Stitchy McHedgehog

Last night as I was drifting to sleep, I thought to myself, "I probably need to do a new blog entry. But there's not much to write about...nothing has really happened around here lately."

Silly, silly me. Have I not learned that as soon as I have a thought like that, something happens?

And, indeed, tonight it did. The kids and Steve were playing outside this evening as usual. As I was finishing up paperwork with the HVAC guy who had come to do our fall maintenance, Steve burst in the door with Adam -- both of them covered in blood. My first thought was that Adam had been impaled on something. I don't know why. I don't pretend to understand why my mind works the way it does. Maybe Steve was saying something about a pole. Happily, we did not have an impaling on our hands. However, Adam's chin was split neatly open and bleeding profusely. It only took one look for me to say, "Stitches" and start heading out to the car with a howling, bloody Adam.

Meanwhile, the HVAC guy, who was really a nice fellow, was standing in my kitchen with the paperwork saying in all seriousness, "So you don't want to decide about that overflow valve right now?"

Really? Um, no...not right now. I left him to figure that out on his own.

Turns out, as I have pieced the story together over the course of the evening, Adam and the kids were playing some game, and Adam fell off some kind of utility box and caught his face on the edge, thereby opening up a stitch-worthy gash in his chin.

It also turns out that if you walk into an urgent care holding a dirty, wailing, blood-covered urchin wearing only one shoe (oh, yeah), you don't have to wait at all. We have never received such prompt care.

The bad news? Well, it's not so bad.
1. Steve and I broke our almost-6-year run as the parents of boys who had never needed stitches.
2. Adam had a couple bad minutes during the shots. (Who wouldn't?)
3. Family pictures are once again postponed. (sigh)
4. Our air-conditioning overflow pan remains without an overflow valve.

The good news? Where do I begin?
1. Adam wasn't impaled.
2. Adam wasn't seriously hurt in any other way.
3. Even in the worst of his pain and fear, Adam's thought was for his brother..."Mom, can we get TWO Hershey bars [bribes] so Andrew can have one, too?" Precious.
4. Adam now has 3 cool blue stitches.
5. Neither Gangee nor Andrew were implicated in this evening's mishap.
6. Tonight's experience was nothing that couldn't be cured with a dose of antibiotics, a Hershey bar, and a "Misser Fweeze" (Mr. Freeze) Batman figure.
7. We're not using the air conditioning again till May.

Stitchy feeling better with "Misser Fweeze"