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The following is a story of Voltron I made up based on the T.V. cartoon Voltron by World Events Productions. I did not have World Events Productions' permission to do the story and therefore it does not have World Events Productions' endorsement.
After the meal, Keith had duties to attend to. As people had been excused to leave the table, Allura called Lance over to her.
“What?” he asked.
“Could you watch Mark for a while for me please? I’ve got some things to do.”
“Sure.”
“Thank you. I shouldn’t be long.”
She had thought of asking Carla, Lance’s wife, but she would be plenty busy watching their own son, Nick, who was just a few days younger than Mark and his first cousin. Lance was then Allura’s second choice.
Without her year and a half-old son, Mark, Allura trudged up the stairs to her room. After she entered, she had to lie down on her bed. She felt faint. A short while later she sat up and looked at the pile of laundry and rug in a heap in her room. She could have just waited for Nanny to come get it, but it kind of stunk and she had planned to get it out herself. Allura stood up from her bed to go get the laundry and rug. She felt pretty OK at first, but knew she’d start to feel faint soon. She began to feel just a tinge sorry for herself that she didn’t even have the mice there to sympathize for her. Then she grabbed up the laundry and headed out of her room. She wasn’t gong to mess with that rolling laundry cart again. And again she wondered to herself just how Nanny did it.
Allura wandered carefully down the stairs and to the laundry room. She dropped the rug and laundry on the floor and then sat on the floor herself and put her head down. She waited for the sort of dizzy feeling she was feeling to pass. Then she got up and was going to load one of the washers with her laundry. When she looked inside, it still had the laundry she had put into it in the middle of the night. Allura took that out and put it in a dryer. Then she put the laundry she had with into the same washer. She picked up the rug and then realized she should shake it out before she put it into a washer. So she trudged outside the castle and shook the rug out right there in the entranceway. There wasn’t even a guard there to help her out and she just felt too sick to walk over to the lake to shake it out. When she was finished shaking out the rug, Allura sat down again with her head down and waited for the dizzy feeling overwhelming her to go away. Then she stood up and trudged back in the laundry room with the rug. She was a bit distressed to see Lance with Mark there. The way she was feeling, she really needed a break from Mark.
“He wanted downstairs, and then he wandered straight over here to the laundry room,” explained Lance smiling and obviously oblivious to Allura’s disapproval.
“Oh,” she said simply and then went straight to loading the rug into a washer. As she was doing so, she saw Mark heading straight for a lint basket in the room. She strongly hoped he wouldn’t mess with it. She just didn’t have the energy to deal with it, and she knew Lance wasn’t likely to do anything to stop him or to clean up the mess he’d create. She was relieved to see Mark move away from the lint without touching it.
As she was leaving, Allura mumbled something about how she wondered how Nanny got clothes to the laundry room from upstairs anyway. She stopped abruptly and listened when she heard an answer from Lance who had overheard her question.
“Oh, there’s that laundry shoot at the end of the hallway as you go by the top of the stairs. She always uses that,” answered Lance.
Allura was puzzled. “I don’t understand. She uses a rolling cart to gather all the laundry. Why wouldn’t she just insist that all the rooms have laundry shoots so her chores would get finished that much faster?”
“Highness, you know Nanny. It’s her way of keeping tabs on everyone if she has a servant or herself visit each room personally.” Then she left the room and trudged herself back up the stairs to her bedroom. There she immediately laid herself down on the bed. Her head felt quite dizzy, and after a while she had been waiting longer than what had been usual for it to go away.
Then she thought she heard something at her door. She didn’t move to check it out. Her head still didn’t feel right. Then an old but not forgotten familiar feeling came over her. She dashed for the bathroom and leaned over the toilet. Yes, she was right. She needed to throw up. She was mad with herself. She thought that for sure she wouldn’t have gotten sick if she had had someone else do the laundry.
Finally she got up and went to the door to look around outside it to see what had been making the sound. There, just a little ways down the hallway by himself, was Mark. Allura rushed over and picked him up.
“Lance!” she called, angry at the thought that he may not be around and had left Mark alone.
“Yeah,” came Lance’s voice from around a corner.
Allura went quickly over to the corner and looked around it and saw Lance. Then she said, “For a while there I thought Mark was maybe out here by himself.”
“No.”
“Well, I’ll take him back now. Thank you, Lance.”
“You’re welcome. Not a problem.” Then Lance walked away and left her there with Mark.
Allura took Mark back inside their room, set him down, and then she really wasn’t feeling well. She went in the bathroom and after a short while she threw up again. Mark was bawling. To Allura seemed like it was more miserable for him to see her sick than what it was for him when he was at his sickest. He was so sensitive to what happened to other people.
Also, since Mark had been sick, it seemed as though he was afraid to even fill his diaper because he knew it was so messy to be changed. Though no one had scolded him for it, and in fact had been reassured that it was OK, he still felt like he was doing something wrong. He was that sensitive.
And then, after Allura had just thrown up, she couldn’t go to comfort him. She felt dizzy and awful and just had to lie down for a while. And so she did collapse onto her bed. She called Mark to come over to her, but he wouldn’t. He just continued crying. Allura continued to lie there waiting to feel better. She thought again to herself if only she had had someone else carry all that laundry and take care of the rug; if only she had someone else do it, she might not be feeling like she was. She was thinking that she might not have even thrown up at all if she hadn’t done all that. Mark continued wailing. Allura could have made herself get up to get him if he was in any danger, but he wasn’t so she let him cry.
Finally, Allura was feeling better and she got up to get Mark. She brought him back over to her bed where she had a towel spread out, and then laid down with him to nurse him.
Commentary:
After supper I did have my dad watch Kyle for a while because I had some chores to get finished. First I went to do chicken chores. I checked their waterer and sure enough they just happened to need it filled. Fortunately they didn’t need some 50 pound feed sack to be carried down, but I knew that dragging water down was going to be heavy enough work for how I was feeling. I dumped the waterer out (what little was left in it). Then I left it there while I walked uphill to what amounts to be a distance of about a couple of blocks to get a pail and fill it with 2 and a half gallons of water and walk the same distance back downhill. I get to the chicken house only to find that Kyle is there! I wasn’t happy about that because of the potential for him to get disgustingly dirty in chicken stuff. I sure knew his grandpa wouldn’t do anything to stop him either because he lets Kyle do just about anything. I didn’t have the strength for bothering myself to stress out over it and make sure that Kyle got away from there. Instead, I just hauled the water into the chicken house and only hoped that Kyle would stay away from the dirty chicken feed he was eyeing that was in a pile from falling out the front door of the house. And fortunately my hopes came true and he went near the stuff, but then backed away. It was very unlike him to do that given the situation, but I was sure happy! In the story I tried to capture a similar moment with Allura in the laundry room and Mark suddenly showing up and then Allura just hoping he wouldn’t get into the lint basket. I also had Mark stay away from the lint just as Kyle had stayed away from that dirty chicken feed.
After giving the chickens water, I picked eggs and brought them to my parents’ house and put them away (about a block’s distance away). Then I really wasn’t feeling well so I lay down on the bed in the guest room for a short while until I felt better. Then I got up and got a full basket of our laundry from my parents’ laundry room to carry to our place. I walked up a flight of stairs and out the front door. Then I walked a short distance and up another flight of stairs to our place (we live above my parent’s garage). By the time I put the laundry down, I really wasn’t feeling well and lay down on our bed, waiting to feel better. After a short while I was hearing strange noises that I thought were on the stairs of the garage and then on the deck. I thought it was probably my brother’s dog. I wasn’t feeling well enough to go check it out. Then at one point I did throw up in the bathroom toilet and then lay down for a while again. I kept hearing sounds and finally, when I was feeling better, I went to see what it was. When I opened the door and looked out on the deck, there I saw my year and a half-old son out there by the top of the stairs all by himself. I yelled for my dad, feeling angry over the idea that he perhaps left Kyle there by himself but at the same time expecting that he was close by. He answered back and was watching Kyle from the bottom of the stairs. I thanked him for watching Kyle and then carried Kyle into the garage, closed the door, and set him down near the bed. In the story I tried to capture this moment with Allura finding Mark just outside her room door with no sign of Lance who was supposed to be watching him, but indeed was still watching Mark from around a corner.
Yep, just like Mark, Kyle was wailing over me being sick. Kyle is very sensitive to others getting hurt so it was as if seeing me sick was worse for him than being at his sickest was. Yep, I soon threw up again after I had carried him in, so I was dizzy and couldn’t do anything to comfort him for a while. Carrying anything of weight sure had me feeling sick. I thought for sure that if I hadn’t carried that water to the chickens and our laundry up to our place, I would have been feeling a whole lot better. When I was finally feeling better I did get Kyle and nurse him. He wouldn’t come to me when I called him, but sure was happy I got him. I think I remember nursing him in the bed although I usually do it lying down on a couch we have.
[Author -- Sheila Bliss, based on the previous creation of Voltron by World Events Productions]
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