weekend lookback, the 4th of july

Row 1: Nightfall, waiting on Arthur | Arthur's impact | Arthur moves out; Row 2: How I spent my 4th of Jul | medicinal | clear skies ahead | Row 3: All hands on deck | Breakfast at Wimbledon | summer on a plate

Why yes, we did spend the 4th of July at the ER, thanks for asking! Oh, Neel. really, it's nothing big to report. First let me tell you about Hurricane Arthur. Now there's the real story.

I kid.

It did slam just south of us as a Hurricane 2, but somehow the track and speed of this one made the impacts minimal, unless you count the tornado sirens going off in the middle of the night. Now that as much as Neel's hand was the big talk of our neighborhood BBQ.

"Did you hear the sirens last night?"
"Yeah! We grabbed the cat and the kid and headed straight for the laundry room. Did you?"
(Gleefully) "Slept right through them!"

I heard them. Apparently I'm in charge when it comes to weather. First my phone went off. I usually keep it downstairs at night but because of the storm, I'd brought it up to our room. Neel had to tell me, "Your phone's going off." I looked, it said tornado warning, and I laughed, saying, "This is why I brought it upstairs!" (My system worked!) Then I went back to bed.

A few minutes later, around 1:30 AM, the sirens went off, a loud, low siren rising to a deep crescendo that was accompanied by an alarming Big Brother-esque voice. "[Garbled}... Take shelter immediately." This was more concerning. The sirens come from the university a few blocks away, and if they're going off... Well, what do they know that I don't know? So I stumbled down stairs and all was quiet. Really, really still except for birds singing. At 1:30 AM?

You know what Cal said to me when I finally decided to get him and Neel up and have them come downstairs? What he says every morning when it's time to get up. "I'll be there in a minute."

All our drama came the next day. And it wasn't that dramatic, really. You may remember from Instagram pictures way back the toilet on my back deck. It's been there so long, we should have planted flowers in it. Or gotten a fish. Really, Neel's just been waiting for room in the trash bin to throw it out, and that day came on Friday. While I was in the shower. I come into our bedroom to find him wrestling the thing to the ground, trying to the tank off. He gets a funny look on his face, almost like he's forgotten something and comes into the house. "I cut myself."

Knowing we'll need to staunch some blood, I look down at the fluffy white towel that I'm currently wrapped in. "Is it bad?"
"Pretty bad."
"Emergency Room bad?"
"Um... yeah." 

The porcelain had shattered as he'd tried to pull the tank off the base and it sliced his hand. Many of you have met Neel and many of you have heard the story about how I heard him laugh before I ever laid eyes on him. He's hard to rattle. He's laid back and easy going. So when he says it's bad, I believe him, but he never acts like it's bad. We clearly need something to wrap his hand, and I have the presence of mind not to use my fluffy white towel and grab some old wash cloths. (The towel goes around my sopping wet hair.) We pull on clothes, we lock up the dogs, and I call Cal who is across the street at his friends' house.

As we try to sneak out the door with Neel's hand wrapped in a towel, Cal's friends' dad (Who is Italian. And a soccer coach.) meets us in the street, his head in his hands. "NEEL! WHAT HAPPENED!"

It's really quite sweet. And loud. But more touching than anything.

But really? The whole thing was super easy and we were in and out super fast. (We were early enough to beat the drunks and the fireworks, I guess.) They worried about bone and tendon damage, but it looks like all the problems seem minimal. His blood pressure was pretty high when he got there and the nurses asked, is there a reason why it would be this high? Neel's answer? "I'm freaking out."

They were stunned. You're so happy, they told him! Yeah, that's Neel.

We sat around for the rest of the weekend. He tried to do to much, and I got irritated (I'm generally less happy, it seems.), but all in all he's healing nicely.

The toilet still sits on my back balcony. He calls it his Everest.

weekend recap, october 21

1. autumn sunrise | 2. studio hound | 3. silhouette | 4. fall bouquet | 5. studio work | 6. fall ball | 7. local hangout | 8. nighttime walk | 9. Emergency! | 10. surprise selfie | 11. bay day | 12. sunday sunshine 

Well hello there Monday, how did you get here so soon? Cal's home sick today, so we're snuggled up on the sofa. I have work to do, and at some point the dogs are going to need to wake up, but right now a snuggle feels good. 

So, I feel like this was a weekend full of stories. They aren't always like that. Sometimes weekends drift from moment to moment, threaded together only by the shift in schedule. This weekend was a lot like that, but peppered with these little vignettes too. And the last thing you want to hear about is my weekend, but! I'm a-gonna-tell you anyway. Smile. 

We had Cal's baseball game on Saturday. It was our first cool game of the year, and the low skies threatened rain all day. As the kids were warming up, a woman came up to me and asked if I had any painkillers. Hello. I always have painkillers. As I dug in the bottom of my bag for some Excedrin and turned around to find the man who would be our home-plate umpire waiting for it. These umps are great men. They give up their Saturdays because they love the game, and during the fall (which is the instructional season for Little League) they spend a lot of time teaching as well as umping.

So after I handed over the pills, he asked what my son's name was, and he went into the dugout and said, "Cal, anybody slides into 3rd is automatically out (Cal plays 3rd base), and you're always safe at first, all right?"  

Cal's first hit was an infield blooper, so he was thrown out at first to end the 1st inning, but when the other ump called him out, our guy says, "Wait! That's Cal! You're not supposed to call him out!" The first base ump totally plays along, saying "You have to tell me these things!" and the woman who came to me for the meds comes stomping up saying, "Who called Cal out? He's supposed to be safe!" 

This goes on the whole game. After Cal makes a routine catch, the ump yells, "Great play, baby!" The ball bounces up and hits his hand, and the ump calls time, saying, "Cal's hurt!" When Cal went up to pitch, the umpire says, "Take your time warming up. Just tell me when you're ready." At one point, the coach from the other team calls, "Favoritism! " and our ump says, "YOUR wife had the opportunity to give me some medicine and she didn't have any, so watch it!"

We didn't win, but we kept it close (this is new), and each week these kids get better and play better. Saturday was fun.  

We drove some boys to a Haunted Bat Mitzvah (how cool is that?) Saturday night, and that was pretty cool. Since Neel and I were doing both pick up and drop off we stayed down at the beach for dinner.  As we were on the road on the way back to get the boys, we saw a pretty gnarly accident happen right in front of us. It's funny how so many simultaneous things can happen at once. I noticed that we passed the place where we were getting the boys and that it seemed to get really misty all of the sudden, and right then, Neel said, "Are those fireworks?"

They weren't fireworks. Some young man had swerved to miss a car, his truck spun out in the misty, muddy road and hit a light pole, completely shredding it. Those were the fireworks Neel saw. The light pole was across the road in front of us. Cars were stopped left and right. Neel stopped our car (we were one vehicle back from the accident, but we couldn't really see a thing) and ran to help, telling me to call 911.

I dialed 911 and got a recorded message saying, "All our representatives are busy at this time, DO NOT HANG UP." 

How crazytown is that? It only took a minute, maybe less, for someone to answer, and I was on the phone with them when the first police arrived. I guess the delay wasn't that big of a deal (and likely caused by other people calling in on the same accident), but still. Totally unexpected to be put on hold with 911. After I got off the phone and moved our car out of the way, I saw that the guy's truck was teetering in a ditch beside the road. It was a moment of near misses. A bicyclist was riding along the sidewalk and could have been hit. The back of the truck was shredded, and if that guy had hit it head on, he would have likely been killed. As it was, he was unhurt, but badly shaken. Neel stayed with him and kept him calm until the police got there and took care of things.  

Thank goodness Sunday was quiet!  

And now Callum is sound asleep next to me, making me think it was likely a good idea to keep him home today.