Stumpy Does Geometry

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We’re studying Geometry around here. Well, at least my son is taking the course. Whether or not actual studying is occurring is another matter. Anyway, despite my remarkably poor grades in that subject myself, I have been reviewing what little I knew, and reading some of the book along with him. Geometry has lots of “if…then” statements, and postulates and theorems and so forth.

I like to think I’ve learned a few corollaries and axioms in my time, in regard to life.

Here’s Theorem One:

Given: that a woman is married and has children and dogs.


If the wife is in legitimate need of being cared for, then her husband will find a real and legitimate excuse for getting out of it.

You can find the proof for this theorem in my post concerning my colonoscopy, another incident where the Big Bison evaded giving me proper sympathy and pampering.

And the second theorem, which is like unto the first:

If a husband goes out of town, then all h-e-double-hockey-sticks WILL break loose at home.

~sigh~

If you are married, with children, I know you, too, have experienced the truth of these pustulates, er…. postulates.

Where do I begin….

~deeper sigh~

Last spring, when money was plentiful, my dear, dear husband, whom I love with every fiber of my being, (and I eat a LOT of fiber, and you are what you eat, so I am a very fibrous being, but, I digress…) Where was I? Oh, yes, my dear husband the Big Bison and I decided that since I got to run off and play with my girlfriends in San Francisco, he ought to run off and play in the woods with HIS friends. So, many months ago, he planned a trip with his buddy Steve to go elk hunting in Colorado. It was with a group of folks who have a ministry to hunters, and Steve had been asked to speak, and so he decided to invite my Big Bison to go with him. They were to leave in the wee hours of the morning of this past Thursday morning.

Fine. Hunky dory, in fact. Right?

Not so fast.

On Monday night before his departure, me fall down go boom. Big time. I arrived home from grocery shopping in the dark, and climbed out of the car into a dark garage. I climbed the two steps up to the kitchen to turn on a light in the garage so I wouldn’t fall. (Oh, the irony!!!) As I backed down the steps, I thought I was at the bottom – but I had one more step to go, so I sprawled onto the concrete and screamed from the pain in my left ankle. Hit my right knee and palms, too, but the ankle was the worst. The contents of my purse had spilled out onto the garage floor and I crawled to retrieve the cell phone, in case I couldn’t get up. I stood (sorta) and was pretty sure nothing was broken, so I hopped back and forth from the back of the car to the freezer, putting away the chicken, because, even though the ship is going down, at all costs, a good wife must save the perishables. (If only I’d had a bit more of a sense of humor about me, I could have started singing Nearer My God to Thee, like they did on the Titanic.)

Once the chicken was stowed away, I hobbled my way to the ibuprophen, the water, and the ice pack, and trembling in pain, called my dear, dear husband. He and the kids were in town at their Bible Study Fellowship class. He decided to come home, and he actually gets extra brownie point for this. I’ll spare you a lot more details, but the next day, especially since he was leaving to go out of town on this hunt, we decided to get my ankle X-rayed, just to be sure that I didn’t have a break. This constituted my very first ever visit to an emergency room. And they were very nice to me there.

But while we’re on the topic of emergency rooms, I will say that nearly every person we met there seemed to be just a little left of center temperamentally speaking. They seemed pretty detached. Why was this? Was it the luck of the draw? Was it just the people who happened to be scheduled that day? Just the hospital we chose? Or does it take a very special temperament to be able to withstand the stress of working in that kind of unpredictable environment? I received generally good care: I am not complaining. I am just reporting what we observed that day, and wonder if anyone else has ever noticed this about ERs.

OK, so my ankle checked out OK, and they gave me this really neat brace to wear called a Surround Gel, which has helped a great deal. It is two plastic paddles that go up the side of my leg. They are lined with two plastic gel packs that make them more comfortable, and the whole deal is strapped around my leg by two thick velcro straps.

They make my ankle feel a lot less wobbly and a lot more stable. The trouble is, when I walk barefoot in the house on the hardwood floor, it sounds like this: step-thunk, step-thunk, step-thunk. I imagine it sounds a lot like living with a pirate would sound, minus the “Arrrr, Mateys!!!”, and so I have named myself Stumpy. And the problem with being Stumpy is that I lose the element of surprise in sneaking up on my kids, which all mothers know is ever so valuable in the art of mothering. Never underestimate the power of catching them in the act, I always say.

Anyway, the only reason to go to someone’s blog is usually to see the pictures, right? So here’s a picture or two of my ankle on the first day, before the exodus of my dear husband with his camera. (This is actually kind of a good thing for the general public, as I wanted to take pictures of the progression of the bruise in all its rainbow splendor, but was unable to do so, since the camera went hunting, as it were.)So this way, you only get to see/have to look at the initial Aquamarine/Caribbean Blue. It has gotten much, much worse, I assure you.

More about the h-e-double hockey sticks that broke lose in my upcoming post. Darn that Geometry of Family Dynamics, anyway.