I want it now!

I’m posting this to enter a contest offered by CheckNGo at The Centsible Life! I want to win the iPad 2! Enter to win here: http://bit.ly/TCLiPad

I feel like Veruka Salt with his post here...I want to win an iPad2.

I've been debating coming back here anyway over the last few months....and what better reason than to get myself some entries into a contest to win an iPad. We are totally low tech here (1 pay as you go cell phone for me, no cell phone for the hubby) , we have only one television and one desktop computer. This is normally perfectly fine, but the [portability of an iPad, and its ability to entertain my children, make it pretty tantalizing. But what with the new garage door we need, and the new hot water heater, and some other green energy-related repairs, and the new car...and, well...an iPad just isn't making the list of things we SHOULD be spending our money on right now. So maybe....just maybe.....I will win this. Maybe. Cause I want it now!!
So here goes....

The body count rises

The lost toenail count is up to three. School starts tomorrow. I'm looking at today as my last day before my life changes completely. My kids are looking at it as just another day to aggravate the crap out of each other and whine until mommy explodes. Perspective, eh?

August...August...come in August...

I just realized that I posted nothing at all during the rest of my trip to France as well as the entire month of August. Oops. The rest of France was fabulous...better than fabulous maybe. spectacular. The food. The sights. Time with my sister. It was all wonderful, except that I really missed my little munchkins. And Benny. And the feet...well, the feet didn't get a whole lot better. I could gross you out with details of blood blisters, calluses, and blisters UNDER toenails, but instead I'll just tell you that I am currently missing two toenails completely, three more are black and blue in part or whole, and the bottom of my left foot sports a lovely design of somewhat concentric circles on both heel and ball, where layers of skin have peeled off. It's frighteningly disgusting.
I will post some more France stories when I can. Right now I am trying to eek every last drop out of summer before my older goes off to big kid school. I am lingering somewhere between shock that the last five and a half years have gone by so quickly, to excitement for her since I know she cannot wait, to melancholy that she will be gone all day. (That last one is easily remedied by letting her spend more than fifteen minutes with her sister, at which point one hits another, blah blah blah, and I threaten to lock them both out of the house.) I will do my darnedest to update on Thursday....the day when school officially starts. If for no other reason than to post a photo of my beautiful girl looking impossibly adorable in her uniform.

Random weirdness

Forgive my long stretches on non-blogging. I think of you, little blog, all the time. But I can't seem to find the time to sit and type all of my introspective, irrelevant commentary. Today, though, was a veritable invitation to blog.
The girls and I had a busy day planned: a trip to the gym so I could work out, lunch with our friend Carly and her older and very helpful children (Helen has a crush on a certain tween boy...so stinkin cute!), and then a return to the gym for swimming at our awesome, way cool "aquatics center" (indoor: lazy river, splash playground, big ole water slide, leisure pool, lap pool, hot tub).
By the time we met for lunch, I was beginning to feel like I was on the periphery of a Twilight Zone episode. We had to make a last minute unplanned trip to target after Helen decided today, the day I forgot her backpack of spare clothes, would be an excellent dsay to wet her pants. On the way out of the Target parking lot, we saw the obligatory homeless man with the cardboard sign. Usually it's something about being hungry and I usually ignore it cuz I'm a chicken and I don;t want to make nay eye contact. But today I read his plea, and I think I figured out what his problem is. See, he's 170 years old, and people probably think he's a ghost. Ghosts don;t need food, no? Yup. His sign proclaimed "Disabled Civil War Veteran" Hmmm.....sigh. Please don't judge me for laughing. I I don't think I've ever claimed to have an ounce of sensitivity. Or tact.
As I continued on my 4 minute trip form Target to the restaurant, I passed a man in the Office M*x parking lot. He appeared to be an employee in a food service establishment, as he was dressed in black clothing and apron, and he was parallel to the ground, feet on the curb, doing push ups. "I'll be back to take your drink order after my office supply store parking lot calisthenics." But by far the weirdest event of the day occurred prior to these, after my exercise class. I proceeded to the locker room to take a shower. I approached the sink to wash my hands, only to be greeted by the smell of meatballs coming from the crockpot that was plugged in and resting on the counter between two sinks. In the locker room. Of the gym. Seriously. If there was a pot luck in the locker room, no one told me abut it. And I dared not taste any of the meatballs, simmering away in the locker room. So. frickin. weird.
Lunch was good, but swimming not so much, as we were ushered out of the INDOOR pool five minutes after we got in becasue of a thunderstorm. (Note that it takes me longer than five minutes to get myself and two small children into swimsuits.) We were attempting to wait it out when the place went dark. Blackout at the gym. So we left. Strange day...indeed.

How do you say blister in French?

My sister walks a tremendus amount. Ten, twelve miles a day. I can't quite keep up with that. If you know me IRL, you know that I recently sffered a debilitating bout of tendinitis in both knees. It was literally crippling. I was cawling up the stairs in my house, sending my 5 year old to the mailbox, and spending the large majority of my time on the couch because it felt like someone was ripping my tendons to shreds every time I tried to walk. I was on a nearly constant regimen of icing, I received four cottisone injections and got PT for the three weeks leading up to my trip. So with that in mind, I'm lucky I'm walking. But it isn't the knees that are kilimg me. It's the blisters. We walked abut 4.5 miles yesterday, and 6.5 today. A lot of walking for someone who has recently spent so much time not walking at all. I think I have bad socks, because the blisters are on the balls and heels of my feet. My sis went out tonight and got me some blister band-aids, but if they don't help, I may rest a little tomorrow. We've had a fabulous time. I know when people think of Paris museums, they immediately think Louvre, or maybe d'Orsay. Haven't made it there yet (well we strolled the gardens behind the Louvre lat night, but we didn't go in) but today we wnt to the Rodin museum. totally amazing. i think I realy enjoy the three-dimensionality of sculpture, and so many of his sculptures tell a story. It was fascinating. I took a lot of pictures, but I don't have my camera software so I 'll have to post them when I get home. I also got momentarily trapped in a pitch black bathroom. And I had no idea how to scream for help in French. I einvisoned dying a slow dark death in there, but managed to free myself by pulling the door instead of pushing (brilliant!) But aparently the lights are on a timer, and the bathroom was in a toilet closet of sorts, so there was NO light. When I finally burst outof there, I cried "THe lights went out!" But the FRENCH wooman at the sink couldn't understand me, so she asked me a question, in French, adn I couldn't understand her. I just stood there smiling. An when she finally mase a little room a the sink, I turned it on and she exclaimed "Oh!" So apparently she was asking me how to turn on the sink. Hmmm. I'm quite sure she stil had no idea what I said.
We aren't eating oursleve sick or anything, but we hav enjoyed some yummy stuff. My lunch today was a small quihe champignon (mushroms). Man was that tasty. Light for quiche anbd just all around good. We had ice cream, and I had to have a flavor I knew I couldn't get, so praline pignon it was. (Praline pine nut) Mmmmm.
Sis needs to get on here, so au revoir!

Bonjour!

Well, here I am in Paris. I am not out soaking in the sights, sounds and smells of Paris at the moment because my sister and I are here in this apartment waiting for someone from the Parisian utility service to comeread the meter. I kid you not. It's like being home kinda, except the only person I can understand is my sister. I feel like I suffer from the mostt major of cognitive deficits. And I'm afraid to talk to anyone in French for fear I'll say the wrong thng, so I've been whispering things like "silvous plait and "bonjour." Cuz really, I don't know too much more than that. I did pipe up with a hearty "merci!" when we were handed the bag from the patisserie that contained our deicious pate sandwich. mmmmm. A lttle baguette with pate, lettuce and some tiny pickles. Heaven. And this delicious sweet bread sprinkled wth sea salt. mmmm again Sis is only giving the meter guy another 15 minutes and then we're taking off. In the rain...again...just like home. Except for the Eiffel Tower and all the French. Au revoir!

NINE

Nine....that would be the number of stitches in my poor baby's beautiful face. It would also be the approximate number of years shaved off my life this past Tuesday.
Ruthie, Helen and the little boy I watch, R, were all out in the front yard. Ruthie went inside to wash her hands. A couple of minutes later I hear her crying as she is coming back out and calling to me "Mommy, I hurt myself." I couldn't immediately see her from where I was standing, so I walked over towards the front door and saw my baby running down the porch steps, crying, with blood pouring down her sweet face in at least four different directions. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that it looked like she was filming a scene for a horror movie. It was hard to tell, but it looked like it was coming from someplace on her forehead. I scooped her up (and admittedly, in a bit of momentary insanity, wondered if I should carry her facing outwards because there was so.much.blood. but I faced her inward toward me so I could see her.) I ran to my neighbors, mostly to deposit the other two children there and decide what I next needed to do. My neighbor took one look at us and all.that. blood. and called 911. I got a towel from her daughter and put pressure on the wound, which I could now tell was definitely on her forehead, and sat on my neighbor's stoop to wait for the emergency responders while I comforted my poor little daughter. We live own the hill from a fire station, so they arrived rather quickly with a truck and their ambulance. Ruthie and I were both calm, so they easily assessed her, applied some gauze and tape to keep the bleeding down, and put us in an ambulance. Ruthie waited in hte ambulance calmmly and patiently while I ran inot hte huse to get my phone and my wallet. Everyone who was there was amazed by how calm she was. Another neighbor later told me me she thought Ruthie and I were both really brave. That made my cry a little. We spent about four hours at the hospital with three other five year olds, all of whom also had head or facial lacerations. Ruthie was a model patient. She never flinched when they irrigated her wound, and she never flinched when they made each of those nine stiches in her pretty little face. I can't say the same for me. I maintained my composure (I'm good in the midst of a crisis, though I always reserve the right to fall apart later) but I felt my heart stop each and every time that needle pierced her skin to take another stitch.
I kept her home from school the next day, and by dinner time, I could feel myself beginning to unreavel. We went to a low-key dinner picnic for Benny's work, and the whole time we were there all I wanted was to leave. It seemed there were so many sharp edges looming there, and every time one of my girls came within a foot of one, I panicked and just wanted to go home. The feeling was exactly the feeling I had after we lost our first baby, and I wanted to be nowhere except the safety of my own home. I guess it was probably a minor anxiety attack. I actually cried on the way home from the picnic, no doubt a release of pent up anxiety. And also the picture. The one that is birned on my brain. The one of sweet little Ruthie running toward me, her face covered in multiple rivers of blood. I thought after two NICU babies, I could handle any medical emergency when it came to my kids. How wrong I was.
Four days later I'm slightly calmer but still nervous about the edges that are everywhere all of a sudden. And we're still finding blood in places. My neighbor kindly cleaned up the puddles by the front door after we left in the ambulance. I found some above the doorknob on Wednesday. The front porch is almost all clean thanks to the rain. Benny found some streaks on the front door today.
I find myself wanting to hold her and hug her even more than usual. And I'm so proud of her for being so brave. She really is a trooper.

Parlez vous anglais?

I can say that....it's a start.

My sister leaves tonight. Me? Thirty-six days. I just got the address where we'll be staying. It's in the Theater District of Paris. And it is a seven minute walk to here:



Knowing where I'll be staying make sit much more relevant, and exciting, to peruse the travel books.

Je ne comprend pas

I don't even know if that is grammatically correct. I haven't taken French in 22 years. I thought I could "brush up" on some French and be okay while away. Ha! I reserved a few books from the library with French phrases, etc. They're not in yet. A friend of mine at the gym recommended this site for free daily French lessons. I was psyched! Ha! The lessons are auditory....the hardest way for me to learn...I need to see stuff in print. I listened a bit and understood that I was listening to something about North Korea, and maybe a boner and a cheese infant. I guess I should just learn to say "I don't speak French" "Where's the bathroom?" and "Have you seen my sister?....she's American and speaks French slightly better than me."

Groan...groan

This is so not helping with that irrational (or is it now?) fear that my plane would go down somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic and leave my children motherless. Benny says it actually decreases the odds that something like that will happen on my flight over...or back. Yeah, he's probably right but for now...sigh.