Me: "My friend, Stephanie, was in a bad car accident and I want to make her a get well care basket. If you were in a body cast, what would you want?"
Nicole: "To be out of a body cast."
Well, this weekend was hectic. My friend, Stephanie, was in a bad car accident last Wednesday. She lives in the country and was driving to work very early in the morning and it was still dark outside. A dead horse was laying in the street and she couldn’t see it. Her car hit it and flipped. She was upside down for 20 minutes until someone came to her assistance. She has multiple fractures and is pretty banged up but she's lucky to be alive and not more seriously injured.
Nicole: "To be out of a body cast."
Well, this weekend was hectic. My friend, Stephanie, was in a bad car accident last Wednesday. She lives in the country and was driving to work very early in the morning and it was still dark outside. A dead horse was laying in the street and she couldn’t see it. Her car hit it and flipped. She was upside down for 20 minutes until someone came to her assistance. She has multiple fractures and is pretty banged up but she's lucky to be alive and not more seriously injured.
On Saturday, Brandon, Nick, Gavin (Nicks friend) and I went to visit her at the hospital. We parked in the garage and then walked through a maze of walkways and outdoor stairwells and finally found an entrance to the hospital. We then trekked through the hospital to find the correct ward. We walked in circles on the floor to find her room. They really don’t make it easy. Stephanie was in pain but was in good spirits talking and even laughing. She said she had an allergic reaction to the morphine they gave her in the beginning. The new medication makes her feel dizzy. She has a neck brace from her chin to her chest that she has to keep on at all times. If she gets out of bed, she has to put on a body cast, which isn’t plaster like I thought. It’s like two large plastic shields, one for the front and one for the back. I knew I was going to bring her a care basket but didn't know what I wanted to fill it with so I asked my sister, "If you were in a body cast, what would you want?" She said, "To not be in a body cast." Ba da bum. I ended up bringing her brownies, chocolate chip cookies and milk.
When we left, we managed to find the car in the parking garage without too much trouble but then couldn’t get out of the parking garage. When I entered the garage, the machine gave me an orange chip. When I tried to exit, I followed the instructions and inserted the orange chip and it said to pay $5 by inserting my credit card or pay cash at the booth. I inserted my credit card and nothing happened. Then it kicked out a yellow chip. I decided to pull up to the gate and go to the parking booth to pay cash instead but the gate didn’t lift. I walked back to the machine and pressed the help button to ask someone to lift the gate. Instead, the attendant wanted me to go through the steps again: insert chip, insert credit card, etc. He kept insisting I wasn’t removing my card quickly enough, which was not true. I went through the motions three more times and then he told me I had to back my car up next to the machine. I told him my window was broken so I couldn’t back it up AND operate the machine at the same time (James has it rigged in the up position.) Then we got into a debate about the color of my chip. He wasn’t understanding me when I told him 4 times that I received an orange chip upon arrival and then when I tried to pay upon exiting, it gave me a yellow chip. He’s asking ME why. What? How do I know? Can I just pull through the gate and pay a human? Finally, I backed up all the way even before the machine and tried all of the steps again and we were able to get through.
We left the garage and I must have missed Holcombe and Fannin while scolding Nick and Brandon for bickering with each other because somehow we ended up deep in the hood and had to take a very scenic route back to 610.
I then dropped Brandon off at his friend’s house and Nick and Gavin and I went shopping for a Christmas tree, not at a quaint tree farm but at the local Kroger. James couldn’t come by with his van to pick up the tree from the store so we went on our own. The boys were too interested in laughing and talking to be of much assistance. I, of course, had to inspect each one narrowing the selection from 5, to 4, to 3, to 2 and then spend another 10 minutes comparing the finalists. The two salesmen seemed amused by this and then out and out chuckled when they saw my car (hint, the Lincoln LS is too small to transport a 7 foot tree.) Not to be discouraged, I pooh-poohed the tree salesmen/sackers/cashiers who told me it couldn’t be done and shoved it into the back seat. We rolled down the rear windows to let the top hang out one window and the trunk hang out the opposite window. We couldn’t close the back doors so I put my hazards on and drove 10 mph home with the boys smooshed in the front passenger seat. Dum-tah!
It was like the three stooges getting it from the store, into the car, out of the car and into the house. We stood it up in the base and then couldn’t get it to stand straight. I was holding the top of the tree upright and told the boys to screw in the base. Well, they were turning the screws the wrong way, unscrewing what the other one had just tightened, my arms were shaking, etc. They quickly got distracted by some TV show so I was on my own to crawl around the floor re-tightening the screws..and I’m too old to crawl. Then, I got all of the strands of lights strung and the very last string went out after I got it on the tree. I couldn’t find my ornaments in storage so I just have the lights on it for now. I hope I can pull it together prior to Christmas day. I remember when I used to be Martha Stewart decorating the interior and exterior of the house like it was going to be in a magazine and had a different tree theme every year and now…Oy!!
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