It's been ages

But life goes on over at Facebook. Seriously.

The Boys.
A couple of weeks ago I was folding clothes and the boys were outside playing. I hear one of them crying. (no big deal) then it gets louder as I hear them walking closer to the door. I glace toward the door and I can see Cole telling Blake to be quiet, calm down, don't tell mom.

Blake comes in, bawling, and walks over to me. I ask what's wrong. Cole says something.. sounds like "he smashed his fingers" and so I start looking over his hands. And Cole says no, his head. and I look and found blood gushing from the back of Blake's head all down his back. So I pick him up and rush to the bathroom yelling for Ryan to come take a look. (He just laid down to sleep since coming in from the night shift.)

We start cleaning it up a bit to see how bad it is. He has a small, but DEEP, cut. I know immediately it'll require stitches. Blake stops crying. He has a really high tolerance for pain.

Anyway, during this whole scene Ryan and I are trying to find out what happened to Blake. Who did it? Did he fall? What happened? Here's a few things Cole said: "I don't know", "Blake was holding a rock above his head, then let go and it hit him in the head.", "Blake threw a rock straight up in the air, and it landed on his head."

None of this added up, obviously. The cut wasn't on the top of his head (consistent with him dropping a rock on his head). You could tell Cole knew what happened but he wasn't talking. He has certain expressions when he's lying. He knew he was in DEEP TROUBLE. On the way to the doctors office (kinda like an urgent care facility) because it was, of course, Saturday morning, when all the major kid related crisis's occur, I told Cole I must know what happened so I could explain it to the doctor so he could fix Blake's head. -- No matter what, I wasn't going to yell at him, or he wouldn't be in trouble. I need to know! So he caved. He said "I don't want you to be mad".... "I told Blake to move, and he wouldn't move, so I tried to throw the rock OVER his head." .... "but it didn't make it and it hit him in the head"

Nice.

The cut only required 2 stitches. It was so deep the doctor could see his SKULL when examining the wound. Since Blake didn't lose consciousness and was acting fine, he didn't need a head scan. But we had to monitor him the rest of the day to make sure he was acting okay. (high alert for head wounds since Natasha Richardson's death)

All is fine.

No more rock throwing for Cole.

Now Blake tells everyone.. in a cute little pouty voice. "Cole threw a rock and hit me in the head and I had to go to the hospital and I had to get stitches."

And he's such a trooper. He didn't cry or anything after that first initial shock of the injury and coming in the house. Even when the doc gave him the numbing shots to prep for stitches. He even poked an area that wasn't numb and Blake just winced. that's all.

Again.. high tolerance for pain.

That was brilliant.

Easter.

Since the boys were already egg-hunt out and they visited with Ryan's parents on Saturday, I planned to spend the day with my parents on Sunday.

Mom calls me first thing in the morning to see when I was coming over. Then mentions that I could help her figure out where to plant flowers and I could help dad stain his wine racks. The main word here: HELP.

We get there and Dad's in the process of bottling homemade wine. His patience was wearing so I jumped in to help out. We ended up bottling 30 bottles of two different kinds of wine. Then it was time to help mom with her flowers. Every place and arrangement I suggested didn't work for her. She put things where she wanted them and I did all the planting. She didn't touch a single plant. Then on to helping dad stain his wine racks... which turned out to him helping me carry the racks outside and then me and Cole staining them.

So in all, I bottled wine, planted flowers and stained the wine racks all while my parents watched. It was that moment... as I was driving home... that I realized they were brilliant. They managed to keep me there the entire day while I did their chores for them, without me clearly realizing it until later.

Brilliant.

Neat-o

My friend Luz and I have created a podcast to discuss our favorite books:

http://www.wakethedeadpodcast.com/

What's up with that?

I forgot about blogger, quite honestly. I was blinded by the joy that is Facebook. So if you really want to keep up to date with me, join be over there.

Otherwise.. I don't know how often I'll update.

Here's what's been going on...

January: Inauguration of Barack Obama. woo hoo!

February: Pretty much a blur. Had an intense week and a half of work in there. Passed the 4th anniversary of my grandparent's death. I still think about them everyday. We went to the Farm and Tractor show in Louisville since the kids love farm equipment. Then we went to Lynn's Paradise Cafe for dinner. It was fun.

March: So far this month has been busy. I've been laid off. I'm co-organizing a new organization called Perry County United for Change. It's a service organization (non-partisan) to do things on a local level, but in coordination with Indiana for Change and Obama for America. It will range from doing one-day service projects like cleaning up a playground or painting a school, to hosting workshops/forums on healthcare, economy, energy, etc.

I designed a website for St. Michael Church in Cannelton. It's a pro-bono type of project since it was my Grandmother's church and she was a devout Catholic. This is the church's 150th anniversary. They've been undergoing a massive restoration process and the results are fantastic. Even though I'm not catholic, I appreciate historic buildings and fine craftsmenship. The church is definitely a hidden gem of this area.

I'm going to start podcasting. I'm pretty excited about it. I ordered the equipment last night. I read several techie articles on what I needed, how to get the software to work, etc. I'll be podcasting with a friend and we'll be starting in two weeks. We'll need to decide on the title and format. Basically it's about books. We've both have forged a very good friendship over Twilight and then Charlaine Harris' Stackhouse series. I'd like to have a podcast focused solely on Stackhouse. And then a second on books in that genre. We'll see how it goes. We're planning a road trip to one of Harris' appearances. The one that sounds most appealing is in Shreveport, LA. But secretly I could totally do DragonCon in Atlanta. It's more of a sci-fi pop culture conference and I'll be around my Jedi friends of The Force ;)

Some post-birthday singing