Then I had to pick Tommy up from school. On the way there, I played phone tag with one of my recruiters that wants me in a phone interview tomorrow morning. Tommy came out complaining of a headache and the urge to throw up so I recommended we not go to Star and instead go to the doctor’s office. He immediately felt better (I still believe he is down and I think Cathy nailed it with “allergies”). Arriving at Star I warned the instructor that Tommy was “edgy.”
After handing him off to the Star staff, I began 45 minutes of phone calls from the car. I confirmed with the recruiter that the phone interview would not intefere with the 11:30 IEP Cathy and I have with the school (if it goes badly, we may be looking at creating a class action lawsuit..what fun!). During the call the recruiter told me the interview was not really for the company he mentioned in the voicemail, but for a different company going through the first one. This raised a problem as my other recruiter has been pushing me in the 2nd company and it could look bad for me to be “double dipping.” Often hiring managers simply discard candidates that come to the same job from 2 different sources. I called my main recruiter and confirmed some details with him them began phone tag with the other to try to make sure it was truly a different position. Slipped a phonecall into the wife at some point there too.
Tommy did good on his ride threatening to throw up only once. The instructor nipped it in the bud explaining the social inappropriateness of talking about the urge to vomit and suggested that he simply say he is not feeling well and end class early. He quit talking about it.
On the way home I was pulling in for gas. Tommy says, “I need air.” So I stop the car in the road and tell Tommy, “Get out.” He gets out and leaves the car do open so I can’t drive out of traffic. I holler at him to close the door. Then I pull around the grassy median to park opposite of where I dropped Tommy off. When I see Tommy, rather than getting into the grassy part of the median he has sat on the curb, laid back in the grass and extended his legs and feet out into the road. I stop the car and yell at him to get out of the road. As he’s standing there I am talking to him and he just bends over and empties his stomach of the 20 ounce (.6 liter) bottle of Gatorade he drank earlier. This is a skill Tommy can do on demand so you never know if he’s up to something or really sick. I instruct him to go to a safer spot in the median with a nice manhole cover to sit on then I move the car to get gas. I look back and Tommy is spread eagle lying on his back in the grass! I holler at him “get up or I’ll call an ambulance!” The guys on the adjacent pump are confused but watching the whole scene. The station attendant happens to be passing by me to help another customer as I start to call Cathy and scolds me explaining that I cannot make a phone call due to federal law; I almost told him where he could shove the federal law or my cell phone, his choice.
Tommy and I make it home without any further incident and he is told to take a bath..brief whining then he goes.
