Our night with Ike

I hope I won't offend anyone's sensibilities when I say I have been feeling a little....pissy. That's the only word for it, sorry. I don't know if it's the small fires I've been putting out around here or maybe postpartum hormone stuff...I imagine hormones have something to do with it, because heaven knows there's *always* small fires to be put out. I've just been feeling very overwhelmed the last week or so. Prayers would be lovely.

In the meantime, I'll share our hurricane adventures. No, we don't live anywhere near the Gulf, but we did get the dregs of Ike, lots of rain and enough wind to knock some branches off the trees. Around 2am the night before last, in the middle of the worst of the storm, there was a BANGBANGBANG on the door. I immediately knew who it was. The neighborhood boys across the street run pretty wild. Lately they had taken to playing "ding dong ditch" with us, though this was the first time they had struck in the middle of the night. We waited a few minutes, and then they did it again, this time waking up Jack and Tess. John went downstairs and I waited upstairs in bed. Sure enough, they came back, and this time John saw our little 8yo neighbor through the tiny window in our front door. Sad, amateur children. Everyone knows that, 1. You don't ever ding dong ditch people that will RECOGNIZE you, and 2. You don't ever RETURN to the same house the same night.

John wanted to wait until morning to deal with this. Our neighbors are a bit, ah, unpredictable. So are their 4 dogs. I, however, was shall we say, pissy. I stormed down the stairs, stuffed my feet in flip flops, and stormed out across the front yard in the cold, pouring rain in my pajamas. As I neared the street my foot squelched down into a mudhole up to the ankle, felt a rock cut my foot, and lost my flip flop. Now shrieking mad, I kicked off the other and continued on in my bare feet. I didn't need to worry about the dogs. They were tucked inside, so THEY didn't get wet. I BANGBANGBANGED on their front door and the mom came to the door in HER pajamas with Mr. 8yo at her side. I told her of my little situation and the boy immediately started denying that it was him. So, I informed the darling that John had seen him at our front door. But, he insisted, he didn't do the actual knocking, his friend did. Whatever. Anyway, the mom was very embarrassed. At least, she sounded embarrassed, I couldn't hardly see her what with the pitch blackness and the rain streaming down my head.

Once home, I glanced at my foot. I found a cut down the inside of my big toe, but it wasn't bleeding. I went back to bed and fumed silently. Once my temper cooled, I became aware of throbbing heat in my foot and wondered if I'd cut my foot worse than I thought. After laying there wondering if we had tetanus in our front yard and trying to remember, if I'd contracted it, how long it would be before my breathing accessory muscles froze up, I got up again and went downstairs to look more closely. At that point, it was bleeding pretty heavily. I don't know why it wasn't before...cold...adrenaline...anyway, it probably could have used some stitches, but I wasn't going to pay $100 ER copay to have stitches in my toe. I could have steristripped it, but I couldn't even work up the motivation for that. Besides, I couldn't really reach it well enough for that, John would have had to be woken up to do it. In the end, I poured some hydrogen peroxide in it, bandaged it up, and hoped my long ago tetanus shot was still good. I guess I didn't get tetanus. I never did look it up, but I'm pretty sure I'd know by now.