Saturday, 31 January, 2009 (part 2)

Near the end of the surprise party, Beth and her Mom start taking down the decorations. Some of the guests thought that was hilarious- they’d never seen a party being undone while it was still in force. They just wanted things clean, so the decorations needed to move along. The couple I was talking to said “Well, it looks like we’ve overstayed our welcome. Time to go!”

A load of people went to Jacob’s new apartment to take a gander at it and I was tasked with putting the twins down for a nap. This I accomplished with very little effort. We simply watched a movie they found boring and they fell asleep in my lap due to lack of interest. Ha!
Once the movie was done, we fired up the Wii and I was getting ready to mop the floor with Will in Golf, but realized I needed to get dressed and out the door for my meeting. I got dressed and headed out the door just in time to hear Jared say,
“Oh no, he fell.”
I looked at Jared and followed his gaze up the road, noticing a figure crumpled in the street. The man stood up and Jared said,
“He got up. He’s okay. Good.”
I could see the guy, but he was almost a quarter mile away so I had no idea who he was. There’s a guy in the neighborhood who can be seen some days on his skateboard and I thought it was him. So I asked Jared,
“Is he just some guy?”
“No,” he replied, “it’s Jacob!”
He started walking quickly toward Jacob and I jumped in my car to head out for my meeting. As I approached them walking back towards my house, I could see concern in Jared’s face (he was walking about a dozen paces in front of Jacob) and blood running down Jacob’s face. Jacob was chatting away on his phone, verbally minimizing the damage he’d done to himself. I stopped and said,
“Holy crap, Jacob.”
Jacob came closer to my car and leaned over so that he could look at himself in one of my side mirrors. It looked like blood had been flowing, but that it wasn’t going to be serious, so I bid them good luck and headed on my way to church.

2 hours later, I pulled back into my driveway and noticed the absence of cars. Only our van was in the driveway. I went through a mental roll-call to figure out where everyone would be. Dad and David would be at the Stake Center; Mom, Beth, and Kristen would be heading to the fireside; Jacob must have headed off in pursuit of womenfolk, as usual… But the lights were on, doors were open, and I knew the kids were still home. So I just had to figure out who was left. But what I saw didn’t add up. Jared and Kristen’s car wasn’t there. I didn’t think Beth would leave Will all by himself to hold down the fort (and more importantly, I didn’t think the kids would let her or Grammy leave them with Uncle Will). It just didn’t add up, but I’d figure it out soon enough. One thing was for sure- it wouldn’t be another surprise party!

I went through the garage door to clean up my mess and Beth and Kristen came out to talk to me.
“So, you don’t know anything about the drama do you?” one of them asked.
“You mean Jacob? I saw he was bleeding as I left. Is he okay?” I replied.
“Well, Jacob and Mom went to the… Wait, no, Dad… Mom, Dad, Will, and Jacob are all at the emergency room. They tried to go to Doctor’s Care but that was closed and then some EMT guy told them to go to the hospital but they’ve been there for hours and haven’t even been seen yet. Jared’s cleaning out our car.”
Bells and whistles begin going off in my head. I am left with a bunch of questions.
“Wait, what? It was serious enough to go to the hospital?”
“Yeah,” they replied “we got him some bandages but they wouldn’t hold. The cut was really deep and it just kept bleeding.”

Again, I was left with more questions than I had to begin with. It took a good 10 minutes of listening to them in hopes that those questions would get answered, but that was pointless. So then I just came out with them:
Q: Why in the world does it take 3 people to take one to the ER?
A: When Jacob came home bleeding all over the place, Kristen and Jared went for bandages while everyone else tried to get the bleeding to stop. After K&J came back, Mom took Jacob out to “find someone” to help. I’m STILL not clear about how it all happened, but the end result was that they went to Doctor’s Care (which was closed) and to the parking lot of some grocery store and found an EMT who (couldn’t fix it, but) told them to go to the ER. They called back here to my house and Jared offered to take Will and go sit with Jacob in the ER so that Mom could come home and enjoy time with the kids. Dad said he was going to go sit with Jacob and that Jared didn’t have to and Will went with him. So that’s how they all got there. After that, Mom came back to the house to go with Beth to the fireside thing but they decided not to go and Jared and I went to sit with Jacob and send Dad and Will back to the house to get ready to head home. If you’re keeping score, it turns out it takes 5 people to babysit one guy while he sat in a waiting room, an exam room, and a bigger exam room.
Q: Are Mom, Beth, and Kristen going to the fireside? They should have left 10 minutes ago if they were hoping to get there in time.
A: Kristen didn’t want to go. Beth wanted to go, but not by herself. Mom originally wanted to go, but didn’t want to leave Jacob and also felt bad that her grandkids hardly saw her all day, so she ended up really not wanting to go. Things were back and forth for a few minutes, but they ended up with Mom coming back to the house with Beth and got to see the kids for a little while before they left.
Q: Did Dad not go to the thing at the Stake Center? My Bishop was hoping to see him, David’s there by himself, and I thought he’d want to be there.
A: Nope.
Q: Did Will like the Wii?
A: We don’t know.
Q: What do you mean, you don’t know? This is one of the coolest technologies to come out big while he was on his mission, and you weren’t paying attention to his reaction?
A: Nope.
Q: Are there any more burgers left from the party?
A: Yeah, and hot dogs too.

So we all had leftovers while we thought about what to do. I changed my clothes and announced I was going to the ER to let everyone get out of there and get on with fun stuff and to knock some heads of the staff there. The last time I checked, it was hazardous to your health to be bleeding from your head for several hours without being seen. Either they were slammed with people (they’re never slammed) or they’re just inefficient (Ding ding ding! We have a winner!). The women had the brilliant idea of making sandwiches for the waiting crew, so Jared and I took them over there.

We waited for a while, sent Will and Dad back to the house, waited some more, and finally saw a human being. She told us to move to another exam room to wait some more. It turns out we didn’t have to wait long- the nurse or doctor came in soon with a needle this long… Just kidding. The needle wasn’t long. But the needles for the stitches looked like pure evil. They taped Jacob’s eyes shut and *We’re sorry, but the details of this encounter were removed from this record because they were in violation of HIPAA regulations. And that photograph you just took will need to be deleted as well. What were you thinking anyway?* Man, that looked painful.

Jacob kept asking me questions in Spanish while they were doing unmentionable things to him (not unmentionable as in immoral, unmentionable as in I don’t want to get sued). It didn’t do any good, though, because the Doc had spent several years in Miami and had picked up Cuban. I mean, Spanish. Her Spanish was pretty bad (partly because she was a gringo and partly because she learned Cuban), but she was pretty proficient at it.

Anyway, we got Jacob back to my house and sent him on his way home with strict instructions to avoid all vomiting and other signs of concussion. Then Jared and Kristen headed out and it was just us again. We watched a movie together and then hit the sack. All in all, it was a surprisingly phenomenal day.

Slacker Dad things to do

I have noticed in the past few weeks that some of my parenting practices are... unorthodox? Sure, that works.

Example:
The babies splash in the tub. They also lack comprehension of the English language. So when I say "Stop splashing," or "No splashing. Not nice", all they seem to hear is "...splash..." and just end up splashing harder.
My solution:
I splash back. That's right- I take a cup of water and I dump it over their heads. Or I reach my hand down into the water and splash a nice handful on them. It gets their attention, doesn't hurt them, and usually gets them to stop (but not all the time). I'm trying to think of a new scheme- something that will work every time. Any ideas? ;-)

Another:
When Seth was younger he liked to sit in my lap while I was trying to do things that required me to get up and down repeatedly, like building a computer. Obviously, it was difficult to get up and down with him on my lap.
My solution:
I gave him some specialized computer socket wrenches and gave him an old shell of a computer to work on while I worked on mine. He still has those wrenches and he goes and gets them sometimes when I need to work on some project that requires tools. Tools as toys? Sure, it's a little edgy, but it works.

I'll post more if more occur to me.