A Day in the Life, Part One - The Shopping Trip

Friday was busy. And as the day went on, I several times wished I had some type of recording device that would allow me to capture aspects of the day in order to visually, or at least auditorily, be able to share what a day in our lives really looks/sounds like. But as that is not possible, I decided to try to blog about our day. It will have to be at least a three-part blog, so bear with me.

The Shopping Trip

Our guy with the recent medication change has been doing better enough lately, that I (mistakenly) thought we could take him out shopping for some new clothes. So we (him, our daystaff and I) headed off to the local department store. All went well - for a few minutes. He tried on a couple of jackets and picked out a few pairs of jeans. And then he needed to go to the bathroom. Which of course was in the far opposite corner. Just the walk over there and back added a good thirty minutes to our little shopping excursion.

Once we got back to the men's section, he was "tired, stomach hurt and about to throw doooowwwnnn." (And yes, most people would say "throw up" but as you know, we aren't most people around here!) So here we are, ready to go back to the van, but still needing to try on the jeans before we purchase them. With a little bribing, we convince him that if he tries on the jeans, he can pick out a new hat. This got him to the dressing room, where once again, he was too tired, so he just sat down on the little corner of a seat in the fitting room. And just as promptly as he sat, he fell off, onto the floor, hitting his head and crying. Oh joy.

He cried until we reminded him about the hat. Then he took one shoe off. I stepped out to see if I could find more clothes I thought he would like. I heard him groaning several times, but just tried to ignore it and pretend I wasn't with him. And it worked fairly well until I heard him yell, very loudly, "I'm a pee myself! Get me a bucket!" This line got a reaction from pretty much everybody shopping anywhere around the men's area. If he were three, people might excuse this as kind of cute. But he isn't. He's 49. And he apparently wants to pee in a bucket. Not so cute.

I headed back in there to see that he had the new jeans almost on. And then he yelled out again, "ooooooowwwwwwwwwww, broke my leg!" I was done. There was so much groaning and moaning coming out of him, he's yelling about peeing in a bucket and having a broken leg. I knew it wouldn't be too long before somebody called a local abuse hotline on us and it was probably best we head on out of there.

Oh, but first a hat. Nobody was leaving the store until there was a hat on his head. He did okay while we were checking out, until it came time to scan the hat. We'll just say he wasn't happy about having to take it off. He got it back really quickly.

As we were finally leaving the store and I was walking behind him, I laughed to myself at the Minnie Pearl get-up he was sporting. A big ol' tag was hanging off the back of his hat. But I didn't worry about it. I knew that nobody within a 200 yard area of this store would DARE touch his *#$^@% hat!