I don’t answer the phone if I don’t recognize the number. Occasionally, I think the call could be important and decide to break that rule. I always regret that decision. Carrying a happy little girl on my hip, I picked up the phone.

“Is this Mrs. the Husband MyLastname? This is Sergent Something or other”

Oh crap. It’s the cops asking for money. Okay. Do I say no now, or wait until they ask for the money. I don’t want to be overzealous.

“This is.”

“Your husband had an accident on his bike. He’s fine.”

That’s never a good start to your night.

Every Tuesday, the Husband has his triathlon group. They all get together and do a sprint tri for practice. (Yeah, I don’t get it either.) On that night, as the Husband was going down a hill at about 35 mph, an orange cat darted into his path. The Husband swerved. The next thing he remembers, he was on the ground with people standing over him. The ambulance came shortly after.

The phrase is Road Pizza or Road Rash. It depends on who you ask and when. The Husband’s left knee, part of his side, elbows, and back from shoulder to shoulder is covered in it. Those look worse than they are. They hurt like hell, but they aren’t horrible. The gash in his head looks nasty and required 12 stitches. I can’t imagine how many stitches would have made it onto his head were he not wearing a helmet.

The walking is the issue. After a few hours of bloody sheets and gravel, the resident who looked nothing like JD came in to clean the road rash. He sat him up only for the Husband to have a lot of pain in his left hip. So much that he couldn’t sit up. X-rays showed no break. We all said, it was probably how he fell, maybe on his keys or a rock or something. Nothing to worry about.  After a couple hours, the pain was worse. He couldn’t sit or stand and they took him back for a Cat Scan. They said he had a subdural hematoma in the area the pain. They said subdural hematoma but after looking it up, that relates to the brain so who knows what it really is. I think by that point it was 12 am? Or was it 10? No, maybe it was 2. Who knows. Anyway, he had a lot of nasty internal bruising which probably explained his issues with walking. There was also some minor bruising on his liver and he had to stay for observation.

Today, he wasn’t much better. The walker was exhausting, pain-filled, and not at all successful. At around 4pm they decided to give him a stronger medication and see what happened. He walked, with a walker and extremely slowly and laboriously, but it was a huge improvement. He’s staying one more night and will be having physical therapy tomorrow. If all goes well, he will be home tomorrow night–bruised, battered and sore, but home.

I guess in the battle of Man v. Cat, cat won.

Made by Hand has collected almost 50 hats! As soon as I finish the Husband’s sweater, I hope to make a few for the pile. This will most likely be Made by Hand’s last charity drive and we are going out with a bang. Or at least trying to. The goal is to bring in 400 hats for 4 hospitals in our area by November 5. That’s a lot of hats, so please take a moment and make a hat for someone going through chemo. You can knit, crochet, or sew your hat just so long as you make it with your own two hands. We even have an address this year!

As soon as I finish the Husband’s sweater I will be raiding the stash for really soft yarn to make a handful of hats. Will you be doing the same?

Chazari posted a photo:

When I got pregnant, I thought to myself that I would be one of those annoying mommy bloggers and write letters to my daughter about all the wonderful things she did that month or at least post about every event in her life. Yeah, that didn’t happen. Instead, everything seemed to be more busy, which is to be expected when one has a baby, but I thought in the spare moments I have between work, the house, and the kid, I would think to post in my blog. Not so much. Instead I…um…I did something. Not sure what.

So where are we in life? Here are some updates in a nutshell.

Baby

OP is 7 months old! It’s a little weird to think that she’s 7 months already, but time marches on and all that. So far she rolls over, sleeps through the night, has two little teeth, sits up, LOVES food, and is almost crawling. She has figured out how to crawl on the bed but that entails her head as a third arm and just doesn’t look comfortable. To each his own, I guess. She has yet to figure out how to crawl forward on the floor.

Having this kid has been so wonderful. Everyone says its a lot of work but with a great return, and they are right. It’s a lot of work both with her and everything that she impacts, but I wouldn’t trade it in for anything. I think our family is perfect as a trio. Of course a duo was good too.

One of the hardest things to figure out with our little drooler was when to fit my time in. It’s a constant struggle for me to put myself first on occassion. The Husband has to force me out of the house to go to Zumba, but I need to do it. I have fun and I get an hour to be me and not mommy. I’m also starting to figure out how to fit in my hobbies. Which brings me to…

Knitting

I have yet to finish a project all year! However, I have the Fir Cone Shawl off the needles and ready to block, and I’m now working on the Husband’s sweater which has been a comedy of errors. Okay, so looking back the sweater has been a comedy of errors. At the time it was a tragedy.

I’m working on a top-down sweater for the Husband. I had him try it on as I went and it was looking great. Until the sleeves. I got the first sleeve started after working on the entire torso and it didn’t look right. I asked my raglan-expert friend and she agreed. The sleeve was way too loose, especially compared to the rest of the sweater and there was no way to fix it without frogging the entire project. Which I did (ugh), and started the whole thing over. This time, I am knitting the sleeves BEFORE I finish the torso. It’s looking good. There has been a lot of ripping back as I go to get it right, but once I can figure out this pattern, I should be able to use it as a standard for most of his stuff. I’m just never doing the torso again until the sleeves are done.

My goal is to get the shawl blocking this week and have the sweater done by the end of August. After that? A lot of little projects. I think I have 10 in the basket.

I’m also not buying yarn unless it’s for a project I need to do right now. I have so much yarn that it’s getting ridiculous. I have *gasp* like 30 skeins of just sock yarn!!! Yeah. I need to cut that number down. Made by Hand projects should do it. Are you knitting a chemo cap for us this year?

Okay, that’s it for now. I have to save something so I post more often. And yes, I’m going to try very hard to post more often. Even if it’s little nothings about random crap. So, it sucks to be you.