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So yesterday I was frantically trying to finish up costumes for Goose and DynaGirl (because last night was our church’s annual trunk or treat), which necessitated a last minute run to the fabric store. I had a list, but I still wandered back and forth across the store because I would remember that I needed something over there even though I was just over there with my list and the something staring me right in the face.
Then I went to pay and I slid my credit card through the little credit card thingy upsidedown. I had the magnetic strip between my fingers! Luckily, I noticed before the cashier did, but just in case, I had to acknowledge out loud that I had done something stupid. I didn’t want her to have seen me do it and then see me try to hurry and cover up that I had done it. Better to just come out and say I’m a idiot. Never mind the possibility that the whole thing would otherwise have gone unnoticed.
And then I almost made it out the door without my bag of somethings that I had wandered back and forth across the store collecting and tried to pay for with the wrong end of my credit card. I had to go back to the register and get my bag. I hate it when you have to go back. Although, going back is slightly less humiliating than someone chasing you out the door frantically yelling, “Mam! Mam! Your bag!” while everyone in the tri-parking lot area turns and stares. Not that I would know from personal experience or anything, but I can imagine.
Driving down the street on my way home, I suddenly realized I had missed my turn. Four blocks ago. I was in my own town, like five minutes from my house.
Somehow I managed to get home, finish the costumes and make it through the day without harming myself or others. (Well, there was that whole temporarily losing track of BigHugs while walking Goose and DynaGirl home from school and finding her 30 seconds later walking 15 feet behind us sobbing and completely freaked out. But that doesn’t really count, does it?)
You have days like this, right?
What’s wrong with this picture?
I’m seriously considering dumping Dumas’ full-length masterpiece for the abridged version. Unfortunately, my local library does not appear to carry the abridged version. I decided to look for it on Amazon, and thought while I was there I would read a few reviews to see if there were any strong opinions about reading the abridged v. unabridged editions. One reviewer said, “I loved the beginning of this book… Dumas sets the whole thing up perfectly. It was entertaining, entrawling and a great story.”
On Wednesday, I volunteered in Goose’s classroom. She’s a second grader in a 2nd/3rd grade split. The teacher had me grading math papers while she gave some writing instruction. She was talking to the kids about different ways you can begin a story (e.g. setting, dialogue, action), and provided her own examples of how to begin the same story using these three methods. Her action story start: “Heather and I jumped on our bikes and peddled down the street as fast as we could.”
Last year, DynaGirl’s teacher had “Daily Schedual” posted on the wall. Laminated.
Sigh.
Goose had cheer camp this morning, and I thought after I dropped her off I’d run a quick errand. I’m not at the high school much, so I’m not overly familiar with the roads there. I turned down one I thought would get me where I wanted to go. But it didn’t. It didn’t cut through to the street I needed, so I decided to just head a little farther north.
A little farther north is a bunch of neighborhoods, but I figured one of them would connect to the main street I was looking for. I turned down a street that kind of twisted and turned, making it difficult for me to see if it would actually go through. I saw a road off to my left that seemed to have an excessive number of speed bumps for a residential neighborhood—I took that as a sign that people had probably been using this as a thoroughfare to the main street and turned left. I was right about the excessiveness of the speed bumps (that was quite a ride), but wrong about it leading to where I wanted to go. Turn after turn only led me to dead ends, which was frustrating because don’t they usually post “dead end” or “not a through street” signs? A little warning might have been nice.
What was even more frustrating was finally getting to a street that ran parallel to the one I wanted, and still not being able to get there because they were separated by a large field with no connecting streets. For blocks. I made my way out of that residential neighborhood, annoyed with the unnecessary detours, and went even farther north until I found the street that would get me to the street I needed. Finally, I was on the right street and then the train rails came down. Sometimes you can head off the train farther down the road, but sometimes you just have to wait. So I waited. And I got to where I was going. And it was OK.
It’s still blasted hot. But that’s OK too.
Running errands.
BigHugs, getting into the car yesterday: It’s freaking hot.
BigHugs will be four on Friday.
We went to the doctor today. Better safe than sorry, right? Only a fool would let her accident prone daughter walk around with broken bones hanging out all willy nilly for ten days more than once. I am no fool, sisters. No fool!
So that sore pinky is perfectly fine. Beautiful, intact bones. WHAT a re-LIEF! It’s just the hand that’s broken. Yes, my friends, the hand. Who needs a broken finger when you can just break the WHOLE DING DANG HAND?!
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It looks like her already paid for cheer camp is out next week. Piano is a no-go, too. And she’s actually pretty excited that the swimming lessons I had planned for the first week of August will have to wait as well. Oh well. It could have been worse, right? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Well, THAT’S not ALL, folks! Why settle for a broken hand when you can have a broken hand AND, wait for it…
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…a BROKEN ELBOW!
And you know what would be even MORE awesome? How about we put that broken hand and broken elbow on DIFFERENT ARMS?!
Bonus! Isn’t that just FAN-TAS-tic?!
As the Dr. splinted her up, DynaGirl started to sniff. Not because she was crying, but because she needed to wipe her nose.
Dr: You poor thing. You’re not even going to be able to blow your own nose. I didn’t think about that. And how are you going to eat? I didn’t think about that. And, oh no! How are you going to wipe your behind when you use the bathroom?! I didn’t even think about that!
Good questions, Doc. Good questions. So far I’ve fed her, dressed her, and taken care of her more personal needs. Good times, my friends. Good times. We see the ortho guy tomorrow (or today, depending on when you read this). Our doctor wasn’t sure whether or not she’d end up with two casts or one. We’ll just have to wait and see. Obviously, I’m tingling with anticipation.
And as if this wasn’t enough excitement, Chuck got called out of town last minute. He leaves early tomorrow morning and will be back next week on Friday. Awesome. Oh, and for just a little more icing on the cake, guess what lucky girl gets to go to the dentist in the morning? That’s right! Me! It’s me, me, me, ME, ME! I love my life! It…Just…Keeps…Getting…Better!
In all seriousness, I’m actually very glad it’s just a couple of broken bones. Thankfully, she was wearing a helmet. She’s OK. Inconvenienced, greatly, but OK. And, as usual, my blessings are too many to count.
And, as a TOTALLY unrelated aside, here’s some classic PSB for you (I think Neil Tennant’s hair is wondering this same thing):
Yesterday a friend of mine called to check up on me, as she is often so thoughtful to do, and we ended up making plans to take our children to the lake. I resisted the idea at first because, well, that would require some effort on my part. Some planning. Some packing up of gear. Some sunscreening of the children. I figured I had already taken my kids on vacation, so I should be done with vacation-type preparations for the rest of the summer. But then I thought about how I’d spent the last ten days holed up in my home with bored, bickering children and decided there was a slight possibility it might be worth the trouble. For my sanity’s sake. So we agreed to meet at my house at 11:30 am today to head to the lake, and I was grateful to have a plan for the day.
Well, last night Goose comes running in the house to fetch me because DynaGirl crashed on her bike. She and her neighbor friend were coming around a corner from opposite directions and crashed right into each other. I arrived at the scene to see the neighbor girl sitting on the curb, bawling with a skinned knee and her sister standing over her sobbing hysterically as if she were standing vigil over her death bead. DynaGirl was still on the ground, bleeding from multiple places. She had managed to skin up her right hand, left ankle (in three places), left knee (with some superficial road rash running down the length of her leg) and left palm. Her palm actually looked pretty gnarly. She was also complaining of a sore right pinky and a sore left elbow.
I brought her home to clean her up. Her right hand was already starting to bruise and swell. I couldn’t tell if her left elbow was swollen, but she couldn’t move it much before protesting in pain. I knew then we’d be going to the doctor. After last time, I wouldn’t dare not take her.
So no lake for us, but at least we still have plans for the day. And we’re both showered and dressed and it’s only 9:30 am. Every cloud…
P.S. Please send your most excellent breast karma Mad’s way today.
Chuck and I took the kids to see UP this weekend. I enjoyed it. Very much.
I’ve been feeling less than up lately. Not exactly down. Not exactly in the middle. Just kind of hovering in some place I really don’t know how to name—an upless, downless, middleless dimension of blahness. I haven’t had much luck figuring out what to do about it, how to pull myself up and out of the slump. Some people might say the cure for that is to immerse myself in something I love doing. Hmmm…and that would be?
It’s kind of depressing when you realize you have no real passions in life. What are my dreams? Not just the “Oh, it would be nice if”s. Real dreams. What do I want to do? Who do I want to be? So I like to write. I want to be a writer, right? Well, sure, that would be nice. But do I really feel passionate about it? Eh.
Eh. I think that’s been the source of my blahs. It’s not that I’m sad about not having accomplished my life’s goals or living my dreams, it’s realizing that I don’t have any. Not really. And that’s just wrong. There’s something wrong with me. That’s no way to live. You can’t just go through life floating along without really wanting. Can you? How can you be happy in life or how can you measure your happiness relative to your potential happiness without defining what it is that will make you happy? How do you even embark on this journey we call life without a destination in mind?
I’m a religious person, and thinking in terms of my faith I have an ultimate destination in mind, an ultimate goal. But along the way, I’m supposed to be making the most of this very limited time I have on Earth. I’m supposed to be doing things. I’m supposed to be making something of myself. I’m supposed to want in a way that leads to self-discovery (who am I meant to be?) and self-improvement (becoming that meant-to-be me).
These kinds of thoughts have been weighing on me for some time. I’ve been feeling like I’m failing at something I don’t even know I’m suppposed to be doing. I’m missing some kind of calling. I’m missing out on something—something big and grand because, you see, I don’t have anything big and grand in my sight. How sad. How pathetic. What a waste.
Sitting in the theater Saturday night, it hit me—a Pixar-produced epiphany. The big and the grand is in the now. All the little moments, even the
most routine and mundane, are my dreams come true because I’m doing it for and with the people I love and the people who love me. Yeah, it’s super corny. And more than a little cliché. But it’s my truth (bonus corny!), at least for now, and I’m feeling a little lighter today. I’m feeling a little up.
Sunday a friend of mine at church said, “Are you shrinking? You look like you’re shrinking. Are you shrinking on purpose?” I assured her that I was not really shrinking. Perhaps I was on the down swing of my 5-6 lb up/down pendulum, but no doubt in a couple weeks I’d be right back up again.
Truth be told, I have wanted to lose 10-15 lbs for the past 10-15 years. Chuck’s taking me to Hawaii for our 15th anniversary in June, and I thought it would be nice to make the trip with just a little less me. I don’t think I look bad, but I think I could look better. And I’ve been thinking I would enjoy the process of swimsuit shopping a little more hate the process of swimsuit shopping a little less if there was just a little less me.
But I certainly haven’t made any concerted effort or “diet plan” or anything. If there’s one thing I know about myself, it’s that I’m programmed for complete diet failure. Complete. Failure. I think we’ve had this conversation before over the Christmas fudge. Anyway, I’ve just been trying to cut down a bit—maybe have one piece of toast instead of two, two cookies instead of twelve. You know, little stuff. And it’s been kind of working until my sweet friend had to open up her big mouth on Sunday. Her innocent and even complimentary shrinking remark triggered my body’s screw itself mode, and last night I found myself sick. And disgusted. And all around oogie-feeling.
The day started out innocently enough. I had a bowl of Special K. I like Special K. It’s crispy and ricey. A little while later I had a small handful of almonds. A few nuts are good for you, right? Protein and stuff. Then a little while later I felt a little grumbly in the tumbly so I had a 90 calorie cereal bar. I had a box of them in the food storage in the garage and it seemed like a safe snack. Less than an hour later I found myself in front of the pantry again. This time I had a spoonful of peanut butter. A teaspoonful isn’t so bad, eh? More protein. Fifteen minutes later (it was lunch time then—time for lunch!) I decided to make myself a couple of eggs sans toast. Heaven knows I love me some eggs, but it’s not exactly the best taste to leave in your mouth. I should have brushed my teeth or popped a tic-tac or something, but no, it was back to the pantry for more almonds. Almonds are salty, though, see? So I needed a little somethin-somethin to balance that out. Enter the mint oreos. I just had one. Then two minutes later I had three more. At this point, it was about 12:15 pm.
I managed to go another two hours before breaking out the popcorn. It was healthy pop, mind you, which as far as I’m concerned is like eating nothing because it doesn’t really taste good. Isn’t that how it should work? If you don’t actually enjoy the food, it shouldn’t count as actual eating? I think that should be one of the slides on those weight watcher point calculators. You’ve got the calories and the grams of fat and the taste scale. Obviously, “delicious” jacks the points way up, whereas “tasteless styrofoam” automatically negates all of the other factors. I guess as long as I’m pretending I should make the delicious food count for nothing, but that would just be too good to be true, and even I’m not that delusional. So I had a bag of healthy pop kettle corn. Not one of those mini-single serving bags. An entire bag.
I was set for another whole hour, and then it was back to the peanut butter. Another spoonful. I did manage to resist the urge to put chocolate chips on it. Then I did my marathon stretch of non-eating and stayed out of the kitchen for two and a half hours until it was time to make dinner. I’m not a big fan of making dinner. I stared at the fridge and the freezer and the pantry for several minutes. Then I went out to the garage and stared at the food shelves for a good long while. Funny how nothing really sounds good to cook let alone eat when you’ve been eating crap all day. I finally settled on tacos, and while I was chopping and dicing and browning and stirring, I probably consumed a good three dozen tortilla chips. Because, you know, they were there. On the counter. And heaven forbid I should not eat something when it’s just sitting there.
By the time I put dinner on the table, I felt good and sick, but I still managed to eat two tacos and some beans and some more tortilla chips. Then as I was clearing my plate I passed the oreos that one of my children had very thoughtfully left on the counter, and I had another one of those. Yeah, just one. Because it was the last one. I spent the rest of the night in a terrible, terrible mood.
Last night I had a dream. Our family was going on a road trip. I don’t remember where. We packed all kinds of food and snacks for the trip, including two big boxes of brown sugar and cinnamon poptarts. (I don’t even like poptarts. Maybe that’s why I packed them because I could eat as many as I wanted and it wouldn’t count as actual eating because I wouldn’t enjoy it.) We stopped at a small restaurant for breakfast. I don’t know why we were stopping for breakfast when we’d just barely started driving, but we did. The place was called Mother’s and looked like a nice, cozy little family owned restaurant. They seated us almost immediately, and then we sat at the table and waited for the waitress to take our order. We waited and waited. Finally, after about an hour I went to complain. The waitress told me with a super fake and patronizing smile that she was sorry, but they were really busy and she was the only one working. She’d be with us soon. A half an hour later, she came to our table. I said, “We’ve been waiting for an hour and a half to place our order!” She said, “It has not been an hour and a half.” I looked at my watch and said, “Well an hour and 22 minutes then.” Then she started to take our order, but left halfway through. She never came back. We were still just sitting there when I woke up this morning. And I woke up super pissed.
What do you think it all means?
What did you eat yesterday?
So Friday I get a call on my cell phone from Chuck saying the school has been trying to get a hold of me for the past 40 minutes because DynaGirl was sick in the nurse’s office. I had been jabbering away on the phone with a friend for a good long time completely oblivious to my cell phone ringing in my purse down in the kitchen. I called the school to tell them I’d be right over, and when I got there the nurse was not overly friendly. I suppose it was irresponsible of me to be tying up my land line with frivolous conversation without having made sure there was some other way that I could be reached because I should always anticipate the possibility that one of my children would fall ill while at school regardless of whether or not they had shown any symptoms or offered the slightest indication that they weren’t feeling well that morning. Mostly I felt bad that DynaGirl had to wait for me for almost an hour, but I was also embarrassed because I like to think I’m a responsible mother and for some reason it pains me to have other people think otherwise. And I guess I was annoyed, too, that the nurse would feel the need to get all persnickety. Whatever.
So DynaGirl spent Friday hurling her little guts out, and I spent the day cleaning up after her gut-hurling. One thing that is awesome about having a puking 9 year-old is that she can puke in appropriate places. She can make it to the bathroom if need be and she has very good aim with the bowl I provide her at her couchside. I think it may even rank above a potty trained child. I’d rather change a diaper than clean vomit out of carpet any day.
The other downside to this whole sick child thing (I mean, besides the obvious sadness over my poor, miserable flu-stricken child) was that I had intended to waste away my afternoon on Guitar Hero. I beat the game on easy last summer and have been meaning to work my way through medium for months now, but alas, it was not meant to be.
By Saturday, DynaGirl was feeling all better, but I was feeling kind of iffy. I think it was psychological. I always start feeling nauseous when my kids get sick—not nausea from watching them blow chunks, but just the underlying fear that I will inevitably catch their bug. I had big plans for Saturday, but I ended up spending most of the afternoon on the couch watching bad made for television movies on the Hallmark Channel. Westerns. Does the Hallmark Channel play any other kind of movie besides westerns? First was Love’s Unfolding Dream about a young woman with a really bad country-gal-on-the-plains accent who wants to become a doctor. But this is the 19th C. so it’s practically unheard of for a woman to become a doctor. The local town doc reluctantly takes her on as an assistant, and she ends up proving that she would be the best damn doctor in the whole wide state of Wyoming despite the fact that she’s woman-folk by performing emergency, life-saving operations that she’s only ever read about in books while the doctor is away. And, of course, in the midst of all this she’s met a man who at first thinks she’s not in her right mind or place for wanting to branch out beyond the role of future wife and mother and tells her as much, which totally annoys her but of course she’s attracted to him anyway and they end up getting married. Such a dumb, dumb movie. But I watched the whole thing.
And then I watched Love’s Enduring Promise, which is from the same series of books, but takes place years before this other one. Why would I watch Love’s Enduring Promise, you ask, when I had just endured two hours of lameness with that other Love guck? Because it was on. And it was just as bad. I won’t even bother to give you a synopsis because it’s not worth the effort. I’ve also seen Love Comes Softly, which is the first in this series, but that was several months ago. I’m not exactly sure how much Love there is out there, but if I see one pop up on my tv schedule I am sure to watch it. Why? Why? Why? I really just don’t know.
And then I watched Mail Order Bride about a con artist woman who steals money from her pimp (only she’s not a whore in the sex sense, but rather in the conning people and then providing the “pimp” with a majority of the cut sense) and then runs away to escape her life of slavitude to him. Oh, and she happens to have this friend (a saloon gal) who is dying of TB and also happens to be writing a man out in the frontier who wants to bring her out west to be his wife, and when the dying saloon girl sees that her con artist friend is in trouble and needs some place to go, DSG suggests CAF take DSG’s place as the “mail order bride” so CAF can be happy and safe because DSG is dying anyway and it just seems like the perfect solution to everyone’s problems. Or something.
It starred Daphne Zuniga as the con artist, so I was thinking how bad could it be? There was a time when I enjoyed Daphne Zuniga. I mean, come on, who didn’t love Jo on Melrose Place? Well, either the script from this movie was just unsalvageable or I am grossly misremembering the caliber of acting on Melrose Place because Ms. Daphne was almost painful to watch. And man, she looks old. Nothing wrong with a few age lines. I’m not against women showing the signs of maturity. But man, she looks old. I can’t remember the name of her co-star* playing the joker who unwittingly brings her and a whole heap of trouble to his homestead, but he did look familiar. I want to say he was one of Donna Martin’s beaus during her on again off again David romance—perhaps in the latter years of 90210? I actually enjoyed him, but also kept thinking that man, he looks old. And you know what that means? Man, I’m old.
Sunday was rather uneventful, I suppose. I did get on Facebook after everyone else had gone to bed to make my moves in my scrabble/scramble matches and found another friend from high school. He’s gone completely gray and I’d like to think looks a good decade older than me, though, he was really just a year ahead of me in school. I’ve always thought that it was the men who were supposed to age gracefully, showing their age much later than women. But my experience on Facebook has been the exact opposite. All of my female friends look considerably younger than their male contemporaries. Or maybe I’m just really in denial about how old I look.
Other noteworthy events this weekend, BigHugs spent the entire night in her own bed Saturday and Sunday. Keep your fingers crossed that I can keep this trend going. Forever. She also tinkled in the potty Sunday evening after not having had a wet diaper for the previous 18 hours. I was actually pretty concerned because that’s just not normal and she had had a good 18 oz worth of chocolate milk during that time, and I was beginning to wonder if this situation might warrant a trip to the walk-in clinic or something. But after about 5 minutes sitting on her potty she went. She really went. “Tinkled” really is not an appropriate description. So yay for her! And for me because a trip to the walk-in on a Sunday evening is not my idea of a good time.
How was your weekend?
*Cameron Bancroft, this guy:
And he was on 90210 as a love interest for Donna. Did you know 90210 was on for like 10 years? I seriously have no recollection of it going past 1995, but apparently it wasn’t cancelled until 2000. Crazy.
I had this little conversation with Chuck over the weekend.
Me: I found the cowbell I want on the internet.
Chuck: A cowbell? How much?
Me: Fifteen dollars.
Chuck: Fifteen dollars?!
Me: Well, it is a musical instrument.
Chuck: Where are you going to put it?
Me: What do you mean? It’s like this (holding my hands 6 inches apart) big.
Chuck: Are you sure? It seemed like on the video (the SNL cowbell skit) he was banging away on something like this (holding his hands 18 inches apart) big.
Me: No. It’s not like a…uh…a statue or anything. It’s like this big.
Chuck: Oh.
Apparently, I am alone in my enthusiasm for the cowbell acquisition. Le sigh.
Yesterday, BigHugs tinkled (yes, I said tinkled—deal with it) in her little potty for the first time ever. She stood up and immediately started yelling for the whole family to come and witness. She was so excited standing there next to the potty pointing most animatedly at her work. I thought, “This is the moment. Right here, right now everything changes.” I had been longing for this day for months, nay years, but then I was no longer certain I was ready for it. Do you know what it means to commit, truly commit, yourself to potty training? It’s a full time job, people. Running your child back and forth to the potty, checking for dryness and stimulated bladderness every 15 minutes, cleaning up the inevitable accidents. But then all my fears were laid to rest as she refused requests for an encore performance the whole rest of the day. Now I’m back to longing. Le sigh.
My washing machine is mocking me. “You think you’re so smart with the duct tape and the half-butted (I’ve been trying to clean up my act lately—don’t worry, I’m sure it won’t last) repairs?” it sneers. I think I may have over estimated the powers of duct tape. My little makeshift jimmy-rigging of the sensor doohickey thingy-majig only lasts two cycles, if I’m lucky. Sometimes I’m retaping every cycle. I’m almost through an entire roll of duct tape. How? How do you run out of duct tape? We’ve only replaced our family roll of duct tape (what, doesn’t your family have a roll of duct tape?) like once in the fourteen years we’ve been married. I might just have to admit defeat and have the darn thing repaired. Le sigh.
Incidentally, I found this little explanation of my post title on the internets and was mildly amused.
Le sigh is often used in mediocre conversation to imply a sigh for whatever random reason. People generally use it because they assume it makes them look interesting or intelligent, when in all actuality it makes them look like a moron, as most things French tend to do.
I thought I was just having a Pepé le Pew moment, but apparently I’m a moron. Der sigh.
On Friday, Mr. T went on a campout with his boy scout troop. This was his second attempt. The first campout did not go over so well as it was raining and cold and there were irritating boys whose sole purpose in Mr. T’s estimation was to make everyone else miserable. Friday afternoon I reminded him it was time to get ready and he heaved a heavy sigh. Chuck and I decided long ago that scouting would not be something we would force upon our son, but Mr. T is the type of kid who occasionally needs a little nudging to do anything besides sit at the computer so we’re still trying to gently encourage him. He agreed to go and got everything ready. We were to meet at our church at 4:50 pm so they could leave at 5 pm sharp. The scoutmaster ended up being over an hour late. Whatever. It was also raining and cold. And there were irritating boys whose sole purpose was to make Mr. T miserable. I’m not sure we can talk him into going a third time. I’m not sure we’ll even try.
Saturday night DynaGirl woke up sobbing. She’d had a nightmare. She said she dreamed that Mr. T, BigHugs and I had all died. Yikes. That’s a nightmare. The kind I have frequently. I have times where my subconscious is a little too preoccupied with death. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had nightmares about losing members of my family. They’re awful. And even the relief of waking up and realizing it was just a dream isn’t enough to take away the feeling of dread. It just lingers and makes me want to cry. Sometimes I do, like DynaGirl.
My favorite death dreams are the ones where someone dead comes back to life, specifically my mom. I used to dream about her all the time—that she was still alive and everything was back to normal. Those were actually good dreams, and even though I would wake up only to realize she was still gone, that repeated grief and disappointment was totally worth having her back for a few imaginary moments. Sometimes I would dream that she was still alive, but then she would die again in my dream. Those sucked. No fair to have to relive it.
On Sunday night, we were all sitting at the dinner table when I noticed this weird noise in the background. My kids were convinced it was the dryer. I thought, “It damn well better not be the dryer because that is definitely not how the dryer is supposed to sound, which could only mean that something is terribly, terribly wrong with the dryer and didn’t we just do the whole dead washer routine?” I decided to investigate and ended up poking my head out the front door to find an ambulance and fire engine outside my neighbor’s house. The weird background noise was the fire engine idling.
We go to church with these neighbors (an older couple with mostly grown kids and one 16 year old son at home), and have lived across the street from them for over seven years. My first thought was one of them must have had a heart attack. They’re both large people. Lovely, lovely people, but large. I was afraid. I sent Chuck over to investigate, and it turns out Mrs. Lovely large neighbor had her leg just collapse out from under her. She heard a pop and then it just folded. Ouch. Her husband said it happened in their bedroom, which is downstairs, while he was away, so she called out to her teenage son, who was upstairs, but he couldn’t hear her so she called him on his cell phone. This is a small house, but thank goodness for cell phones, I guess. Her son called his dad and he came home. Chuck said the son was still upstairs when he got there. I was wondering if he was still upstairs or upstairs again. Surely he didn’t just stay upstairs and leave his poor mother alone in her misery until dad arrived. Surely.
I was just so relieved no one had a heart attack. I’m going to check on her today.
Today Chuck left for a 10-day business trip. Again with the business trips. It would have been a full two weeks only DynaGirl’s birthday is next Thursday and Chuck missed her birthday two years ago while on business in Italy, and DynaGirl has never let him forget it. She still brings it up at random non-birthday related times. “Remember that time you missed my birthday?”
He broke the news to the kids Friday night over dinner.
Chuck: I’ve got good news and bad news. Which do you want first?
DynaGirl: Bad news.
Chuck: I have to go on another trip.
DynaGirl and Goose: What? Again?
DynaGirl: You’re going to miss my birthday! Again!
Chuck: Wait for the good news.
DynaGirl, sulking.
Chuck: I’m coming back on your birthday.
DynaGirl: Yay! Wait, what time?
He’ll be home before she gets home from school, but I love how quick she was to make sure he wasn’t trying to pull a fast one on her. Like not getting home until nighttime would have been totally cheating because he still would have basically missed her birthday. Again.
So, to sum up:
stupid campouts = bad
death = bad
jacked-up leg = better than a heart attack
DynaGirl = forgive, but not forget
How was your weekend?
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