Chaos & Sadness

It has been a not-so-good weekend. I went to Greenville, SC to visit SM – which was good, except she wasn’t feeling very well. First of all, Kiddo fell down and scraped himself up pretty good. He was in full-on four-year-old flirt-mode trying to get SM’s neighbor AS (tall pretty blonde lady) to watch how fast he could run. He was so busy making sure AS was watching him, the he wasn’t watching where he was going and the concrete sidewalk tripped him up. He went down – SPLAT! – and knocked his head, scraped up the side of his left hand and maybe, possibly broke his left little finger (...he won’t let us touch it to see, but he can bend it a little so maybe not...), got a good scrape on his right elbow and skinned both of his knees. That was 30 minutes of screaming while trying to calm him down, ice his noggin, staunch the bleeding hand, and bandage all. Secondly, before and after Kiddo’s fall, he was a complete butt-head all weekend. He refused to do anything anyone asked him to do and went deaf as a post because he was fixed to the TV the whole weekend. He watched more TV this weekend than I think he’s watched in his whole four years. This is due to the fact that SM keeps her TV on 24-7...and the volume cranked up all the way. Little Bit was golden all weekend – not one problem. Kiddo, on the other hand, was in trouble the entire time. I’m not even going to go into the issues we had about trying to get him to go potty before we left for the 4.5 hour drive home. Suffice it to say, I said to him, “You’re lucky I’m not a mean mommy, or I’d beat you to a pulp, bud.” AS, from the other room said, “Go ahead! We don’t know nothin’!” Then, as we’re in the car all packed and ready to leave, I reach into my purse to get my phone so I can call Hubby to let him know we’re headed home, the phone starts ringing in my hand. It’s Hubby, calling to say that his father just passed. I immediately started crying, sobbing, and Kiddo was in the back asking me what was wrong, and Little Bit was “talking” in her sweet, baby way and SM & AS were trying to talk to me and ask me what was going on. Chaos. Sadness. So I drove to Kingsport instead of Knoxville which was only about a 2 hour drive to meet up with Hubby and his family. We had a very sad dinner. I’m so sorry for Hubby and all his family. I can’t even begin to express to them how well I understand their feelings. I remember, though, how angry I was with people who said, “I know how you feel,” after my mom died. I do know how they feel, but I can express my sadness and sympathy for them in other ways. I left the kids with Hubby in Kingsport, because I had to work on Monday and they had a meeting with the funeral home. It was right about 8PM when I left Kingsport and drove slowly and carefully back home. I arrived at 10PM and planned to go directly to bed, but couldn’t shut down enough to actually sleep. So I did laundry (of course) and half-heartedly watched Empire Records which I found while randomly searching the DirecTV guide, checked email (work and personal), thought about calling SM but knew it was (by now) almost 1AM and a phone call from me at that time would only serve to scare her, and then finally got into bed and to sleep around 2:30AM. I woke up (*BING*) at 4:30ish and couldn’t get back to sleep. So I got up. I could go on ‘cause there’s so much more...that was only through Monday morning...but I won’t. I’m sure no one wants to really read all about my woes. But you know me – I’ve got to write ‘em anyway. TTFN JMS