Run With The Fishes

As mentioned previously, when I need to focus on what I am doing, I pull my hair up. I have several pony tail bands, bobby pins, and round clippy things in my desk. I know what you’re thinking, I probably hardly ever need to use them. Har Har to you. Most of the time, I just grab one out and pull up my hair.

It’s not like I’m a fashionista and really give a darn about whether or not it looks fabulous. But dude, why does no one tell you when your hair looks like you fixed it in a very dark room with no mirrors?

I’m thinking of making some changes to this little space. Not that the layout isn’t great, it’s just slightly worn out. I may or may not also be upgrading version of the blogging software used. It all depends on how it goes on the test server. It won’t be immediate, but if things look a little wonky in the next few days, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

For a while, I was trying a new recipe about once a week. I didn’t always blog about it, but trust me, it happened. I want to get back into doing this and, like the Did They Eat It section of Suburban Bliss, keep track of reactions to the new concoctions. I have a horrible memory and maybe this will help me keep track of what we all like to eat and don’t.

Even though it’s kind of old news and has been done by so many people, I think it would be a fun experiment to try and take a photo every day for a year. Of course, by doing it this year, it will really be project 366 instead of 365. I think most people take self-portraits. That’s probably not going to happen. Since I have my pocket camera, I have no excuse to not snap some kind of picture throughout the day.

I’m looking forward to the new stuff already.

Let’s just get to the good stuff.

Presents from Santa were a Television for Nathan, Guitar Hero (for the PS2) for Zoey and a big girl bike for Allison. There were also loads of presents from all across the country.

I’m not sure how I feel about a television in a bedroom. We have one in our room, but, you know, we’re grown ups. There are some pluses, like, now while Nathan has friends over and they want to play the PS2, the rest of us are no longer sent to our room to watch shows. Satellite is not hooked up (and there is no reception for local channels) so there will be no unmonitored viewing going on. I guess we’ll see how it goes.

To make space for the television, we had to do some furniture rearranging. We convinced the kids that because the computer had been in Nathan’s room for two years, it was now time for it to move to the girls room. It was only fair. It must have made sense to them. They bought it without pressing us for details. I love how sometimes kids are unquestioning and gullible. I think it also helped smooth the jealousy that Nathan was getting a TV and they weren’t.

We thought we would build up the anticipation for the big present. Let them have no idea it was coming. Greg even went so far as to hide it behind a curtain (a little like a Red Rider BB Gun). The very first present the kids opened (after Santa gifts) was handed to them by my sister. It was a charging/docking station for some wii remotes.

We had a cover story though, for a few weeks we have been talking about how long it would take the kids to buy a Wii by saving up their allowance (6 months with allowance alone, if they combined, and 5 weeks if they counted Christmas money) and then how much longer it would take for them to get all of the accessories they would want to go with it. We just told them that other people knew they were starting to save up and thought they would help with some of the parts and pieces.

Eventually, Greg let the kids know that he thought there was one more present, somewhere near the tree. The search was on.

When Nathan is happy/excited about something, he doesn’t dance. He doesn’t jump up and down. You won’t find him shouting, “Yes!” with his fists pumping. Alright, sometimes he does. But when he is really, really, really excited, he acts like he doesn’t care. He just glances at whatever the object is, then turns and walks away, usually with one word said, “cool”. In lowercase. This is what happened yesterday.

I managed to get a picture of the smile on his face as he was walking away.

I hope your Christmas (or Tuesday if you don’t celebrate this holiday) was filled with cheer. Did you get the gift for which you hoped?

First things first, some much sought after pictures of Zoey in her cast.

As I was looking through some of the photos on my computer, I came across these that I had scanned in from my Mom. The year is 1981 (I can tell because that’s the year the Smurfs first appeared on TV). I’ve already put these notes over on flickr, but thought I’d just copy the thoughts here also.

Picture 1: I like to think I am thanking someone for the Barbie. Really it looks like I am saying something snotty, “I already have this one.”. My brother on the other hand, looks pretty pleased. I can’t tell if it was GI Joe or Hot Wheels.

Check out the tin foil on the antenna. We needed to see those Smurfs clearly!

Picture 2: Cowboy boots! Does anyone use tinsel anymore? What a mess that must have been for our parents to clean.

Did you know that Christmas is only 4 days away? How did this happen?

It’s not even the right kind of weather for it. It’s been in the upper 70’s all week. Shorts weather. Although, maybe I just need to get used to the fact that we now live in a place where it really only gets cold for about a week in February. Those two nights that the temperature dropped into the 30’s last week were a huge fluke.

I completely dropped the ball on Christmas cards. I bought them, but never actually: took a family picture to include, signed, or addressed any of them. Looks like I won’t have to pick any out for next year. We’re all set. If you were looking forward to receiving a card from us, sorry to dash your hopes.

Let’s not even really talk about presents. Sure, our kids are set. We have been receiving packages from far away relatives for the past few weeks. Allison expressed her worries this morning that we may have so many presents that Santa won’t visit.

We may have finished our shopping yesterday, but in all likelihood, there will be another trip to the big store for last minute items. I had big hopes of making fantastic presents for all of my nephews. Instead, I barely managed to find something and get it shipped out in time. Hopefully they will be delivered via the brown trucks by Christmas Eve. Thanks for working just for me, guys!

So, is it just me, or was Christmas entirely too sneaky this year? Please, tell me that I’m not the only one completely caught off guard.

That old saying, Always a bridesmaid never a bride? Were you a bride if you didn’t have a wedding ceremony and visited the judge?

As previously mentioned, last weekend Allison and I were both members of a wedding party. Since this wasn’t her first time, Allison was excited about meeting some new flower girl friends showing them just what to do.

The tiny little country church was decorated all Christmas-y with pretty trees and candles. The wedding went off without a hitch and contained mostly the same elements that all weddings do. It was short and sweet. The bride and groom looked happy and in love.

We have been trying to find a gift for the kids. We know exactly what it is. It’s the only gift all three of them really want this year. Many of their other presents are based off of this gift. It is just never in stock – anywhere. We have woken up at five in the morning to drive an hour and a half away to stand in a line that some crazy people must have camped out in the night before to be one of the first twenty. We have people in three states keeping an eye out for us. I’m sure stores are getting sick of people like me calling every day to see if they have received any shipments of this gift.

Yesterday afternoon, I decided to call all of the stores in our region to see if they could tell me when they expected the latest batch to arrive. As fate would have it, Best Buy had, at that very minute, received a truck. We knew that there was no chance one would be left in an hour and Best Buy could not hold one for us. Darn our luck, these things don’t even make it to the shelves. Someone Greg knows said they would drive over and get it for us, and walk around the store until he could get there to pay for the sucker.

It was like everything was coming together. We wouldn’t have to print a picture of the gift and wrap it up in a box with a note saying, “As soon as we find one, it’s yours”. It would have worked out perfectly, if Greg hadn’t gotten a call about five minutes after he left the house letting him know that they had just sold the last one to the lady right in front of his friend.

Looks like an empty box it is, unless Greg decides he really doesn’t mind waking up at four in the morning to wait in line on Sunday.

Last week Zoey was incredibly curious about what having a broken bone was like. First she asked me if I had ever broken a bone. I told her that I hadn’t, but that her dad had once broken both arms at the same time and she should ask him what it was like.

In a weird twist of fate, as soon as I walked into the yard after work on Thursday, Nathan ran out of the door and told me that Zoey was hurt and that I needed to come take a look at her arm. From the sounds of it, she was standing in one of the swings and slipped out, landing on her elbow. One look was all it took to see that we needed to visit the emergency room. Since we live in a very, very small town we had to make the decision to drive to a bigger city with a better hospital or see if our little ER could help. We decided to give our hospital a shot. Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20*.

Zoey had some X-rays taken of her arm. This was a nightmare. To get a good picture of the bones, they wanted her to straighten out her arm. Now, if you have broken your arm, either at or near the elbow, doesn’t it seem like it would be really hard/painful to straighten? It was, which impacted the events for the rest of our night dramatically.

One of the x-rays showed a small bone where it wasn’t supposed to be. It looked like a chip had started to shift around in her arm. That isn’t really a good thing and the ER doctor decided that she needed to see someone more qualified than him immediately. Fractured elbows that aren’t treated properly can hinder movement lifelong. It looked like she was going to need surgery. For the information he had, the doctor did a great job. He worked really hard to find a doctor that would see Zoey. For that I am extremely thankful. Most of them were unwilling to come in at night or something.

He asked us if we would be willing to send her to Ft. Worth to the Children’s Medical Center there (about 4 hours for us) and wanted to send her in an ambulance. While that sounded exciting, we opted out of the ambulance but not the trip. By then it was almost midnight. They put a splint on Zoey’s arm. We got all of the information about the doctor and the nurse we were supposed to see upon arrival then headed home to gather up the necessary items for our fast trip (made arrangements for LT, change of clothes and laptop) and began our drive.

When we lived in the DFW area, we took for granted the quick and efficient way we were taken care of on our few emergency room visits.The differences between our little hospital and a larger one were even more pronounced since we were coming directly from one to the other. We were quickly checked in and taken to our room. The doctor took one look at our small town x-rays and said the quality was pretty bad. After a fresh batch made on a machine from this decade, he apologized that we had driven so far for just a broken arm. After thinking that it was something major that could require surgery, we were grateful for it to be just a broken arm.

Now to find an orthopedist closer to home who will have room on their schedule the week before Christmas. Wish me luck.

Have you ever had a broken bone or a crazy trip to the emergency room?

*If we had gone to the other hospital in the slightly larger town, the chances are high that we would not have had to travel nearly as far.