You Wouldn’t Believe Me If I Told You

I vaguely remember going downstairs at 2 in the morning today to get DearDR off the couch from where he had passed out, watching TV (I’m regretting cable). I told him to turn off the TV, and heard Bun start to moan in her room.

Bun had felt warm to me the day before, but I did not take her temperature. I wanted to be in denial.

After stumbling back upstairs, I tried to get Bun settled back in her own bed. She kept drifting off, but would cry whenever I attempted to leave the floor next to her bed. Finally, I scooped her up and brought her into bed with me. DearDR had not made it upstairs.

I woke up with Bun pummeling my back with her feet.
I woke up with Bun snoring and pummeling my back with her feet.
I went into the guest room.
I woke up with Bun crying for me in the hallway. We went back to my bed where she pummeled me with her feet. And snored.
I woke up to the phone ringing. At 5 a.m.
I woke up to DearDR standing in the doorway of the room saying something about his grandmother (Nanny).

This was the morning that my MIL (with whom Nanny lives) needed to leave at 5 a.m. to go to the hospital in Beaver to be there when her husband (my FIL, obviously) went into surgery for a triple bypass.

Well, Nanny was hemorrhaging. Nanny has diverticular disease, and she does bleed from time to time. But she wasn’t *just* bleeding this morning.

Bella (MIL) did get off to the Beaver hospital. DearDR and his sister were left to get Nanny to the hospital (and clean up). After trying to get Nanny to his car, DearDR decided it would be better to call an ambulance. (Nanny is very, very frail, and she had lost a lot of blood.)

In the meantime (and in ignorance of Nanny’s condition) I had dragged my exhausted ass out of bed and gotten ready for work. DearDR called at 6:30 a.m. with the update on Nanny, and what he was going to do.

I packed lunches. I gave the girls their breakfast. Bun didn’t eat hers. I started getting the girls changed.

Bun was still warm to the touch. I steeled myself and took her temperature.

99.9.

Looks like I was staying home from work again.

The ambulance was still in my in-laws driveway when I left. Everyone seemed to be okay, albeit worried and groggy from lack of sleep. Monkey wanted to stay home, and Bun wanted to go to day school. Tough luck on them.

The updates rolled in around noon: FIL out of surgery and doing okay. Nanny staying at the hospital so they could locate and deal with the bleeding, stable condition. DearDR and SIL torn in many different directions (work, kids, two hospitals, other obligations).

Once Bun started napping, I channeled my Italian grandmother. I made a huge batch of pesto sauce; I made some no-cook tomato basil sauce; I made a baked vegetable strata. If you can do nothing else for people, then you feed them. It is very simple.

Oh, and I edited something for Dr. Sis. Yer welcome, Dr. Sis!

Things to look forward to: Beer (as always). Going to work on Friday. The Pizza-Off on Saturday. Ice cream with my brother and his family. The Dark Knight and Bottle Shock.

I’m thankful that everyone is doing fine. Now I just want everyone to be doing fine at home.

Tuesday: FAIL

So I had to bolt to pick my feverish, puking Monkey up from Day School yesterday. I am praying that she is not reinfected with strep, and that it’s just the flu. Yeah, “just” the flu.

If anyone mentions pigs, there will be blood.

Also: WTF is up with my children? They spend more time sick than well these days, or so it seems.

If anyone mentions feeding them meat — as my FIL did last night — there will be blood.

To top off the night, I ran out with my FIL to deal with his nephew’s car, which was pretty much sitting in the middle of an on ramp on Route 60. It had stopped running (the oil was all over the road, so something must have cracked or leaked) and he simply took the keys out of the car and made the five mile trek home. I felt bad for everyone involved, but I watched some hockey highlights on my phone (for free) while we waited for AAA, and my FIL had me home by 10:15. It is exhausting, sometimes, family.

Bun is just fine, but I’m sure she will be sick by the weekend. She woke up crying at 2:30 a.m.; I figured she was either feverish or ready to throw up. But she was neither. Maybe it was just a bad dream. After I brought her in bed with us, she went right back to sleep.

That child is a bed hog — er, bed pirate. Yeah, pirate.

Anyway, Bun is off to Day School again; Monkey will spend the day at my in-laws, no doubt in front of the giant screen TV all day. Which, I guess there are worse ways to spend sick time.

My Wet, Wild Wine Weekend Recap

This past weekend, we headed to the New York Finger Lakes region to see my sister graduate from chiropractic college. (The drive Friday night was horrendous, and the weather Saturday was cold and wet. We did not care.)

As my sister was called to the stage, she was introduced, thusly: “Dr. Soul A. Sista”. She was hooded by my brother, Dr. Brother, who is a dermatologist.

I sat in the audience with my pharmacist parents, and my psychologist husband, and thought, “I’m feeling a little inadequate here.” When I voiced that thought, DearDR quipped, “Yeah, two doctors and a poet.”

Which does pretty much sum up the situation. Ah, well, at least we all have fun. (Scroll past the pictures if you want to see some winery details.)

The Poet

Two Pharmacists and a Doctor

Two Doctors and a Poet I

Two Doctors and a Poet II

Matriarch and Youngest Child

Local Sights

Not Bad

Lots to Choose From

Pretty Relaxed

The Ladies (No Flash)

If you go:

Although it’s a 5-hour car trip, I can heartily recommend heading up to New York Wine Country. Try to plan to be there at least two whole days (we were only there for one whole day, Saturday) to make it worth your time. Next time DearDR and I go (our 10-year anniversary is in a couple of years), I’m thinking we should arrange to drive home on a Monday.

We stayed at a lovely B&B. The room was well-appointed, comfortable and clean, and I am thinking that DearDR and I should invest in a king-size bed. I haven’t slept that well in a long time (we left the girls with Bella & Tadone). The breakfasts were amazing. (They are talking about having some special family weekends. I can see visiting with the girls in a few years.)

We enjoyed lunch at Knapp Winery and Restaurant. The food was excellent — especially the red pepper bisque. The wine at the winery was so-so. We had a lovely Barrel Reserve Chardonnay — which was described to us as being oaky, but was actually a very light fruit flavor with a tart finish — with lunch.

The best winery we went to was Buttonwood Grove Winery. Their wines, ranging from clear, dry whites to a sweet blackberry, were outstanding. Each one I tried (the typical tasting in the Finger Lakes region runs you $1 for six wines) was so clean tasting — no funky aftertaste, no metallic, chalky, or off notes — I wanted to buy a case. From the nose to the finish, each wine was simply delicious. We limited our purchases to their Chardonnay and Redbud — it was a tough choice between the Chardonnay and the dry Riesling.

DearDR got such a kick out of me playing wine snob: volatizing the esters, inhaling the bouquet, talking about the smells and the flavors I encountered. For example, “Oooh, very minerally on the nose, but with a fruit taste of apricots.” Or, “Big, red fruit, like cherries. Tannic on the finish.” Seeing as he taught me a lot of this stuff, I’m not quite sure what he found so amusing.

It was, akin to last Sunday, so nice to be able to take my time with these things. Dinner that evening was at Belhurst Castle with a tasting in their winery before hand. Their Syrah is amazing — big, bold flavors, dark red fruit to black pepper, all the way through — but it was also $25 a bottle. DearDR ordered up a rioja with dinner, which is a different choice for us. As we were enjoying our coffee and desserts, I mused how we never got to do this. Dinner must have lasted nearly three hours!

The next day on our way out of town, we stopped at Montezuma Winery. They specialize in fruit wines, melomels (that’s honey and fruit, no grapes, i.e. cherry, raspberry), and mead. We bought the Vin de Myrtille (a dry blueberry wine) and a Traditional Mead, plus a red blend called Canvasback Red for my MIL for watching the girls. I would put this one on your list too; they have a Cranberry Bog that is so unique — as if Ocean Spray had made a cranberry wine — I lobbied to buy it immediately, and a Sparkling Mead, but DearDR overruled me.

Oh, well. We’ll be back. Maybe some Burgh Moms want to make a road trip?

A big thanks to Mom and Dad for picking up the tabs, and a big thanks to Soul Sista — ahem, excuse me: Dr. Soul Sista for graduating from chiropractic school. You’re awesome, babe.