I visited Matt at the hospital in one of the most famous towns in America - James Fenimore Cooper's namesake, Cooperstown. Home of the Baseball Hall of Fame, needless to say. Matt is resting comfortably after surgery to install a stint (sp?) to drain his infected kidney so that his giant 8mm stone can be removed at a later time. Why they didn't snatch the stone out while they were in there is something I can't fathom, but I remain humble and incredulous at the medical profession. It is a place where I don't ever want to go, and rarely do. I got lost in the complex, a huge stone mansion with several wings, and found myself in the administrative wing. A man came out of his office and insisted on walking me to Matt's room in another wing. Maybe he thought I was an escapee from the mental ward. Matt was up out of bed with the gown untied, showing his buns to anyone who wanted to take a look. The difference from yesterday was remarkable, and the day before that, well, we don't want to go there. He kept peeing blood but the nurses seemed to approve of it. Three days of copious amounts of morphine has left him very mellow. I left him with cards, a framed picture, newspapers, and a Sheep! magazine (thinking it might make him homesick for the flock - but he didn't even ask about them). He might come home tomorrow. In any case he plans on going to work on Monday. Thank you, Dr. Urologist Surgeon, whoever you are. I started home about 5 and somehow got on 166 instead of 80. Big mistake. I went miles and miles through open space with no signs or stores or any place where I could ask directions. My instincts told me I was going in the right direction, and I was I found out later, but it was so far I got nervous. No cell phone reception and no map. Finally I came upon a little town called "Roseboom." No kidding - Roseboom. I stopped in a Vermonty country store where several people in line all tried to figure out how I could get to New Berlin or Edmeston, but no luck. They collectively told me to go back to Cooperstown, about 15 miles back. I went back and started out again, taking the same wrong road. Okay, keep it together. Went back to C'town AGAIN and found a cop who told me how to get to 80, where I still got lost but in a place where I could figure out how to get home. I know New Jersey like the back of my hand, but the wilds of Northern Appalachia where the hunters have the deer making suicide charges across the roads every where you turn? It was awful. My new/old minivan is creaking and screeching like crazy and needs a dose of power steering fluid, which I bought, but don't know how to add to the engine. My last wrong turn took me past a Price Chopper where I could get, what else, cat and dog food. I crawled up the milk room steps three hours after leaving the hospital. Two hours of chores later, which included removing chickens from a very draft roost and placing them out of the cold wind, and carrying water to the upper hay mow for Dallas Alice, who is dying of very old age, and here I am. There's a cold drizzle being blown by a hefty wind out there. Everybody is hunkered down in the barn. I am out of hay after tonight's feeding, but my last stop on the way home was to knock on my dairy farmer neighbor's door to ask him for hay tomorrow. He was upstairs, no doubt in for the night, but came down to talk to me. I wonder sometimes how lovely it would be to have a little dinner waiting for me when I get home, tired and bedraggled, you know, like men do. That hasn't happened since my mother was alive, ten years ago. I ate a piece of pumpkin pie for dinner - very bad, I know. Time for whiskey and egg nog.
