parents, and helped contact various family members and such to let them know Gerald's situation. So one of the nights we were down there, they called up and came out to the lake for a visit. I must say that they were total nutcases. I mean that in a good way, mostly. DH is very mild mannered and quiet, a non-smoker and non-drinker, a wonderful, fabulous guy, but very...quiet. Which, as it turns out, is not really a family trait.

So I stayed up until after midnight, fighting off the smoke (bleah) and laughing until I thought my gums were going to dehydrate. One of the nights those two had volunteered to stay the night with Gerald in the hospital, they got each other all worked up talking about time flying by and life and such, so they decided in order to keep a party atmosphere, it was necessary to bring booze into the picture. So Shannon left, and returned smuggling 18 cans of beer into the hospital room disguised as a chest of ice. EighTEEN cans???!! Funnier still were the stories of Beth spilling a cup of beer in the bathroom and their antics to cover up the smell before the nurses found out. They spent so much energy laughing over their efforts that they ended up both getting a total of about one sip of beer. Gerald was happy on morphine so he didn't need any beer and anyway I expect those nutcases were exactly what he did need. I hope the nuts in my life make an appearance if I'm ever in a situation like that.

My own personal newsflash:
A filling fell out of my tooth last night - I guess. I never felt it come out or found it for that matter, so I can only the suppose the sudden gaping hole in one of my back molars is because a filling came out of it. I suppose I probably swallowed it. Bleah. Visions of mercury dancing around my digestive system...