Periodically, GJ’s phone just goes out. It’s not even for the same reason sometimes. Kris and I find out because when my other grandmother gets a busy signal for hours, she pesters us to go check on GJ. Because, y’know, she’s probably dead. (Juanita’s assumption, not mine.)
Kris and I pulled up to our house at the same time yesterday. He’d picked Ben up from daycare, but I wanted to get him out of the car seat since I hadn’t seen him all day. This was fine by Kris cause he was on the cell phone with Juanita, who was telling him to go check on GJ. Ben was being fussy because he had his 4-month appointment for more immunizations that morning.
I gave Ben some baby Tylenol and rocked him to sleep. Kris and I forgot we had leftover pizza and so decided to cook some steak fritters we got from Angel Food. He headed off to fix GJ’s phones, while I stayed home to start dinner and fold laundry.
I was mid-towels when I heard a bad kitchen sound. Y’know how sometimes you’re not sure what you’re hearing but know it’s something you shouldn’t? I thought maybe the butter beans were boiling over. No. The fritters, it turns out, are insanely greasy and the grease was causing flames to leap off the heating element in the oven.
I turned the oven off. I wanted to take the fritters out, but also, not catch myself or an oven mitt on fire. Nor did I want to set off the smoke alarm (and also wake Ben). I tried to call Kris and say “oven on fire, come home now!” but got his voicemail.
When he drove up and said “I tried to call you back…” I cut him off with “the oven caught fire.” I had both doors to the house open to get the smoke smell out. We remembered that we had pizza and Chris Wood was gracious enough to let us heat it up at his house.
While Kris was over at the Woods pizza-watching, Ben woke up and I made him a bottle. Just as he started eating, a mosquito landed on his head. I shooed it off. It landed on his foot. So I set down his bottle, which he didn’t appreciate, and went to close the doors. Then I got one of the not-yet-folded towels and swaddled him in it. No bug bites for Ben. I got three on my ankles. Crafty little mosquito, landing on me where I couldn’t see it.
We ate pizza, Ben was still fussy. Kris rocked him. I put away laundry. The Closer was coming on at 8pm, to be followed by the premiere of Holly Hunter’s show Saving Grace.
The power went out at 8:30pm.
“Not a problem,” I said. “TNT re-runs the show later, like at 11pm.”
The power did not come back on until 4:30am.
Aww, sweet wittle Kris as a baby. I know all the comments we hear about Ben are directed at how much he looks like I did as a baby, but I see Kris in there, too. 
