I do not own any of the TWD characters.
Trying to Get Back into the Groove
It took Beth the rest of that week and part of the next to finally get back on her feet and going about her daily business normally. Each night Daryl would sit with Beth and write down everything that she had planned to accomplish the next day. As the week wore on and Beth began to feel better, she would already have the list written out. Daryl had asked her if she really did all that stuff on each daily list. Obviously, Beth was offended at his line of questioning. She said something to the effect of "naw, I've got a fuckin fairy godmother that comes in when ya leave out each mornin." Daryl did some back peddling real quick like. It was no coincidence that Josepha brought a beautiful flower arrangement up to the bedroom the next day. The card read "Thank you for all you do for us - I love you so much. D".
Josepha came each day and tended to all the many chores and tasks that Beth normally took care of. She began by preparing breakfast for the Dixon family, packing lunches for the kids, any canning or freezing that needed to be done that day from the garden, the shopping, laundry, dropping off and picking up kids from school. You name it and Josepha was willing to do it - of course, Daryl was paying her well but she would have done it even if he weren't.
Josepha was George's wife and they were originally from Honduras. They'd been employed by Merle Dixon even before Daryl and Beth were married. George was the Dixon Farms' lead guy - he and his wife were practically family. Josepha served as a nanny to the Dixon kids whenever a caretaker was needed - not everyday, but there were seasons and periods in the Dixon family's timeline that they had needed help. After each child was born, of course they needed extra help and one time the flu swept through the Greene Dixon Farm and all the adults had to take turns tending to each other - that was a rough month and half.
George and Josepha were the reason that none of the Dixon kids were going to take Spanish as their foreign language requirement in high school - the kids were already fluent in Spanish. The school didn't like it very much because they were going to have to find some kind of foreign language online or something for them to take. When Jacob was a freshman the school tried to pull the "we're going to require you to take Spanish just like everyone else" card. Daryl Dixon about took the roof off that place. After that, it was just understood that the Dixon kids did not have to take Spanish to meet their foreign language requirement. That guidance counselor was never quite the same when Daryl got through with him.
George and Josepha had three kids of their own, two boys and a girl. The oldest boy, Samuel, had a really good job at the largest factory in the county, good pay, benefits, and room to advance. The daughter had majored in secondary education and had been teaching social studies down in Macon. LilyAnna, that's the daughter, had been looking for a teaching position closer to home as she'd been terribly homesick lately. The youngest child, Daniel worked for Merle and Daryl, still lived at home, and was attending accounting classes at the community college.
Beth's instructions to Josepha for supper each day included "pull the dirty rice casserole out of the deep freeze" or "pull out the chicken and dressing casserole out of the deep freeze", or better yet "pick up BBQ from Bubba's tonight". Beth thought she was pulling one over on Josepha. She was trying to save Josepha some work because she felt simply awful for pulling the woman away from her own duties at her house.
You had to get up pretty early in the morning to put anything over on Ms. Josepha though - she knew what Beth was up to and she also knew that if Beth didn't eat whatever she'd specified in her written instructions, Beth would get upset. So, In order to keep the peace, Josepha did as Ms. Beth instructed. She pulled and heated the specified casserole from the freezer each night. What Beth didn't know was that Josepha replaced that casserole with at least one or two more that she'd prepared each day. If Josepha took out a dirty rice casserole, she replaced it with chicken enchiladas and lasagna. Ahhhh, tricky, tricky Ms. Josepha. By the time Beth figured it out, it was too late to raise hell about it and who in their right mind would do that anyway because Ms. Josepha was a better cook that Beth Dixon would ever be.
Thursday night was what Daryl dreaded. It was the first day the football team had practiced and there was always a parent meeting scheduled for right after. Now, it wasn't the actual meeting that Daryl dreaded because he was there for every parent meeting - unless, of course there was some kind of farm related emergency to crop up. This meeting was different though - Beth wasn't going to be in attendance because she was laid up in bed on the heating pad. Daryl was going to have to speak on his wife's behalf. She gave the same speech every year about how they feed the whole team and staff every Thursday night during the season. Then, everyone, hopped up and excited after hearing the tiny Dixon explain the process, would sign up for different nights and dishes that they would contribute. Some who didn't, couldn't, or wouldn't cook (for whatever reason) signed up to donate cash for the purchase of food, paper products, or drinks.
It wasn't nearly as bad as Daryl had anticipated. Beth had gotten all the sign up sheets drafted and printed out from her laptop. Each Thursday night had its own sign up packet with the menu listed at the top, items needed and lines for people to sign their name and phone number 'cause you better believe you'd get a reminder phone call the Sunday evening before and a thank you follow up call on the Saturday morning after. That's just the way Beth Greene Dixon operated. She'd put Katie Raye in charge of the packets and Coach Miller had made sure that a table and chair was available for the girl to sign people up.
The only thing crazier than football season at the Dixon house was baseball season. Football season meant a freshman game on some Monday nights (since Micah was playing now), the team meal on Thursday nights with the occasional JV game thrown in, and Varsity games every Friday night. Baseball season meant multiple games every night of the week and tournaments on the weekends - in the future when Daryl and Beth would look back on their "raisin kids" part of their life, they would marvel at how the hell they survived baseball season. Back to the football season though - if there were a home JV game, the kids were fed after the game at the stadium. If they only had practice, they were fed at the practice field located at the high school. If there happened to be an away JV game ( a rare occurrence), the school board paid for the team to eat at McD's or someplace on the way home.
The sign up packets filled up quickly although some of the games for later in the season could still use some more names. Katie Raye was sure her Momma would take care of that once she got back into the swing of things. Micah made sure to put the fold up table and chair away before they all loaded up with their dad to head home.
"How was practice today?" Daryl asked the boys.
"Great!" Micah answered quickly. He'd been hyped up all night long. Jacob was a little slower to answer his dad. "Weird" he finally responded.
"Weird, huh?" Daryl asked him. "Bad weird or good weird?"
"I dunno" Jacob sighed. "Just weird."
"Hmmmm" Daryl didn't know what else to say so he moved on to the only girl in the truck. Surely, he could get her to talk. "What 'bout you Katy Bug? How was your day?" he asked his daughter.
"Okay I guess" she mumbled.
"Just okay?" Daryl asked.
"Yeh, it was alright" she said "I'm just tired."
It was very quiet in the truck and Daryl thought the boys in the back had drifted off to sleep. Hell, he figured they were tired. Even though they'd worked all summer long, up and at em early each morning, the beginning of school tired just hit different.
"I gotta stop and get ya Momma something to eat" Daryl said to no one in particular. "Ya'll want your usual?" Despite the fact that they had all eaten pizza at the parent meeting, of course they wanted their usual. The Dixon truck pulled into Wendy's where Daryl placed the standard family order to go.
Once they'd gotten home and hauled all their gear into the house, only to schlep it all back out with them in the morning the kids sat down at the kitchen table to eat. "Kids, I'm gonna go up and eat with ya Momma" he reported. They just nodded at him and chewed their food, barely able to keep their eyes open. "Ya'll need to stop in and see her 'fore y'all tuck in for the night - she ain't seen ya all day."
"Yessir" they all mumbled.