Everyone knows I'm in over my head

"I tell you everything that is really nothing, and nothing of what is everything, do not be fooled by what I am saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I am not saying." ~Charles C. Finn

The last pair of earphones I had met their demise in a paper shredder. I was happily cleaning the house with my music in my ears and I went to shred some nonsense credit card offers that came in the mail and I bent over the shredder and well, the earphones got sucked into the shredder and that was the end of those. I replaced them with a less expensive pair and have been careful not to go near the shredder while wearing them.

I went to listen to my ipod the other day and noticed my earphones were missing. I usually always leave them together but I'm not above being careless and thought perhaps that I had left them somewhere else so I searched throughout my bedroom but still couldn't find them anywhere. Later that night, my son came into my room and told me he had them and asked me if I noticed they were gone. I told him yes and that I had searched all over for them. I was sort of surprised that he took them because they're pink and he's this scruffy, tough looking guy, but I guess that doesn't matter if you want to listen to your own music bad enough.

I bought myself some new shampoo and put it in my bathroom. I got into the shower and looked around for the new shampoo and discovered it was gone. At that point I was naked and wet so I just used the old shampoo that was in there. When I got out of the shower, I searched the other bathrooms and found my new shampoo had found it's way into the girls' bathroom. Someone just up and took it. I didn't get mad because I'm getting used to my stuff being everyone else's, too.

Earlier in the week I had a really happy day out shopping with my youngest daughter. She needed a new pair of tennis shoes so we set off to the mall and found a pair and did some other shopping then went out to dinner. It was one of those days where you are happy and you know it but you don't really know it because you're in the moment living it and enjoying it. It's the kind of day you look back and think, "that was a fun day."

I told my daughter that she needed to scuff up the bottoms of her new shoes before going onto a court to play because new shoes tend to stick to the surface and can cause you to trip and fall. The following day she set off to play tennis and shortly afterwards I get a call from her telling me that she fell and hurt her ankle, and maybe she broke it. Lovely.

So I bite my tongue even though I wanted so badly to say I TOLD YOU SO!!! and went to get her. I brought her to the emergency room because she has a low tolerance for pain and a flair for dramatics that I knew would not simmer down until an x-ray was taken to prove one thing or the other (and even after it was proven that it wasn't broken she took me aside and told me she did not think much of the doctor on call because he wasn't serious enough for her!!!). I roll her into the children's section in a wheelchair and there was a young black woman doing the checking in and instead of asking us what happened she started going on and on about my daughter's tennis shoes---how great they were, how fine they were, where did we get them, how much did they cost, etc. I was standing there a bit confused because, um, it's an emergency room in a hospital, not The Finish Line. She interrupted her shoe gushing to have me fill out a form or two then we were wheeled off to get an x-ray.

We were in that room not more than 3 minutes when another black woman came in with a pad of paper and a pen and did she want details on my daughter's fall? Nope. She was sent by the other woman at the check in to get the name of the tennis shoes again because her friend tried to look them up online and couldn't find them! Is it me, or has the world gone mad?

Long story short, my daughter's ankle was just badly sprained, and she was sent home with a splint and crutches which she complains about endlessly (They stick in the carpet! They hurt her hands and under her arms!). I'm playing Cinderella to the best of my ability even though I tried to prevent this from happening by telling her not to wear those sneakers until they were scuffed up on the bottom but once again, no one listens to me.

That's what I like most about this blog. I say something (or, rather, write something) and pretend someone is listening.