Back up your computers, and beware of eggs, bowls, toothpaste, and life

I am writing this to you from my husband's computer, because mine is dead. My computer is dead because Scott spilled a glass of seltzer all over the keyboard. Don't do this. It won't end well.

I barely noticed last night while Scott was apologizing and cursing and shaking my laptop upside down because I was too busy attending to my son, who had sprayed toothpaste in his eye. Toothpaste in the eye, it turns out, is surprisingly painful. How did it get into his eye? What device did he use to spray it? Never mind that. I didn't ask. It didn't seem important.

This was a different eye from the one he had injured earlier, when he performed a dramatic hair-flip and slammed his eye socket into the bowl he was eating from. I did ask about that. We were eating dinner and all of a sudden his dinner was on his lap and he was screaming. I had made the mistake of turning away for .5 seconds, and when I turned back I assumed a poltergeist had flung his meal at him. Fortunately I asked him what happened before calling an exorcist. Now he has an angry red lump over his eye, and I can't wait for his teacher to ask him what happened so he can explain that somehow he struck himself in the face with a bowl.

This incident occurred only a few hours after I had eaten eggs for lunch, which it turns out I can never do anymore--eat eggs, that is--because the last few times I have tried I have become distinctly unwell. (Another reason I wasn't looking at Henry when the bowl attacked him: I was too busy staring at my sad little bowl of yogurt, the only thing I could face after EggGate.) While I was whining on the phone to Scott about getting sick, I slammed my knee against the table, thought I dislocated my kneecap, warbled incoherently, and hung up on him so I could black out in peace. Sadly I remained conscious, but happily my kneecap was in its rightful place, so everything worked out.

And now I am about to go to the gym. Which, given my recent history, seems like a terrible idea.

The night before last

I woke up at 3 am to the sound of Henry calling for me. I stumbled into his room, reassured him that I was alive, stomped back to bed, lay there wide awake for what seemed like hours, finally dropped back into blissful slumber, then heard him calling me again. I nudged Scott and explained that his son was calling for him and if he was a sensitive and loving father he would run to his side. He totally bought that line and made his way to Henry’s room, showed Henry that he, too, was alive, and I heard him stumbling back to our room and then I heard a terrible sound. It was the sound of a delicate foot-part slamming into a heavy piece of furniture.

There was a millisecond of silence and then a string of expletives. This is normal procedure for Scott, who is well-known in these parts for taking out his anger on inanimate objects. He can usually be found instructing God to damn a computer to hell or unleashing brutal verbal abuse on a hinky small appliance. I could tell from the sound and the ensuing tenor of the cursing, though, that this particular injury was beyond the usual stubbed toe. This was bad. I wondered, from the comfort of the bed, if he had broken his toe. I considered getting up and helping him out, but on the other hand the bed was warm. I decided to wait it out. I heard him making his way to the bathroom, I assumed to check out his injuries in a well-lit place, and there was much hissing and gasping and cursing. I really should get up, I thought, and did not move an inch. Because really, what could I do? Wring my hands while he bandaged himself?

As I considered what a good wife I was, keeping the faith that he could help himself and in the process getting some much-needed rest so I could tend to the household tomorrow while he nursed his painful foot-wounds, I heard a crash. Actually it was more like a series of crashes, like all the furniture in the bathroom had come tumbling down. Except we don’t have furniture in the bathroom. I braced myself for the onslaught of cursing that would undoubtedly follow whatever it was that probably just landed on or near my husband, but I heard…nothing. Silence! Well, he’s handling that well, I thought. Just cleaning up the mess, without cursing and…

I sat up. My husband has never in his life taken events in stride. Especially when he already has what sounds like a painful injury. The silence continued. Shit.

I made my way through the dark hallway toward the lit bathroom, and then had what I referred to later as my Law & Order moment: turning the corner to see Scott sprawled, unconscious, on the bathroom tile. There were a couple of small puddles of blood a few inches from his arm, and a streak of blood across the cabinet. I would have been more alarmed if it hadn’t been for the small smile that was playing across my husband’s face, as if he were in the middle of a lovely dream, while his hand, now alarmingly close to all that blood, pawed the air. Did he think he was petting the dog?

I crouched down by him. “Honey,” I said.

He opened his eyes. “What?”

“You fainted,” I explained to him.

“I did it again?” he said.

Scott’s fainted a couple of times, the last time almost exactly a year ago, also in the bathroom, although that time he had been under the weather and not nursing a bloody toe. We ended up hanging out in the ER for hours and hours that time, only for the doctors to tell us that he was completely fine.

So this time, I wasn’t too alarmed. Only I knew that if he got up, he’d probably faint again, because that seems to be his way. And he was trying to get up.

“I’m okay,” he said.

“You’re not,” I said. “You’re lying on the bathroom floor. Stay down.”

Then we heard Henry open his door and amble over. “Hey, guys, what’s all the racket?” he asked, and then saw his dad lying on the ground surrounded by blood. He appeared…concerned.

“It’s okay,” I told him.

“It’s okay!” Scott repeated. “It’s okay!” His face was completely gray by now, and shiny with sweat.

“What’s wrong with Dad?” Henry said, his lower lip starting to tremble.

We then entered the wacky hijinks phase of the evening, in which I tried to reassure Henry that his father was, despite all the blood and the nearing-death quality of his face, actually fine, and also keep Scott from getting up and, in the process, pass out again and this time crack his head open, which was really the last thing we needed. I had to get Henry out of the bathroom and back into bed, and at the same time keep Scott lying down for little while longer, and while I was in Henry’s room comforting him and explaining low blood pressure and fainting and also how sometimes a little blood, strategically placed, looks like a lot of blood, Scott was in the bathroom, inexplicably calling out I’M OKAY to the Universe, and I kept shouting DO NOT GET UP WAIT FOR ME, and possibly the alarm in my voice kept Henry from dropping back into slumber, and then I got Henry to laugh by poking a little fun at his dad's fainting tendencies, and it was going well until I used the phrase “ripped his toenail off” and made Henry weep for Scott’s toenail, weep as if it were his very own, and I had to comfort him all over again and then get back to the bathroom because Scott was all I’M GETTING UP, and for some reason he went over to the couch, which was far from the bedroom and in the exact opposite place he needed to be, and then I went back to Henry who was now mourning Scott’s toe AND freaking out over the blood, and it’s amazing that any of us got any sleep that night.

But we did. In the end, Scott’s poor pinky toe was bandaged, his healthful glow returned to his face, and he managed to get to Henry’s room to reassure him and then get back to bed, and Henry fell asleep, and then I did, somehow, eventually. And the next day the source of the original injury—a heavy wood file box, which had been emptied and left in the hallway so that it could be thrown out—was taken outside and tossed to the curb, where it could never hurt anyone again.

Cellulitis! A short play.

I. Walking to school.

Henry: I have to be careful of my purple thumb.

Me: You have to be what of your what now?

Henry: My purple thumb. See?

Me: What, did you get magic marker on your thWHAAAAT IS THAT. Scott. Scott!

Scott: Oh, wow. Did you cut your thumb at some point, buddy?

Henry: Hmm. Yesterday at school there were these white cracks on my thumb so I put my finger in my mouth, and then the cracks went away.

Me: Oh, god, you put it in your mouth?

Henry (sighing): Yes, and then the white cracks went away.

Scott: Does it hurt?

Henry: Only when I touch it.

We head back home. Phone calls to the doctor ensue. An appointment is made.

II. At the doctor's office.

Nurse: So what happened?

Henry: Well, my thumb is all purple and swollen, see?

Nurse: Wow. Did you get a cut?

Henry: Yesterday there were these white cracks all over, but then I licked it and the white cracks went away.

Nurse: White cracks? And you … licked it?

Me: I know. I… I know.

Henry: It's okay! When I licked it, it got better! Well, it still hurt.

Doctor: What did you do to your thumb, Henry?

Henry (sighing deeply): White cracks, licked it, school, purple.

Doctor: White…what?

Finally, after much explanation, there is a diagnosis, and a prescription. We leave. I try to convince Henry not to ever lick his wounds or really any part of himself, especially at school, blah blah. He ignores me, preferring to list his favorite aliens from Ben-10. The End.

That play's going straight to Broadway, my friends. Mark my words.

New post on Wonderland today, about lying to your children. Like how when I told Henry that if he licked his thumb ever again, somewhere a puppy would die.

Why I should never be left alone with anyone under the age of eighteen.

Sigh. So, okay. Here’s what happened.

Yesterday, shortly after dinner. Henry was in dreamy, reflective mode, standing up on the window seat in our living room, gazing at the cars and flotsam. This is a narrow seat that he’s never left alone on, as he could immediately slip and fall, causing grave injury to his person. (Note the foreshadowing! NOTE IT!)

Anyway, I was of course sitting right there, right next to him, my legs stretched out across the seat as he pressed his body against the window. He was absentmindedly kissing the window and he was being so cute and so unusually still that I grabbed the camera off the coffee table and started taking pictures. Of course, while clicking away, I let go of him. And then. Then. He looked at the camera, grinned, shouted “Boom!” which is his way of saying, “Watch me comically throw myself down!” and—boom—he threw himself down. Only his butt landed on nothing--remember how I said how narrow the seat was? Remember?—because his butt was headed straight for the floor, but before his butt could reach its destination, his poor little skull cracked against the brutal coffee table edge, and OH MY GOD WHO TOLD ME I COULD HAVE A KID?

For a millisecond he lay there, staring up at me like, why am I down here, wasn’t I up there? and in that millisecond I thought, he’s not making a sound, he’s a vegetable, his brain has been pureed and then he started wailing, and I scooped him up and tried to comfort him as only an idiot-mother can, and I tried to figure out what to do and I couldn’t remember a damn thing, including my husband’s cell phone number, and all I could do was babble idiot words of idiot comfort to my poor trusting child. Miraculously, after ten minutes of unadulterated weeping he wiped his eyes and asked to read a book, so of course we did, me quizzing him on the name of every animal on every page, as if he might have lost the giraffe-identifying lobe of his brain.

So, in the end, everything was fine, Henry’s fine, we’re fine, tra la la. There’s not even a bump on his head. Everything’s fine, except I’M NOT FINE, I’m a total wreck still. I’m having flashbacks of the feeling of his little legs landing on my legs and then slipping away from me, stupid me with my stupid camera; I’m still watching him slip off me and I’m not reaching forward and dropping the goddamn camera and I hate myself. And the worst part is, I have a picture of that big grin he had on his face, the joyful get-a-load-of-this grin he gave me, one second before he discovered that his mother sucks.

On an unrelated topic, while searching the web for a good brain chart to link to, I found the kitty paintings of a schizophrenic artist. First the kitties are weird and THEN THEY’RE SO MUCH WEIRDER. Go see. I don’t know, though—I think the psycho kitties are less frightening than the “normal period” kitties. What does that say about me?