talk to the hand

There is no end a Grammy will go to when she is trying to maintain peace in her house.  Especially when that is a fragile peace that has run amok because the two year old has smacked the six year old with a push toy, and the six year old is crying like he is dying, and the two year old looks like he is clueless about the whole thing.

I am a relaxed housewife, and grandmother.  Solutions like this one come easy:

1. John smacks Dunc with the above mentioned toy.
2. Dunc starts crying.
3. I am deep in the middle of a painting and trying to juggle research for a project at work at the same time.
4. I look up and see the whole family in my small work room.  (Stevie Wonder and all three grandkids.  Jack is the only GMIA*)  *GMIA=grandchild missing in action
5. I know I have to come up with something fast to get them out, before my creative well runs dry.
6. I try to soothe Dunc, but quickly notice he is milking it for all it is worth.

7. I tell him in a loud, dramatic tone of voice "oh my Dunc, it looks like you might lose that finger, I better do something fast!" (I am not sure which finger it is, they all look fine, so I ask Dunc and after pointing to a couple spots, we settle on the worst one.  It looks just like his other nine fingers.)
8. I tell Stevie W. to get the first aid kit.  He is clueless at this point and tries some fake move, like "we better stitch it up" and I look at him STERNLY and say "GET ME THE FIRST AID KIT NOW!"  He goes to get it.  I tell him to bring the gauze rolls too.
9. He brings everything we have for first aid back to me (he may be slow out of the gate, but he is good for the distance).
10. I unroll some gauze.  At that point Maddie scoffs and says "there's NOTHING WRONG with his hand Grammy".  I look her in the eye and say loudly "OH BUT THERE IS!"  and proceed to start wrapping his hand.  Maddie gets a look on her face that is somewhere between wanting to laugh and looking like she just bit a lemon.

11. Dunc is really into it now.  He holds his hand very still while I wrap it in gauze.  And tape it.  All done with my most professional Nurse Grammy attitude.  Steve has started to laugh by now and left the room.  Dunc's face is 1/2 inch from his hand as I finish taping it. Examining it.  Maddie still has that sour, laughing smirk on her face, her lips pursed tightly together.  As though she knows I am faking this, but she won't say it, just in case Dunc really is wounded.  But she knows.
12. Dunc (who stopped crying the minute I opened the roll of gauze), walks off, staring in fascination at his hand.

13. Maddie looks at me.  Lips still pressed together.  I ask her if she wants her wounds bandaged.  She just grins bigger.  And I know right then, she won't admit she isn't wounded, because if she wants to be part of this, she has to ACT the part.
14. I wrap her hand, she walks off loving every bit of the whole episode, and then I notice.
15. John standing there with his mouth open, wondering what the heck he has just witnessed.  He has no idea what it was, but Maddie and Dunc have something he doesn't.  So I grab the paper tape and put a piece on his hand, in the same place, minus the gauze, because I figure he will rip it right off.

The room has cleared.  I get back to painting.  And it took me less time to perform first aid than it did to write about it.

Score one for Nurse Grammy.

When John went home an hour later, he still had the tape on his hand.

Dunc and Maddie went to bed a while ago, bandages still in place on their hands.


...life is good.
~cath
Twitter @jonesbabie

it begins with a bang

Last night, Stevie Wonder and I snuggled and shared a bottle of wine as we watched the minutes on the clock tick by to the end of one year, and the beginning of a new year.  As I looked up at him, I felt a shiver of anticipation run through me at the thought of his lips touching mine at the exact moment that 2012 began.  I thought of the brand new silk sheets I had put on the bed and smoothed with loving fingers, and I felt my heart begin to race as he touched my face with his fingers, tilting my face up as he leaned down toward me, closer, closer, until....

...Wait just a dang second.  If you think that is how my New Year's Eve went, then you're delusional.  It would have been lovely, and actually we did plan to split a bottle of wine.  But nothing in my life ever goes as planned, and last night was a prime example...

This year is the year of the dragon, and I was born in the year of the dragon.  Mum told me it would be a lucky year for me.  And she is right.  Depending how you look at things.  My luck so far:

• I inherited some waterfront property yesterday.  But it's going to be hard to get a tan, unless I crawl under the house.  That's right, last night the hot water heater blew a pipe and we became the proud owners of a private lake under our home.  We could stock it and fish in it, if we were elves.  (The crawl space is belly-only crawling.)
• Wretch and I baked some cookies and snarfed them down while Steve was hunting Bambi.  I knew I was a dragon at that point, because I had the fire in my stomach to prove it.  After sucking down a boatload of Tums, I was still burning.  
• Steve cooked the fish I had promised to eat and put about 2 pounds of pepper on it.  Notched the burn up a bit higher.  The glass of wine I had after that finished me off.  I was toasted before the bottom of the first glass.  (Try pouring wine in an open wound sometime and you will get an idea about how my upper digestive system felt at that point.)  I finally went to bed about 10PM to wallow in misery.
• Steve woke me up at 11PM to tell me Happy New Year.  I said something obscenely rude at that point, and he snickered.  I woke him up at 2AM in retaliation to wish him a Happy New Year, but he swears he didn't remember it.  

I think he lied.  And I got payback watching Steve and our son Jim spend most of this morning crawling and wallowing, fixing the leak that will dry up our new lake.

Steve isn't sure the hot water heater will work now though.  He told me he turned on the hot tub so we could bathe in it tonight if there is no hot water.  If you see bubbles floating in the air above our house, you'll know where we are.

Isn't that romantic?  Yeah, I'm gagging over that line too.

Happy New Year y'all!  It begins with a bang.

~cath xo
Twitter @jonesbabie