Because my birthday was last Monday there were ‘noises’ from the wife and the kids about dad having a quiet weekend to do whatever he felt like… which suited me. As usual it didn’t quite work out the way I’d expected.
The wife took pity on me and got up at 5:00 a.m. to take the youngest to ice-skating leaving me to sleep
When I *did* get up, at around 8:30 a.am., I decided to just carry on where I’d left off the day before, i.e. doing more cleaning and tidying up… much as I’ve been doing for the past few weeks actually. I made a decent start on the garden hacking back a lot of the overgrowth from the plants that had taken advantage of the rain and sun to explode into growth. I’m not a particularly fast worker so my slash and burn activities took up most of the afternoon.
Exhausted as we were, we figured it might be nice to get the shopping done, come home and collapse in front of the telly for a change… or maybe watching a new film! To facilitate this, we rang home from the shops and suggested to the girls they make pizzas for us all so dinner would be ready and we could all relax into the evening. Bad move.
A few minutes later I get a phone call. I couldn’t quite make out what my eldest daughter is saying because of the noise, so I asked what the noise was… and it turned out the youngest had taken frozen pizza bases out of the fridge, laid them on their *side*, taken the sharpest knife in the kitchen and tried to separate them. Naturally the knife slipped and sliced the top of her finger instead.
As if happened we were literally on our way out of the checkout when she called so we threw the shopping in the car and rushed off home… only a few minutes away since the new town centre opened.
Got in… had a look at the finger. Luckily (*very* luckily) she’d not done much damage and there was very little blood. Nevertheless because her finger is so small I figured it was safer to take her to the hospital for a checkup just in case.
We arrived at Triage in the Emergency Dept. or Westmead Hospital just after 7:00 p.m. and waited.
We waited… and waited,,, and waited. Eventually the nurse had a look, took details, told us to wait to see the doctor… so we waited… and waited… etc.
At 11:00 p.m. or so they called her name. Off went the wife, and both daughters. I figured it would only take a few minutes so stayed behind with the books, jackets, computer games etc they’d brought (we’ve been here before so were at least minimally prepared) and waited.
And waited, and waited…..
By 1:00 a.m. I was getting a little tired and no doubt so were they wherever they are. By now I’d read everything I could find to read on the Internet (via the phone), played all the games to the point of boredom, and eventually drained the battery to the point the phone gave up and switched itself off! Thankfully, it was around this point that they finally reappeared.
And what had happened to the youngest? Seems they’d x-rayed her finger to check that no muscles, nerves or tendons had been damaged and determined she was ok. Then they’d simply cleaned the wound, used a few plaster strips to close the cut, bandaged it and told her not to remove it for three days and wait in a corner for 40 minutes while they wrote a letter saying it was ok for her to go home. When it eventually arrived it was just goodnight from them and away we all went.
We drove home in a daze, and all fell back into bed at around 2:00 a.m.
That was my Saturday.
Sunday was a bit of a blur but I spent some of the time making a start on the garage… I’m sure there was more but it’s hard to recall when you are wandering around half asleep! 🙂
No worries… we’re all better now. All in all we were *very* pleased she hadn’t done more damage so even tho we eventually gave her a mild telling off for not separating the frozen bases as we’d shown her several times before, the overall emotion was one of relief. After all it could have been much, much worse!
Today the daughter has gone off to school with her trophy… a finger covered in bandage with which she can demonstrate the full horror of her weekend! Kids… who’d have ’em?? 😀
The Eclectic Interweb 