Comacozi Dove

Bob was sitting at the kitchen table yesterday doing some school when he glanced out the window. He saw a dove fly off the branch of our tree and directly into our glass front door! When he was telling me this I was incredulous. I KNOW without a shadow of a doubt that the door is not so clean as to make it invisible. There are smeared fingerprints all over it.

Bob said, “No Mom, the big door was closed behind the glass door. The bird couldn’t have thought he was going to fly right on through.”

Strange. Was he suicidal? Maniacal? Rabid? Do we have a flock of Nutty Grey Doves roosting in our trees?

This is all feeling very Hitchcockian to me.

Crisis

I am feeling a little down today. There is crisis happening all around me, like a tornado.

My brother in law’s body is just so broken right now. He can’t do anything for himself. This is a very vibrant and independent man, brought low so very quickly. He is tired. His wife is tired. No one is sleeping. The pain is extreme. The prognosis for healing, while good will be LONG in coming. This will not end soon. And there is nothing I can do.

A friend of mine’s marriage is falling apart. I am in awe of the human ability to destroy. Bad, selfish choices cause everyone to be afraid, and in pain. They tear at each other, out of pain and anger and fear and everyone is hurt. And there is nothing I can do.

I have bonus kids here today; tasked with the job of keeping the kiddos away from the destruction and pain. I am on call to pick kids up from school, have kids sleeping over when their parents cannot watch them. I try to act like all is well, like it is just another day, while watching my friends and family suffer.

Father in Heaven, so many need your healing hand. Do not hide your face from them.

That's What She Said

Today I'd like to send you over to Shannon's site. She has a guest poster today who wrote about her son's peanut allergy.

As many of you know my Ann has an anaphylactic (fatal) allergy to ALL dairy. So many don't understand what that means. It means if she gets some pizza grease on her hand by sitting at a table that has not been cleaned, she could die. DIE. It's crazy and terrifying.

I must admit to being one of those parents who thought is was so unbelievable that some school districts were outlawing peanut butter just because a couple of kids couldn't have it. How rash and ridiculous! Then I had Ann and learned all about fatal food allergies. Kids with severe peanut allergies can go into anaphylactic shock just by SMELLING peanuts!

Now I get it.

I'm not suggesting that the world go dairy or peanut free. I know that is unrealistic, but if there were just a few places our kids would be safe, sunday school, or grandma's house, our lives would be a little simpler.

So go read Shannon's post. Jane Ann (her guest poster) said it better than me.

Go See!

I have a review up over at The Homeschool Review.

Even if you don't homeschool you might like this one. It's a toy. Just in time for Christmas!

Go check it out!

And The Winner Is...

LORI! A fellow TOS Crew Member. Congrats! Now off to find her email.



Lori, if you read this before I find your email, click on the 'Email Me' link on the right and send me your mailing address. I'll forward it on to Brandilynn's assistant and she'll get the book to you as soon as it is published! Your gonna LOVE it!

Now I am off to clean something. Going to Houston and back twice in four days has left its mark on my house.

There and Back Again. Again.

Just a reminder that my contest ends today at midnight.

I am going to bed now. I drove to Houston and back again today. About 10 hours in the car. My other SIL R and I got SDB and SIL R back home. (I just realized all three of my sister-in-law's name's begin with R. Humm, that is going to get confusing.)

He is resting comfortably in his own bed now, well, as comfortably as one can rest with three broken ribs and a titanium rod for a femur bone.

And I am ready for bed.

Medically speaking…

Some of you have inquired about the stitch removal. It went off without a hitch. Ann sat very still while I took some of my sewing scissors (because they are the only sharp scissors in the entire house) and cut the threads. Then I put some ointment on it for lubricant and gave Ann some tweezers and a mirror.
She wanted to pull them herself. They came right out. So, YIPPEE!

Now on to more impressive injuries.

Sir D, Sir D’s Brother (heretofore known as SDB) and their friend C, and my boys went on a riding trip down to Houston this weekend. Everything seemed to be going along swimmingly until late Saturday afternoon. They say it’s always that last lap that get’s ya. SDB apparently miscalculated something or other and there were berms and whoop te doo’s and high siding on a curve and maybe some headshake and other impressive motocross terms I do not understand, and he flew off the track and hit a tree. Hard.

SDB broke his femur in three places and broke several ribs, and may have slightly punctured a lung (how do you slightly puncture a lung, I ask?)

I got a call from my SIL R around 7pm on Sat night asking me if I’d heard about SDB. Um, no I had not, but I knew it could not be good. It wasn’t. He was going into surgery to put a rod in his leg. That night.

So SIL R and I distributed our remaining children to various willing adults, threw some things in a bag and headed off for Houston. We made the 4 hour trip in 3. I was doing a fair amount of speeding, but figured if I got pulled over I had a good excuse, plus we didn’t have to stop every 5 minutes for potty breaks.

By the time we got to the hospital at 11:30, (getting to Houston was the easy part as it turns out. Finding the hospital at midnight, then SDB’s actual room took a while) he was out of surgery and in his own room.

We left SDB and SIL R at the hospital and Sir D and I went off in search of a hotel room nearby. It was after 1 at this point and, for the first time in my life, was wondering if there was a place that sold hotel rooms by the hour. Sir D said that would probably not be the kind of establishment we should inhabit. Oh, right.

Anyway, after getting about 6 hours of sleep that if I figured out how much it cost me by the hour, I am sure would make me sick, we headed back to the hospital to meet up with SDB, SIL R, C (who’d been at the camp site with my boys) and my boys.

We prayed over SDB, said our farewells and packed up all the motorbikes and gear and wagon-trained back home.

SDB and SIL R are on their way home today. I can only imagine that riding in an SUV with a rod in your broken leg, and several broken ribs and a slightly punctured lung will be an experience SDB or SIL R will not soon forget.

Makes a few hours in an ER waiting room and a few stitches to the head seem like nothing.




PS, don't forget about my giveaway! It ends Tuesday at midnight!

A Giveaway! A Giveaway! A Giveaway!

I was sent an Advanced Readers copy of Brandilynn Collin’s newest book. All I had to do was review it on my blog. There are some serious perks to being a blogger!

I have read many of Bradilynn’s books, and I LOVE them. I loved her Hidden Faces Series so much I bought a copy of this series for my sister as a gift. And her Kanner Lake Series? Totally freaked me out!

Let me give you some advice; if you go to a little cabin in the woods in the middle of nowhere with your family on vacation, and let your husband leave you and the sleeping children in the little cabin to go hang out with the rest of the family at the campsites about a mile away, don’t take the opportunity to finish the series. I know it would seem like a good idea, what with the lack of TV’s or computers or, really any other sounds or people to distract you, but it will get in your head. Then when the little woodland animals begin to scurry about after dark, you will be certain you are being stalked by a psycho killer and work yourself into such a state, that when your husband finally comes back, he will take in your frenzied appearance and request you stop reading the scary books already!

I mean, I guess. I don’t know for sure. Ahem.

So back to the newest book. It is called Dark Pursuit. It did not have quite the freak-out factor that the last two series did, but it was good none the less. (BTW, this is a stand alone book and not the beginning of a new series.)

You can read what it is about here. I don’t want to add to that because I don’t want to give anything away. Let me just say that I read it in two days and it did not disappoint. The ending left me very satisfied.

Also I read it during the day when I was not alone and the sun was up, bright and shiny.

Now for the best part! Brandilynn has agreed to send a brand spankin’ new copy to one lucky winner when it comes out in early November!

Here is what you have to do. Just leave me a comment telling me what your favorite genre to read is; romance, suspense, mystery, fantasy, non-fiction, teen fiction books about vampires, whatever. I’m dying to know.

I will leave this post up until Tuesday. I’ll close the comments at midnight on Tuesday and use the Random Number Generator Thingie to choose who gets to win this spine tingling book!

Removal

Today I will be pulling the stitches out of Ann's head.

I don't want to pay the $30 to go see the doc for him to do it so I bribed her. $15 if she'll let me do it.

Is that being frugal? Or is it being a bad mom? It's not about the money really so much as the time. The ER people told me I could bring her back to the ER and they'd take them out. Yeah, right! I don't go to the ER unless someone is on deaths door or needs part of their bodies put back together or stitched back up. I'm not going there for stitch removal. Anyway I've done it before. Of course it was on the calf of a teenage boy's leg. That's a bit different than a 9 year old girl's head.

I'll let you know how it goes.

And don't forget to leave a comment on my Giveaway Post!

Have a great Saturday.

My Sister's in a Movie! Look!

I have mentioned before that my sister is an actress and model. Well, now she's in a feature length movie! Check this out! My sister is the Mom; the one walking out into the yard hollering. She's good at hollering!

I am so proud of her. Can't wait to see it in its entirety.