Weekend Update Part One: Blood, Blacktop, & Bacardi

Here's my Sunday night usual. We had yet another action-filled weekend. This post is going to chronicle only Friday, and then tomorrow I'll follow up with another post. The upcoming post is much more upbeat than this one, and will include photos of me posing with a man wearing a "WILL WORK FOR SEX" shirt. Stay tuned.

So, on Friday morning, The Goose & I set out to hike a strenuous trail here in the park which goes up a ridge. He was in his backpack carrier which looks like this:


It was about 7:00 a.m. when we left and the trail takes about an hour and a half to complete. I was in somewhat of a hurry to get back since I had four of my best friends from college coming to spend the weekend for a Girls' Reunion and I really needed to mop up my FILTHY kitchen floor and cook a gourmet meal. Reader, let this be a lesson: Don't be in a hurry when you're hiking down a ridge, because you just might trip and fall on your face and then proceed to roll partway down the ridge, scraping up your head, your knee, and causing your baby to get a gash in his head. Yeah.

So I sat there and screamed "HELP!!!!!!!!!" for a while and then I decided that I might as well get up and start walking. I cleaned up the blood with my shirt and held The Goose cradle style for our hike out. He was alternately sleeping and screaming at this point. I was shockingly calm and trying to take every step with extreme caution. Reader, let this be a lesson: Don't ever expect other hikers to notice that you and your baby are bloody and NOT IN THE LEAST BIT OK. We passed several people (none of whom noticed the blood, the limping, or the panicked expression on my face), all of whom greeted us with a happy "Good morning!" or "How ya doin'?"

"Oh, I'm just fine and dandy and by the way, watch out for that guy with the ax up there."

I finally made it out of the woods and onto the road, only to discover that it was being paved. There were about 10 pavers hard at work with three dump trucks and some other sorts of machinery, blocking the road, and making LOTS of noise. Still, no park visitors had noticed my condition.

I flagged down one of the pavers and used his cell phone to call the visitor center at the park. I was planning to have the clerk radio Husband to come pick us up, but coincidentally, Husband answered the phone and and was on his way in a flash. We hurried down to the ER and didn't even have to wait at all before being admitted.

Reader, let this be a lesson: Don't expect the people at the ER to be as concerned as you are about your bloody baby. They will likely remain very calm and ask you all sorts of asinine questions such as, "I see that there is some dried blood on his head. Do you suspect that he has a laceration underneath there?"

YES, CONSIDERING HE AND I ROLLED DOWN A HILL AND LANDED HEADFIRST ON A LANDSCAPE TIMBER. NOW CAN YOU PLEASE JUST SKIP TO THE PART WHERE YOU TELL US WHETHER OR NOT HE HAS SOME BRAIN DAMAGE?!?!?!?!

Then comes the realization that you have come to a teaching hospital and they have sent you a medical student who, apparently, has never set foot in a hospital room. Student evaluated The Goose, said that he thought it might need one stitch, and then sent for the attending physician. The attending physician came, looked him over, and announced that since the gash was small, he would like to use something called Dermabond to close up the wound. For those of you who haven't had the occasion to bust open your head recently, you will be excited to learn that hospitals are now using the equivalent of BONDINI to glue people's heads back together, rather then stitching them up. My dad would be proud.

Oh and I forgot to mention that this all took an extremely long period of time to accomplish and at one point while we were in the room alone, Husband broke into the cabinet and borrowed some stuff to clean up my head and knee. Peroxide is the devil.

Finally, the medical student numbed The Goose's head, flushed out the wound, and began the Dermabondini application while Husband and I attempted to hold him down on the table. During this scene, the attending physician was watching over the med student's shoulder and saying, "NO, NO, NO, don't drip it ... just spread it on like mayonnaise so that it doesn't glue his eyelids shut or goop up his hair." Ummm ... yeah.

So finally the ordeal was over and we headed home only to find that the pavers were still working and that we couldn't drive up to our house, but rather, had to park and walk up the freshly blacktopped drive ... UPHILL in the midday heat, still wearing our bloody clothes. By now it was after noon and my friends were going to arrive in just a couple hours and I was just a tad put out.

The Goose went down for a nap and I took lots of ibuprofen and coffee and started cleaning and cooking madly. Then the friends arrived and they also had to hike up the hill dragging their luggage (and an excessive amount of liquor) up the driveway. I'm sure it was a sight: Banged-up mom and baby in stroller with Bacardi and wine bottles underneath, followed by four hot chicks pulling coolers and luggage as if we were all headed for some weird summer camp.

So that's Friday. As I said, tomorrow I'm going to follow up with Saturday's story, which includes some fantastic pictures of our barhopping expedition. Get excited.

And by the way, The Goose is FINE and has been acting like nothing ever happened. Today we got back on that horse and hiked another trail and we both handled it beautifully.

Until tomorrow ...