THREE AM

I don't need sleep. Silly me to think I do. But there is something else. I am listening to my husband, in his room at the other end of the small house, coughing and coughing and coughing. He has been sick. The first few days he tried to plow through (and did) but the cold, if that is what it is, got worse and worse.
Now he claims it is breaking up.
I claim he needs to see a doctor.
About once every 5 years he gets genuinely sick.

When Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Spouse was in bed, piled under blankets, shaking with the Hong Kong Flu. Remember that? Boy, I do. I never got it but he sure did. For my hollow-eyed spaceflightaholic, I dragged the tv into the bedroom so that he could watch and he did, with alternating current: sometimes his teeth chattering and other times the sweat pouring off him. I honestly think it helped him get better, seeing those first images from the moon. THE MOON!!! It means so little to us now but my God, what an accomplishment.
We can walk on the moon but we cannot cure the cold.
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Yesterday Nigel was laying on the bed which is right next to this table. I can reach him from here anytime for a belly rub or whatever. I was rubbing under his jaw and neck and when I quit my hand was all....yukky. I give him dry baths frequently but it is mostly concentrated around the nebbeminds and he was just plain filthy all over.

So first I did not want him in the tub because he is incontinent to a point and I had visions of him, how do I put this delicately?-- shitting in my bathtub. Having worked in grooming I have encountered this before and it is a holy mess and I have to shower in that same tub and I knew no amount of bleach would ever convince me it was clean again.

So John found me a tub he had used to mix cement in, and I spent a half hour cleaning every speck of dried quik-set off it and we dragged Nigel into the bathroom and put him in that little tub in the big tub. But he had pooped just before all this, while I was looking for the shampoo and so when I discovered that I was never ever going to get the soap off his undercarriage I dumped him out of the the little tub and did it right.

Despite his looks of misery I cannot believe he didn't feel better.

I had put extra waterproof padding on my bed and extra towels because I worked hard at drying him but he was still soaking wet. It took about 4 or 5 hours for him to actually get about 90% dry, and then of course, his hair started falling out in huge quantities. He has the heaviest coat of all the Bassets, it is technically probably an incorrect coat because it is thick and soft, not sleek and hard.

But I do think he feels better. I hope so. I can barely move after leaning over that damn tub.