Because I know you miss these stories

It's a good thing I don't wear my heart on my sleeve. (No fair debating that statement. Just go with me.) I do have a shiny silver bracelet with a single heart dangling from it, closed by a toggle clasp. It's not one that I made, and I think that's the problem. It falls off. Somehow the bar works loose and ka-chunk, it's on the floor, the ground... the other day I felt it slip off in my car and slide down under the left side of my seat.

When I arrived at my mother in law's I parked, opened the door, reached down under the seat to get the bracelet, and found I had two problems. One, I couldn't reach the bracelet. Two, my arm was stuck. Stuck, as in "Woah... I can not pull my hand out from under this seat and I just scraped my wrist trying and my hand is going to bloat up and the firemen will have to come and coat my wrist with criso before it swells too much or they're taking apart this seat to get me out," stuck.

Breathe in, breathe out. Maneuver, scrape the wrist a little more, (bleeding...) and recover sweet freedom. Get out of car, inspect situation from back seat, and pick up easily accessible bracelet. Because I like to do things the hard way. (That's what she said.)

* * *

The Wii reminds you frequently to be careful, put that wrist strip on and cinch it (not on the scraped part of one's wrist, mind you, but I'm right handed), and make sure there's nothing too close when you start swinging that little wireless mouse around. SO, I cinch. I look around.

And still, the other day I swung back my "bowling ball" and THWACK, I hit something. I felt a solid connection with that Something. I looked around to see my son doubled over, his hands clasped to what I was sure would be a broken nose. Blood? any blood? No. It turns out I hit him square on the forehead, with only slightly insufficient force to stamp the Wii logo right there permanently.

I had visions of taking him to the ER and saying "it's an injur-wii" and falling over laughing, albeit laughing alone. There's no amount of helpful warning text that can compensate for a kid wanting to go over THERE, right NOW.

* * *

Last night we finally moved in MY NEW DESK. It's a simple corner desktop resting on two base cabinets that MIGHT actually hold 12x12 paper. Be still, my heart. It's all mine and there will be beads and scrapbook pages on it but no PTA stuff and no clutter and no Christmas decorations on it, ever, or Santa is going to take everything back to the North Pole. Ahem. And I am fucking Santa, and you can take that remark any way you like.

The stuff came in huge cartons so our wonderful friend was helping Mr. C open them in the garage and carry the pieces in. At one point Mr. said to my son, "D, go stand in the doorway of the garage so that no skunks come in." ( I did blog about my neighbor having seven babies in her woodpile a while back??) D immediately shot back "what's Mom doing?" without glancing up from the wii screen. Ahh, the love. Friend almost fell over laughing. At me. Or him. Or both of us.

There was some finesse in getting the file cabinets properly placed under the desktop (recessed edges underneath the desktop help/ hurt the situation). A short time later I opened the bright red bags that held handles and tiny screws. I removed the first set, and dropped one handle. I picked it up, then counted the screws, and was missing one. (Mumble, mumble, someone else's kid is in my house.) I got down on my knees and started crawling around on my beautiful new carpet that I love because it goes with the furniture and the paint colors and the fireplace and damn I'm so happy this project is pretty much done and where was I? Oh, on my knees, hunting for the screw. I called over the kids. No deal. The guys came over, move the desk top off, tilted each cabinet up, etc. We gave up. THEN I found the 4th screw, still sitting right in the little red "parts" ziplock bag. It had never even made it out of the bag before the APB went out on it. Luckily, Friend is a forgiving person.