No, not really......just busy and in the good old redneck vernacular, I've been TARRED! For those speaking and reading only the Queen's English - I've been tired. Thursday morning started off in a rather traumatic way - I got up, performed the morning ablutions , proceeded to get Pixie on the milking stand and get Twister and Trixie situated in the front yard (more on this later) and my neighbor comes running up the street - "Leigh, Leigh you've got to come up here. There's a man up there and he's having a problem -we think he's having a heart attack. (When you're a nurse - everyone thinks you know something, so you get called upon for all manner of things. One just accepts this.) So I ran up the street and sure enough, there was a fairly young looking hispanic gentleman being propped up against a truck, and no he did not Hablo English. His friend barely spoke English, but we did manage to get him to lie him down on the ground and prop him up so that his legs were elevated above the level of his heart. According to 911, it was going to be somewhere in the neighorhood of 30 minutes before the EMS could get there. His pulse was regular and fairly strong and I questioned him with my vast knowledge of Spanish - " Dolor?" and pointed to his chest and his left arm. He nodded "Yes" and I must say that he did quite resemble someone on the throes of a heart attack. When I inquired, the people at whose house he had been working informed me that he had been working indoors, which ruled out any chance of heatstroke or exhaustion, but we kept a cool cloth on his head and I kept my fingers on his pulse to keep track of his heart rate. In the meantime, I yelled at Alex to bring my phone, and then I had to tell him to go back because Rachel was still sleeping in the house and Pixie was already on the milking stand.
So, eventually the EMS did arrive, and when they put him on the monitor, all his vitals signs were stable, however, his EKG did appear a bit abnormal. At this juncture, I must say that my experience with cardiac rhythms is positively archaic, so I couldn't really be sure. Since he was in most capable hands at that time, I returned home, at which time I discovered that Alex set about the task of milking - which was very surprising since he hadn't done an entire milking at this point - and all I had to do was check and make sure she was fairly dry. Cracking good job, Alex!!!!!!! I'm so proud of him!I have discovered that milking is quite relaxing and not a chore at all, so I foresee a time in the future where we'll be fighting over who gets to milk. Maybe we need some more milk goats?
All this drama put me pretty much off schedule, so I still had bills to pay ( moving right in to the chore segment of our programming.), floors to mop, a meal to prepare, etc. Along with being off schedule, I had this lingering feeling of being ill at ease. I felt somewhat traumatized for the rest of the day. The bill paying thing didn't work out too good, I had numerous errands to run, and on the last of the errands, which was Home Depot, Rachel got sick and threw up. Okay, really feeling traumatized now! You know, my kids just don't throw up a whole lot, not even every year. I had many food allergies as a child so I threw up approximately every other day, but my kids do not, so immediately I was on red alert , Defcon 3, you name it - I was really freakin. I won't go into the whole long story, which involved a call to the pediatric triage nurse - suffice it to say that I somewhat overreacted. As of yesterday, she was still feeling a little puny, but is apparently okay. By the end of the day, I was ready for an Alabama Slammer, or whatever kind of Cocktail that Tom Cruise could throw together that would ease some of my mental pain. Had to settle for a good old Natural Light - the beer of champions! (What kind of champion you ask?)
So Friday really wasn't a great deal easier. Got up and took care of the goats, milking , cleaning the back porch, etc. etc. and the we left to run errands - mailing the two boxes-o-books I need to mail, visiting the credit union, and buying the dreaded fast food lunch because I didn't have time to cook. Fast food sucks. It makes it too easy to be a lazy parent. I don't like to think of myself as being lazy, after all, there's only so much one person can do, but I've got to get better organized. End of discussion.
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