Day 158 (Jan 5th)
How fitting that today would normally have been Cleaning Day had we been on our regular schedule. I feel like that’s what I’ve been doing all day one way or another.
Because everything is so crazy and stressed out we’ve had to go back to everyone living with us or camping in the backyard of our house. The only exception is the eight that are quarantined at the hospital. It makes for an air of managed chaos that is more uncomfortable than I remember it being.
Not a single moment can afford to be wasted right now. During breakfast everyone who was mobile and aged 12 or older – save the two on guard duty who had already been privy to the information we were about to hear, and the two adult women in the hospital – was seated in our backyard. Those who were not mobile or who were 11 or younger remained in the house.
It wasn’t pleasant, especially while we were eating, but Matlock gave a rough synopsis of what they had learned from the interrogations that took place during the Raid on Sanctuary. First off, the pirates had recently had a bloody civil war amongst their own very large group. The greater majority remained under the leadership of Samson who was now and forever dead. The smaller band, supposedly no less vicious, has reportedly migrated further south along the Gulf Coast.
The general reasons why the pirates had struck so far inland include that first, they’ve pretty much denuded the immediate coastal communities within their grasp of all supplies of food and fuel. There are probably a few hidden caches that would be interesting to small groups but it wasn’t worth the effort to search and seize them for a group the size that the pirates had grown into. Instead of more work and less waste the pirates chose to set their sights on easier pickings … inland areas and survivor groups. They were supposed to spring board that operation from their base in Tarpon Springs. However it was destroyed by the same Big Horde that struck Sanctuary just prior to Christmas. This leads to the second reason.
Samson’s pirate crew had totally shifted their main base of operations into Tarpon Springs. They put all of their eggs in one basket. When the Big Horde slammed into the community all they could do was escape with what little remained on the boats in the harbor. Cindy and Tasha confirmed this. Their families had been some of the first to voice their opposition to the pirate takeover of their community; they were also some of the first to be executed and enslaved when Samson publicly took charge. They were being held on a slave galley – a former charter boat – when the pirates evacuated just ahead of the horde. The need for immediate resupply and a new base speeded up their plans. Instead of infiltration and then treachery, they chose to attack head on and intended to crack us open like a nut.
Fortunately they had been overconfident and their plan failed. Their picture of Sanctuary from what they had overheard led them to a much different picture than the reality. They had expected to find a moderately armed commune-style farm made up mostly of civilians, a high percentage of whom were women and children, with little to no experience in fighting. What they got instead was a community of survivors with a high degree of persistence, a moderate percentage of professionally trained fighters, with the remaining community members being trained-by-experience including the children. Their diversion plus “shock and awe” tactics didn’t completely overwhelm us as expected though it did come close.
Their intent had not been to destroy the physical structure of Sanctuary at all. In fact they wanted it intact for their own use. Nor had they wanted to kill the animals or women; again, they wanted them for their own use. However, most of the adult and teenage males as well as the youngest children were to be considered expendable or used for sport. Basically they wanted to scoop out all possible resistance like segments out of grapefruit half and replace the sweet pulp with their own rancid fruit.
Complicating the entire situation was the fact that we became caught in what was essentially a tug of war between two rival gangs; two dog packs fighting over the same bone. There was the pirate crew who attacked from the front and then there was the raggle-taggle bunch of raiders who attacked from the rear. The raiders were much less organized and less experienced with taking armed communities on head first. Their normal modus operendi was to follow the zombie hordes and pick up the scraps that were left after they moved through an area. They rarely engaged the hordes at all, choosing instead to remain at a safe distance. This was why the raiders seemed so inept when they came into direct conflict with the NRS infected corpses. The raiders had been observing us for some time and had thought to move on until they saw their own opportunity in the form of the pirates. They knew our skill level but thought they'd be able to sneak some of our supplies out from under the pirates' noses.
The tally had been completed and for the loss of our six community members we had exacted a toll of at least five dozen from the other two groups combined. Admittedly a large percentage of this number was a result of the explosives that had been set off outside of Sanctuary’s Wall by David and Cease. However, this number did not include the depredations caused by the zombies. If you included those numbers you could safely add at least another three or four dozen casualties, but most of these were on the side of the raiders.
Sixty for six; for every one of ours dead we killed ten of theirs. A Spartan might have found joy in that number, I couldn’t. It still meant that for no other reason than people being unable to get along and work together for the well being of all that over seventy people had died that didn’t need to. That didn’t include the needless deaths caused by the zombies.
We had tossed the remains of pirates, raiders, and zombies all into Juicer and had hauled them up to the body dump to be left for the scavengers. Our six were buried with more respect in our small but growing cemetery.
We didn’t have a stone mason so head stones haven’t been possible. We hadn’t really planned for the cemetery to grow like it has. We have simply been marking off where we bury people and mark the head location with decorative stepping stones. A couple of weeks ago Scott had taken a piece of scrap aluminum and inscribed the names of all who had been interred in the cemetery up to that point: Dora, Jose’, Hall, Teri, the three unknown refugees from Hale Hollow. Ricky doesn't count; we left him to the carrion eaters. Last night Scott added the names Murial, Jerry, Hank, Trish, Marty, and Rachel. After I saw it I had to find a quiet place and cry thankfully that none of my own have yet made it to that plaque of remembrance.
We haven’t had time for a memorial of any kind much less a full blown funeral. We’ve all been saying our goodbyes privately. We voted to table having a community-wide memorial service for the immediate future. If people feel led to have private services they are free to do so but the thinking is that those that are gone are not in a place to be concerned over any type of pomp and circumstance and that we are better off waiting until we can celebrate their lives and not just mourn their deaths.
Either way people are hurting. I held Brandon while he cried yesterday. Not only is he mourning the death of his father and step-family, he is at a loss what to do about and for Maddie and Josephine. We’ll help him but in no way do I expect this to be easy on anyone. It was almost easier to accept Murial and Jerry’s death because they went together. I only knew them for a short time but I have a hard time imagining one living without the other; but still, that wasn’t a choice the pirates had the right to make.
The one that I’m very concerned about is Dixon although I think he isn’t quite as bad off as I had originally feared. He’s a soldier and in reality so was Rachel. It added a certain understanding of the potential volatility of this life and how temporary some things can be. It doesn’t necessarily lessen the grieving process but it does give continuity and connectedness, both strengths that too many people seemed to lack pre-NRS.
I was taking another load of debris that I had swept up to dump into the trailer we were using as a collection point when I accidentally stumbled on Dix in a weak moment. He was sitting on a stump with his head in his hands. He wasn’t weeping and that somehow made it even worse; like his pain went beyond the ability to cry.
I don’t always understand Dix and why he does things the way he does them. He can be oblivious and dense in my opinion. He really is a good man and means well but with faults that sometimes make it hard for me to see that fact. His pain pulled at me and I couldn’t just pass by. The blonde giant looked like he was about to collapse in on himself. I parked the garbage can I had been rolling and went over and put my hand on his shoulder. I didn’t say anything. I was afraid of making it worse. He stiffened momentarily and then realizing who was standing there said, “How the hell do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Just … show up. Do that thing, whatever it is, with the … dammit. No matter who it is you just show up and try and make it better.”
“Humph. I only wish I had that gift. Look Dix, I’ll admit to not really understanding everything with Rachel, but I’d be inhuman not to empathize with the fact that you miss her. And I can’t just see someone in pain and not … not … acknowledge it.”
“Yeah. She and I, we made mistakes. We shouldn’t have … but that’s water under the bridge and we did and … I’m not really sorry for it the way I guess I should be. Rachel made me feel damn good in a way being with Patricia never did. Sex was great with Patricia but it was more than sex with Rachel. But in the end … even with the other stuff … I didn’t know how to help her. I couldn't save her.”
“In the end sometimes the only people that can help us is ourselves Dix. We would have done what we could for Rachel the same as we did for Patricia. Circumstances didn’t leave her the time to want to choose a different path than the one she was going down.”
Dixon sighed and continued, “She was living in a fantasy. She was very good at keeping her fantasy, her version of reality, hidden from everyone else. I noticed that tendency when we were having the affair. She could turn it on and off, like she was living in two separate worlds. I just thought of it as a talent. She could be so focused and I admired that. It might have bothered some men, but not me. To me it made her strong and strong meant that … that … Strong meant that she wouldn’t have to depend on me so much.”
I really didn’t know what to say to that. I understood what he was saying but the wrong word could have appeared judgmental, could have killed the moment and he needed to talk.
“But her greatest strength eventually became her greatest weakness. She wanted me to live in that fantasy world with her. When we were alone, sometimes it was like NRS, the zombies, Sanctuary, this whole situation was a military training exercise. She had to act like she believed it one hundred percent but deep down she actually believed that they’d eventually call an end to the exercise and we’d all return to the way things used to be. Then she started having trouble keeping her two worlds separate.”
“Was she a danger?” I asked concerned that we had missed something like this for so long.
“Only to herself. She was 200% committed to those she cared for. Things started getting shaky when she was nearly bitten that day. Patricia surprised the hell out of us. First she’d known about us all along and then she just … let go. See, I know Rachel loved me. She did want to be with me publicly, out in the open. She wasn’t ashamed of what we had. But to finally have that as a possibility meant that she also had to accept that all of this other stuff was real. She couldn’t do that. She wasn’t ready or willing to let the fantasy go. The two worlds she lived in started to collide more and more … I didn’t know what to do for her. She was headed for a meltdown. As her lover I wanted to protect her. But as a leader here in Sanctuary I had to … “
That part I did understand. “Dix, you did the best to protect her that you could. It would have destroyed Rachel not to be able to do what she did. Maybe it would eventually have come to that but we needed her as much as she needed us. We just don’t know for sure what would have happened.”
Then he pulled a bit of a non sequitur on me. “You really believe in a God don’t you?”
A little suspicious of the sudden shift in conversation I admitted, “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“You think God is just sitting up there playing games with our lives? Making stuff like this crap happen?”
I took a breath and tried to answer him as honestly as possible. “I think that people blame God for a lot of things that are man’s fault. I believe that he created us with free will. I think we abuse that gift a lot and don’t want to take on the responsibility or results of that abuse.”
I don’t think that is exactly the answer he’d expected. “So your God isn’t omnipotent.”
“No, I’m saying I’m not omnipotent. I’m saying I don’t have all the answers but that I do think that if people took their responsibilities in this life more seriously there’d be a whole lot fewer problems. The pirates chose their path. They are directly responsible for Rachel’s death. I believe real miracles are few and far between in this life because we don’t really believe in them anymore. Most of us have to live with the fact that we are finite beings and that we have to conform to the physics of this existence.”
“Who knew? A philosopher and a house wife,” he said a little snarkily.
“Hey, five kids will do that to you.”
That got a small, sickly grin but it was quickly gone. “I don’t know if I want to do this anymore.”
“Do what?”
“Be responsible for so damn many things, so many people. One mistake and … “
“Dix, we all go through times when we feel that way. But I promise you, you wouldn’t be where you are at unless we supported you and believed in you. We have too many strong people in Sanctuary. Not just anyone could be a leader of a group like ours.”
That made him look at me.
“You think I’m kidding? Just because I don’t always agree with you doesn’t mean I think I could do a better job than you. It’s the same for Scott, and I’m sure it’s true for everyone else as well. You have a lot to offer. Rachel knew it too. I don’t know why things had to happen like they did, but I do know that she would not have wanted to see you give up and turn your back on something you’re good at, something that is as much a part of you as breathing. That’s not going to bring her any kind of justice at all.”
I left him to his thoughts and continued on with my own. I really did believe that Dix was a good leader. I didn’t think I could do a better job of it than him. The question I asked myself was whether he would continue to believe in himself.
The rest of the day continued in the same vein off and on. Those of us that could, started the process of cleaning up. Two people would pass each other and sometimes they would stop, share their strength with one another, then move on to continue each going their own way to complete their assigned task. We were doing what communities down through the ages have done. We were picking ourselves up, dusting ourselves off, and trying to get on with the business of living.
The question we’ll be discussing tomorrow though is whether we are going to continue doing the business of living in this particular location. Dante’ is the one who brought it up. I think part of him thinks that getting Tina away from here, away from where she was raped, will help her heal. I’m not so sure of that. Running away never solved anything. On the other hand he did bring up some other points that have merit and we’ve all agreed to look at them and discuss the possibility. Even Scott and I.
But that’s tomorrow. Tonight I’ve put all the children to bed and made sure everyone had a place to sleep and could find what they needed during the night. I set the bread dough to rise so that it can be put to bake first thing in the morning. Scott put bruise balm on my face and disinfectant on my ear, wincing nearly as much as I did. And now my work is finished and it’s time to blow out the lamp and crawl into the bed that Scott has already warmed up for me. Tomorrow is just going to have to wait until tomorrow.
How fitting that today would normally have been Cleaning Day had we been on our regular schedule. I feel like that’s what I’ve been doing all day one way or another.
Because everything is so crazy and stressed out we’ve had to go back to everyone living with us or camping in the backyard of our house. The only exception is the eight that are quarantined at the hospital. It makes for an air of managed chaos that is more uncomfortable than I remember it being.
Not a single moment can afford to be wasted right now. During breakfast everyone who was mobile and aged 12 or older – save the two on guard duty who had already been privy to the information we were about to hear, and the two adult women in the hospital – was seated in our backyard. Those who were not mobile or who were 11 or younger remained in the house.
It wasn’t pleasant, especially while we were eating, but Matlock gave a rough synopsis of what they had learned from the interrogations that took place during the Raid on Sanctuary. First off, the pirates had recently had a bloody civil war amongst their own very large group. The greater majority remained under the leadership of Samson who was now and forever dead. The smaller band, supposedly no less vicious, has reportedly migrated further south along the Gulf Coast.
The general reasons why the pirates had struck so far inland include that first, they’ve pretty much denuded the immediate coastal communities within their grasp of all supplies of food and fuel. There are probably a few hidden caches that would be interesting to small groups but it wasn’t worth the effort to search and seize them for a group the size that the pirates had grown into. Instead of more work and less waste the pirates chose to set their sights on easier pickings … inland areas and survivor groups. They were supposed to spring board that operation from their base in Tarpon Springs. However it was destroyed by the same Big Horde that struck Sanctuary just prior to Christmas. This leads to the second reason.
Samson’s pirate crew had totally shifted their main base of operations into Tarpon Springs. They put all of their eggs in one basket. When the Big Horde slammed into the community all they could do was escape with what little remained on the boats in the harbor. Cindy and Tasha confirmed this. Their families had been some of the first to voice their opposition to the pirate takeover of their community; they were also some of the first to be executed and enslaved when Samson publicly took charge. They were being held on a slave galley – a former charter boat – when the pirates evacuated just ahead of the horde. The need for immediate resupply and a new base speeded up their plans. Instead of infiltration and then treachery, they chose to attack head on and intended to crack us open like a nut.
Fortunately they had been overconfident and their plan failed. Their picture of Sanctuary from what they had overheard led them to a much different picture than the reality. They had expected to find a moderately armed commune-style farm made up mostly of civilians, a high percentage of whom were women and children, with little to no experience in fighting. What they got instead was a community of survivors with a high degree of persistence, a moderate percentage of professionally trained fighters, with the remaining community members being trained-by-experience including the children. Their diversion plus “shock and awe” tactics didn’t completely overwhelm us as expected though it did come close.
Their intent had not been to destroy the physical structure of Sanctuary at all. In fact they wanted it intact for their own use. Nor had they wanted to kill the animals or women; again, they wanted them for their own use. However, most of the adult and teenage males as well as the youngest children were to be considered expendable or used for sport. Basically they wanted to scoop out all possible resistance like segments out of grapefruit half and replace the sweet pulp with their own rancid fruit.
Complicating the entire situation was the fact that we became caught in what was essentially a tug of war between two rival gangs; two dog packs fighting over the same bone. There was the pirate crew who attacked from the front and then there was the raggle-taggle bunch of raiders who attacked from the rear. The raiders were much less organized and less experienced with taking armed communities on head first. Their normal modus operendi was to follow the zombie hordes and pick up the scraps that were left after they moved through an area. They rarely engaged the hordes at all, choosing instead to remain at a safe distance. This was why the raiders seemed so inept when they came into direct conflict with the NRS infected corpses. The raiders had been observing us for some time and had thought to move on until they saw their own opportunity in the form of the pirates. They knew our skill level but thought they'd be able to sneak some of our supplies out from under the pirates' noses.
The tally had been completed and for the loss of our six community members we had exacted a toll of at least five dozen from the other two groups combined. Admittedly a large percentage of this number was a result of the explosives that had been set off outside of Sanctuary’s Wall by David and Cease. However, this number did not include the depredations caused by the zombies. If you included those numbers you could safely add at least another three or four dozen casualties, but most of these were on the side of the raiders.
Sixty for six; for every one of ours dead we killed ten of theirs. A Spartan might have found joy in that number, I couldn’t. It still meant that for no other reason than people being unable to get along and work together for the well being of all that over seventy people had died that didn’t need to. That didn’t include the needless deaths caused by the zombies.
We had tossed the remains of pirates, raiders, and zombies all into Juicer and had hauled them up to the body dump to be left for the scavengers. Our six were buried with more respect in our small but growing cemetery.
We didn’t have a stone mason so head stones haven’t been possible. We hadn’t really planned for the cemetery to grow like it has. We have simply been marking off where we bury people and mark the head location with decorative stepping stones. A couple of weeks ago Scott had taken a piece of scrap aluminum and inscribed the names of all who had been interred in the cemetery up to that point: Dora, Jose’, Hall, Teri, the three unknown refugees from Hale Hollow. Ricky doesn't count; we left him to the carrion eaters. Last night Scott added the names Murial, Jerry, Hank, Trish, Marty, and Rachel. After I saw it I had to find a quiet place and cry thankfully that none of my own have yet made it to that plaque of remembrance.
We haven’t had time for a memorial of any kind much less a full blown funeral. We’ve all been saying our goodbyes privately. We voted to table having a community-wide memorial service for the immediate future. If people feel led to have private services they are free to do so but the thinking is that those that are gone are not in a place to be concerned over any type of pomp and circumstance and that we are better off waiting until we can celebrate their lives and not just mourn their deaths.
Either way people are hurting. I held Brandon while he cried yesterday. Not only is he mourning the death of his father and step-family, he is at a loss what to do about and for Maddie and Josephine. We’ll help him but in no way do I expect this to be easy on anyone. It was almost easier to accept Murial and Jerry’s death because they went together. I only knew them for a short time but I have a hard time imagining one living without the other; but still, that wasn’t a choice the pirates had the right to make.
The one that I’m very concerned about is Dixon although I think he isn’t quite as bad off as I had originally feared. He’s a soldier and in reality so was Rachel. It added a certain understanding of the potential volatility of this life and how temporary some things can be. It doesn’t necessarily lessen the grieving process but it does give continuity and connectedness, both strengths that too many people seemed to lack pre-NRS.
I was taking another load of debris that I had swept up to dump into the trailer we were using as a collection point when I accidentally stumbled on Dix in a weak moment. He was sitting on a stump with his head in his hands. He wasn’t weeping and that somehow made it even worse; like his pain went beyond the ability to cry.
I don’t always understand Dix and why he does things the way he does them. He can be oblivious and dense in my opinion. He really is a good man and means well but with faults that sometimes make it hard for me to see that fact. His pain pulled at me and I couldn’t just pass by. The blonde giant looked like he was about to collapse in on himself. I parked the garbage can I had been rolling and went over and put my hand on his shoulder. I didn’t say anything. I was afraid of making it worse. He stiffened momentarily and then realizing who was standing there said, “How the hell do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Just … show up. Do that thing, whatever it is, with the … dammit. No matter who it is you just show up and try and make it better.”
“Humph. I only wish I had that gift. Look Dix, I’ll admit to not really understanding everything with Rachel, but I’d be inhuman not to empathize with the fact that you miss her. And I can’t just see someone in pain and not … not … acknowledge it.”
“Yeah. She and I, we made mistakes. We shouldn’t have … but that’s water under the bridge and we did and … I’m not really sorry for it the way I guess I should be. Rachel made me feel damn good in a way being with Patricia never did. Sex was great with Patricia but it was more than sex with Rachel. But in the end … even with the other stuff … I didn’t know how to help her. I couldn't save her.”
“In the end sometimes the only people that can help us is ourselves Dix. We would have done what we could for Rachel the same as we did for Patricia. Circumstances didn’t leave her the time to want to choose a different path than the one she was going down.”
Dixon sighed and continued, “She was living in a fantasy. She was very good at keeping her fantasy, her version of reality, hidden from everyone else. I noticed that tendency when we were having the affair. She could turn it on and off, like she was living in two separate worlds. I just thought of it as a talent. She could be so focused and I admired that. It might have bothered some men, but not me. To me it made her strong and strong meant that … that … Strong meant that she wouldn’t have to depend on me so much.”
I really didn’t know what to say to that. I understood what he was saying but the wrong word could have appeared judgmental, could have killed the moment and he needed to talk.
“But her greatest strength eventually became her greatest weakness. She wanted me to live in that fantasy world with her. When we were alone, sometimes it was like NRS, the zombies, Sanctuary, this whole situation was a military training exercise. She had to act like she believed it one hundred percent but deep down she actually believed that they’d eventually call an end to the exercise and we’d all return to the way things used to be. Then she started having trouble keeping her two worlds separate.”
“Was she a danger?” I asked concerned that we had missed something like this for so long.
“Only to herself. She was 200% committed to those she cared for. Things started getting shaky when she was nearly bitten that day. Patricia surprised the hell out of us. First she’d known about us all along and then she just … let go. See, I know Rachel loved me. She did want to be with me publicly, out in the open. She wasn’t ashamed of what we had. But to finally have that as a possibility meant that she also had to accept that all of this other stuff was real. She couldn’t do that. She wasn’t ready or willing to let the fantasy go. The two worlds she lived in started to collide more and more … I didn’t know what to do for her. She was headed for a meltdown. As her lover I wanted to protect her. But as a leader here in Sanctuary I had to … “
That part I did understand. “Dix, you did the best to protect her that you could. It would have destroyed Rachel not to be able to do what she did. Maybe it would eventually have come to that but we needed her as much as she needed us. We just don’t know for sure what would have happened.”
Then he pulled a bit of a non sequitur on me. “You really believe in a God don’t you?”
A little suspicious of the sudden shift in conversation I admitted, “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“You think God is just sitting up there playing games with our lives? Making stuff like this crap happen?”
I took a breath and tried to answer him as honestly as possible. “I think that people blame God for a lot of things that are man’s fault. I believe that he created us with free will. I think we abuse that gift a lot and don’t want to take on the responsibility or results of that abuse.”
I don’t think that is exactly the answer he’d expected. “So your God isn’t omnipotent.”
“No, I’m saying I’m not omnipotent. I’m saying I don’t have all the answers but that I do think that if people took their responsibilities in this life more seriously there’d be a whole lot fewer problems. The pirates chose their path. They are directly responsible for Rachel’s death. I believe real miracles are few and far between in this life because we don’t really believe in them anymore. Most of us have to live with the fact that we are finite beings and that we have to conform to the physics of this existence.”
“Who knew? A philosopher and a house wife,” he said a little snarkily.
“Hey, five kids will do that to you.”
That got a small, sickly grin but it was quickly gone. “I don’t know if I want to do this anymore.”
“Do what?”
“Be responsible for so damn many things, so many people. One mistake and … “
“Dix, we all go through times when we feel that way. But I promise you, you wouldn’t be where you are at unless we supported you and believed in you. We have too many strong people in Sanctuary. Not just anyone could be a leader of a group like ours.”
That made him look at me.
“You think I’m kidding? Just because I don’t always agree with you doesn’t mean I think I could do a better job than you. It’s the same for Scott, and I’m sure it’s true for everyone else as well. You have a lot to offer. Rachel knew it too. I don’t know why things had to happen like they did, but I do know that she would not have wanted to see you give up and turn your back on something you’re good at, something that is as much a part of you as breathing. That’s not going to bring her any kind of justice at all.”
I left him to his thoughts and continued on with my own. I really did believe that Dix was a good leader. I didn’t think I could do a better job of it than him. The question I asked myself was whether he would continue to believe in himself.
The rest of the day continued in the same vein off and on. Those of us that could, started the process of cleaning up. Two people would pass each other and sometimes they would stop, share their strength with one another, then move on to continue each going their own way to complete their assigned task. We were doing what communities down through the ages have done. We were picking ourselves up, dusting ourselves off, and trying to get on with the business of living.
The question we’ll be discussing tomorrow though is whether we are going to continue doing the business of living in this particular location. Dante’ is the one who brought it up. I think part of him thinks that getting Tina away from here, away from where she was raped, will help her heal. I’m not so sure of that. Running away never solved anything. On the other hand he did bring up some other points that have merit and we’ve all agreed to look at them and discuss the possibility. Even Scott and I.
But that’s tomorrow. Tonight I’ve put all the children to bed and made sure everyone had a place to sleep and could find what they needed during the night. I set the bread dough to rise so that it can be put to bake first thing in the morning. Scott put bruise balm on my face and disinfectant on my ear, wincing nearly as much as I did. And now my work is finished and it’s time to blow out the lamp and crawl into the bed that Scott has already warmed up for me. Tomorrow is just going to have to wait until tomorrow.