The Queen's Rambles

Mike hates coming to Oregon.

It’s not that he hates my family. The amuse him.

It’s not that he hates Oregon. Oregon is beautiful.

It’s that something always delays our trip home, either weather, malfunctioning airplanes, or whatever.

This time our trip isn’t delayed *knock on wood* but it has truly been the vacation of doom.

Before I go any further I just want to spoil the end of the story by saying we are all going to live and Mike claims he is not in pain. Remember this as the story goes, ok (Julie, I’m looking at you!).

This house is ancient and you can hear every noise any one makes from anywhere in the house. No one ever shuts the doors at night, much less shuts them. They rely on the dogs to wake them up in case of emergency. They don’t have any smoke detectors, which also freaks me out. I kept smelling smoke all last night, but I’m pretty sure it’s just from the wildfires all around here.

I heard someone run down the stairs around 2 am and convinced myself it was a burglar. I think strange things at 2 am.

I wanted to go put my wallet away, but I didn’t want to be shot by the burglars. Also, I was nursing Elsa so I was sort of stuck in bed. I knew I was being silly, but I’m reading a crime novel right now. They always make me silly.

I finally figured out it was probably my mom, so I was just started to relax when there was a humungous crash and sound of breaking glas. I heard my mom yell “What the hell was that?” but then I didn’t hear anything else except her cleaning up glass. I thought my dad fell, but I knew he was in bed. The more glass she swept up, the more convinced I became that the dog had somehow knocked over the hutch of dishes.

When Elsa was finally done nursing I got up and walked out into the hall. There was blood everywhere. I’ve never seen so much blood in my life.

My mom was in the kitchen sweeping and yelled at me to go take care of Mike, that he was hurt really badly. I started racing around trying to find him but couldn’t see him anywhere. She kept saying he was on the couch, but he wasn’t on the couch.

Finally he staggered out ofthe bathroom, covered in blood. He had rags pressed to his face and was gushing blood everywhere.

He had somehow fallen all the way down the stairs (he thinks) and broke the fall with his face and a window. It was terrible. I just started flapping my arms and trying not to scream. Thank goodness my mom was more level headed.

While she was cleaning up, I got him dressed. Elsa and my niece woke up during this, both crying. My dad got up and thank goodness he wasn’t drunk off his ass like he usually is.

I wanted to take Mike to the ER but I didn’t want to take Elsa there and get her a nice little MRSA infection so my mom took him.

I got the kitchen and hall cleaned up while my dad entertained Elsa and tried to comfort my niece. We couldn’t get ahold of my sister to come get my niece and she wanted absolutely nothing to do with me. She was totally freaked out, rightly so. Eventually she let my dad turn on cartoons and I was able to get her to lay down with a pillow and blanky and she went to sleep while my dad stayed with her.

I laid in bed for three hours thinking and thinking and thinking. I was so grateful he was alive and moving of his own volition, but I kept thinking about the “what ifs” and “might have beens.” We are so very lucky he didn’t break his neck or slice open something vital.

Mike ended up with 25 stitches in four (I think) different cuts, plus he has all kinds of other shallow cuts on his face. He has goose eggs and a swollen face. Things are starting to turn yellow. He claims he is not in pain, but I don’t see how that is possible.

In other great vacation news, I went to a funereal today. I shouldn’t have been worried about finding something black to wear. We were just about the only ones wearing black. I have only been to a couple of funereals in my life so don’t have any experience, but aren’t you supposed to wear black to a funereal? And I know I must be spelling that word wrong. It’s really bugging me.

And now, to continue the doomish theme, my aunt and cousin that have never expressed any interest in us at all want to come over this afternoon to see the baby. I hope my sister doesn’t show up while they are here. No telling what she’ll do. We don’t need to see world war three.

I hope we are able to make it back to Maryland without any more incidents.