Friday, April 8, 2022

Everything today was measured in golf holes.  How many golf holes did Bill miss while he was at therapy, how many holes were left to watch for the day, how many holes has Tiger played?  How many holes does it take to bake Texas toast?

Bill didn’t get to watch much of Tiger’s round while it was live yesterday, so he was looking forward to watching the live round this afternoon. 

He didn’t even take a nap after therapy because he wanted to focus on Augusta as soon as he got back.  That’s a big deal.  He loves a nap.  But that wasn’t the biggest deal of the day.

Remember, Shepherd provides outpatient therapy participants an apartment for the duration of the stay.  The apartment reminds me of a Residence Inn (insert joke here about Bill Snipes’ preferences about hotel accommodations).  There’s a bedroom, a bathroom, a living room, and a full kitchen.  The apartments are side by side and there are a lot of them…maybe four floors of apartments and therapy facilities on the lower floors.

Bill, Terri, and I were enjoying Tiger’s round with the sounds of the birds and the Masters music, and the views of the prolific azaleas and bright green fairways.  I started dinner and left it on the stove to simmer.  A few holes later, I put the Texas toast (Bill’s favorite carb) in the oven.  I set a timer on my watch to make sure I didn’t forget about the bread.  As Tiger teed off on hole 16, I took the perfectly baked toast out of the oven.  Within the time it would take to swing a driver, we heard a strange noise and then we saw a strobe light.

That was not a good thing.  My first thought was someone in another apartment must have been a bad cook and caused the fire alarm to go off.  A moment later, Terri had become our apartment’s fire marshal, and Bill was off the sofa and in his wheelchair.  There was a bit of chaos with grabbing handbags, phones, and making sure the oven was off.  We were leaving the most perfectly cooked Texas toast behind.

It was like a NASCAR crew during a pit stop; we raced to the car, had him in the backseat, put the wheelchair in the back and got out of the parking garage in something equivalent to Tiger’s club head speed.  But, it was similar to pulling out of the pit with the gas can hanging out of the car.  We made it out in great time but left our dinner behind.  As we were pulling out of the Shepherd campus, I jokingly said, “Does anyone need anything from CVS?  We could go in there to kill time.”

From the backseat came this very calm voice, “I can’t; I’m in my underwear.”

There was a significant level of shock from the front seat when we turned and saw him wearing red boxer shorts with penguins on them.  In the panic, no one noticed Bill wasn’t wearing pants.  We made sure to grab the catheter bag, the external defibrillator with the VCR hanging from it, but we missed the pants.  All of this took the equivalent of playing less than ½ a hole.

Again, Bill belly laughed.  All of us belly laughed.  There were tears and snorts.

It was good to test our emergency preparedness.  Human, check; cathether, check; purse and keys, check; pants, we’ll get them next time.

Then came the panic that the source of the fire alarm could have been the perfectly baked Texas toast.

Then, came the worry of how we would get him back into the building while wearing only penguin underwear.  Our solution?  He sat in the chair and he held a gigantic purse horizontally in his lap.

As we walked down the hall, we could smell something, and I breathed a big sigh of relief that it didn’t smell like burned Texas toast.  We still don’t know which family has the bad cook, but at least it isn’t someone in apartment 104.

Next time, we’ll have Tennessee toast. I’m not even sure what that is, but maybe it won’t come with a fire alarm.   Miguel, this could be a new menu item.

All of this was measured in the time of 3 holes.  We walked back into the apartment as Tiger was walking off the 18th green.   At least the apartment and the Texas toast weren't covered in fire retardant foam.

Tomorrow is another day, a new NASCAR race, and a day without a fire.  We’ve got this even when wearing penguin pants.

Michele