Been a rough week.  Last Sunday I thought I was going to be the last person in West Michigan to get that nasty flu bug that was going around all winter, still something I could brag about right?  I was so awesome that it didn’t break down my immune system until flu season was technically over.  Unfortunately it was worse, much worse.  My lower leg hurt but I hadn’t engaged in any type of activity that would result in a lower leg injury.  Something told me the pain in my leg, low grade fever, and fatigue were intertwined but there was a chance they were completely unrelated.  I decided to continue to try and plod on, hoping it would just go away.  Monday morning I felt a bit better, but by that afternoon I started feeling like ass again and realized this felt exactly like an incident I had about eight years ago where I almost lost my right foot to an infection.  A trip to the ER didn’t confirm or deny my suspicions, the ER doc was going to send me away empty handed.  However, I insisted that he give me antibiotics because I knew I had an infection due to the fact that this was playing out just like my previous infection, other than the fact that I ignored that one, kept playing basketball on an infected foot, attended a golf weekend in Saugatuck where the vast quantities of alcohol I consumed didn’t counter the infection but likely exacerbated.  Fortunately, when I woke up that Saturday morning at 6am and couldn’t put any weight on my right foot I realized it was time to stop being a hero and get some much needed medical attention.  I had to drive from Saugatuck to GR on one foot, that’s how badly my right foot had deteriorated.  When I finally arrived to the ER they put me in the front of the line and whisked me into emergency surgery.  I could have easily woke up with out an appendage, but the surgeon did a great job of cleaning it out and saved my foot.

This time I wasn’t about to go through that experience.  I started taking antibiotics on Monday afternoon and slept from Monday at 6 until Tuesday morning at 8am.  I sweat out a minimum of a dozen gallons of fluid Sunday and Monday night but by Tuesday I was feeling a bit better.  Wednesday rolled around and my mobility changed from that of a 95year old to a 75 year old so I figured I should play lunch basketball at MVP.  I’m glad I did, well sort of, I played amazingly well for a 75 year old.  However, the basketball may have compromised my immune system somewhat.  That night when I got home with the kids after a trip to Tanger Outlet for new water shoes (another blog topic for the future) Cara asked how my leg was, I said fine, unfortunately it wasn’t the infection was spreading and my leg was as hot as New Kids on the Block were in the 90’s.   Fortunately my mother in law was there picking up the dog and she stayed with the kids.  Shirley dropped me off at the ER and parked and I limped into the ER, holy shit, it looked like the scene from Walking Dead the one where the zombies try to eat you, everyone in there looked like they had been a zombie for at least a couple weeks and there was one guy moaning in pain in the waiting room.  I wanted to go over and tell the guy to quit being such a pussy, but didn’t want to lose my place in line.  I was actually behind a guy who was on crutches trying to push a women who looked like the crypt keeper in her wheelchair.  Needless to say, my glass half full approach to life was taking a serious hit, I don’t even think Mr. Rogers could find a silver lining to this evening.  Eventually I was wheeled to a private room and as I made my way through a number of hallways it was remarkable how each hallway was lined with people on medical beds who looked just about as bad as the guy who was screaming like a giant pussy in the waiting room.  I thought to myself “this would be a great place to find cast members for the Walking Dead, they wouldn’t even need makeup, and probably already have a hankering for human flesh so their acting will be spot on.”  Ultimately, I was admitted and given two IV’s of antibiotics which really did the trick.  What I didn’t see coming is that I would be released at 10:45 am the next day, it was like God wanted me to play basketball at lunch, which I did.  My partner called me when I was in the parking lot of Kuyper college and we were talking and I asked if I could call him back.  He asked me “Hey you’re not playing basketball are you?  Wait you wouldn’t play basketball would you?”  I may have responded with a “why would I do that?”  However, if I said no and you read this Mark, sorry.

Once again, an amazing performance by someone who was eligible to retire from the work force a decade ago.  I chose not to shower at Kuyper because I am pretty sure that’s where I picked up this flesh eating bacterial infection.  I was able to accomplish a few things at the office and then hit a quick spray tan before I went home.  I go completely naked and I will say this, I am a confident guy, but a spray tanned penis doubles my amount of self confidence.  When I got home I saw my father in law coming the opposite way out of our house.  Damn it!  I was hoping for some business time, Shirley had told me he was picking up the kids, I thought that meant and bringing them to his house but he was merely dropping them at our house.  When I got through the door I could instantly tell my kids were already amped up for the Florida trip that we were hoping to depart on at 3am Friday morning, likely an unreasonable goal, but Loyola made it to the final four so the Jansmas could conceivably get out the door by 3am.

My kids doubled down on annoying, it was my over confidence with a spray tan times ten.  What was perplexing was the fact that I would be spending the majority of the next ten days with them on a trip. People are full of shit if they actually pretend like they enjoy family “vacations” just as much as real vacations.  Oh yeah, why would I want to be able to drink as much as I want whenever I want, lay by the pool, read book(s), drink while I do that if I feel up  to it, have extravagant dinners and a LOT of sex?  The alternative sounds way better, yelling at my kids, yelling at my wife because the kids are driving both of us crazy and we take it out on whomever happens to be around, and then catering an entire vacation to someone else’s needs (my kids)  fucked up right?  One of my buddies is married and he and his wife made the conscious decision not to have kids, I use to think he was crazy, now I know who is crazy, everyone who actually tries to have kids.  I can see accidentally having a kid because you are horny and in the spur of the moment didn’t take the necessary precautions to avoid such a catastrophic mistake, but to actually plan it out, that’s just idiocy.

While I am not sure if I responded to my partner “why would I do that?”  There is one person who I did:

“I tried calling you this morning when you said you were being released”

“You did?”

“and you didn’t answer” (I saw her missed calls when I left basketball but didn’t think much of it, in hindsight I’m glad I didn’t call her back)

“I was kind of busy”

“Did you play basketball today?”

“Why would I do that?”

“When you didn’t answer I tracked you since we are on the same plan and you were at Kuyper college.”

(OH SHIT!)

The good news is, and this isn’t because I am an attorney by trade, its innate, when faced with answering a question that answering truthfully is against my self interest, instead of lying, I follow it up with another question and see where it goes.  That way,  if it appears that the lie would have been detected, I am not compounding the problem.  Obviously, this conversation didn’t go the proper direction.  Shirley took it better than I thought and I actually managed to get some business time under my belt prior to our long road trip.  It went better for me than her because:

1. My leg infection creeped her out.  (not sure why it’s not contagious)
2. I smelled like spray tan, a smell that should make everyone Randy.
3. I also smelled like a black bean burger.

apparently I was the trifecta of unsexy even more than normal

 

Guess what?  The apocalypse is near, how do I know that? The zombies at the ER?  No, the Jansma’s were on the road at 3:15 am making their way to the sunshine state.  The ironic thing is it had nothing to do with their parents and can be attributed to my eldest and his annoying habit that has replaced him sleeping on the floor next to Shirley’s bed.  He now wakes up in the middle of the night and pushes our door open, the light is on in the hallway and I am a light sleeper so this wakes me up.  I need pitch black typically but at that time in the morning I have no desire to get up out of bed and traverse the three feet needed to close the door, and typically when I do this Aiden gets up again and opens it.    Friday morning Aiden did it again and both kids were there and wide awake, this woke me up and the ensuing arguing resulted in me deciding to just get out of bed so we could actually shove off on time.

Friday’s travels were fairly uneventful.  I laid the groundwork for zero tolerance early with Shirley.  She immediately started critiquing my driving, ordering me to slow down.  She is so fanatical about it you would think that me being pulled over for speeding would result in the officer pulling me out of the car and shooting me execution style in front of my family instead of the small fine and points to my driver’s license.  I fought back and told her it was 3am we would be fine.  The reality is, there is a shift change with law enforcement, not sure when it is, but you have a window when you can speed your ass off without the fear of being caught.  Ultimately we made it to our hotel in Montgomery in about 16 hours, my sweatpants were 90% saturated with farts and sweat, but we made it.  The next day we were back on the road around 8 am EST and the only thing initially that went wrong is that a Starbucks, which was actually on our route, was completely ignored by the people we were following.  I just figured that he knew of one up ahead that was on our side of the street instead of having to make a left hand turn into the Starbucks.  What are the odds of there being another Starbucks somewhere in the next 90 miles?  100% unless you are traveling in Alabama then it is more like 0%.

Fortunately the Starbucks void in Alabama is filled by Chick-Fil-A and they serve an amazing breakfast as well as cold brew.  Going there for breakfast rectified the situation to a degree.  Even though I was satisfied with the Chick-Fil-A Starbucks trade off I was still on edge due to the fact that I had just spent more consecutive hours with my family than I had ever before.  As I was traveling I was stuck behind a Prevost and blinkered to get over to the left where there was plenty of room, this old bag in a PT cruiser sped up and started going nuts on me.  I yelled “Let me in you BITCH!”   Obviously, this didn’t sit well with Shirley even though the kids had headphones on and were watching the first Jumanji and I could have thrown Shirley out of the car without them noticing.  “The kids shouldn’t be hearing that.”  Boy was she right.

The kids are a bit too young to understand how the rules of the road work when using the word Bitch.  I was referring to this women as a bitch, and well within my right to do so, but bitch is a versatile word.  Furthermore, had it been a male driver I would have had to use the word asshole instead of bitch.  Exposing my kids to bitch this early would likely result in a complete mis understanding and mis use of the word by them.  What if they heard a guy referring to another guy as a bitch?  “You’re my bitch!”   That could be quite confusing.  Or, on the off chance that I referred to Shirley, my wife as a bitch when we were arguing and they just happen to be in ear shot?  Maybe once a year I get to pull out the bitch card, I don’t get to directly refer to her as a bitch, I tone it down.  “Why are you being such a bitch?”  It doesn’t result in divorce, because when she gets to this level  and looks at thinks retrospectively, she realizes she was being a bitch.

I guess I will have to find a movie for the ride home for the kids that uses the word bitch in its many different contexts and then have a sit down with Aiden and Parker to discuss how the word bitch actually works.  Knowledge is power.