I’m sorry. Oh so sorry. The last two weeks have just gotten the better of me but I won’t let it happen again. I promise.

If you are worried that my ankle got gangrene and I died or at the very least had to have my leg amputated… rest easy. Nothing nearly as dramatic as that has happened. But wouldn’t that make a ridiculous headline if I got “taken out” by a palm tree? And by a stationary one at that? As in, not one falling down on top of me. No thanks, I’d rather save up for a bigger, much more exciting headline for my obituary.

I did finally get the stitches out Tuesday. They’d postponed the removal because it didn’t look ready and on Tuesday, apparently still weren’t ready when the first three she took out gaped open after the stitch was removed. And it hurt like the dickens. What exactly does that mean? I sure don’t know but let me tell you, if “Hurt like the Dickens” means I just about scraped the ceiling plaster off with my nails and teeth as I hung there after jumping straight off the doctor’s table, well, then it’s a perfect phrase for my experience. The last five thankfully were nice and healed and when she took them out it actually felt good. Like scratching an itch (I won’t even tell you how many times I just have to right that before getting it right). So, she had to steri-strip the bugger and wrap my ankle up again. I’m so tired of the darn sticky bandages on my ankle. What I wouldn’t give to be able to shave those 5 leg hairs that are right around the battle wound and always covered. If they were any closer together, I could braid those suckers. Clipping them with scissors helps a bit though.

The nurse told me to try and take in easy and not stretch my ankle out too much. Yeah right. Like that’s going to be easy. It’s an ankle after all. So unless she’s going to slap a cast on it and hand me a pair of crutches, it’s going to be really tough not to use it.

As a parting random thought for this evening, did anyone else completely bawl during “The Baby Borrowers” last night? Oh. MY. Goodness. I think each and every one of those Seniors were precious. Simply precious. Particularly when George’s sweet wife, Reggie, called him an Old Windbag. I can’t wait until Hubby and I are at that age and I can call him that. As a term of endearment of course. And then of course they had to let us know at the end of the show that Reggie had passed away after the taping. Just when I’d gotten myself under control from seeing one gentleman take his teen care-takers to visit his wife’s grave, and heard others talk about love that lasted 50 – 60 years, and heard them encourage the teens in life, etc. I totally boo-hoo’d all over again.

I love seniors. Watching the show last night made me remember how much I love working with them and brought to the surface how much I miss my grandmother and wish she wasn’t on the other side of the country from me. I think it’s sad how much our society today just pushing them to the side and how little parents encourage interaction between their children (of any age) and seniors around them. They have so much wisdom. So many great stories. So much insight. My children don’t have the benefit of grandparents close by (although one set is here visiting at this very moment, YEAH!) but we have several senior neighbors who we LOVE to visit and bring goodies too. In fact, the kids love them a bit too much, if that’s possible. I’m always having to tell them we need to give dear Mrs. So and So a break and let her have a nice quiet evening or that just because we saw them pull into their house doesn’t mean they are ready for a visit from four munchkins. But I knew the care and love we want to instill in the kids was taking place when we drove down our street the other night. Poppett noticed one of our senior ladies standing in her driveway and told me, “Mom, Mrs. This and That looked worried. I think we should check on her”. My Momma-Heart lept with joy at her awareness. I’d noticed the very same thing and was already making a mental note to check on her as soon as we unloaded from the car. It was evening and she was standing in her nightgown. Not unusual for some gals but it was for her. So we went down and made sure everything was okay.

Okay, that was a really LONG random thought. Sorry, I’ve just missed you all.

Don’t forget, tomorrow is the Great Lipstick Challenge! I guess I’d better get busy figuring out Mister Linky!

So, I’ve been struggling of late to retain the brain power necessary to compose an interesting post. So what am I going to do this evening? Write you a Seinfeld post. You know, a post about nothing. (just like Seinfeld was the show about nothing… get it?… hello?… anybody out there?…)

I’m in the middle of cleaning my house from top to bottom tonight. My little sister is coming into town with her hubby and baby for a week. I’m so excited. So why the procrastination in the cleaning department? Well, partly because I function best under pressure, or at least I tell myself that. I don’t know if I really work best with pressure, I just have no other choice but to work! That, and with four little ones runningamuck in our home, anything I clean or tidy is dirty or scattered all over the house as soon as I turn around to grab a swig of Cherry Coke. Oh, we do chores every morning. But there’s something about moping a floor only to turn around and serve lunch 30 minutes later and have juice and yogurt spilled all over the freshly washed floor.

I don’t know what type of sink you have (unless of course you are Keri, lol!) but I have a white porcelain one. And it’s a love/hate relationship at it’s finest. I LOVE the fact that I can see when it’s dirty and that it cleans up soooo well.

We interrupt this boring, random post to inform you of the following:

I paused in the writing of this post two days ago to take the kids outside to do a little evening gardening. I decided to put off the cleaning of the house EVEN MORE and instead tackle the completely overgrown palm trees that are on our parking strip.

I waged a war with two palm trees… and I TOTALLY lost.

The older two kids were helping me by dragging the huge palm branches up the lawn after I cut them off. I was paranoid the whole time that the 8 inch long thorns at the base of each branch were going to impale one of the four kids. I warned them over and over to be careful and to watch out for the younger two who were running around enjoying the coolness that dusk was bringing. I should have listened to my own warnings.

Because as I stepped back (in flip flops mind you) to avoid being hit by a branch I just cut, I walked right into the thorn of a branch I’d already cut that was laying right behind me. It stabbed me right in the ankle. I stifled the blood-curdling screams whimpers and looked down, expecting blood. I’d already stuck myself several times on my hands with lots of blood as a result. (doesn’t this sound sooo fun?!) But no blood. I thought I must not have stuck myself as badly as I thought so I continued to lop off branches. I glanced down every now and then, still surprised not to see any blood because frankly, my ankle was throbbing like mad. As the light faded and the kids grew cranky, I decided to call it a night and begin the outdoor clean up process. I stopped to sit on the lawn and take a closer look at my ankle. Lo and behold, the inch long tip of the thorn was still inside my ankle! I could see it clearly laying across my ankle, right above my ankle bone.

Freak out?

Yes. To put it mildly.

Panic?

A tad. Hubby was out of town for the weekend. I was gonna have to be the adult and the victim in this situation. I was flying solo.

As I tried to keep from hyperventilating, I attempted to push the thorn back out through the hole it made coming in. But I couldn’t get it lined up right. It just kept poking up under my skin like a tent pole holding up the center of a tent. Sweet Poppett informs me she’s going to get the first aid kit. I didn’t have the heart to tell her a band aid wasn’t going to help.

So a very long story made a little bit shorter, my buddy Tess came over at 8:45pm to watch my kids so I could go to the ER. I was so worried that sucker was going to travel to my heart. I’ve watched enough CSI to know things like that can happen.

They took me back to a room right away, even though the waiting room was full of people. I was so thankful. I’d been praying the whole time I was driving that I wouldn’t have to wait all night. But then, being the impossible-to-please-human that I am, I starting worrying about why they took me back so fast. My SIL, B, hunted me down right after the doctor informed me that he would have to make a very small incision to see if he could find it and pull it out. See, in all the running around, the thorn had moved and was no longer up at the surface or even laying across my ankle. (we thought) It had slipped length-wise behind my leg bone but it couldn’t be felt through the skin, no matter how much massaging and prodding the the doctor did.

As a quick side note, let me inform you of the fact that at the time of this incident, it’d been 2 days since I’d shaved my legs. And I also had nasty dry feet from working in the yard in flip-flops and hadn’t even thought to slather a truckloaddab a bit of lotion on those puppies before heading into the ER. Real niiccceeee!

So the doc numbed me up real good, and as I stared into B’s eyes, sliced me open just a bit and started feeling around. B and I amused ourselves with small talk, dumb jokes, thoughts on current movies and of course, mommy-talk (much to the thrill of my young doctor I’m sure). He hunted for quite a while. Easily 20 minutes or more before he let me know he hadn’t found any evidence of a foreign body and was I sure the thorn had been left behind. So I explained again how I had seen it through the skin and had attempted to work it out. He said he’d have to make a bigger slice, in a “T” shape, in order to create more room to look around. I said to go right ahead. B and I were having way to much fun catching up and watching my legs shake from my nervousness. We didn’t want to be anywhere else… yeah right.

So he proceeded to slice and dig around some more for what seemed like an eternity. He finally stopped (probably another 20 minutes or so later) and let me know he still couldn’t find anything and that my said attempts at removal were the strongest piece of evidence he had that there was anything even in there.

So now I’m starting to panic. Not because of the thorn but because the nice young doctor thought I was crazy. Or even worse, attention hungry. I made sure to talk with B nice and clearly about how I’d had four children without any drugs, that I hardly even take a Tylenol, that I hadn’t been to see my primary care doc in over 6 years, etc. etc. I wanted him to know I wasn’t here by choice!!

So he wheeled me down to have my ankle x-rayed, hoping that the thorn would be visible that way.

And of course, the darn thing didn’t show up AT ALL!

So now my nice young doctor is looking at me and telling me there isn’t much else he can do for me. That he was willing to go back to “my room” and dig around some more but that if he couldn’t find it, it might just be that I have to let it “reabsorb” on it’s own. B asked if it was possible for it to keep moving around (she watches CSI too ya know!). The nice young doc said that yes, it could and if it did, that would be need to be “addressed” then. Whatever that means. Like, “if it works it’s way to your heart and you die because of it, we’ll have to admit you weren’t crazy and you did in fact have a very sharp thorn in your ankle at one time.” Thanks. That makes me feel MUCH better.

So we go back to my nice cozy ER room. By now, I have pictures up on the wall, a nice quilt and decorative pillow on the gurney and my fuzzy bunny slippers by the door because I’ve been worked on for so long. Some feeling is starting to come back so I asked him if he could numb me up more before he resumed digging. He did. He really was a very nice doctor.

I’m praying quietly now like there is no tomorrow. I would cry myself to sleep every night, until my death from a thorn piercing my heart, worrying about that sucker floating around in my body, if I left without it being found. Not to mention the blow to my pride since no one in that ER room would believe I had told the truth. In their defense, I’m sure that comes from experiencing plenty of crazies walking in through the doors wanting nothing more than attention; even if it means they have to stab their ankles and make up a crazy story.

So I’m praying. I’m praying HARD.

And lo and behold, not three or four minutes into the third round of digging, the nice young doc exclaims in a very excited voice, “I think I found it! Yep! I sure did!” To which I shouted at the top of my lungs exclaimed, “See! I’m NOT crazy!” As he prepared to pull it out, he asked B if she wanted to watch, “…because this is the best part”. She looked at him like he’d grown a second head. But, she took a deep shaky breath and walked around the bed to watch. I did too, from the reflection of the monitor mounted on the wall. It WAS the best part, he was right. Out came the thorn and my pride and proof of sanity walked in!

3 1/2 hours after I arrived, I hobbled out with eight stitches, a tetanus shot in my arm, a HUGE antibiotic shot in my hip and a half-inch thorn in a cup all as trophies of my ordeal. Warning: there’s a picture of my stitches at the end of this post… just in case you want to avoid that mental image.

Sweet B returned home with the horror of watching that thorn being pulled out of my big ol bloody incision burned forever in her memory and 3 hours missing from her life. My hero Tess, bossed me around when I returned home and wouldn’t leave.

She refused.

No matter how much I talked, tried to convince her and impress her with my coping skills, she didn’t budge. She told her awesome hubby that she wasn’t coming home and to deal with their four children on his own. Then she promptly ordered me to take some pain meds and go bed. She did inform me, after the pills had been taken, that she was a bit of a snuggler. I told her that was okay, because I was a squeaker (you know, as in pass gas) in bed. We were both tired enough (well, I was also high enough) to snort, laugh hysterically and generally find ourselves outrageously amusing.

In the morning, Tess not only fed my kids and helped do a couple chores (remember, my sister and family were still coming that day and NOTHING was done!) but she also went and filled my prescriptions!

She totally rocks.

So Tess and B? Here’s your shout out. I couldn’t have survived that night without your help and support. Thanks! And if you ever impale yourself on an 8-inch thorn? I’m TOTALLY there for you.

Hey! I think I may have ended up with an interesting post after all! Oh! And I’ll get to the boring stories about homemade ice cream and ballet birthday parties sometime… or maybe I’ll write about my stitches being removed. Ah! I joke! I joke!

Mostly.