Ouch!

This is the eye of my son after he had been stitched up at the hospital on Monday night. He suffered a bit of an injury at wrestling practice when he didn't scramble out of the way fast enough (note: my son does not scramble). He got a kick to the head which actually was straight on to his left eye (the good one). Thank GOD he was wearing his protective goggles like a good boy, although, ultimately, the goggles are what cut him. So, after a CAT scan and 6 manly stitches (he told the E/R doc he "got into a fight"), we headed home with a HUGE headache. I was trying to recall all of my sons head injuries, of which he has had a few and my mother reminded me of another one that I had forgotten:

1. Age 2 - sliding down a HUGE spiral slide (30 feet tall), head first, screaming the whole way down with daddy powerless at the top to help and mommy powerless at the bottom to help. Peaches banged his way face first down this thing. He ended up with a goose egg the size of a golfball right between his eyes and I seriously thought his brain had herniated out of his skull. This, along with a huge cast on his arm certainly made him look like a poster boy for child abuse.

2. Age 3 - playing baseball in the front yard he was the catcher and his friend the batter. Peaches got a little too close to the swinging bat and wham! Right in the face....blood everywhere.

3. Age 4 - Roller skating on our side walk, took a header into the front stoop, whamo - his two teeth came out right through his lip - horribly bloody.

4. Age 13 - assaulted at school and thrown head first into a locker....nice. (The kid who did it, a 16 year old was expelled from school and arrested - totally random attack).

5. Age 13 - clocked by a baseball to the side of the head (mom reminded me of this one).

6. Age 16 - kicked in the face while wrestling.

Nice, huh?

Oh, is that present for me?

This is the thought my mother had earlier today when she went out into her garage and found an exquisitely wrapped package just sitting next to the door. Hmmm.....how lovely, she must have thought. She excitedly brought it into the house and contemplated where it could have come from...I must have a secret Santa, she thought....For a moment she did pause to contemplate that it was a very LIGHT package, but she forged ahead with unwrapping it to see what was inside. Small presents can be just as exciting as bigger ones! She got it all unwrapped and was surprised and disappointed to find that it....was....empty! What the heck? mom wondered...why would someone leave a beautifully wrapped gift for me and then have nothing in it? Mom's brain whirled at the possibilities, trying to think of a good answer to this....nothing. Oh well....she shrugged, I can just use this to wrap a present for someone else. It just so happened, that she DID need to wrap a gift for a friend and this box was a perfect fit. So she put her present inside and carefully wrapped it all back up and put the gift in the car so she could drop it off to her friend later...

REWIND: Lulabell and I finally put the finishing touches on her fake gift that she needed for show choir. We got an empty shoebox and wrapped it in green shiny paper, with ribbons and bows and made it look as lovely as we could as it was a prop for her performance. I asked Stu if he would be kind enough to drop it off at my mother's house the next morning as she was kindly picking Lulabell up from school the next day to take her to show choir and I didn't want Lulabell to lug it to school and risk ruining all our lovely packaging. He agreed and that, I thought, was that.

FAST FORWARD: Mom arrives to pick up Lulabell and when she enters the car, she asks Grammy if she brought her gift with her and spies it in the back seat....whew, what a relief! Grammy is now confused and wonders how Lulabell knows about the gift...!?!?!?!? Finally, things start to click when Lulabell informs her that her daddy brought this to Grammy so she could give it to Lulabell for show choir practice. OMG! Grammy finally realizes that this was NOT a gift for her and figures out that in the next ten minutes, she has to get her chicken out of the box and they have to rewrap the box so Lulabell could take it to practice. ZOOOOOM they go to Walgreen's because obviously, in order to rewrap the gift, they will need tape and although Grammy has lots of stuff in her van for emergencies, tape is definitely not something she has just laying around in her van (too bad they didn't need Kleenex or dog biscuits). So, Grammy sends Lulabell into Walgreens for tape and Lulabell comes out triumphantly with a roll of tape. Unfortunately, it is not the invisible kind of tape she comes out with, it is tape with TO and FROM written all over it, which was not the look we were going for with our elegant and tastefully wrapped gift. However, there was no time to waste and they retaped the present as best they could, which was difficult as the TO and FROM tape just didn't stick as well as the invisible kind. By this time, grammy was quite worked up and trying to rewrap a gift, balancing it on the steering wheel with the dog jumping all around did not improve her mood, nor did the fact that they had exactly 38 seconds to make it to the school before Lulabell was late. They sailed out of Walgreen's, fighting the after school traffic but as they neared the school, grammy was quite frustrated to realize that the road to the school was blocked (as it always is at dismissal). Frantic now, because the show choir director takes a very dim view on latecomers, Grammy spies the entrance to the church next to the school and decides to take a detour into the church, but alas, church officials, having taken a very dim view on parents using their church for a school pick up place, have blocked the road through and grammy is stuck. Grammy decides then that the only choice left is for Lulabel to get out and hoof it the last half block to school and kicks the poor child out of the car with her present that is now decidedly worse for wear.

The moral of this story? Do not ask your husband to do any favors if you don't want your mother to kill him....Stu is toast.

What's new pussycat?

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, oh....or something like that I guess. (I'm channeling Tom Jones here). So much to say, it's late on Sunday nite, Thanksgiving is almost here (that's just crazy, isn't it?). Busy for our household to say the least. I'll try to get you updated here...

Peaches started his training this past week and I am happy to say that he seems to be keeping up with things...although boy, was he sore this week! The poor kid started the week off with a terrible cold just to make running more interesting, but I guess running was just the ticket because by Wednesday his cold was gone! He went to his first wrestling scrimmage to cheer on his teammates on Saturday, which he thought was cool...Keep your fingers crossed that things continue to go well there.

Lulabell is also doing well. She got a new pair of glasses and almost simultaneously got a new boyfriend! Weird how that worked....this is a kid who has been hanging out here this past summer and finally, over dinner the other night he asked her to be his girlfriend! She was kinda surprised and said "yes" before she even thought about it. He was thrilled and later asked me how I felt about kissing!?!?!?! I told him absolutely "NO!" He seemed down about that then perked up with "well, how about hugging?" I told him that was up to Lulabell but I didn't want him to rush things. About two days later, he called for her on the phone and when I asked who was calling (even though I knew it was him) he said, "tell her her BOYFRIEND called.....and that I love her) AWWWWW.....he really is a sweetie but definitely wears his heart on his sleeve and is a little needy, which is making Lulabell nervous. Two days ago he asked what my policy is on sleepovers! Now I'M NERVOUS! Again, I had to deflate his sails with a resounding "NO!" on the sleepover thing. His mom actually came over to meet me and to tell me how wonderful they think Lulabell is...and how thrilled that their son has picked such a lovely girl....(these kids are 11, you know!) Anyway, she couldn't have been nicer and did have such nice things to say...I told her that I loved her son as well (I do! He is a cutey-patootie) and that I hoped everything worked out well. Hmmmm, this should be interesting.

My mom has had a rough week health-wise. I mentioned in a previous post how she has not been feeling well recently. Well, we found she had some alarming results on her stress test and she had some blood tests which showed she may have an embolism. We hurried off for a CAT scan and luckily that was negative but it did show something else that was just as worrisome, some enlarged lymph nodes in her chest. This could mean anything from an infection to cancer, so we were freaked out a bit. Her doctor will do another CAT scan in January but he didn't think we should worry about the big C at this time....he also gave her some new medicine to help her breathing and she definitely has improved with this. So, catastrophe averted for the time being there. I'm still making her cook Thanksgiving!

My sister's haranguing finally got to me and Stu and I made a trip to Canton to see my ailing grandmother on Wednesday. Actually, it was nice just the two of us going somewhere and the visit turned out rather well. We brought her lunch from her favorite diner and she seemed to enjoy it very much. She was in the nursing home part of the retirement home and this has her understandably depressed as she cannot have her little dog with her (who is making a home with her groomer now). She looked okay, was a little thin but her mind seemed very clear. After visiting for about an hour or so, I could tell she was getting tired (although she did put away her vanilla milkshake like a trooper!) and so we started to say goodbye. Suddenly, she piped up with, "if I can get this ring off my finger, I'm going to give it to you". Well, this was a little shocking to me and I protested that of course she didn't have to give me her ring...but she insisted and finally got the ring off her finger (YAY). She told me that it had belonged to my grandfather's mother, that she had it made from a diamond broach she once had, back in the 1940's. Wow! It really is beautiful and I was stunned that she wanted to give it to me. She did though and I was pleased to accept her gift. I made sure to let the nursing staff know because I didn't want a hassle for them when she forgot that she gave it to me and began to accuse the staff of stealing it....So, all in all a nice visit and now I have something from my grandfather's family (remember my china?) and I am very pleased. When we got home I took it to my jeweler to have it sized (it was about 2 sizes too small) and to have it valued so we can insure it. My sister was very happy about it, saying that I deserved it after all I have gone through with her...I'm feeling good about it too.

Work has been going very well from home. My line counts have remained high and I qualified for our new incentive program, so the more I type, the more $ I get...woo-hoo! I need it too because it seems that financially I have fallen into some kind of shit hole which I don't understand because we don't have an extra car payment anymore....where does the money go? Man....I do not know.... So, I will be back to post some pics in a day or two...hope you and yours have a terrific holiday!

Fear not!

I have not abandoned you! You would not believe how busy things have been...here's a little taste:

I have been training on our new dictation system at work all week, on dayturn. This has been nice and while training did hit a few bumps, on Thursday I actually worked from home for the first time. Believe it or not, things went swimmingly and my line counts were awesome! Friday was terrific too and I am feeling good that this is really going to work out! Tonight is my first midnight shift at home and I am SO looking forward to just walking into my office and not having to get dressed and go out at night now....how nice will that be? Thank you to the powers-that-be who have made this happen...I am excited about my job again, can you imagine? Keep your fingers crossed that things continue to go well!

It's been so long since I last posted, I forget what I've posted and what I still have to tell you...hmmmm. Peaches is all ready to start wrestling, practice starts on the 17th. We got his hair cut and I shaved his beard off this weekend - he looks like a new man! He is really looking forward to this and I need everyone's good thoughts that things work out for him there. He was FINALLY able to pee for his urine testing (after 2 failed attempts - shy bladder). So we are just waiting for the doctor to fill out his physical forms and then we are off into the world of high school wrestling. I really don't see him wrestling competitively yet, just learning and working out for now - at least I hope! Lulabell is excited about her show choir but I don't have any info on when her concerts will be...more info to come I hope. Grammy has been laid low with a bad chest cold - it seems she gets one every year and tries to skedaddle to Florida each year before it hits, but this year it came early for her...I hear she is feeling better now though.

My nephew's football team lost the "Superbowl" a few weeks ago and I am sure my brother-in-law was devastated....they are sports crazy down there in South Florida....my nephews have apparently inherited my athletic gene though, which is nice! (Did you hear that roar coming from the south?).

By the way, here is Lulabell's very scary costume for Halloween ----- get ready!

Yikes, huh? She looks like that face you see when you are sent one of those seemingly benign pictures to look for the difference and then some hellion picture pops up complete with a screaming banshee to scare the bejeebers out of you...(make-up by mom).