Monday, May 17, 2010

Hella Weekend Roundup

Here it is Monday and I have a shit ton of things to do but LO, it is noon and I'm not doing any of them. I attribute this failure of energy partially to a rather over full weekend and mostly to my dreams: last night, while asleep, I snuck into a Modest Mouse concert that turned out to be a) not at the Orange Peel at all and b) not a concert but some kind of simulcast thing with a big screen, which made all my friends leave in disgust. This was smart of them, because shortly afterward the building was attacked by flying saucers full of terrorists with large black mustaches. Evading the terrorists involved a whole lot of stairs, so I woke up tired.

This was one hell of a weekend and by hell, I mean, well, hell. On Friday Charlie and I took Valentino back up to Hot Springs to rejoin the Appalachian Trail and while we were there, we got a tub for an hour, which was lovely. Then back to Asheville and somehow, although now it's all a blur, I think I was sort of crazy busy but at any rate we all ended up at the Admiral. All was as usual in my small PBR drinking world and then we came back home and went to sleep, only to be awakened at 1:15 with the news that young Miles had just been in a major car wreck.

Yeah.

This is not something anyone ever wants to hear although I tell you, as an alarm clock it works rather, um, alarmingly well. I levitated out of bed and into clothes and we jumped into Audrey's car and got down to the end of Haywood Road where my shaken but miraculously unhurt son was standing with a police officer observing the ruins that result from the mating of a 1998 Buick and your common or garden variety telephone pole. It was a one car accident - apparently a truck driver, who was very nice, as was the cop, had started pulling out of a side street onto Haywood and young M had seen him, freaked, swerved, over corrected and gone into the pole. I duly took my son home, gave him tea with lots of honey and an ice pack for his lip, woke him up every four hours to ask him who the president was (you can tell there is no concussion if their reaction to this question contains enough complaining about not being allowed to sleep for gods' sake Mom what is wrong with you content) and then, over the course of the next three days, proceeded to argue with him nonstop about how insurance stinks, life stinks and what the hell is he supposed to do now?

Be glad, I keep saying, that you are alive. I am glad you are alive (well, up until about hour 7 of argument 3a, I was) and that goddamn Buick saved your life and oh, god, my son, part of me still wants to wrap you in bubble wrap and pad your room and just keep you in there, safe, forever, because you terrify me so. Don't have kids. Sure, babies are cute but they grow up to be teenagers and it turns out you still love them helplessly but there is little, or nothing, at that point that you can do about what happens to them.

Anyway. I'm unclear on the details of what we need to do now myself. We need to go down, today, to the police station and get the accident report and then we need to deliver it duly to the insurance company and we need to go to the car and get whatever was inside of it out of it and, I suppose, arrange for it to be towed to a wrecker. Sigh.

So that was Friday. It would be enough for most people, who would then go into suspended animation or something like sensible beings. But no! We are not wimps! Instead, after an afternoon of home repairs and the like, we went on to a rather fabulous party at Restaurant Equipment Galaxy, which is owned by my friend Charles and where, by the way, you should totally go for all your obscure and important used restaurant equipment needs. At the end of the party we got a sudden impromptu - at least I think it was impromptu - performance from Kenny the clown, pictured here juggling fire. There was also a unicycle and more juggling and a balloon was swallowed, which was a little terrifying, and it was highly awesome, so I took too many photographs.

And that, minus a few details like my wonderful daughter who cleaned up the whole kitchen on Sunday thank you thank you thank you, was my weekend. Despite the interludes of great fun, I would prefer never to repeat it, thank you gods. But we are all still healthy and hale and, oh, there are baby wrens in the hanging fuchsia on the porch.

4 comments:

Anne Fitten Glenn said...

Glad Miles is OK. Damn, that's scary as hell.

My boy smashed his head the other day, and I immediately asked him who the President is. Which caused him to giggle uncontrollably because, I guess, that's a dumb question to ask a smart 8-year-old.

Then I explained to him why I asked. About 15 minutes later, I overheard him say to his sister, "Did you know when I hit my head that I came this close to losing my memory?"

Anne Fitten Glenn said...

Wow. That's interesting. Google just changed my name from my avatar name to my real name. Without my permission.

mygothlaundry said...

When Miles was tiny and had hit his head yet again I asked him that question and he said tearfully, "Mommy, I'm only five years old. How am I supposed to know that?"

Yeah, have you tried signing into Pandora recently? Not only does it just tell you that it is using Facebook to help your listening experience, it tells you what your friends like or don't like. Not cool. Not a fan of this privacy eroding all over the web lately. There's such a thing as too much SMS.

eemilla said...

Glad to here he is safe and healthy enough to argue with you. In case you haven't already gone, the insurance company should be able to get the police report themselves (via a DMV database).