“Love is not about changing someone; it's about accepting them for who they are and standing by their side through it all.”

 If we all survive this stage of our lives, it might be a miracle.

I'm trying my hardest to be understanding. 
At 66, plenty of people have already retired. 
If they're still working, many aren't pulling third shift in a factory.

Cowboy is old, tired, doesn't feel well, and doesn't get enough sleep.

I'm trying my hardest to be understanding. 
At his age, a lot of men have already retired. 
If they haven't, they're probably not pulling third shift at a factory.

His doctor diagnosed him with shift work disorder. 
In simple terms, it means his body clock has spent so many years fighting against his work schedule that it no longer knows when it's supposed to be asleep or awake. 
He's been working some form of night shift since his early thirties, so that's over three decades of asking his body to do the exact opposite of what comes naturally.

The best way I can describe it is to imagine flying to Japan every week but never staying long enough to adjust to the time difference. 
You'd spend your life feeling jet-lagged. 
That's basically what shift work disorder is like. 
Your body is constantly trying to operate on one schedule while your job demands another.

As he's gotten older, it seems to have caught up with him. 
He can fall asleep holding his breakfast one minute, then be wide awake when most people are heading to bed. 
It also explains, at least in part, why he can be so crabby sometimes. 
Living for years without truly restorative sleep has to take a toll.

Knowing all of that doesn't make it any easier for Badger and me to live with, though.

He's become so overly critical that it feels like nothing we do is ever right or good enough. 
He always seems to find fault with something. 
Even his driving scares me these days.

This isn't the man I married.
 If he had been, I never would've married him.

My Cowboy, my tall, dark, and handsome knight, was always smiling. 
He was always cracking a joke. 
Kids adored him. 
He'd bust his rear end to help anybody who needed it. 
He was always in motion, always doing something.

Now it feels like I'm living with a stranger.

Maybe some of it is my fault. 
I'm the one who never worked. 
I'm the one who can't drive. 
If I had been able to take care of doctor appointments and errands, maybe he could've worked day shift instead. 
Maybe he wouldn't have spent more than thirty years working night shift.

Let's just say our morning didn't start off well, although it was closer to being noon when Cowboy woke up.

He did try to rein himself in.
He was still snappy as a snapping turtle, but he tried.

We stopped at a yard sale.
Badger and I didn't find anything, but Cowboy found some more lights. He's declared war on the rats in his chicken pens. I mean, rats will kill chickens, and they're just overtaking Cowboy's chicken pens. They're attracted both to the eggs and the feed.

A neighbor cleared out a heavily wooded area, and I think that at least in part, the rats are coming from there. It's just across the road. I refuse to set foot even down close to the pens. Rats are fearless, and there are so many, they're even out in the daytime. Rural living isn't all Disney pretty.

Cowboy keeps adding more and more solar lights to his pens.
I don't know if he thinks they'll keep them out or what.

I hate to even say it, but we need a snake. When we had a resident chicken pen snake, the rats were kept down. I mean, it wasn't fun going in to gather eggs and having a snake blink up at you, but at least you didn't have rats.

I'm not sure what happened to our snake.

We got to the store, got our groceries, and made it home just after 2:30 pm. 
Timing could've been better, but Cowboy has to sleep. 
There's no getting around that, even though he kept insisting we should've woken him up earlier. 
Well, he got to bed at almost 4 am, and he never drops straight off to sleep, and he wakes up throughout the night. 
At his age, four or five hours of sleep isn't enough. 
He can't keep pushing himself like he's still 30.

Cowboy got dinner eaten, chickens fed, eggs gathered, and yet more squash picked.
He was asleep by 4:30 pm.
He's got a full workday before he even goes to work.

Badger and I watched TV. 
We finally finished that series we've been watching.
Badger headed to her room, and I headed to the yard to read in the swing a while.

I hadn't been sitting outside very long when Badger brought Duffy out to potty.
All of a sudden she just froze and told me to very quietly turn around.
I slowly stood up, and as quiet as possible turned around expecting to see our groundhog.
Nope.
In the carport-side neighbor's yard stood a deer.
He stood watching us watching him for a good long while.
Long enough for Badger to go inside and grab her camera.

He finally took off back into the wooded area, so we did what any normal human would. 
We followed his butt. 
I mean we didn't trespass, and we didn't go tromping through those bushes and weeds. 
We took the road. 
He was heading to the senior citizen center, and that's where we went.

We got to the senior citizen center, no deer, so I told Badger he'd probably already crossed the road and was hiding in the field with the waist-high grass.

We turned around to head home, heard a loud rustle rustle coming from the bushes beside us, then this clomp clomp on the pavement.

We turned around just in time to see a deer butt hauling tail to the field with waist-high grass.

That little devil had hid in those bushes while we stood right beside him, and we didn't see him.

I think we'd make lousy hunters.

We get back home, Badger heads back inside while I head back to my swing.

I hadn't been outside very long before it started rumbling thunder, and the wind started blowing.
I figured I wasn't in any danger, so I stayed where I was until a drop of water hit me on the nose.

I headed inside.
It was nearly time for Cowboy to work anyway.

It never did storm. 
I don't call a few rumbles of thunder and some high wind a storm.

Badger was in her room, so I just went to mine.
 I was reading a good book.

We both moved to the living room at 8 pm to watch TV, and that's where we stayed the rest of the evening.

I'm heading off to bed.