Tonight was one of those nights that just seem to pop up and flop down on you like a wet smelly dog. I had the day off and had planned several different possible days for myself. I got up and woke the girls up. The night before Teri said it sounded like one of the girls were coming down with a cold. I thought that it was just from the dry air in the house because I had been coughing as well and I felt fine. WELLLLLLL I was wrong and Nastia stayed home. I took both girls to school and walked both into the building, but I came back to the car with one of them. When we were home I sent her to bed and she asked if she could watch TV from our room which she did for several hours in between coming down looking for me (Papa? Wherrrrre are you?) I was in the basement trying to finish up the hallway before the social worker came by this afternoon. Not that it was a make or break thing I just wanted to surprise Teri with the job being done (Surprise, surprise it only took two years to finish.). I didn’t get it finished. There was a spot on the molding where it starts up the stairs to the second floor and I was having trouble figuring out the angle to cut the molding and was over thinking the angles. I made a two foot piece of lumber a six inch piece of lumber in the process. I finally figured it out and then Nastia and I had lunch (she was a bottomless pit today for a sick girl.) After lunch it was time to pick up Elena and she had bought homework for Nastia to do and had left her’s at school. So I had her sit down with Nastia and together they both did some work. Elena wrote the alphabet and did some addition and subtraction while Nastia read from a book of Dr Seuss stories when it turned out she had the wrong homework. We did this for about an hour until the social worker came by and they went to watch TV and I got to talk about how well they are doing here and how proud Teri and I are of them. Teri showed up about 45 minutes into the visit. We talked some more and it all went very well.
The Social Worker left about four thirty and I went to the vets to get kodi her pills and then to the grocery to pick up some items for a Russian chicken cutlet dish that sounded pretty good. I got back after six and set to work making dinner. The dish consisted of sautéing mushrooms in butter then taking ground chicken adding bread crumbs and eggs and spices and cream then put the mushrooms in the middle and roll the mixture in more bread crumbs and cook it in oil and top it with a cream sauce that had heavy cream, butter and sour cream in it. For all that work it was only OK.
In the middle of it Teri calls me up stairs and I run up the steps to find blood, yes more blood on the bathroom floor and a crying child, yes another crying child. It turns out that Elena went to hug Kodi and Kodi had a chew and she protected it by biting Elena on the left cheek, the one on her face. There are three or four scratches on her face that don’t look to deep and Teri plays Doctor Killpatient and bandages her up. I hope she left some tape for the next time.
I made the decision not to go to the emergency room and let the doctors look at it. I hope I am not wrong about it. I just couldn’t go to the emergency room again and I am really starting to worry about social services coming and knocking on my door. This would be three emergency room visits in six months and I don’t see how we could have avoided two out of the three.
The blood stopped flows rather quickly and Elena put ice on it for most of the night and she was able to eat dinner even with a cut inside her mouth. Nastia felt better by 10 am and things quieted down enough for me to watch Lost.
There is a big snow storm coming tomorrow so school are closed and we will see what we are doing about someone watching the girls if we are both told to go to work.
OK, I will say it because someone out there already has Oh, the joys of parenthood.
