Crippled leading the lame
I may have mentioned in the past that Herself is an invalid.
Please note I said an invalid. She is still reasonably valid.
A nasty combination of arthritis and a degenerative spine thingy has left her in a ton of pain and almost totally immobilised. As a result, I have a lot of work to do such as running up and down the stairs [around 20 times a day?] if she wants to move around in the bed or if nature calls. That’s apart from all the other chores around the gaff.
As you may remember, Daughter is also an invalid having smashed her leg good and proper by falling off a push bike. Not you’ll notice, a decent scrambler or even an ordinary motorbike. No, she has to do the spectacular on a fucking ordinary push bike with a fucking basket up front! Where did I go so wrong?
My time therefore is somewhat preoccupied with running up and down stairs with cups of tea or to fix the television that Herself has mucked up yet again or doing emergency runs to various schools to collect Grandkids.
In other words I really need to be in peak fitness or we are all fucked.
Now all was fine and dandy [apart from being fucking knackered all the time] until the lawn needed mowing. As I mentioned, the first attempt at that job ended in disaster when the main drive belt broke. I had a spare belt which was grand and yesterday I decided to fit it. I know I should probably have left it for a few days, but I just had to know if I could do the job and even if the new belt was the right size. That’s just the kind of bloke I am – I have to complete a challenge or else I get edgy.
This morning I had to set the alarm as I had to bring Daughter into Skobieville. As we were driving along I noticed the creeping pain in my back. It was/is a familiar friend as I have had problems with my back for many years. Fuck! I can only presume that lifting a heavy tractor to fit a belt was not the best of ideas after all.
I’m sitting here now trying to take things easy. I’m not going to mention my predicament to Herself or else she’ll start nagging about how I should have left the mower until another day. That’s all very well but the deed is done now and nagging won’t have any effect.
I now have to think up an excuse as to why she should not attempt one of her fortnightly forays to the downstairs.
There is no fucking way I could get her back up again.
You think you have problems? I have just gotten over the annual dose of SAD and now the antibiotics i have been on for months for the Epididymitis have stopped working (for the females and eunuchs among us I should explain that pretty much everything a man does, every single movement he makes, every breath even he takes, produces movement in his testicles). I’m seriously considering ‘transitioning’- I’m already halfway there with the moobs that the Amitriptyline (for the pain,SAD and insomnia) has given me. Except the risk of my facets locking means I can’t hoover as much as my OCD demands, my male variety OCD. The thought of being a ‘woman’ with OCD and not being able to house clean….doesn’t bear thinking about.
I don’t have problems. Herself and Daughter have problems – no more mobility for them.
So the tricycles make moobs, eh? I wondered where they came from.
Are you insinuating that Herself weighs the same as a pachyderm?
Artistic licence.
I don’t envy you your task at all although from past (hard) experience I know that there is some rather subdued personal satisfaction in being there when needed. I can also understand what it’s like being in a rather precarious position when you’re the only one keeping the ship afloat. You with your back and such and me with my medical problems (and no medical care as yet) back when Sister and I were taking care of our parents, etc and so-on.
Makes me wish that meself and the wife were living right down the road from the manor instead of “across the pond”as we are. All sorts of help we could be.
Makes me wish that meself and the wife were living right down the road from the manor instead of “across the pond”as we are.
Nah,can you imagine the constant noise from all them builders van and trucks coming to do repairs to the manor cos he insists on keeping Elephants in a domestic premises….not to mention the smell wafting down the lane of all that jumbo pooh.
Perhaps then we should live right up the road then? And hopefully upwind as well.
You need to devise a rope and pulley system – then Herself coming down could create the force required to pull the lawn mower up and down the garden!
May I refer you to Gerard Hoffnung’s monologue “The Bricklayer’s Story” – essential reading before devising such a system.
Excellent!
Oooooh, Gramps. If Herself catches sight of that picture, you are going to be in such, such big trouble! The thin ice beckons …
No problems. I can run!