Two Adults and a Dog

Well, DD left this morning and is home now, tossing limp vegetables out, mollifying the cats, and getting ready for work tomorrow.  She has been a gem, cooking for her dad, reading to him, and giving him his meds when I had to work and sleep.  We probably won't see her again until around Thanksgiving, or maybe Christmas.  She has suggested we think about moving closer to her, so she would be able to help more.  The thought surprised me, as I sometimes regress to her teens and early twenties, when she was so anxious to get out on her own, away from home and parental units. But she is an adult and I believe this summer, with first her own health issues and now her dad's, has changed all our perspectives.

J-Man's cousin Bill came up yesterday and left this morning.  He thought he'd be able to get a room here in town, if he stayed overnight, and I laughed when he suggested it. It's leaf-peeper season and rooms are hard to come by, especially on the weekend.  No matter.  We tossed the extra pillows off the sofa and threw on some queen-sized sheets and blankets, and he declared it more comfortable than his own couch, where he slept after coming down with some respiratory illness a couple of weeks ago. It's a long drive from his home to ours, about 5 1/2 hours, but it did hubby a world of good to have a member of his family around who wasn't pushing pills or needles or watching what he ate--and wasn't female!  We did a lot of laughing and the guys did a lot of reminiscing and we introduced Bill to the movie Sneakers. 

The house feels very empty with half its population gone. Tandi has had a great time playing with DD's dog, but she has spent the rest of the day snoozing on the back of the sofa, exhausted from the week, and happy to be back in her safe little routine with her human family all together again.

It all feels rather surreal right now; we're in our own home with usual bedtimes, thermostat control, and refrigerator access again, but things are not quite the same.  There's a stack of pharmacy receipts and paperwork on the dining room table, new medication times to learn, and these on the bathroom counter, waiting for an empty jug in which to be discarded:

That represents over $800.00 worth of medication injected into hubby's abdominal wall. Doesn't look like that much, does it? Tonight was his last injection until after the liver biopsy Tues. afternoon.

Tomorrow the carpet cleaner comes, followed by some salesman who will pitch a clean air system recitation that I will only halfway hear, in order to help a friend get a carpet shampooer. I wish I'd said no. There are MD appointments to be made, meals to be cooked, laundry to do, floors to be mopped and recorded programs to be watched, but really, we wait. And after Tuesday we wait again.  And through it all, we try not to speculate or worry.