Breakage

The past week has been one of breakage, but everyone's OK.

On Friday, while we were prepping for the St. Patrick's Day party, it was very windy outside. While we were in the kitchen, we heard and partly saw a giant branch of a tree across the street fall down, with the result below:
It knocked out power to those two houses, and caused some damage, but no one was hurt. So that was the neighborhood drama. You may recall that a little less than a year ago, we had another tree come down nearby. Trees. We must kill them before they kill us.

The other breakage was in Jake's hand. Before you get too upset and pick up the phone, he is fine. While riding to work on Thursday, his bike slipped on some nasty ice, and he went down. he was able to ride the rest of the way to work, as well as home in the afternoon, but he was in some pain. On Friday he went to see the doctor, and the X-rays indicate that some of those tiny bones in his wrist have some tiny fractures. He's doing fine and the swelling has gone down. He'll see a hand doctor on Monday.

Yikes!

We also had a broken salt shaker during the party, but other than that, the party was breakage-free. More on the party in the next post. We're still a bit tired. It's one of those Zombie Mommy (TM) days.

Scene of the Accident

Jake had a little accident last weekend, and before I tell you all the details, I will first tell you that he is fine and everything turned out OK. How's that for suspense?

Here is the scene of the accident:
Yes, those are our new steps and new stone wall. At approximately 10 pm on July 3rd, Jake and I were about to commence the toasting of marshmallows over the grill for the purpose of making smores. I was down by the grill with the stick Jake had whittled for me, and he was coming down to join me. I was holding a long pointy stick. Jake was carrying an open pen-knife. The grill was hot. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky that no one was burned or impaled or stabbed.

Sadly (or perhaps luckily, given the other alternatives), Jake stepped off the steps and into the uneven terrain of the patio area; he sprained his ankle. It hurt. A lot. I got him sitting down on the steps and ran in to get some ice. I came back out and started to apply the ice to the ankle, when Jake sorta started to shift towards me. I wasn't sure what he was doing, when I realized that he didn't know what he was doing, either: he was passing out. I sort of broke his fall, but he ended up lying on the ground with his head on a rock. I yelled to our next door neighbors (who were working outside, in sight of where we were) and they went to call 911, seeing as how Jake was unconscious. Yikes! Jake suddenly says "I just sprained my ankle. There's no need to call an ambulance......why am I on the ground?" He didn't know he had passed out.

I was a bit unsure of whether he had actually hit his head, perhaps even on the first fall, but we decided quickly that he was OK enough to just go to the E.R. via car. Anna (the grandmother next door) very kindly offered to stay at our house so Lucy could keep sleeping, and Liza (the mom next door) had a pair of crutches we used to get Jake to the car. We are tremendously grateful to have such kind neighbors!

We spent almost three hours hanging out at the E.R. Jake was feeling better by the time he saw the doctor. It was, as far as she could tell, just a sprain, so he got an air cast, and we were sent home. This was a relief.

Upon walking (limping, in Jake's case) through our front door, we heard an unexpected sound: "Hey! That's my parents! I hear my parents!" Yes, it was Lucy. Awake. At 1:30 in the morning. Apparently she had woken up about half an hour after we left, and since then had been talking non-stop to Anna. Carter had even gone upstairs (we don't let him upstairs) to check out the excitement. Wow! All our creatures took full advantage of our absence.

A week later, Jake is feeling much better. He hasn't been on a bike yet, but we're hoping he will be very soon. He's going to do some physical therapy, too, to strengthen the ankle (this isn't his first sprain).

Next project: install railing on the front wall steps.

People who live in glass houses.....

...should be sure to have a lot of band-aids around.

So I was cleaning up the mess of our shattered storm door (see below), which, thankfully, was made of tempered glass. Tempered glass shatterers into tiny little bits instead of big sharp-edged pieces. I should stress that it fractures into LOTS of TINY bits. It's actually kind of pretty.

While sweeping up the sparkly bits, I was transported back to the days one summer when I worked in a glass factory. Yes, dear reader, I worked in a glass factory. Worst. Summer. Job. Ever. I spent a lot of time sweeping up broken glass from the floor, not because I caused the glass to be broken, but because A LOT of glass gets broken by machines & people, and when you're the lowly summer help (and a girl at that) the only thing they really want you to do is sweep the floor.

One of the many miserable things about working in a glass factory is that you have to wear a lot of protective gear. First, heavy steel-toed boots. There are chaps involved. Also arm gaiters and multiple layers of gloves. As a (former) professional in the field, one would think I might have at least put on some garden gloves for the task at hand. But no, I took the term "safety glass" a bit too literally, and now my hand is covered in band-aids.