The Boys of Summer

Babe is catching for Southwest Forsyth's 12-year old All-Star team this summer. They scored a whopping 29 runs over the weekend to win the first two games of the district tournament.    Play resumes Friday night v. Winston-Salem Nationals.

What was I thinking??

Maybe it's a result of all the time I spend staring at this computer screen trying to conjure up something blog-worthy to write about, I'm not sure, but clearly I must be operating under some sort of diminished brain function.

I have to be.   I just put my 13-year old son, Will, on a plane to a music camp in Vermont.   

Yes, Vermont!    I know it's 900 miles away----not that I could readily identify it on the US map, what with me being very southern and it being above the Mason-Dixon line and all, but I'm trusting Mapquest on this detail.   It's far away.

He's flying all by himself.    Him and his new wallet and super-official state picture id....and all those hand held electronics he just couldn't live without (and can never afford to replace if he leaves them all in the seatback pocket in front of him).   

And you don't even know the worst of it yet.   Brace yourself.    He'll be gone an.......an.........entire month.  (I was whispering that last part...it's just too outrageous for me to say outloud in cyberspace where all you responsible parents are hanging out to hear me.)   

I have really gone and done it this time..... 

Four whole weeks without seeing that beautiful boy???   I'm done for.

No amount of communication via the aforementioned handheld electronic devices will ever be enough.   I'm sure of it.

(Sniff. Sniff.)

Anybody wanna go to Vermont??

No such thing as luck

The doctor who did Brant's surgery today told me afterwards that he thought Brant was a very lucky guy.

You see, the wrist tendon that Brant severed is one of two that allow the wrist to flex up and down---important for teenage boys who play guitar.   And baseball.  The tendon also covers the biggest nerve that runs down the arm and controls feeling to most parts of the hand and fingers.   And that nerve covers the major artery that supplies blood to the hand.

The doctor said that had the glass gone just a fraction deeper, Brant would have been permanently disabled, assuming he survived the blood loss, of course.

I wasn't bold enough to say it to the fancy-pants surgeon---evangelical dim-witted-ness comes with 6-hour stints in hospital waiting rooms I can now attest----but I know that luck had absolutely nothing to do with the outcome of Brant's accident and subsequent surgery.   God, in his sovereignty, had every thing to do with it.

Not for the squeamish...

Just as the summer haze has settled here on my blog, dust was starting to collect and readership was dropping to all-time lows, Brant and a garage door window pane have stepped up to provide some exciting blog-worthy fodder with that can't-help-but-look photo to boot.

Drew and I were over in Cary Sunday evening.....alone, holding hands, enjoying a perfect beverage and celebrating Flag Day with Elvis Costello---any excuse for an outdoor concert, I say----when, just 5 songs into the first set, do we get a frantic text from Will.

Generally speaking, FRANTIC usually finds me in person or over a landline telephone, but as I embrace new technologies, FRANTIC has proven it is completely capable of finding me via Verizon and it's world's largest and most reliable network. Will's urgent text went something like this:

"We R takin B 2 the hospital.

Call back ASAP.

HURRY. HURRY."

Those all-caps kind of messages are just the kind that make a mother's heart drop to her flip flops......and her mind race to figure out who "we" is and what scenario could have possibly played out to warrant a trip to the ER this time.

Since Brant doesn't have his license yet, I was fairly confident he wasn't in a car accident......so, what then??

Had he been hit by someone else driving another car? Not likely on our quiet cul-de-sac.

Could he have gotten knocked out playing football/basketball/wiffle ball/cops & robbers with friends? Maybe....but it was more likely that, with B's size, he'd be the one doing the knocking out......

Was there some sort of cooking accident? I couldn't envision how microwaving a Hot Pocket could end very badly....well....for Brant any way. (In 2005, Will once microwaved a Hot Pocket for 14 minutes, though I've gotten very good at suppressing that memory. PLUS, the text didn't mention a melting microwave interior or a smoky charred dinner brick of any sort.)

Had B been electrocuted by my hair dryer (which, BTW, I always really, really DO mean to remove from its precarious home near the sink where B brushes his teeth)??? Hmmmm.....THIS was a definite possibility.

Finally, whilst running to the parking lot, I got Will on the line and he gave me the gory details....

During an energetic game of wall ball with neighborhood buds, Brant had run full-speed into our garage door where broken glass from a window pane made a mess of his left forearm. Will was with an adult neighbor and the neighbor's friend---who just happened to be a nurse----on the way to our county hospital. Will used excited and graphic phrases like "cut wide open" and "to the bone" along with helpful adjectives like "gross" and "really bloody."

The nurse-friend (aka, "Complete Stranger") assured me that Brant was okay and conscious; he was likely in shock, but alert. She says Brant will get good care where they're going, but no one will be able to handle this injury in the ER and he'll probably be admitted for surgery.

What????? I immediately called my friend Kris to go be with Brant. I could count on her to take charge of the situation, assess things and hold Brant's (other) hand until I could get there.

By the time Drew and I winged in on 2 wheels around 10 o'clock, every body involved had determined that, in deed, no doctor there or on call was the right one for the job. Hands are tricky, apparently and no one wants to touch them if they don't have to.

So.......after a quick interlude precipitated only by my embarrassing, woozy swooning and cold sweats.....the attending doc stitched up Brant as best he could and sent us home. A hand specialist will do the official honors on Wednesday.

Rangers Win Little League Championship!

Yahoo!  Babe's Little League team racked up both the Majors' regular season and tournament championships this week.   The Rangers worked hard all spring, were great sports, encouraged each other and in the end, proved they deserved to win it all.   

And, if you ask me, the coaching wasn't half-bad either.