Buckets and Lockdowns and Books, Oh My! (It’s Monday)”

I keep repeating to myself: today is Monday, today is Monday. 
I should know that—really, I should—but we seem to be in that little bubble where time has no meaning.

Badger is down for the count, so we've stayed inside. 
She's mostly been in bed with a bucket and a heating pad.

I did call the doctor. 
I've been putting it off forever because, frankly, I don't like talking on the phone. 
Three adults in this house, and all of us have a serious phone phobia. 
I've been the designated phone call maker for what—35 years? How long have we been married?

Badger goes at the end of September, which is way too close now—I think I may have lost the month of August too. 
She's not going to like this appointment, but maybe if she had let the doctor do a proper exam the first time, she could have avoided all this misery.
 If it is what her personal doctor suspects it is. 
Or maybe not.

So this is going to be a waste-the-paper type of post, put up mostly so this pea-brained idiot can maybe figure out what day it is.

Once Cowboy went to work, it's just been me and Badger.
 Raven is at the other parent's house, Heron is at his girlfriend's—and with Badger down and out for the count, well, it's been a stare-at-the-four-walls type of day.

Ok, one tiny bit of—I hesitate to say excitement—more like oh my gosh. 
At 1:19 p.m., Peacock sent me a text: he’d been ordered to evacuate and hunker down. 
At 1:30, campus police released information that an active shooter had been called in—luckily, it was a false call.

My son works at UT, not as a student but as staff—he’s part of the physical security infrastructure team.
 He doesn’t carry a weapon, and he’s not a security guard. 
He’s the one who installs and maintains the electronic locks, configures the alarm systems, and responds when something breaks—like rescuing a professor stuck in an elevator.

With adult children, I never thought I’d worry about school shootings again. 
But shooters don’t care if you are staff or student. 
And his job means when the alarms go off, he doesn’t get to run. 
He has to go toward the problem and make sure the systems work.

The kind of thing that makes a mother’s heart skip beats.

I’ve got one more load of clothes to finish up, and then I’ll get off of here and see if I can possibly finish Walter Cronkite. 
At least we’re finally to the Vietnam War. 
I don’t have the book in front of me, but everything online says it has 862 pages—I swear it feels like more. 
I’ve been reading it forever, and it just keeps going.