Monday, April 27, 2009

Quincy--0; Sidewalk--1

Usually Mondays are uneventful. I have a day off and I go grocery shopping. That's about it. I know. Exciting.

Today, we set out to get Quincy's hair cut. It was long and looked bushy. I conveniently forgot that most barbers are closed on Monday. Two shops later, we found one open. It was at The Avenue, an outdoor mall here in town. I hung out with Quincy during the hair cut and Keegan browsed Best Buy. Afterwards, Quincy and I headed for Best Buy, too. Keegan met us on the sidewalk and the adventure began.

Quincy decided to run away from us and back towards the haircut shop. He was wearing Crocs. It was a bad idea. He got about six or eight feet away and then boom--faceplant. He slid on his forehead and nose, with most of the impact being absorbed by his head and nose. He ended up with a goose-egg on his head and a scrape below that. His nose bled like crazy. It took six wet paper towels to get it manageable. When we headed to the car, I had another three paper towels in my hand and his nose continued to bleed for ten minutes. He also scraped up his left knee. He looked like he'd been in a fight and lost.

Here are some pictures once we got home. He had stopped being upset by this time.


Well, mostly stopped being upset anyway. He looks kind of sad in this one.


A close-up of the forehead!


That's not blood that I didn't scrub off on his nose. That's an actual scrape where he slid. Ouch!


Looking pretty relaxed here after some candy.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

The times, they have changed

When I was younger, I liked men who stood out in a crowd, who broke the rules, who maybe wrote poetry or sung songs. They usually had long hair, maybe a tattoo, probably a piercing. Most of them skateboarded or spent way too much time playing hacky-sack. They all had one thing in common--they were rebels in some way or another. Perhaps just in the way they thought.

Now that I'm older, I still think the bad boys are kind of cute, but not nearly so much as I used to.

The men I normally gush about being cute are almost always police officers. Show me a nice, crisp uniform and a gun belt any day and I am happy. Seriously, I got to deliver to the house the police have made their headquarters in the Tornado Zone last weekend and it took me three days to shut up about it. Never mind that I completely misspelled the name of the cop I delivered to (so much so that I made up a new last name). I was thrilled by the $5 tip. I mean, who doesn't like tips? But it was the nice, cute cop that had me smiling when I talked about it later. Even my husband was teasing me about this all week. He was amused.

If someone had told me ten years ago that I would eventually find the good guys as fascinating as the bad, I would never have believed them. Amazing how things change.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The tornado that crossed the road

This is a photo of the tornado that crossed the road and prevented my visit to the doctor on Friday, April 10.



What we saw did not look that big. That part of it was up in the clouds, swirling.

We left our house in Rockvale a little after noon that day. We planned on dropping Quincy at my parent's and heading to the doctor. That^^^^ threw a wrench in our plans.

As we travelled up Memorial Blvd., which is one of the main roads in Murfreesboro, we noticed that it was raining kind of hard and traffic was bad. It did not seem like a big deal so we kept on going. We passed over Northfield and began to approach the road to my parent's house, when I began to notice cars turning around in driveways and making u-turn's and stuff. I commented that the sky actually looked green over the subdivision that is behind my parent's. Weird.

About that time, all the cars in front of us stopped. WE did, too. In front of us, not more than three car lengths ahead, a very small tornado crossed the road. We saw it drop garbage, but it did not seem to do any damage. My husband later remarked that it did not stop at the red light. Ha!

Traffic got going again and we turned onto Irongate, which is where my parents live. We noticed that the power was out. When we got to the house, my mom said that she had heard a loud noise after the power went out but did not know what it was. She had also forgotten to replace the batteries in the weather radio. My father was out driving around with my sister. It turns out that he was just a few blocks from where that picture at the top of the page was taken. My other sister was home and saw this picture below on her tv before she hid.



Once the storm had passed, my sister tried to call my mom, but all the phones lines were jammed. It took us a while to get my dad on the cell phone. He was on the way home and fine. He turned right on Broad Street. If he had turned left, he would have been driving into the path of the tornado.

Meanwhile, we're sitting at the house and don't know what has happened. After my dad and sister got home, we decided to drive up and see if anything had power on the main road. It did not. So my husband and I drove back along a different route. We went up Haynes Drive toward my parent's house. We had heard a lot of sirens and wondered why. We saw police blocking the road. We had to turn left. Right before we turned, I pointed out the power lines that were on the ground on Haynes. The poles were snapped in half and touching the ground. The police had Sulphur Springs blocked off also. My parents live at the corner of the two roads.

It took driving back to our house, where there was power, to realize what had really happened.

To put it into perspective, this is near the corner of Haynes Drive and Sulphur Springs Road, literally 1/2 mile from my parent's house.



(all photos courtesy of dnj.com, TDOT, and a flickr photostream )

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Went to the doctor...finally

I tried to go to the doctor last Friday, but we were stopped by a massive tornado crossing the road and knocking out all the power nearby.

There was no time to try and go back. I've been subbing all week and trying to mentally get ready for the big teacher job fair Saturday morning. This year, I will take a resume that has been proofread and attempt to not say anything stupid to anyone important.

Also, I will try not to cough on anyone because I really do sound like I might cough up a lung. It's just an upper respiratory infection and a slight wheeze, but it sounds awful. It's amazing that my throat doesn't hurt.

In the meantime, I have this song stuck in my head thanks to Richard at work:

Thursday, April 09, 2009

I wish I could shake this off!

I have a really great post outlined and planned on writing it tonight, but then I returned home from school with a temperature of nearly 101. So scratch that. My nose in congested, my ear hurts, and I have some icky drainage. I'm pretty sure it's an upper respiratory infection, which means I need a visit to the doctor and a Z-pack. Until then, I'll be on the couch!

Friday, April 03, 2009

Thomas's Friends are not MY friends

And I'll tell you why with the help of some fuzzy pictures of his buddy Terrance the Tractor.



See how nice he looks? He has such a happy face and looks like he would never hurt anyone. Don't be fooled!! He's thinking about how he's going to position himself in the middle of the floor so some unsuspecting adult will step on him and "hahahahahahahahaha." That's what's behind the smile!



See all the knobby spots he has sticking out of him? Those hurt if he gets stepped on. Actually, those will cut a foot even through a sock. I spent two days hobbling around and limping because of that Terrance!
(And yes he is sitting on the bathroom counter now. I can't possibly step on him there.)



That's my foot two days after the incident. I waited until it was no longer bloody to take a picture. :) Also, I should probably watch where I'm walking. It wasn't even late at night and I had my glasses on still.

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Where does this sense of humor come from?

Is it an inborn male thing?

Let me explain. My son has always been fascinated with any noises that his body makes. Burps are very funny to him. farts are even funnier. A fart from somewhere near him will result in a comment like, "Was that your pout? Did you pout? Hahahahahahaha" If he happens to be the one with the gas, he is even more amused. He'll ask, "Did you hear that pout? That was me!! That was my pout!! Do you smell my pout?" Sometimes, he just tells me to smell his pout. It's pretty disgusting.

My husband has explained the finer points of pout etiquette to him. If he pouts near a woman, he must say, "Excuse me!" If he passes gas around my husband or one of his friends, it's okay, he can laugh. They probably will.

The last few weeks, he had a problem with his poop. I thought we would never get rid of the diarrhea. I modified his diet. I added an acidopolus supplement. I upped his fiber. It still took ten days or so to go back to normal. This was pretty agonizing since it was the ten days before he supposed to leave for a week at Disney World. I really hoped he wouldn't be sick all the way down there or at the park.

Well, he wasn't. It cleared up about the time I gave up on diet modification. I did cut out dairy for a few days. He was very proud of his first normal poop. We made a big deal out of it. Maybe we shouldn't have. After that, every time he pooped solid, he announced it to everyone around. My mom said that they were at Disney World and he'd be in the stall and she would hear, "Ohhhhhh, it normal! Yay!" I don't know what the other ladies in the bathrooms thought.