I've fallen and I can't get up!

Yesterday I was working from home because my husband had to go to training for work and he wouldn't be around to help our boy get on and off the school bus.  This should not be a dangerous venture, but I managed to make it so.

Around lunch time I decided to go to T-Smell and that reminded me that I hadn't started dinner.  We were supposed to have roast in the crock pot and I figured that even if I started it at 11, there would be enough time for it to cook.  I am a little on the short side, and my husband is a little on the tall side.  This means that he puts away a lot of stuff on the top shelf and I can't reach it without standing on something, normally a chair.  This was the case with the crock pot.  I climbed up on the standard climbing chair and wrestled with the crock pot to get it down.  All of a sudden I was laying on the floor.  My lower back hurt and my legs hurt and I was sure that I would be stuck there until someone came home to find me.  I was screaming and wishing that I had one of those med alert necklaces.  It didn't help that my book club is reading a book where an elderly woman fell down and couldn't get up and was left laying on the cold floor for hours.  I was sure that would be me.  After I calmed down a little, I realized I could at least roll over and crawl around.  I was still screaming but managed to crawl towards my phone.  It wasn't long before I realized that I could get up.  I could walk around, but, my foot still hurt.

It turns out I am a giant crybaby.  I was in total panic mode off and on for a while after that.  Since I could get around, I figured I didn't need to call 911.  After making myself some lunch, I decided to return a call from my mom, and as soon as I heard her voice I started my freaking out again.  My poor mom, she didn't even know who was calling her.  My mom called and sent my sister over.  My Mother in law dropped by for something else and both of them took good care of me.

I picked up my sweet boy from the bus stop and he was cute as he helped me out of the car.  He insisted I had to tell daddy.

My sister is a darling, she came and watched the kids as we went to urgent care after the hubby got home from work.  Urgent care is probably not a very pleasant place to work.  It took all evening, but they looked at it, gave me an xray, and wheeled me out to the car after putting a splint on my foot and telling me to get crutches.  The most surprising thing to me was the xray machine.  I never got an xray before.  I pictured it looking like this:

 

In reality, it is a table and the xray machine comes down from the ceiling.  Who knew?  I feel that old timey cartoons had been fooling me for years.

This is mostly a sob story blog.  Poor Catherine, she hurt herself.  But as I look back at the sobbing mess I was, it becomes kind of funny.  I picture myself getting one of the med-alert necklaces and wearing it everywhere even though I am only 36 years old.  I also wonder what would have happened if the kids were here.  It would have been super bad if I was holding the baby when I fell.  So, lesson number 1, don't climb up on stuff while holding the baby.  But if I was not holding her, I think it would have gone better.  I like to think that I wouldn't have freaked out if the kids were here.  I wouldn't have wanted to scare them.  Lesson number 2, being a mom makes me a stronger person.  Lesson number 3, crutches are not as much fun as they look.

Have you learned any good lessons lately that you want to share?  Did you already know what xray machines look like?  Am I the only one that was fooled?

Check out my balls

 

I took a glass blowing class on Saturday and it was lovely.  I have always wanted to be a glass blower, but it isn't really something you can set up in your basement.  I saw this class at Baron Glassworks of Ypsilanti advertised in the Rec and Ed book, so I signed up.  I realize now that my idea of fun is very different than it used to be.  The class was more interesting than fun, and that is ok with me.  There were 8 people in the class and there were two teachers.  There was no way they were going to allow us to insert the metal rod into the burning hot glory hole (that is what they call the furnace where you reheat the glass) without a teacher assisting us.  This meant that there was way more watching than there was actually making things.  Some of the people made really beautiful things.  Mine are just average, but some of them were beautiful.  My turn was toward the end, and by then the poor instructors were exhausted.  I wanted my second piece to be a drinking glass.  I was torn over whether I should make a drinking glass or a paperweight.  I have a bajillion drinking glasses and they have to be tough to survive at our house.  I have always loved looking at glass paperweights, but decided against it because my papers are rarely flying all over.  It was a mistake, but maybe having two beautiful garden gazing balls (as my dad calls them) will distract from how bad I am at gardening.  When you work in the hot glass arts, you refer to this as "reading the glass."  All the best artists do it.  Sometimes the glass just doesn't want to be formed into what you want as your end result and all the best artists can read the glass and turn it into something better.

As much as I enjoyed the class, there was one big distraction.  One of the other students was getting on all my nerves.  In the picture above, she is right behind the instructor.  I had one where you could actually see her, but the hubby thought it was inappropriate to put up a photo of her on the internet.  Instead, I will describe her in such great detail that you will recognize her if you see her around town.  If you do see her around town, ask her if she is pregnant.

This woman walked into the glass studio like she owned the place.  She was VERY vocal.  She let us all know that she is also a glass artist (she is an artist, but she does science as her day job.  I wonder if it is like when my son does science by dissolving candy in a cup of water) with her own studio in her house (craft room).  She does stained glass and fused glass (when the teacher asked her about it, she didn't know many technical details about fused glass.  I think she mostly takes scraps of stained glass and melts them in her microwave).  She only wears dresses and they are always sleeveless because she wears sweaters (this was fun because it was about 40 degrees in the studio if you weren't working with the glass).  She is very athletic which is why she has two bad shoulders and a bad leg and therefore had to sit down in one of the very few chairs.  She had her badly dyed black hair up in a messy ponytail with a flower barret in the front.

Why do I find this woman SO obnoxious?  Is it because I secretly want to be her?  I want to be an artist.  I want to have room in my house for a studio.  I want to have a distinct fashion that labels me an artist whereever I go.  I sometimes want to be friendly.  No, I don't want to be this woman.  I can't stand her.  I will have to be an eclectic friendly athletic artist with a studio and somehow still be the opposite of this woman.

As we watched the students make their glasswork, this bleepity bleep bleep "artist" looked at me and said, "wow!  Are you pregnant?"  People who live in a civilized society should never ask this question.  Women who also carry their excess weight in their midsection should also never ask this question.  However, I know it happens.  Had that been all she said, I wouldn't have even paid attention.  I responded, "no, I just had a baby."  She should have apologized, instead she said, "Are you pregnant?  Wow, you must have JUST had that baby."  After that, I punched her in the lady parts...emotionally.  She still wouldn't stop.  Then she exclaimed, "wow, you are still a really new mom."  I am never rude to people.  I can count on one hand the number of times in my life that I have been rude to someone's face and I regret all of them.  At this point, I decided I could be rude to this person.  I wish I would have been more rude, all I did was look at her and then turn away and ignore her while I was watching the other students.  After that she started talking to one of the guys in the class.  He was really friendly and she thanked him for being so friendly, "Thank you for being so nice.  I like to be friendly and I like to learn things.  It is so nice to meet someone so friendly."  I would like to say that is when I turned around and told her off while I jump kicked her in the face, but I didn't do that.

So, as usual when I wish I came up with a really good response to something, I thought about it all weekend.  It is none of her business if I am pregnant or not.  I didn't need to tell her that I just had a baby.  Lets work on some new responses, here is what I have so far:

• Why?  Are you?  Are we preggo buddies?
• Why do you ask?  Do you think I look fat in this outfit?
• I can't tell you because you look like the kind of person that would try to cut a fetus out of someone.

Oh, and sorry to be misleading with the title of this blog.  You can't really check out my balls because I didn't get them back yet.  They are still in the kiln.  I will post a picture when I get them back.