First Monday of the year

Epic insomnia last night. There was no cause. No worries. Just no sleep. Wide awake from 1 to 4 a.m. and none of my usual tricks - like trying to remember all the dog breeds in alphabetical order - worked.

So I formulated a plan to sleep as late as possible, 6:25 am, and skip showering and skip eating and just drop Goldie at Mom and Dad's, drop my car at the shop so they could fix the still-ghetto plastic window and take their shuttle back home to work all day in my glorious grubbiness.

When I got to Mom & Dad's, the front door was locked, which made me cranky. Dang, I get there at the same bat time every bat day and they can't even remember to unlock the door? I gave the handle a good bashing about, rattling the door hard and through the blinds I could see Dad still lying there in the recliner.

Oh, great, I thought. He's gotten so deaf he can't even hear me at the door. I pounded on the window and he kept ignoring me, so I pounded even louder, more irritated.

"I'm coming! I'm coming!" my mom yelled, and suddenly I knew something was up. Mom doesn't get around so good and door duty is all Dad, all the time.

I walked in and Dad was sprawled in his chair, pale, clammy, no dentures, breathing rapidly. I asked him what was wrong and he could barely answer. He looked scary. Skinny and old and sick with his cheeks caved in.

Mom explained that he had been throwing up and was feverish and in pain. Classic food poisoning symptoms, which is never good, but when you are weak and 90, even worse.

What made it all even finer was that I probably caused it. I had brought some handmade sausages from Farmer's Market that didn't have any preservatives in them. The woman had told me to cook or freeze them within 8 days, and it took me 4 to bring them over, then a few more days for Dad to start eating them and then he took his time before finishing them...Mom didn't eat them and she was fine.

I was petrified that he was going to die. He LOOKED like death. But as usual, he didn't want to go to the hospital.

I brought in my laptop from the car, sat down in the spare room and waited for whatever chips to fall where they might, greasy hair, no breakfast, white-trash car and all. First things first.

But that Dad is a wiley one. By the time I was buried in the morning's conference calls, he was sitting up and feeling better, his voice strong, the fever gone. I went back home at noon, crisis averted.

Last time I got food poisoning I was about 35 and really healthy. I threw up for two days, couldn't work for four and didn't eat for a week. Mom just called, saying he wants a vanilla shake delivered. They made them tough back in 1918.