Last weekend my college friend Karen was in town. It was really nice to see her! We finally remembered to get a picture together after dinner on Sunday evening at a restaurant that only serves souffles. Ha. She and Becca and I were aerospace engineering classmates — and, for senior year, roommates. It’s hard to believe that we all graduated from college 15+ years ago. Life keeps moving…
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After the nice weekend, it’s been a rather stressful week.
We had some “fun” with the natural gas company on Tuesday when we discovered — at 11:00 p.m. when Jose tried to heat up a pot of water to make tea — that our gas wasn’t working. Upon further inspection, he realized that the gas meter outside our house looked brand new. And upon further inspection, we finally found a notice on our front door — which we don’t use every day since we park in the back by our garage and enter the house through the breakfast room — that said the gas had been shut off to replace the meter. And they can’t turn the gas back on without having access to the house to check the inside connections.
To give credit where it’s due, a service guy did come out to our house at 11:30 p.m. to turn it back on. I was frustrated with the total lack of communication, but apparently we weren’t the only ones in this boat. The service guy told us that due to an error at the home office, the notification letters to several neighborhoods hadn’t been sent out in advance. On top of that, we discovered the next morning that an email saying we’d need to call them to have the gas turned back on was sent at 4:30 — to the previous owners of our house. I don’t even understand how that happens, since the gas bill has been coming to us for 5 months now!
Sigh. Home ownership is full of random frustrations, isn’t it?
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On Wednesday night, Charlotte tripped head-first into an outward-facing corner in her room. No doubt it hurt like crazy so she started screaming, and Emma — who had been standing right next to her — also started wailing because she thought it was her fault. (Charlotte may have tripped on Emma’s foot, actually, but it was totally an accident.)
It was mass chaos for a couple minutes. Charlotte’s head immediately started swelling so I rushed downstairs for an ice pack and ran back up to her room. I basically had to hold Charlotte in a headlock to keep the ice pack on her forehead — which she hated, so her screaming continued. Jose took Emma into the other room to calm her down, and that took a while too.
The ice pack helped, but there was swelling right above her eye so we called the pediatrician’s after-hours line for a sanity check. There were no signs of a serious head injury, so finally we gave her some ibuprofen for the pain, put her to bed, and just checked on her a couple times later in the night.
By morning, the swelling had mostly disappeared and she seem none too worse for the wear — except there is literally a red line from her hairline to her eyebrow where she hit the corner.
Man. Kids are stressful.
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Last night my work group had a belated holiday party and the kids came along. They were both up later than usual but behaved pretty well at the party. After we got home and were supposedly “winding down,” I agreed to play hot potato with Emma for just a couple minutes before heading to bed. Then Charlotte wandered in and I didn’t realize and the next thing I knew, an errant toss from Emma resulted in the grapefruit-sized rubber ball bouncing right off the top of Charlotte’s head.
SERIOUSLY.
I mean, total mom fail for me not realizing that Charlotte was in a spot where that could happen.
BUT SERIOUSLY. How many times can Charlotte’s head hit or be hit in 24 hours??
Fortunately the ball is a squishy one not really capable of inflicting injury. Still, cue another round of both girls crying — one because she got accidentally bonked on the head and the other because she was the one who had thrown the ball — with me feeling like an idiot and Jose frustratedly proclaiming that there will be no more balls in the house EVER.
Sigh.
Here’s to a weekend free of utility issues and head injuries…
Here’s to a bonk-free weekend