Where's the camera (repost)

Where's the camera

1/18/2006

I know I took photos of Skip opening his birthday swag on Sunday morning. Since then? Your guess is as good as mine. Too bad, though. Yesterday morning. being the closest school day to Skip's actual birthday, he was allowed/encouraged/etc to bring goodies in to class at the end of the day as a bit of a special day celebration. What did he want to bring in? Hey! Why don't we MAKE Beaver Tails in the classroom as a special treat? Next year, it'll be Middle School, and I doubt that kids get as much leeway in doing fun, unexpected stuff during school hours, so sure, why not. I cleared it with the teacher, and all was set in motion for me to be able to bring in a frying pan, oil, dough, and (did nobody read the bits about boiling oil and kids not going together well?) deep fry beaver tails for the kids. Anywho. The dough needed to be made a few hours ahead of time, and so, when I woke up yesterday, actually feeling life-like at 5:55am (though still unable to breathe through my nose), I took advantage of my wakefulness, and the house's sleepfulness, and went downstairs to get the dough going. I had proofed the dough, and was sitting down to do another of those infernal Paint By Numbers (oh, why did I ever click on the "archive of unsolved puzzles' page????) when I realized that not only could I not breathe through my nose, but the right side of my nose seemed to be blocked by something very solid that a mere nose-blow wasn't going to deal with. J-jumping. Look away now. You've been warned. (No, there's not a picture. She's just squeamish, and has heard this story before.) I reached up, not having yet looked in the mirror, so not knowing if there really was something growing out of my nose or not, and noticed something crusty and hard in my right nostril. A flick with the kleenex wasn't dislodging it, so I grabbed that bad boy and pulled. I kid you not, it was like the entire contents of my head came out through my right nostril. An exact semi-plaster cast of my right maxillary sinus. I believe the term for the form is 'dendritic' because that creature branched with the best of them. I'm surprised that my nostril doesn't bear stretch-marks from birthin' that creature. It was easily as big as my THUMB! Of course, after I dispatched it to the deep with a girly little shriek, I thought "Oh poop. I should've taken a picture of that!" Kelly had her final gymnastics class with the Tuesday Crowd. Next week she moves up to the Grade School Girls class. They did a little gymnastics presentation. Seven little Nadia Komenechis (or however you spell that last name) all prancing around, tumbling, and balancing on the high beam. There was even a medal presentation. Of course they all got the gold. And then Kelly twirled with her medal on, and cracked Gina right in the eye. Nothing like a big purple welt with a blood blister center to make a girl look good for the cameras. So maybe it was a good thing that I did NOT have my camera yesterday. Making the Beaver Tails yesterday afternoon, by the way, went off without a hitch. Except that Nate was distracted by something, twirled around, fell backwards over a chair, and bonked his head on the linoleum with a sickening "doink!" sound. He immediately raised a gumball-sized goose-egg on the back of his head, and I behaved like a horrible mother, hugging him for barely 10 seconds before I sat him down on the floor, crooned "Now, didn't I tell you you shouldn't have been farting around?" and then went back to rolling dough for the tails. Hey. I was on a tight schedule. The kids were quite impressed to see the things made before their eyes, and maybe, even a little bit more impressed to see Skip was the one wrangling the tongs over the vat of hot oil. We made close to forty tails, all tallied, and I bet if we'd made twenty more they would've gone. So maybe I *should* have had the camera with me after all. As if one boink on his head wasn't enough, Nate had to take a tumble at home while I was off at gymnastics with Kelly. I was on the phone with Ken when I hear him say "Yeah, I just wondered... wait... Skip...? Skip! Stop. Nate! No...NO! No Nate...." and then that same "doink" sound in the background followed by a sudden silence and then the "Waaaaaaaah!" When I came home an hour later, all was well, but Nate was cradled in Ken's lap with a big ice pack on the back of his head. And he had TWO big lumps on the back of his head. Now THAT is what I should've taken a picture of.