Still Sick and Some Scary Stuff

My husband is still sick, after four days.  His fevers have never lasted this long, so we finally buckled down and took him to a doctor today.  Turns out, he has viral gastroenteritis.  He was given some medicine to help with symptoms, and he's not supposed to really eat anything today or tomorrow.  Poor guy - he's barely eaten since Sunday!

Having him out of commission all week has really shown me how much I depend on him here.  Not just for helping with chores, or carrying heavy boxes up and down the three flights of stairs (which we did a lot of this week, since I was switching out all our winter clothes for summer ones)...but just being present - being my husband, being Sly's dad.  He hasn't been much of a conversational companion recently.  And it's just no fun to cook a real meal for dinner when Tom's not even going to eat it.  Sly's still too young to care.  So this week, eating has been a pretty piecemeal affair.

 It's also been really frustrating for us because he's forced to take a bunch of time off work, and we've already lost so many of his vacation days this year due to other circumstances.  I think Sly and I might have to go on the annual summer vacation to Lake Erie without Tom.  And Thanksgiving and Christmas might not be accompanied by any time off for him beyond the actual holiday itself.  :-(

The scary stuff
Tom's been tossing and turning at night - jumping up to run to the bathroom, having freezing spells which make the whole bed shake with his shivering...so understandably, I haven't really been sleeping well myself.  Last night, when we were both semi-awake, we heard a sound coming from the floor below.  A light repeated thumping - almost as if a plastic container had rolled down the stairs.  I was asleep enough that I didn't really think much of it, but Tom said with concern, "what was that sound?!"  "Something falling," I answered calmly.  But then I started thinking about it...I realized that one of the cats was right beside me.  It would have been strange for the other cat to just be knocking things down the stairs.

And then Tom said to me, "do you want to hear something creepy?"  I immediately replied, "No!" because I know how easily I can get freaked out about stupid things in the middle of the night (I have nightmares sometimes where some crazy guy breaks into the house and tries to kill us all).  Tom ignored my response, though, and told me in a grave tone, "it's exactly three o'clock".

gahhhhhhh!

"I told you not to tell me!!  Why did you have to tell me that?!?!"

3:00 AM, according to some, is the time when evil forces are at their most powerful.  It is the opposite of 3:00 PM, the hour at which Christ died, also called the Hour of Mercy.  Plus, we've seen all three of the Paranormal Activity movies in which a demon moves things around in the house in the middle of the night.  Like I said, my fears can get a bit irrational when it gets late.  So suffice it to say...I was pretty freaked out.

I eventually explained it away to myself.  I remembered that on my way up to bed, I had carried a small plastic bin that was sitting in the downstairs hallway, and put it back on the second floor.  I figured I must have just left it close to the top of the stairs, and the other cat had accidentally knocked it down.

I did fall back asleep, and nothing else weird happened, thank goodness.  BUT!  A little while ago, I noticed that that plastic bin was actually back where it belongs under the changing table - that's where I put it last night, but I had forgotten.  So what the heck was the sound last night?        dun, dun, DUN!


At least we finally got Fr. Stephen over to bless our house two weeks ago.  That actually makes me feel better.