I asked Charlie if he wanted to write another blog post for Blogabetes.

"Neh," he said. "I'm out of material."

He unraveled a long strand of red and white bakers twine from a large, round roll and carefully laid it out along the kitchen counter.

"Nothing?" I asked.

"Nothing," he said.

"Yeah, me too," I said. "I'm out of material."

Charlie eyeballed about three feet and snipped the twine with scissors.

"You have anything for me to write?" I asked. "Any diabetes news?"

He answered immediately, never taking his eyes off the twine as he tested its pull and elasticity; dangling it as if operating a marionette.

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I wish there was a number to call when in need of diabetes-related assistance while on the road; the diabetes equivalent of AAA.

We were about 45 minutes into our 1 hour trip to my mother's house Sunday when we threw the diabetes bag into the back seat and asked Charlie to test his blood sugar.  This came after Charlie said he was thirsty and felt high.

"330," he said.

Having played hockey that morning, this presented yet another anomaly in the never-ending saga of life with diabetes.  This would normally be his low period of the day. But it wouldn't be the first time he was over 300. It was nothing a healthy blast of insulin couldn't cure.

That is, if we had insulin.

Charlie patted himself down.

"I'm not wearing my pump."

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I'm sorry.

I'm sorry I stumbled into bed at midnight and woke you up; piss drunk on TLC and Discovery channel programming. Back-to-back episodes of Hoarders, dysfunctional tattoo artists and the fascinating sex life of giant sea clams of the Pacific.

I know you've had migraines for like eight straight days and the closest thing to real food you've had in the past month has been licking the salt off a tortilla chip.

So I'm sorry. I'm sorry I decided, at midnight, to bring you in on my idea for a movie script. You remember - the one about the guy in a coma who is stuck in a dream which becomes his reality. A dream in which he is a wandering homeless man who builds relationships with estranged family members (those at his bedside) urging him to come back.  Now that it's morning, the idea doesn't seem nearly as good. And yes, you were right. A tad depressing.

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When you're strolling down the food store aisles, do you find yourself making mental notations of items that would be disastrous to blood sugars?

I tend to do that when walking through the frozen foods aisle.

"Mmmmmm ... chicken taquitos. Those would not be good for Charlie."

"Mmmmmm ... eggrolls!"

"Mmmmmm ...  pepperoni and cheese strombolis. Those would not be good for Charlie either."

It's just window shopping really. It's no fun getting your kid a treat when you know there's a good chance it will affect his health in a bad way.

I have had friends navigate very carefully around me when discussing their kids' food allergies. They don't want to complain to the guy with a kid with diabetes.

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"Maybe try to hold on to the puck a little more, ya know?"

"Don't just give it back to the other team."

Charlie nods in the back seat, pulling his thick hockey socks up and over his plastic knee pads.

"And you should work on your cross-overs when you're out there," I say.

"And your stops. Especially the one direction that gives you trouble."

We turn down a narrow road and over a creek toward the rink.

"Mmhmm," Charlie says.

Staring out from the window at partially constructed homes dressed in blue tarp, I can tell he's thinking of something other than hockey.

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You reach into the top bunk and correct a blood sugar of 263 at 10:30 pm before "going to bed."

So you curse and set the alarm for 12:30 am.

You smack the cell phone and roll out of bed at 12:30 am and shuffle like a zombie down the hall and into his room. You pull his arm through the slot in the top bunk. He pulls it back and tucks it safely under his pillow. So you pull it again so that just his fingers are sticking out of the slot.  You extract blood.

So you curse and correct a blood sugar of 232, set the alarm for 2 am and shuffle back into bed like a zombie.

So you have strange mini dreams that blur the lines of reality. You find a scratched up DVD of Mr. Popper's Penguins lying in the street outside your house. So you begin to question whether or not you really did send Mr. Popper's Penguins back to Netflix.

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