She needed some time away from the baby, and was willing to plan ahead for this last week of August. Her mother, the Latin Teacher, is visiting from New York. The two of them rented a house at the Oregon Coast, armed with good walking shoes and Season 7 of 24. The boys were invited for the first few days. On Thursday afternoon we left to roll back home. This is where the fun begins.
It was hot when we hit Portland and neither Jeep or I felt like cooking. We hung around the house that evening, playing with our newfound toys and pretending to clean the kitchen, respectively. At some point I stumbled upon the mostly finished keg of beer in the garage, leftover from last week's Pig Roast. Why not? It smelled alright and tasted just fine for lukewarm beer. This will be exhibit A.
Jeep ate a lot of grapes for dinner. Grapes and cheese and whole milk and Cheerios. Let the court note that I am marking the contents of my one-year-old's stomach as Exhibit B. Do you see where this is going?
Boy, we were having a good time now. I love bachelor nights! Jeep and I played around the nursery, wrestled on the bed, read books in the shower, and generally had a great night. I was too lazy to make dinner after he went down, so I put in a movie and ate crackers for dinner. Rice crackers. And I found something in the pantry to go with it. Dry packaged pepper garlic salmon spread. From CostPlus World Market. Definitely a Christmas stocking gift. Exhibit C.
On bachelor nights from days gone past, when I still worked for a living and I wasn't out swilling drinks, I had a bachelor tradition that I followed religously. Whenever the wife was out of town, I always watched the somewhat adolescent classic, Joe Dirt. I do not know how this got started, but probably it has something to do with the fact that my Wife HATES this sort of movie and has no patience for it. And of course I love it.
I went to bed around 10pm, just after the part where Joe sleeps with the girl he thinks is his sister. Joe could be Exhibit D.
Around 11:30pm I was roused from sleep. Let me give you a little background about our baby arrangement. At our house, the baby sleeps as far away as possible. He is in the back corner bedroom off the laundry, and we close all the doors to keep things quiet back there. Needless to say, we are the sort of parents who fall into LetHimCry (LHC) category, also known as CryItOut (CIO) or ShhBeQuietAndHe'llGoBackToSleep (SBQAHGBTS). We are heartless cold bitches in my house. And my boy sleeps like a dream.
Except on this night, when I heard a very different sound coming through the baby monitor. He was awake, for the moment, but little Jeep was making a new sound. This one was not a cry so much, as a kind of choking cough. I rose from my bed to see what was the matter.
To be continued . . .
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