You did what?

For several days I had been planning to share a photo of my beloved son, who decided on Sunday that come hell or high water, he was going to learn to  ride his bike without the infernal training wheels. He fell down a lot, and the neighbor boys were constantly bragging about their abilities to already ride on two wheels, but he kept trying. This isn’t something usually in his character to do– he prefers to quit after one taste of failure, then try again another day when he’s sure no one is looking. Amazingly, all the knee scrapes and crashes didn’t stop him, and he is now a real live bike rider.

See how adorable?

But this post isn’t really about bike riding and the recent accomplishments of my beloved 6-year-old. It is now about the fact that he stuck a piece of rubber tire mulch into his ear canal yesterday. {insert nonsensical curse words here}

See, he had managed to track a piece of shredded tire in from recess, which happens all the time. We still haven’t ascertained why he thought it was a good idea to try sticking it in his ear, but Mr Deplume and I are pretty sure that the answer is really “because he is 6.” Anyway, at 3pm he was bored near the end of school and he stuck a piece of rubber in his ear, but it didn’t readily come out. He tried a few more times, then at about 3:45 he told his dad about it, while I was out running an errand.

I got back home about 4, tried looking in his ear to find it was shoved way down deep. Ugh. Mr Deplume tried calling our Dr’s office, but couldn’t get a human, instead getting an “everyone’s busy, please try again later” message, then the phone system hung up. (That’s a whole ‘nother rant, which I’ll not get into now.) Since the prompt care places we called said they refuse to treat “foreign object removal,” we headed off to the emergency room.*

The ER doctor at first tried poking at it with what looked like a dental instrument, with a curved pointed end, but quickly bagged that idea and tried to irrigate it out. She then got a huge syringe and squirted water into it. Nigel screamed. He said the plastic end was poking him in the ear. It was probably already sensitive from trying to pull on his ear all afternoon. The screaming (and the fact that three syringes full of water did nothing to dislodge the thingy) made her decide to send him to an Ear Nose and Throat specialist, who might want to sedate him to extricate the offending particle.

So we have an appointment for this morning at 9:45 in town to see if they can get it out. Ugh.  Kids: they really put a damper on one’s sanity, you know? I’m trying to laugh about it. The dollars we’ll spend getting this treated are just money, and it’s not serious, in the grand scheme of things. I admit I’m struggling with that. While none of my problems are serious, there are just a lot of them, and it’s hard to keep perspective these days.

Have I mentioned that I am a wedding coordinator here on the blog before? So yeah, I’m working this weekend. I’m supposed to be at the church at 12:30 assisting a bride, for her wedding this evening. Last night after the ER trip I had to go straight to the rehearsal without dinner.  I had to go up to the church kitchen and pilfer a piece of sponge cake destined for today’s funeral dinner, in order to stave off the impending hunger of doom. I would like to thank the hospitality committee for saving some treats in the freezer, and then removing them yesterday instead of this morning, because otherwise I might have had to resort to communion grape juice and saltines. That wouldn’t have felt quite kosher, but I wouldn’t have had much choice. I was starving.

But we’ll get through all of it, right? Someday (soon, I hope), we will all be able to look back on this and laugh, I’m assured. We will sit around for a few hours without a care in the world with the kids riding their bikes in the summer sunshine without falling and needing stitches.

Tell me that’s tomorrow sometime, please. Even if it’s an untruthitude.

*In retrospect, we could have waited until this morning to call our regular doctor, but we’ve only been parents for 9 years– we’re still novices. Our rookie mistake will likely cost us a couple of hundred dollars, as our stupid insurance has no copay for ER visits. {insert more curse words here}