A few days ago when the caregiver provider person was here with Henrietta and John was off work for the day we got all crazy with freedom and decided to hit Starbucks in the Barnes and Nobel bookstore.  Just us.  No errands, no kids, no promises to do anything for anyone else.  It was totally relaxing and we had such a good time.  John has been working so hard and putting in so many hours.  I, literally, just sat across the table and watched the stress melt off of him.

After we browsed around looking at books and I bought a new one, we drank our coffee and headed out to La Madeline’s to have lunch.  We’d never been there before and it was excellent.

It probably seems a little bit ridiculous, but I’d like to have just one day a month when we can go out and do just what we want, together and not feel like we have to hurry and run two dozen errands in the meantime. A “date” day, if you will.

That’s not too much to ask, is it?

Settling in at Starbucks…

NOW we’re ready to go eat.

I guess the saddest part of this story is how badly abused John is when he’s at home and it’s late at night and he’s so tired he can’t stay awake and I have run out of reading material, there’s no good guests on Leno, Letterman or Furgeson…  Well, it gets a little dicey.

I had a sheet of sticky felt dots I had picked up at the hardware store to attach on the bottom of a part of H’s wheelchair that was making black marks on the floor in her room when I took the pedals off at night to haul her out of the chair.  (I think that may be the longest sentence ever… yet, I don’t care enough to go back and fix it…humph.)

Anyway, I started out just wondering if he’d wake up if I stuck one on him.  This, of course, led to more of them and I have to say…

I felt no shame.

Looks like he has a case of the dreaded green felt dot leprosy.   Yes, I thought it was a little funny.

Did I mention I was bored?

Anyway, he got up to pee later that night and came back to bed and I started giggling and he wanted to know what was so funny.  I ended up telling him about the dots and he started feeling around on his back and I had to tell him, “No… the other shoulder.”  I couldn’t stop laughing.  He did too and now every night when we go to bed he says something like “Don’t dot me!  AND NO PICTURES!”