Car in the yard 2: the sequel

Dear God:

I had the best of intentions to get up and make it to church today.  But there was another car in my yard.

I’m fairly sure that our house resides in the Bermuda Triangle for cars.

We had just finished watching the reboot of The Karate Kid (which really should be called the Kung Fu Kid) and had sent the kids to get their jammies on when I saw lights flashing through the front windows.  J came a-running from his bedroom saying, “A crash!  There was a crash!” and at first we thought he was making it up.  I figured the lights had been somebody taking the corner too fast in front of the house and skidding a little, Dukes of Hazzard style.  Little did I know that the lights I saw was a Jeep driving through our lawn, across the driveway, narrowly missing my sister’s car and the mailbox, across the lawn on the other side, swerving to miss our giant pine tree, rolling over (yes.  ROLLING OVER) and landing in front of my neighbor’s house across the street facing the opposite direction.

As far as I know, the driver is ok.  Thank goodness.  She was able to walk to the ambulance.  The policemen did pull more than one bottle of alcohol from the vehicle so that does explain her impaired judgement somewhat.

Our poor traumatized children.  It’s just now occurring to me that J probably saw the crash.  And L is afraid to go to sleep.  She wrote an account of what happened (maybe I should start a blog for her?) and created a sign for her window warning others to watch out for broken glass on the lawn.

So anyway, God, we probably won’t be making it to the 7:30 service.   But I did want to thank you for watching over my family, the driver and my neighbors.  This accident could have been so much worse than it was.  If my sister had parked in the driveway.  Or if the driver had swerved into the giant tree.

Thank goodness the damage is just a little sod that can be regrown.

Yours truly,

Nicole

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Most super awesome week ever – Part 2

Helping Mama.

So Tuesday morning rolls around and still we have no power.  We actually lucked out in terms of damage but there was (and is still) a lot of clean up to do.  Taking the children aside, we talked about how when things like this happen, we come together as a family to help make our yard right again.  Got the kids on board and we cleaned up the driveway.  In fact, it was pretty cute.  We have a neat gaggle of children on our block, ages 3ish to 11ish, and they were all at each others’ houses helping with the pick up.  So, when we were done with the driveway, I let the kids go play in the basement.

Here’s where my day starts to droop.

We have one of those ancient bouncy horses in our basement and apparently the kids decided to see if they could exceed the maximum load.  Of course the horse fell over and the kids bonked their heads, but they seemed ok to me, so I finished my conversation with a neighbor and about 15 to 20 minutes later I went to check on them.  Couldn’t find the girl.  I asked her friend where she was and he told me she had gone to bed.  Mama Spidey Sense is starting to tingle now, so I wake her up and she is still crying about how much her head hurts.

So let’s take a reality check here.

1.  Tired kid after hitting head.

2.  Mom on medication who can’t drive.

3.  No power.

After checking with my friend the PA in GA (heehee) who is quickly becoming my medical interpreter, the decision is made to go to the hospital.

Luckily the grandparents were home and one took the boy while the other took the girl and I to the hospital.  L barfs in Grandma’s car.  Mama Spidey Sense is now smashing me over the head with a frying pan.  And I get to hold a barfy towel for the rest of the trip.  We made it to the ER without further incident and took L inside to get checked out.  They got us right in but there was a really long wait for the CT.  (Cat spelled CT not CAT, L likes to tell people when she tells the story.)   The nurses and doctors had L retell the story of how she hit her head a bazillion times and I will say it’s very scary when your 6 year old who usually knows her birthday cold has to be prompted.  The first tellings of the story were very confused, probably sounding a lot like I did last year on chemo.  Much too freaky.

Towards the end, after the CT, she began to perk up and start speaking her little college professor English again.  The last time she told The Story, it started off like this, “Apparently, you’re not supposed to put 3 people on a bouncy horse…”  (Apparently, she has heard her mother use the word “apparently” a  few too many times…)   The other thing that made me laugh was her insistence that the room smelled like barf.  No YOU smell like barf darling.  Because you barfed.  She just couldn’t be convinced that was what it was.

We made it home and their daddy called to see how we were and whether I was still going to Planina.

Heck ya, I’m going to Planina.  Are you kidding?

Oh, and bring some McDonalds please.

Shouldn’t we be eating out of the…

MCDONALDS PLEASE

I had pie for dinner before rehearsal.  I’m such the picture of health.  Grins.

To Be Continued

Been a little AWOL

I think I spent most of the past 7 days in the car driving back and forth from Parker. But can you blame me? Isn’t she the sweetest? My new niece (whose blanket is still in the works. Maybe I’ll get it done by her 1st birthday.) I had to laugh that it didn’t even occur to L to ask to hold the baby. She’s not exactly the most maternal kid. But then neither was I and now look at me. We used to tell this great story about L right before J was born when she was really into her baby dolls. She would lovingly wrap her baby in a blanket, give a sweet kiss, and then roll it down the stairs. Actually she was and is a very cute and helpful big sister. Except when J is in her stuff. I actually caught her TEACHING him how to make a mess the other day. J is actually quite neat for a toddler and likes to put things back and here she is showing him how to throw cereal in the air. The last picture is of some yellow roses I found while mowing the lawn today. We didn’t plant any, but I did get some as a gift once and my brown thumb and I left it outside for dead a while back. Apparently the seeds moved on. Maybe they’ll kill all the dandelions. We have raspberry bushes in the front yard that migrated in a similar fashion after we removed them from the backyard. I like to call our landscaping “Chaos Gardening”.