The Finger

I am not on speaking terms with my garage right now. On Saturday evening, I ran outside in my yoga capris, t-shirt, and "flop-flops" to move my car into the garage. It was in the driveway because I'd been out and about with the kids and had six gallons of paint in the trunk and didn't really want to haul them any further than necessary. It was about 45 degrees and, by the time I'd hustled to the garage to manually open the door, gotten into the car, started it, and parked it in said garage, my fingertips were more than a little cold and I had to pee. I hopped out of the car, locked it, and started to pull down the garage door.

It isn't a heavy door. It isn't an unusual door. It's your standard, run-of-the-mill garage door without an electric opener. I gave it a small tug with my right hand, my left one reached out to steady the door so that it didn't slam down.

And then it happened.

My fingers got stuck in between the panels of the door. Since they were cold, the intense burning as they were pinched between the door panels felt like fire. I yelped, tried to yank them out, then quickly reversed the direction of the door, sending it flying back up into the garage. Stunned, I pulled the door back down while looking at my throbbing fingers.

Like all pain, the throbbing was only a warning for the actual pain, which hit me as I scurried back towards the house, now crying. I get inside and look at the fingers. They are red, red, red and have what looks like peeled skin over the pads -- like I've tried to debride my fingerprints away. There is no blood yet, but I am certain that it will come.

I stumble through the house, past the kids. Milo tattles on his sister, saying, "Mom! Violet's eating Play-Doh!"

Gulping inbetween sobs, I manage to command, "V-v-v-violet! D-d-d-don't eat P-p-p-play-Doooooh!"

Bewildered, Milo looks at me. "Mom, it's just Play-Doh, don't cry over Play-Doh!"

"I'm not," I say. "Mommy, hurt her f-f-f-fingers very badly."

Both kids are stunned and silent. Violet stops eating the Play-Doh and I continue through the minefield of toys to my bathroom, where I turn the tap on hot and jam my fingers under the running water. I think, "If I can warm them up, maybe the nerves will stop jangling and I can figure out how injured I actually am..."

To my surprise, what I thought was layers of my scraped off skin washes away. Apparently, the joints in a garage door in the country get pretty dirty. If you get something stuck in there, the dirt comes away with whatever you've tried to smash.

The water trick is working and the pain goes from four-alarm to alarm clock. They still throb, but I'm no longer concerned that I'm going to pass out or need to drive to an ER to have my fingertips reattached. I sigh and relax. Actually, I was unaware that I needed to relax, but as I sighed, my shoulders stopped being my earmuffs and my back grew three inches. I'm going to make it.

I dry my hand and wipe my tears and rejoin the kids, where I confiscate the Play-Doh from Violet and ask her if she'd rather have some food, like string cheese. She decides that dairy will taste better than toy and agrees to a swap.

Two days later and my fingers are still sensitive, but I am able to use them. For all of that pain, they aren't even bruised under the nail, so I don't think I'm going to lose the fingernails, either. I have been extra careful while maneuvering the car into and out of the garage, lest the beast decide to try and take more than my fingertips.

I do think that the fleeting, yet consuming, pain I felt for those few minutes allowed me an emotional release that I've been needing -- it actually felt good to cry for a few minutes. The pain left me focused entirely on myself for a few minutes, activated some adrenaline and endorphins, and snapped me mostly out of the funk I've been in lately. It takes something like this for me to remember that my body will always find a way to get me back to me, even if the reason it jumps to my defense is caused by my own clumsiness and inattention.

OK. Enough for now, typing is one of the activities that makes my fingers hurt :) Oh, and I've flipped my garage off the last dozen or so times I've looked at it. So there :P

Ring-a-Ding-Ding

First of all, let me start by saying that I am wearing the most adorable pair of black platform sandals ever. They are very comfortable and light and easy to walk in... normally... Yes, the heel is 3 1/2 inches tall, but the platform is 1 1/2 inches, so the heel height is only 2 inches. I was tap dancing in two-inch heels when I was 10, so this heel height is a height that I am very comfortable wearing.

Why do I need to justify my shoes? I need to explain why I shouldn't win the "Worst Mother of the Year" award. Or maybe I should win the "Klutziest Mother of the Year."

The day actually started quite nicely. I wasn't jostled from bed too early by the whines of a dog needing to go out and hadn't been awakened overnight by my lovely children, darling husband, or faithful hounds. Everyone woke in good moods and cooperated during the morning scramble -- this isn't something that I take for granted.

And then I got to the sitters. As per my usual routine, I opened Milo's door and unbuckled him from his car seat. He normally climbs out and shuts his door while I round the back of the car and unbuckle Violet. She's been in a very independent stage and this morning, she was insisted that she could buckle herself back into the seat. I gently explained that we were going to go inside to play at the sitter's and she relented, allowing me to slide her out of her seat.

Then I stepped back to close the car door and I realized that Milo had followed me around the car instead of climbing the porch steps and making his way to the door as he usually does. I knew this because as I stepped back from my car, I stepped onto his foot. Startled, I immediately shifted my weight back to the other foot and attempted to put the errant foot down a bit more behind me and not on his toes.

When I set my foot down, I don't know if I set it down in a divot or on a stick or what, but it didn't connect with the pavement the way I expected. For a moment, I held my balance, then my ankle wobbled and I rocked over the outside of my sandal. I fought to get my foot on solid ground, but lost the battle and tumbled to the unforgiving driveway. Violet, who had been on my hip, was dislodged during the impact and she sailed out of my grasp, landing with a thud on her diaper-padded bum.

The look of confusion on her little face compelled me to scramble back to my feet. Her eyes welled and she screamed in shock and, I think, pain. I scooped her up and held her close, but she continued to shriek. Worried, I made my way to the sitter's porch and into the house where I sat her down gently on the foyer steps and quickly combed her body for scrapes, cuts, bruises -- any indication that I had hurt her badly. I found nothing and she quieted in less than a minute, tears caught on her cheeks.

Thinking back, she likely only flew out of my arms as I connected with the cement, and though she traveled three feet away from me, she probably only went down eighteen inches or so. She didn't skid and I didn't sit on her, she didn't hit her head or try to catch herself with her hands, so I do believe that her bottom took most of the impact. But I still feel beyond terrible about it.

As for me? I was overwhelmed by adrenaline immediately after the fall and continued to be as I bid the now-calm children goodbye and returned home to change my clothes. I think that I might have bruised my left palm, but my ankle, knee, and back all seem fine. I can take a fall -- I've had enough practice in Aikido and figure skating to know that my fall was a "good" fall and that even though I'm fat and hit the deck hard, I rolled onto my back after impact and the motion dispersed a lot of the force with which I landed (and showed the neighborhood my undies). I get the physics of it. But I am still wrapped in guilt. I know that accidents happen and that no one was seriously -- or even minorly -- hurt.

I was so shaken by this, that after I returned home I stopped at the local grocery store. I dreamt last night that I was eating Ding Dongs and gave in to the craving this morning. It's fitting: a Ding Dong for a ding-dong... Yep, that's my prize for ringing my clock this morning.

p.s. I'm still wearing the shoes.

Hello 2009...

Well I started the new year off with a whimper. As in wanting to crawl back into bed. The kids had been sleeping in every morning all wee -- I didn't even see Milo on Tuesday before I went to work. But New Year's Day? Nope. Up at 6:30. Yay...

We've had a series of unusual mishaps lately -- now that we're on the other side of them, we can look back and appreciate the humor in the situations.

First: Scott was filling the dogs' water bowl thingy -- it's like an office water cooler, but sits on the ground with a dog bowl attached. It's pretty spiffy. Anyway, the kids and I were in the family room reading books and he started filling the water cooler in the kitchen, then turned on the tap in the bathroom for the kids' bath. He stepped into the family room as the tub was filling and we chatted a while, then he rounded up the kids to get them ready for the tub and I went into the kitchen on an errand which I have now forgotten. Well... the water cooler had filled up several minutes prior to me walking into the kitchen. Enough minutes prior that there were three inches of water standing on the floor by the sink.

I screamed a horror-movie scream and dashed to turn off the faucet, Scott quickly on my heels with a look of shock on his broad face. "Towels..." he stammered. I pointed to the basket of clean towels right behind him and we started sopping up the mess. Both kids tried to get in on the action and before I knew it, they had thrown every potholder, washcloth, and hand towel from my kitchen linen drawer onto the pile of seeping, wet bath towels, plus a sweater, some doll clothes and a mitten. This was the point where I insisted that bath time happen as normal, mostly to avert anything else going into the substantial pile of sogginess.

2. Scott left to work on the opera yesterday morning at about 7:30. The kids and I were happily ensconced on the couch, snuggling in the comfort of our big red blanket.

At 7:45 I decided to use the restroom. Violet followed close behind, then Milo skipped into the bathroom around her, bouncing from one foot to the other like an over-sized leprechaun. Thus the team sport of Mom is Pooping was born.

Violet quickly unspooled half of the roll of toilet paper before tearing off about three square inches, which she used to try and wipe my bum whilst I was re-rolling the rest of the toilet paper. Somehow, the babe actually connected with some of the poo, which she wiped onto my leg, pajamas, and bathrobe. Horrified, I snatched the offending and offensive tp from her hand (which was miraculously clean) and plopped her outside the bathroom, closing the door. In case you don't make it any further in the story, I did get her hands all washed the minute I was able to -- no gross baby hands, please...

Well, banishing the princess started her howling, which made my leprechaun all the more gleeful -- until I decided that pooping is really in an individual sport and deposited him outside the door as well. Then I locked the door. I did all of this from the seat of the throne, but the way.

As I really didn't have that much to finish up with, I was quickly off the pot, scrubbing my icky thigh, and changing clothes. Then I washed both kids' hands with mucho soapo and got us all the heck outta the outhouse.

3. Last night, at an informal gathering at my parents-in-law's home, Violet apparently auditioned for "Jackass" without my knowledge. While I was helping child #1 into his pajamas in Grandpa and Grandma's bedroom -- he's suddenly shy about changing clothes in front of people, as he should be -- Violet and her cousin Reece were playing with the plastic ride-on John Deer tractor.

According to eyewitnesses, my sister-in-law Sally shrieked and darted out of the room, yelling, "Reece! Stop!!" Reece was at the top of the stairs with the tractor. They say they saw Sally grab Reece and move her from the top of the stairs and the tractor tumble down. By this point, Scott's brother Eric (husband to Sally) was on the scene. Sally flew down the steps and those not close enough were puzzled at her response to "just a tractor" going down the steps. Unfortunately, no one but Reece, Sally and Eric knew that Violet was riding on the tractor that Reece was pushing.

Baby girl and tractor cartwheeled down the steps, landing on a similar pile of shoes which caught Milo about 20 months ago when he, on his own power, cartwheeled head over heels down the steps. Violet was instantly screaming, which I heard from the back bedroom, but assumed was because she didn't want Scott putting her pajamas on her. Nope... She was startled, confused and wanting a nipple to calm her. When Milo and I finally came out of the bedroom and the story was explained to me, it was already clear that Violet was fine, but Sally was not. Violet nursed for about three minutes -- long enough to gather herself together. She ran down the hall, back into the fracas without a second thought.

There was much chiding, mostly teasing Eric and Sally about Reece wanting to be the only girl again and getting there by offing our little Evil Knievel.

When you add to this the normal craziness of raising kids who have limitless imagination and sharp wits, it has been an interesting year already...