Crapper Barrel

hoffywhf

Aug 26, 20143 min read

Jason and I have been trying to outdo each other for the past few days in the illness department. I managed to essentially give myself a sinus infection after crying excessive tears over horses in the last week. I rarely get sick and when I do I tend to just soldier on. I’m not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing, probably a mix of both.

Jason on the other hand is wimpier a big baby more inclined to let the world know when he feels less than 100%. He is most unhappy with me the last few days. Although I have kept my sinus infection to myself I did share my most unpleasant case of conjunctivitis with him. At first I thought I had pink eye for the first time in my life. After a couple of days of feeling like my very existence was a form of torture (and Carter telling me my eyes looked “really scary mom”) I finally went to the doctor and was given antibiotic drops (gentamycin) for my eyes. They didn’t do crap any good, however I kindly shared them with Jason when his eyes became red, swollen and crusted like mine.

The drops didn’t do him any good either. I half jokingly, half seriously told him he should go to one of the barns and get some of the triple antibiotic ophthalmic ointment labeled for horses that we keep on hand. As always he failed to follow my excellent advice and stomped off to the doctor. He came home with . . . triple antibiotic ophthalmic drops.

Medicating Jason’s eyes is harder than medicating any horse’s eye I’ve ever dealt with. He is so ridiculous about it I told him that from now on he is never allowed to complain about a horse being difficult about eye meds again. Unfortunately all the wrestling I have done to get his eye drops in his eyes has been for naught. His triple antibiotic drops haven’t worked any better on his eyes then my gentamycin drops did for me.

Apparently we have the viral form of conjunctivitis, or pink eye, or whatever you want to call this most vile eye infection we are suffering from. Every morning at 5am we start our day with a charming exchange where we compare our swollen eyes, the amount of discharge we have, decide whose eyes are more red and discuss how impaired our vision is.

We finally appear to be on the upswing. Although we both had one eye that was crusted shut this morning that is an improvement over both eyes. Neither of us have hideously swollen franken-eyes anymore. I was able to make myself cook dinner tonight instead of just collapsing in a chair after working in the dust and sun (can we say torture for infected eyes???) all day. Carter told us our eyes looked better. Things are definitely looking up.

Carter did a great job describing our state of affairs a couple of days ago. I could hardly stand the thought of making breakfast. Jason wasn’t even going to entertain the thought. Carter wasn’t about to go hungry. We decided it might be less torturous to simply go pick up breakfast somewhere. When we asked Carter where he might want us to order breakfast he said in his most sincere three year old voice, “how about Crapper Barrel.” He had no idea why mommy and daddy were howling with laughter, but for so many reasons it was such an appropriate choice of words.

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