You wish you lived on my street. You may not fully understand how badly you wish it, but that’s just because you haven’t been here.
So last night, we had fish sticks for dinner. This is not one of the reasons you should live here. Derek went on another trip, and when he’s gone, I’m worse than lazy. I made, er, I mean heated up, some fish sticks. That’s all. No veggies, just fish. I did whip up a bowl of tartar sauce, though, which was a huge hit with the under-8 crowd. Something about the pickles. And/or lemon juice. My chickens will suck a lemon dry if they get the chance. Anyway, I had to slice a lemon to extract said juice, and idiotically did it with a steak knife.
Well, the idiotic part wasn’t using the steak knife, but rather leaving the steak knife on the dining table after dinner, when I went to beat my bruzzer’s high score on Scramble. Zeeb came in telling me Kiki was wielding the knife. I asked him to get it from her. He did. Then he came back to tell me she had blood all over.
She wasn’t crying at all. She was standing in the dining room, dripping from her hand. I called one neighbor, we’ll call her Christy, to ask how you know when you need stitches. She said you call your neighbor, we’ll call her Lisa, who is a nurse. I did, but she didn’t have any dermabond. She said to call the other neighbor who is a nurse, whose husband, the OBGYN, was home with the kids. They said they’d look around. Christy also called her husband, the on-duty police officer/firefighter/medic, just in case. Meanwhile, I just had the kids put on shoes- pausing here to say how much I glory in the fact that it was 60 degrees and they didn’t need coats or mittens or hats…- and we went to that neighbor’s house to ask if we even needed more than a bandaid.
He, the OBGYN, we’ll call him Phil, said if it were his kid, he’d get the stitches. I trust that opinion. I was mentally gearing up to get the kids ready for a fun night at Instacare, when Christy came in, took Phil’s baby out of his arms, told me to go home and get pajamas for the boys so she could put them to sleep at her house while I went to the doctor with Kiki, and she would carry them back when I got home.
But before that plan could be set in action, Dr. Phil said if I was comfortable with it, he could put in the sutures himself. Yeah, I was comfortable. Except for the part where the blood was draining from my brain. Christy took the baby to her house, Phil sent my boys downstairs to watch a movie with his 2 year old, and got out the gloves.
My darling baby girl, who, up to this point, had only complained because of the pressure I was putting on her finger, stood while he gave her a shot, screamed while he sewed, but didn’t try to get away. She was amazing.
I had to kneel down for a while, and my face felt weird, but I never turned yellow. I know, because after we finally got home, I got Kiki into bed, and as she was admiring her Dora bandaid on top of her stitches, she waited for me to leave, so she could sleep. Then someone knocked on the door. My Greek neighbor who’s married to a Japanese man (this being the gratuitous, multi-cultural sector), came to return a tupperware and hear the story, but she said I was definitely on the pink end of the spectrum. The pink side that’s more indicative of not being about to check out.
Just then, the police arrived. OK, it was just my neighbor, still on duty, but as he got out of his squad car, he said, “We got reports of a stabbing?”
Later today, I’m sure my kids will regale the mailman with tales of gore.
H. I. P. 