My weekend has been a challenge. I was going to use the word "epic" to describe said challenge, but that word, like the words "adventure", "awesome", and petty much any cuss word, has been overused, it's meaning nearly negated by such. There was once a time when a person would be upset enough to cuss, and that's when you knew they meant business. Now people cuss all of the time. Everything is awesome. Trips to the local burger joint are epic. A successful shopping trip is an adventure. What happens if someone's driving acrossa hot desert, breaks down, and has to walk and all they have is a half a gallon of water and an extra shirt? If a burger is epic, then this must be an experience only dwarfed, perhaps, by the book of Revelations as considered factual... but I'm getting way off topic.
My challenge has been a lot more personal. It's now seven minutes after midnight. I finally broke Malcolm's fever (again), but he's wide awake. We napped for a couple of hours earlier this evening, but we've been awake since 9:30.
I suppose if I'm going to claim my entire weekend as a challenge, I should start at Friday night. After work, we went to the Tucker household for our inagural "Friday Night Burger Night". Bart had mixed ground beef and ground buffalo, and Jeremiah grilled them ever-so-gently on a charcoal grill. I had some sharp cheddar and pepper jack melted onto mine. The burgers themselves were heavy, round, and juicy. Delicious. I placed mine on a slightly-steamed bun, pre-dressed with mayonaise, and topped it with three strips of bacon, lettuce, red onion slices, catsup (I'm going to try to bring this spelling back), and spicy brown mustard. It was almost identical to Bart's, but he had avacado slices on his, too.
To garnish my plate, I filled the little space not occupied by this burger with some Bush's baked beans and some classic Lay's bbq chips. To was it down, some sort of blueberry lager with an 8% alcohol volume. All in all, it was a fabulous meal. Not epic, as nobody died cooking it, but really, it was pretty damned tasty. Afterwards, we hung out, put Mal to sleep, and enjoyed some adult time.
Saturday was relatively non-eventful. Lyss went to work for a few hours. I had kicked around taking Mal into town to catch a glimpse of the first cruise ship of the year to arrive in Ketchikn, but he was in a pretty clingy mood, so I opted for some simple playing time outside with him. When Lyss got home from work, Bart and I went back over to the Tuckers, and we played a game of Risk. I mistakenly misread the rules, assuming that new packaging, game pieces, and setup rules meant a radically different method of play. Almost 2 hours into the game, puzzled, I reread the rules and discovered to my shagrin that I messed up. We went back to old-school style of playing, and Jeremiah, who had been amassing armies under the new rules (showing high adaptability, it must be noted), quickly routed Bart and Cat. I, the last holdout, was swept in the next turn.
At about 11:15 last night, we went home to a crying Malcolm and stressed out Lyss. After briefly discussing his fever, I gave him some ibuprofin and read Hop On Pop. He mellowed out quickly. I forgot to mention that he was up with me at 3:30 that morning. We fell asleep on the recliner around 1:30 this morning. We woke up again 3 hours later.
Today, I did some dishes, and then Steve and I helped Cannon move some furniture to his new apartment. Two truckloads up three flights of stairs and around the back of a house. Then I came home, and the rest of the story is the beginning of the blog.
The title lends itself to the fact that Mal's fever seems to be related to the molars he's cutting in the back of his mouth. I gave him some benadryl tonight, both to help with some of the hives he's had, an to (hopefully) help us both sleep a relatively full night. He just passed out about fifteen minutes ago. It's 12:30. I'm going to bed.
