Life Is A Grand Adventure...

...most of the time, anyway! The rest of the time goes something like this:

We finished packing and cleaning the other house and made it up here in one piece. I completely expected to be able to just unpack everything when we got here...the house was supposed to be clean. Our landlord had made his wife seem like a very anal person when it came to cleaning. First thing I noticed was that all the fans were dusty...very dusty. "Not a problem," I thought. I'll just wipe them off, no biggie. Then downstairs, there are dusty cobwebs everywhere. I was a little bit miffed, but still thought that was ok, I could do that, a broom works wonders! This morning, I woke up and got ready for the day, fed the kids and sent them downstairs (thank goodness for cable being set up already...it's a lifesaver) so I could start unpacking without "helping hands". The kids were fighting over toys and teasing and pestering each other like crazy, I kept telling them to stop it, to TRY to get along today, just for a little while. I started opening kitchen cabinets to put stuff away and noticed....they were NOT clean. This really, REALLY ticked me off. I mean, really, I just got done cleaning one house, didn't really want to clean another...it wasn't on the top of my list of "happy things" to do. I got to work opening up boxes to find my cleaning stuff to get busy. I started on one end of the kitchen and thought I'd work my way around - couldn't open the cupboard because of the grease build-up. Oh boy.

I finally got ONE set of cupboards washed and scrubbed out and heard the kids fighting in Terra's room and then heard a big thud...boom....bang - then some crying ensued. I asked what was wrong and James came from Terra's room and this is the conversation that followed:

"Terra didn't push me or hit me, I just fell." (through sobs)
"Well, you'll feel better in a minute."
"But, mommy..."
"Walk it off, James, you'll be fine."
(sob, sniff, CRY, sob)
"But...but..."

I glanced at him at this point (yup, that's right, I'd been ignoring him completely up to this point) and realized that he was bleeding (gushing, by the way) down the side of his face...it was coming from his eye. I screeched and jumped from the counter top, grabbed a clean rag, got it wet and then started pressing it to his head as I walked him to a chair. He was screaming, telling me I was hurting him, and trying to bat my hands away from his face. The gash was about an inch long and a quarter of an inch deep (I honestly didn't know that a cut could go that deep without cutting into the eye). I immediately grabbed my purse, ran out, started the car, threw kids into the car, told Terra to make sure that rag did NOT come off his face, ran back in, grabbed shoes, diaper bag (only glancing in to make sure there was more than one diaper in there...not even checking the sizes) and then ran out the door, calling Chris along the way, and then calling a friend to ask where the nearest ER or Urgent Care Center was...Chris didn't know and my friend wasn't available at the time. I dashed to a local family practice around here and asked if they did stitches and they said no and then gave me (what turned out to be faulty) directions to get to an Urgent Care. I drove and drove, following the directions and not finding anything. Ran in to a Walgreens and asked for directions and they gave me more faulty directions...I finally called 411 on my cell, the operator came on and asked if I needed an ambulance, I said...well, more like screamed..."no" and she immediately connected me and I finally got directions and wound up in the parking lot of the right place. By this point in time, my "mommy brain" is screaming at these people for giving me the WRONG directions because MY SON IS BLEEDING TO DEATH. He wasn't really, in fact, most of the bleeding had stopped by then. I got in to the building and my friend called me back and offered to come get the kids, which was a VERY wonderful thing. We were in the waiting room for about 2 hours (after being told we might have to go to the actual ER...it was determined that we didn't need to) and then when they called us back, it was another 45 minutes before we were out of there. They didn't do stitches, but just glued him together with DermaBond. I could have done that at home! LOL, oh well!

This wasn't exactly the "welcoming committee" I had expected. They asked me for his regular pediatrician and when I mentioned that he was down in Parker, they seemed flabbergasted that I would drive that far just for a pediatric doctor. I would then mention that we had just moved in yesterday and their response (each time) was, "Oh! Well, WELCOME to the area!" Gee thanks!

Oh, and a side note - I think I need to have a serious talk with Terra about the inappropriateness of making comments to an already histerical little one! The whole way to the Urgent Care, she kept telling James he was going to have to get shots...that's what he was crying about mostly because he didn't want a shot. THEN, she whispered something to him and it made him scream. I couldn't get anyone to tell me what she had said, so I dropped it, but after my friend took the kids, James crawled on my lap, started crying again and said, "Mommy, I don't want my eyeball to fall out!" I had to reassure him that his poor eyeball wasn't going anywhere! KIDS!