A Series of Unfortunate Events

What a disastrous weekend we had!!

The fun began Friday evening. Gabriel had gone to the "family sock-hop" at his elementary school with our neighbors, since we were not up for taking Lana to an event we didn't entirely understand, that was sure to be loud and noisy and crowded. (Since when do kids have dances in elementary school? Since when do parents GO to dances at their children's schools? I just thought the whole thing was weird, but, Gabe really wanted to go, and our neighbors were taking their child, so, Gabe went along with them.)

Anyway, David and Lana and I were eating dinner. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but, one second Lana was eating a piece of a tortilla and the next second she and the chair were on the floor and there was blood EVERYWHERE. I was cutting into my enchilada at the time, but, Husband said she just fell off the chair, caught her mouth on the corner of the table and kept going down.

When she finally let us get a look at her lip, it appeared that it had a hole all the way through it from where her teeth had punctured it. David paged my cousin B~ (who is a dentist) while I ran two doors down and, behaving as the worst neighbor on the planet, pulled my neighbor, who is a doctor, down to my house. While Dave talked to B~ on the phone, my neighbor looked at Lana's face and said, "I think she needs a stitch to pull her lip together. I wish I had the stuff to do it, but, I don't."

Meanwhile, B~ instructed Husband to run his fingers over the tops of her teeth gently, to test if they were loose. They weren't thank goodness. (There was a lot of screaming to accomplish this.)

We packed her up and went to the ER. I called my neighbors to tell them what had happened and they said they would just keep Gabe overnight. (Thank you neighbors!!)

When we arrived at the ER (oh, my favorite place) - it was FULL OF PEOPLE. (Maybe because it was the day before St. Patrick's Day, and a Friday, so, people had evidently been drinking heavily since noon? (Just conjecture on my part.) We sat in the ER for an hour and a half. We did get into triage at one point, where they took our info and a copy of our insurance card. Then, because there was no room in the actual ER, sent us back out to sit in the hospital lobby. By about 9:00, her lip had long since stopped bleeding, and she was giggling and running around the lobby of the hospital with another 4 year old girl, who had had a television set and entertainment center fall on her. (She had also stopped bleeding, but, she needed some further testing to make sure she didn't have internal bleeding/a concussion, etc.) I turned to the other little girl's mother and I said, "We give up. If they call for us, take our spot." And we left. Lana wasn't bleeding anymore, her lip had closed up, and what she really needed, most of all, was to go to sleep.

The next morning, we put Gabe and Lana in the car and headed up to my in-laws in Detroit. It had been my mother-in-law's birthday last week, and also we had plans to go together for a St. Patrick's Day dinner (i.e. "boiled dinner" or "Jiggs Dinner" or "corned beef and cabbage and turnips" whatever you want to call it.) We arrived at my in-laws and visited for a bit, and then went their club for dinner (they belong to private club that has a bar and hosts events. It has a name, but, for the sake of anonymity, I'm not saying). We did this last year and it was delicious. This year, it was INEDIBLE. The corned beef was much like shoe leather. The vegetables were crunchy. The cabbage was just...awful. We were all extremely disappointed. It was, hands down, the worst corned beef dinner I have ever had.

We went back to my in-laws and my sister-in-law and brother-in-law and their kids joined us. We were all sitting around eating cheese and crackers and cookies, when my niece, J~, came running up from the playroom in the basement calling, "EMERGENCY!! EMERGENCY!! Gabriel is stuck!!"

Visions of the child who had the TV fall on her came to my mind as we rushed downstairs. Gabriel's foot was caught in the mechanism of my in-laws Elyptical Fitness Rider. His foot was extracted, and fortunately, he could move all his toes and his ankle bone, but, the skin was badly scraped up and bruised and purple-ish. Out came the first aid kit and we bandaged him up.

Not an hour later, my father-in-law announced that he was still hungry after "that awful dinner" and pulled out some leftover ham to cut up. Can you sense what is coming?? Can you?

My father-in-law, working on the ham, SLICED HIS FINGER TO THE BONE. COPIOUS AMOUNTS OF BLOOD ensued. Out came the first aid kit again, as my father-in-law turned vaguely pale and held his hand over his head to stop the blood. (I personally thought that he should go to the ER, but, he didn't go. And what do I know, what with my two disastrous ER visits in the last month??)

We decided that we were about the sorriest bunch of folks in the State of Michigan, what with three of us being pretty banged up. We decided to put in a movie so the kids could get settled down, and the DVD player BROKE! Good grief, what else could go wrong?

My brother-in-law and I took the kids in the front living room to watch the movie (there is a smaller tv and dvd in that room.) The kids and I were all watching the movie, when, my brother-in-law sat down in an arm chair, leaned back AND THE CHAIR BROKE. So, my brother-in-law just kept going, dragging the chair over on top of him as he fell backwards, whacking his head and neck on the stone floor of my in-laws entry way. I yelled, "OH MY GOD ARE YOU OKAY?" to which he did not respond. I started to run into the kitchen to dial 911 (I honestly thought he had broken his neck), when a feeble voice beneath the chair said, "hey...yeah, I'm okay...I think I'm okay." And he was okay, mostly. By which I mean, his neck was not broken, but, he still was sore and had a big goose egg on the back of his head.

After that incident, we all decided to go to bed, so as to avoid further injury. We managed to remain injury free through Sunday, but, I have to tell you, I was nervous about driving home. I thought for sure we would get into an accident with the kind of luck we were conjuring up!

But, we're safely back home. Lana's lip is very black and blue, and Gabe's foot is black and blue, but, other than that, I think we're okay.

LM