Martin Luther King Jr. Day Parade

Emergency Extraction

Last night,  Ansel woke up with a toothache. Never knowing how seriously to take the morning complaints of a school child, I gave him some children’s Tylenol and sent him off to school.

I knew things were a little more serious when he refused to chew his afternoon snack or dinner. After a restless night with jaw-grabbling moans, he woke up the next day, again in serious pain, I knew that I was going to have to do something about it.

I called our dentist several times, left a message, and impatiently called again a few minutes later. The sooner I acted, the sooner Ansel would receive relief from his pain.

Luckily, the receptionist said that he could be seen as soon as we could get there, and within an hour, x-rays were taken, nerves were seen to be exposed and decisions were made.....the tooth was going to need to be removed immediately.

When Ansel emerged from the operating room, the dental assistant commented on how brave Ansel had been. Knowing my son, I could tell by the look on his face that he had been brave in the operating room, and was keeping himself together in public by a thread.

As soon as we were out in the car, he broke down in tears, revealing the true nature of the pain. which he labeled an 8 on the pain scale.

I surrendered all the plans I had for the day and spent the next few hours beside him, letting him sob out the pain and suck on popsicles. It wasn’t a pain I could take away from him. It was just a pain that needed to be gone through. I had done everything I could to alleviate the pain, and now all I could do was comfort him and mourn with him.

Are you mad at me? he asked 

Why would I be mad it you?

 Because I didn’t brush my teeth.

It didn’t matter to me whether or not his toothache was caused by his lack of brushing or eating too much candy. The dentist said it was just somthing that happens. It didn’t even occur to me that I should be mad at him.

A snow cave day

When I woke up this morning and saw that 6 inches of snow had fallen and more was still falling, my first reaction was one of excitement.  My second reaction was a lurch in my stomach, knowing that I may have to drive in this.  But I was sure that they were going to cancel school.  I turned on the tv to find that the list of school closures was long and growing by the minute.  But no District 81.  District 81 has a history of being the last district to give in, or ask forgiveness later when they realize that they should have initially cancelled school.

That was the case today.  My confidence that school was going to be cancelled added to the series of events that aligned themselves to create the perfect storm accompanying this perfect storm.

Robert K Merton, the sociologist who coined the phrase, self fulfilling prophesy, insists that I feared myself into an accident this morning.

The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behaviour which makes the original false conception come 'true'. This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error.
In other words, a positive or negative prophecy, strongly held belief, or delusion - declared as truth when it is actually false - may sufficiently influence people so that their reactions ultimately fulfill the once-false prophecy.
In other words, my intense fear of driving in the snow actually causes bad things to happen.

It caused the nice fellow to do a 180 degree turn and slide into the back of my van.

But if I knew that this was going to happen, wouldn't I have made sure to put some proper clothes on before I left the house?

A few years ago, Savanna was a domino for Halloween.  I added some white circles to a black fleece zip up onesie outfit I found at Goodwill.  I think it is meant for construction workers or hunters to wear under their uniforms....as a collective, not individual ensemble  In any case, it is genius.   It is made with the softest fleece imaginable and is easy to put on and take off.  Wearing it is like being encased in a .   The only problem is that it is butt ugly.  Corey calls them my gangster pajamas.  I must preface this statement by saying that Corey never has many qualms about what I choose to wear.  So the fact that he hates this one, is a testament to it's revulsion inducing quality.

Who cares, really?

In the grand scheme of things, this is just one of those days that I will choose to remember and laugh out loud at the ridiculous of the series of events.

Today, I choose to build a snowcave and hide.

Tomorrow, I will be shouting from the rooftops.  Life is funny!!