Crash! Bang! Boom!

That's what the back of Guthrie's head looks like right now. He has 4 staples in his scalp. Yes, they were put there intentionally. Oh, yes, we paid good money to have a doctor put staples in our son's head.

Yesterday started off normally enough. The house is total chaos, and really has been for weeks, with the girls visits and then the hurricane, so we decided our mission was to get things under control. And to start with the kitchen. And so, we spent hours cleaning the kitchen, and if you looked at it right now, you couldn't tell.

Okay, back up: Late Saturday night I got a call from my almost 17-year-old niece asking me if she should go to the Emergency Room for her injured wrist. Not quite sure how she injured it, but something about a ledge and her cat. She didn't have her insurance card, couldn't get ahold of her grandparents, and so she called me, thousand miles away that I am. And I didn't know what to tell her, so I spent the night worried sick about my poor injured niece.

Ah, yes, the kitchen. And the boys acting insane because we were ignoring them so we could give them a clean house, a hot meal, a nice home. Fighting, tantrums, the normal for 2- and 4-yo boys.

I napped with Turner. Things felt hectic but okay. I was scrubbing fingerprints off wallpaper when I realized it was about 5 o'clock, time to call Samantha.

She answers, says she's home alone, and that it's stormy. I was at the computer anyway, so I pulled up the weather channel for where she is, and - TORNADO WARNING!!! Anyone who knows me knows I HATE tornadoes, and Samantha freaked out (just a little bit) too. Home alone, going to the basement, sirens going off.

While I'm on the phone, Eric's making dinner, and I hear Turner cry. Eric says Turner broke his piggy bank. (This bank - it's a bear holding a honey pot, and I think actually belongs to Rosalind - has become Turner's "lovey" lately. He calls it "Puppy." It's hard and not cuddly, big and unweildy, but Turner insists on sleeping with him.) Fortunately, it was a pretty clean break and fixable, but Turner was pretty upset. He kept kissing it, holding both pieces, and saying, "I sorry," over and over again.

I'm still talking Samantha through the tornado warning. Asking her when her dad will get home, trying to find local (for her) news stations to see what they are saying. And then -

BANG!

Guthrie was playing on the exercise tower I got for my birthday. He was hanging by his legs off the bottom bar, swung backwards, and BOOM! cracked his head on ... something. I'm not sure if it was the bottom bar of the tower or a wooden block on the floor. He screamed and cried, but, you know, little boys bang their heads all the time, so I was still on the phone with Samantha, Eric was still trying to make dinner and comfort Turner with the broken "Puppy." Guthrie climbed into my lap, and then we found the blood.

Oh, the blood.

I've never before seen that much blood come from one of my children, and I hope to never see it again.

I told Samantha I had to go, slipped on my shoes, and we took off for the ER. Eric was in a panic. There was SO. MUCH. BLOOD. We had a wet towel on Guthrie's head, but by the time we got to the ER I had blood all over me (and my purse and my cell phone), and Guthrie's hair was pink. He was crying, more in fear than pain. Eric's crazy driving there and his sense of panic probably didn't help much.

And then, 5 hours later, we left the ER, Guthrie with 4 staples in his head. Yes, staples. The doctor (she was really, really awesome, and really helped keep Guthrie calm through it all) said staples are better than stitches because they are much faster. Guthrie thought it was all awful, and I'm not sure how much the topical painkiller did to ease the pain of his head BEING STAPLED. And the thought of taking those staples out of my son's head? Not looking forward to Friday when he gets them removed.

Today, things are more normal. We didn't get much sleep. Eric fixed "Puppy," and Turner was distraught he couldn't sleep with him, but Puppy sat right next to Turner on the bed, and that's how he fell asleep. Samantha survived the tornado warning without any problems. Stacia, my niece, has some kind of fracture in her wrist and can't work for a week.

It was after 10 p.m. when we got home from the hospital last night, so too late for any treat. But today, to make up for the horrible owies Guthrie had to endure, the decapitated piggy-bear-puppy bank, and the general chaos of the day, I did what needed to be done: We went to Cold Stone. YUM!

And how was your Sunday?

We survived the crash

The computer crash, that is.

Saturday afternoon, after returning from getting our pumpkin, and as just a part of the insane and nearly catastrophic weekend we had, my computer crashed. Guthrie hit the surge protector button, I turned everything back on, then he did it again, and once again I was trying to get everything started, when bam, nothing, crash boom bang.

And I had just been talking to two different people who had had computer crashes recently, and thinking I do a pretty good job of backing everything up. Except, when the computer crashed, I realized I hadn't backed things up in at least a week, a week in which we had taken 500+ really awesome pictures. And Eric and I had a little miscommunication, where each of us thought the other was backing up his e-mail, so it wasn't getting done at all. it wasn't as big a fight as it could have been.

The good news? We were able to salvage all the pictures (it was only a few hundred that weren't already on the external hard drive), Eric's e-mail is all there, and the computer is now fine, and just like new. Well, that's part of the bad news. Now I have to reinstall all my programs, add back all the files, and get everything figured out again.

The really bad news is that I lost my e-mail. Yes, all of it. My address book, my messages. Everything.

I'll recover. This happened once before. I am learning to back things up even more often.

In the meantime, send me an e-mail so I can have your address again, and if I haven't gotten back to you, this is why.

Proud!

First, excuse my absence. I smashed most of the fingers of my left hand into our garage door about a week ago (don't ask - my clumsiness will be my demise, I'm sure), and although nothing was broken or otherwise seriously damaged (at least I don't think - I didn't actually go to the doctor or anything) my left middle finger is still in some serious pain, still hasn't regained all the feeling, and is just now starting to develop a pretty serious bruise under the nail. So, typing hasn't exactly been easy, or fun.

BUT ---

I talked to my mom earlier today. My mom is ... okay, I won't reveal her age here. (She says she's 19, again, on every birthday.) She has never, once, in her life, flown in an airplane, anywhere. She has, as many people do (myself included) a fear of flying. We've talked about it in the past, and she has given her excuses, but shown not much real desire to overcome this fear.

A week or so ago, I talked to her on the phone, and invited her here, to visit us, for Christmas this year. The thought of traveling to Missouri with the boys, the hassle, the cost, not spending Christmas in our own home (again) just seemed so ... not fun ... to me, and I thought she and Samantha could come here, to Texas. I even looked up the Amtrak schedules to see how it would all work.

Well, today on the phone, she said that she is thinking about coming, and thinking about FLYING!!!!!!!!!

I cannot properly express here, on the internet, for anyone in the world (or, okay, the 6 people who occasionally read me, LOL) to see, how terribly proud I am of my mother for taking the first steps to conquer what has been, for her, a lifetime fear. Truly, fear of flying is nothing to be ashamed of (John Madden anyone?), but taking steps to overcome a fear is a huge accomplishment, and I am so so proud of my mom for even considering it. Whether she does it or not, she rocks for trying! Yea!!!

And come on, everyone, all 6 of you, give my mom a little encouragement. Missouri is cold and snowy and icy and cold and ... COLD at Christmastime. She could fly down here, spend a couple days in San Antonio, and then spend Christmas, not slaving over a hot stove cooking a huge feast, but on the BEACH on SOUTH PADRE ISLAND (or Corpus Christi - we love Corpus too) eating perfectly yummy junk food and being WARM and on the BEACH. Hmmm, someone really has to think about this?

Oooowwww!!! Ouch! Pain!!!

I seem to have, to the best I can figure out, an ingrown toenail. A while back (can't remember how long - weeks, maybe a couple months) I injured my toe (somehow, I really do this all the time) and broke off part of the top layer of the nail. Didn't seem like a terribly big deal at the time. Now, however, OH MY FREAKING GOODNESS it hurts.

Started this morning, but wasn't too bad. Got steadily worse, and both boys managed to step, sit or otherwise bump it multiple times today. I've read home treatments (soak in warm water, then try to pull the nail back from the skin), and am trying them. Also just took some ibuprofen. But I just now, sitting at my desk, barely bumped the toe against a book sitting by my desk, and AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH! It was all I could do not to scream out like a baby. The pain is currently shooting all the way from my toe up to the middle of my thigh.

I feel like a total wuss. I usually have a fairly high tolerance for pain, too - 3 unmedicated childbirths included - so being this crippled by a freakin' toenail is unsettling, to say the least. Add in the fact that Turner somehow injured my right nipple last night, and then he woke up at 5:15 in the morning, and I'm having a cranky day.

Any home remedies would be greatly appreciated, as would heavy painkillers.