The bigger they are...

Yesterday, I had was granted a rare opportunity.  I got to experience what it feels like to be a cartoon klutz.  I got to feel the unparalleled experience of being parallel to the ground, with only air under my body.  It was like briefly skydiving, but without as much altitude.

This is a position you've seen Fred Flintstone in countless times.  Wile E. Coyote assumes this pose at least once per "Road Runner" episode. But yesterday, I was the unwitting doofus and a slick piece of ice was the stand-in for the obligatory banana peel ("exhibiting a strength and unflappability rarely hinted at by banana peels in this role," Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times). 

Has this ever happened to you?  First you are upright, legs securely supporting your torso, and the next second you are laying prone in midair, looking forward at your snow boots, toes pointing skyward.  Time stops, you have a second to hope for levitation; the next second you realize that this is going to hurt, and then boom! gravity remembers you and reunites you with the icy driveway, posterior cranium first. 

To add to my confusion, I spilled the drink I was holding, which is my new favorite concoction, fruit punch Crystal Light with a splash of diet Dr. Pepper.  So while gentle canaries circled my head, I looked around and saw, not my spilled drink, but lots of uncharacteristically pink and bubbly blood fizzing all over me and and running in freezing rivulets down the driveway. I may have yelped as I scrambled to my feet.  (Thankfully, there was no real blood.)

Classic disorientation had kicked in within seconds of my landing.  And then a few seconds later, everything goes blank.    Oh, I was standing, talking, walking, going on about my business, but I have no memory of this time.  My best guess is that I lost about 10 minutes in this state.  Evidently I had an incoherent phone conversation which fortunately led to more phone calls, summoning my neighbor the nurse, and my husband.  I don't remember any of these goings-on.


My memory resumes with me sitting on a chair, crying to my nurse/neighbor/dear friend, trying to remember how she and I got to yet another neighbor's house.  The next few minutes are still blurry, but everything came into sharp focus when we stepped outside, where it was 20-something degrees.  It was quite bracing, and just what I needed to wake up my brain.


By the time Eric arrived, I was pretty well restored to normal functioning, which wasn't all that reassuring to him.  I protested about a trip to the ER, since I could walk and talk and openly confirmed I'm not really married to Colin Firth in another dimension (please don't tell Colin I said that).  But my Eagle Scout, son-of-a-nurse husband wasn't about to rush all the way home from work early and not have a hospital bill to show for it, so off we went to the ER.

Let me say that St. Joe hospital (whatever the formal title), is a beautiful, efficient, brand-new facility and they processed me with no waiting.  Everyone was unfailingly nice, young and clean.  The admitting nurse was more like a restaurant hostess, politely ushering me to my table and assuring me that the waitress, er, doctor, would be right with me.  And he was.  And even though he was very young, he was at least seasoned enough to play along during the exam so that Eric got to work in several wisecracks about the contents of my skull.


So the outcome is that I'm fine.  Extremely lucky, extremely blessed and apparently, extremely hard-headed.  I have some thank-you notes to write, because I am surrounded by awesome, caring people who look out for me. I'm utterly humbled by the concern expressed by everyone who saw the facebook postings, and count you all as individual blessings in my life.


After fielding inquiries into how I'm feeling today, I came up with this scale of relative debilitation.  On a scale where 1 represents a mild hangover and 5 represents giving birth without anesthesia, I'm feeling about 2.  I can do most anything, but I don't feel like doing anything.  Blizzard or no blizzard, I'm not shoveling snow this morning.  But I did make Eric's lunch as usual, so I still get to be a martyr about that.


Fortunately, the offending sheet of ice is predicted to end up smothered by a foot or more of snow by tomorrow.  Serves him right.  I'll be doing what I usually do when the weather outside is frightful:  I'll be watching movies while I iron, mend, cook, do crafts or all (or none) of the above.  Just another enviable day in the life of an glamorous housewife. 



But for just one moment, I was the star of my own cartoon.  And that one moment was quite enough, thank you.

Happy Monday to all, and to all a good week

Let me just begin by saying that I have two equally wonderful daughters.  If anyone had ever told me that I'd like my own children so well, I wouldn't have believed them.  Your children are supposed to be a constant trial of your patience, and your most cherished dream is alleged to be attaining the empty nest years - right?

Well, I don't feel that way.  At least not yet.  And realizing I'm lucky, and realizing it could change any day, and realizing I'm probably jinxing myself by even saying this, I'll still say right here in front of God and everybody that I like my girls almost as much as I love them.  And I'm not playing favorites, but today I'm only writing about one of them.

That said, my younger daughter, Camille, gave me a lovely start to my day.  She didn't know it, but that doesn't matter, because it's Monday and that usually means headless chickens tripping over each other in the kitchen from 6:00 - 8:30am.  But not today.

I should back up a bit and explain that Camille is a musician.  She plays piano and bassoon, and is quite accomplished at both.  I was what you would call musical as a young person - I played in the band, sang in the church choir, dabbled at piano - but in spite of the fact that I had a little talent, I didn't work at it or value it like I should have.  I don't refer to Camille as "musical," I call her a musician because she takes her instruments seriously.  Whether in a group or as a soloist, she owns her effort, her talent, and her accolades.  When she isn't pleased with her results, she doesn't blame anyone else.  I think that's impressive for a girl of thirteen.

 

Most mornings, Camille only has a few minutes to spare (she is a slow mover upon waking, but that's fun dirt for another blog when I'm annoyed at her).  If she has a few minutes to spare, she usually turns on the TV to watch one of her archived episodes of "Dancing with the Stars."  I despise television in the morning, but I can usually ignore ten or fifteen minutes of Tom Bergeron and the most dramatic panel of dance judges in world history if the volume is turned low enough.  But today, she decided instead to practice her new piano piece:

and it was so lovely.  I'm amazed that a child raised by me could attempt something so delicate and emotive.  I don't know how she broke the genetic bonds of uncoordination to play so well.

I began my Monday to the soothing sounds of my daughter tinkling the ivories with her usual care and seriousness.  Add a cup of coffee and a furball warming my feet, and I was in heaven.  So here I sit, writing about my lovely morning, and there goes Camille:

waiting for the bus in the rain, with a fifteen pound backpack strapped on, and a bassoon to wrestle onto the bus and under the seat for the half-hour ride to school.

So the next time I start to wallow in the attitude of the unappreciated mother who does everything so my kids can have it easy, someone please remind me to look back at this entry.  My kids have it good, there's no denying that, but they don't have it easy.  And Camille demands more of herself than we demand of her.  So I should just thank God that I have her in my life, and that she'll be living with us for at least a few more years.

Thank you, Camille, for a lovely start to Thanksgiving week.