"We will speak of this to no one"

*Hinrew already heard this story, so he's been forewarned. Any others of you who are squeamish when it comes to blood might want to sit this one out. Reader discretion is advised. Yes, again.*

Carrie sits in Health class as her teacher Mr. D. talks about "capillaries, arteries and stuff" and he decides to put on a video of Clint the hockey player who takes a blade of an ice skate to the neck. 

Obviously, Clint goes down, wide-eyed, there's blood all over the ice, and Carrie flashes back to the time she got the first three fingers on her right hand scissored in the Dutch doors at church. She had been leaning over the ledge of the lower door with her fingers hanging off the outside into the hallway when a friend unknowingly threw open the bottom half into the room and into her body. She tries to pivot back, and the bottom door would have slid nicely into the top door except she neglected to also move her hand. 

She describes the experience by using a karate reference. The owner of the karate academy instructs his tiniest students to be careful to use the bottom of their foot when kicking and not their toes because otherwise, "there are three sounds I will hear. *CRUNCH*, "ouch!", and "MOMMMMM!" That last one is the one that scares me most."

She almost passed out the sight of the 90 degree slices out of her fingers. She's cringing as I'm typing this from the muscle memory. 

Flash forward to the health room. Poor Clint has his hand to his neck (picture lots of blood) and collapses to his knees. A ref shoves his own fingers into the wound on Clint's neck and pinches the artery closed. (Clearly we don't pay refs enough.)  At this point in the video, Carrie closes her eyes, grabs the water bottle belonging to the ninth grade boy sitting beside her, remarks "I'm gonna take a sip, and I'm gonna pass out real quick. Be with you in a moment." 

She recounts that she *should* have leaned to the side where the bar connects the desk to the chair. Alas, stupidly, she leant left with her head down on her arms, closes her eyes again, and tries to not focus on the church flashback. 

She remembers blackness and then dreaming.

And then a fuzzy-edged Mr. D. kneeling beside her as she's on the floor, exclaiming in a voice that sounded away, "Carrie? Carrie?! Are you okay?!!"

Glaring at him, Carrie reads his lips and replies through gritted teeth, "you will speak of this to no one."

He grinned and remarked, "now we know who passes out!" Carrie restrains from punching him.

He instructs, "Mr. G (another student), go get the principal." Carrie muses to herself, from the floor, "what did I just say? Aren't you a health teacher, and you ask me if I was okay? I'm on the floor!"

The vice principal strolls in, does a double take at her white face and quips, "you are really pale. Do you want to walk with me to the office or do you want me to bring in the wheelchair?"

At this point, Carrie does a complete Carrie-ism which is hard to describe unless you've seen it. There's the eyes which squinched shut, a half shrug with palms wide open, shoulders up to her ears, mouth wide open with incredulity. It's hilarious to see in person.  "I'll walk."

She reaches for her backpack only to have him snatch it while soothing, "I'll take that." Rolling her eyes, she follows him out. Evvvvvveryone stares as they leave.

Arriving at the office, he installs her onto the nurse's bed in the middle of the hallway in the office. He instructs her to stay put and that he's not letting her do anything until color comes back into her face because, as the secretary noted, "you are as white as paper!"

"And then he just leaves me there!"

And doesn't come back. 

Eventually the bell rang, still no vice principal, Mr. D. comes back in and asks, "oh, you're still here? Did they allow you to leave?" 

She recounted what the principal had said. Mr. D. says he'll go find him and he leaves, too.

Carrie's ride starts texting her from the parking lot because they're supposed to head off to work, so Carrie texts replies and sums up the situation. 

Mr. D comes back in and says he thinks she can go. Carrie's ride is waving cheerfully from the front desk. As Carrie collects her backpack, the secretary again comments, "you were really white." 

Yes. Thank you. Got it.

Upon reaching work, one of her bosses asks, "where were you guys?"

"Oh. I just passed out last period."

*pause* He smacks his lips a time or two then declares, "that's a valid reason."

Then life continued on as the staff wrestled with erecting Halloween cobwebs, which, I'm told, is more difficult that it would seem to be. 

In all the kerfuffle, somehow Carrie's coat went MIA. She asked Mr. D. if he'd seen it and he hadn't. It could be in her friend's car or in a previous classroom... poof. 

Woohoo, buh bye.

If you're interested in the video, YouTube "Clint hockey accident" and she says it's probably the second one from the top. Also, don't show her any sympathy lest you get punched.

Life with Boys

Life with boys is often surprising. I never know what I'm going to find even in the most mundane of places. For example, while cleaning the kitchen, I found Dada's espresso maker lid hosting a foam bullet:

I turn around to attempt to put things back in the pantry where they belong and "the way is shut":

"Look Mama, he's hugging me!" 

I'm glad you're having a moment. Please get off of the floor.

***

Even right now, I am set up to blog in the guest bedroom where I foolishly hoped I'd be working in peace. I grabbed a mug of Elixir of Magic Beans, the camera, my phone, and the laptop, strode through a single filament of spiderweb (yes, the guest room was used just last weekend but our spiders are very industrious around here and have apparently set up shop again), plunked everything down on the table...

and have had Damon with me more than without me. He's having a meltdown because the iPad is in Carrie's room and she is still sleeping. He wants it because he won this:

How I can hear my Nana chuckling. It seemed she was always winning some door prize or another. If there was one single clothespin tucked under a chair at an event, that's the chair she'd be discovered sitting upon. If there was a lucky ticket number, that'd be the one she'd drawn. It was amazing as a kid to have a Nana who won just about everything.

And now I have That Kid. 

The Gizmo dog is part of the selection of prizes for the elementary school's fundraiser. He claims it's what he would have won had he sold 150 items. He sold six. 

After I drove to the school to pick up said six items, I received a text informing me that he'd won the raffle prize. Could I come pick it up or should they just send it home with him the following day?

Having just a tiny Inkling of Eventualities, I texted back that they could please send it home tomorrow and that it would make his day and thank you.

Did Gizmo the dog make it home safe? You bet. 

His backpack and lunch box remained on the bus.

The following day, yesterday, I sent this note in his lunch:

He did manage to bring home his report card, his lunch box, the original backpack he'd left on the bus.

The second backpack stayed on the bus. 

It's a long weekend because they're hosting conferences at school today.

Lest you think he's the only one, we have yet to see the middle schooler's report card because... well, Life With Boys.

Wednesday

Me: Did you bring your report card home?

Liam: No, I didn't get one. They were passing them out but it was bus time and I had to go.

Me: You mean you didn't get yours. Yours is specific to you, you can't just take any old report card home.

Liam: Right. 

Thursday

Me: Did your report card make it home?

Liam, staring at me like a deer in the headlights: It's in my binder.

Me: Can I see it, please?

Liam: It's at school. In my binder.

Me: Liam, it is a long weekend! We won't even get to see it until Monday?!

Liam: *blink*

Lest you think they are the only ones, I hate to burst your bubble. Miss Carrie is going without her winter coat all this long weekend because it is also at school, but that is a story for another post, believe me. 

She did, however, bring home a report card of straight A's! Your kid gets a part time job AND the best report card of her high school career thus far- who knew?! Good job!

Back to Gizmo. 

We had our conference with Damon's teacher last night and she laughed that he'd asked to take Gizmo out to recess the day he received it. She wisely told him that's not the best choice as it could get broken, and she laughed again when I informed her that Gizmo had made it home safely whereas his backpack did not. 

Of course he is over the moon about this newfangled contraption (sorry, I had to) and once he discovered that it comes with an app where you can feed the dog and tell it how to move, it was all over. Never mind that it already operates on voice command. Telling it to sit, play dead, roll over, go pee pee (and no, I'm not kidding, unfortunately), and whatever the command is for playing and dancing to the music is, no, none of those were enough. 

For two days he's pestered me to add this ridiculous app.

Yesterday:

Damon: Mama! Add it onto the iPad. Please!

Me: Damon, the iPad is out of room and we can't delete anything because you see? There are no little x's. I'm sorry, buddy, there's no room on here.

Damon: *sound of ultimate suffering* Then on your phone?

Me: Not just no.

Damon: Where's the mini iPad? Can we put it on the mini?

Me: We'll have to wait until Carrie comes home because she had it at school with her and now she's at work.

Damon: *more sounds of ultimate suffering* It's not faaaaair!

This morning:

Damon: Can we add it to the mini?

Me: The mini is in Carrie's room and she's still sleeping.

Damon: *wailing* She's going to sleep until karate tonight!

Me: That's ridiculous. No she's not.

Damon: It's not even supposed to be in her room! It's not fair! 

(He's not wrong.)

Me: Why don't you go get some more reading minutes or play with Legos?

Damon: *sound of ultimate suffering*

Me: Or go back to bed...

Drat it all, Nana, this had better not be a sign of things to come!

***

On Monday, Damon's belongings all actually made it home from school. I removed his lunchbox from his backpack and was a bit dismayed to find everything was wet.

Me: Damon, did you take your water bottle to school?

Damon: *distracted* Uh, what? No. Why? What?

Me: Why is your backpack and lunchbox wet?

Damon: Uh...?

The culprit? See that small container of applesauce? The one that wasn't eaten at lunch?

Right at the edge of the spoon you can see the puncture. It exploded just enough applesauce to make a mess.

Now his lunchbox has been washed and is no worse for wear. However, one must always remember to check every pocket of boys' belongings before dumping them into the wash. Look who would have ended up squeaky clean had I not checked the pocket of the lunchbox:

I'd ask plaintively if it was the weekend yet, but one, it obviously is as they are home with me, and two, I'm not sure it'll make it any better because then they're home with me! I'm reminded of the quote from the movie Beetlejuice:

"Because then I will go insane, and I will take you with me!"

Please keep your musings to yourself as to what mischief they'll get up to next. If speaking a thing into being is real, I don't want to have to hunt anybody down!

Accessories

Let me start by saying that, no, he wasn't in his winter coat the entire 4 hour drive to Thanksgiving dinner. We had a really good start on dry roads and got most of the hours in before we gave up looking for a Wendy's and settled on McDonald's for lunch.

When we got back in, stuffed with fries and nuggets and milkshakes and burgers, Damon found my jewelry in my bag's side pocket. I was hearing small jingling sounds and turned around to find him almost asleep, fingering the bracelet on his right wrist and my necklace that he'd wound around his left wrist. He then conked out, all gussied up and stuck in the carseat. This kid cracks me up every day.

 

Has Alexander left yet?

The quote board is almost full, but not quite enough yet for today's post to be that. But soon, I promise! Today I'm just checking in to see if Alexander is still around, or if he's already on that plane to Australia.

This morning Thing One had a grand mal tantrum over wearing a coat (it was 37 degrees) versus her jacket. She even had to be threatened with the wooden spoon. It wasn't used, but that was probably because we HAD to leave for the bus, or it would have been a pretty darn sure thing.

Thing Two was dropped off at preschool without incident, and cheerfully announced the split second he got into the door, "tomorrow's the pumpkin patch day!" His teacher was impressed and I got away without incident.

At moms' group, all was quiet for the entire first hour. Then the baby decided to nurse and poop at the same time, which would normally be fine. However, today he wasn't wearing a onesie, and first I felt warmth, then wetness, as the poop escapes up the back of his diaper and all over my blue jeaned lap. Once I change him, mop myself off the best I can with sensitive skin wipes, and clean up the mess, I pick him up to burp him and he blorps right into my scarf. Lovely.

Excuse me while I go polish off the pan of brownies we enjoyed at moms' group...