Hi, you’ve reached Metalmom! I can’t come to the blog right now. I am currently on vacation for the week! The key is under the mat, beer’s in the fridge, and alcohol is hidden everywhere. I’d appreciate it if you mow the lawn and DON’T get busted for noise violations if you have a barbecue! Keep the girls and the drinkers legal, and no pooping in the sinks like last year!! BEEP……..

Here is what happened:

Son2 had gone to see the Warped Tour, an all day music fest of several different groups. He had fun, got very tan, only had two beers (he stuck to water because of the heat) Around 4:00, he was observing the mosh pit.  Someone fell in front of him and he reached down to help him up. As he started to stand up, he was struck in the face by someone else’s forearm.

As blood gushed from his face, he was assisted to the first aid tent where he was told “Dude, it’s broke. You need to get that set.”

At 5:15, I was informed of this facial deformity BY TEXT! I freaked out and waited for him to get home. I saw my baby’s beautiful face which now had a nose pointing to the left. No swelling, no difficulty breathing. But I still said “Dude, it’s broke. You need to get that set.”

 We went to the hospital and waited. And were treated to the mess that was Motormouth Man. (I will tell you all about him when I get home! He is a whole post unto himself!) After an hour and a half in the waiting room, Son2 was taken for x-rays. He returned and hour later. At 11:30 pm, the doctor entered the room and informed us, “Dude, it’s broke.You need to get that set.”

He will join us for the beginning of vacation. Later in the week, he will return with Hubs to see an ear/nose/throat man to have the nose mushed back into place. He informed us that it really looks bad but he is honestly having no pain.

The mosh pit injuries have always been my fear for him. He works out his aggressions there as do countless others. I always tell him “Be careful in the pit” as he leaves the house. I didn’t say it yesterday. (I know!! It’s not my fault!) But according to him, he feels like it’s time to give them up. He wasn’t even in the pit! He was watching, and was in the right place at the right time to help someone else’s child from possible injury. He was being the hero for once. And his nose got broken for his efforts. *Sigh* (I’m still proud of him for that though)

So that was my Friday night. The action never stops over here. Today will be our last chats until next week. I don’t need any more action!

In roughly 44 hours, I’m supposed to be checking into the motel for a week of relaxation. Note-I said supposed to be. Son2 just texted me that while in the mosh pit of the Warped Tour, he had his nose broken.

Me: Are you sure it’s broken?

Him: Mom, I look like fucking Owen Wilson! First Aid said go to the hospital and have it rebroken and set. Will you set it for me?

What the fuck am I?? Florence fucking Nightingale??

Oh yeah…..Son2 is the one with NO INSURANCE!

Update later……

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Nose-fractured. Set?-No. Apparently no one in a hospital knows how to set a broken nose. We are leaving for vacation as planned. Son2 and Hubs will come back early to see an ENT so that he can have the nose set (after the swelling goes down.) What a night!

Remember when you were a kid and you spent a day or two home sick? Remember what it was like to go back to school and everything was ‘normal’ but it felt ‘different’?

That’s how I’m feeling today.

While things were busy happening here at home, other things were happening in the blog-world. I missed it. Not all of it, mind you, but a bit. I didn’t have time to read every post every day. The majority of my ‘regulars’ were read. A few were commented on. But more than a few, I read and immediately forgot. This isn’t because what was written was forgettable. I would say that it is because there were other more immediately pressing things intruding on my thoughts.

I missed whatever went on among my friends that caused a rift. Was it serious? Was it irreparable? I don’t know.  I hope it is all better. Someone’s computer was sick and it left them offline for a while. Did I notice? No. Someone wrote posts trying to relay her feelings without actually “saying” what it was (for reasons all her own.) But did I “hear” what she was saying? No. Someone went to a convention and reported all the goings-on  that he saw. But I missed that too!

(At this point, I will say that I’m not linking these friends because I seriously don’t think I can remember who wrote what! And besides, we’re such a tightly entwined cyberfamily, that I think we all know who is who.)

ANYhoo…..

I kind of feel like I have returned to school only to hear that so-and-so broke up with her boyfriend, or Mrs. Teacher had a meltdown, or what’s-his-name got suspended. I hear it, after the fact, too late to weigh in,  too late to be part of the surprised, too late to comfort, too late to be “in the loop”.

And now it is time for summer vacation. What will I miss in the week ahead? I hope that all that I miss is good news. I hope that when I get back, I can catch up on things more easily than this time!

Once upon a time, Hubs did a job that required him to get up in the middle of the night to go to work. He worked in businesses that had to be closed in order for him to work, or in areas where motor traffic would be a danger to him. The point is, he’d leave me alone in the wee hours.

Babygirl had just been born, but she was a very good newborn, who slept through the night. In fact, she slept through the night until she was two. This meant that even though I was awake at two, three or four am , I had nothing to do.

Why did I need something to do? Because I find it hard to sleep alone.

I can sleep in the bed alone when I am sick or when I am exhausted. I know that Hubs is in the next room and it’s comforting. I can go to sleep when I know that he is getting up to go to work. He will leave at five or six and I can definitely go right back to sleep. But those late night jobs were sometimes in areas that left him vulnerable to crime or where he was working alone with no backup in case of injury and that thought kept me awake.

He left a short time ago. He left to work in another state and he will stay overnight and come home Friday. It is raining, so I will sit here typing this while I worry about him driving on the highway. I will most likely fall asleep again around 8am. That is when I expect him to call and let me know that he made it to his destination.

After all this time being married, I certainly enjoy being able to stretch out on the bed. I like the comfort of the “middle”. I can fall asleep with the TV on if I feel like doing so.  But  I miss the certainty that come with knowing exactly where he is. Not in a “hovering wife” kind of way, but differently. I find it hard to explain.

Tonght (or more precisely this morning), I have finished doing laundry and will now fold it. I am just about finished packing for vacation. My house is pretty much clean and the dishes are done. What is left?

What’s left is to snuggle with my puppy and wait for the phone call that will finally put me back to sleep.

It’s that time of the year again folks….VA-CAY!!!! After all the crap that has been thrown at us this summer (and it’s only half over!) we are ready to roll. We don’t leave until Sunday, but I gotta pack now.

Here’s a question for all of you…..

What do you have to pack? What can’t you be without?

Here are my top five must-haves:

My iPod. I intend to sit on the beach alot. One year, I took my new CD player and three new CDs with me and ruined them all. Sand scratched the discs and got into the crevices of the player. I am so stoked about having all of my music with me without the worry of having them destroyed.

My coffeepot. We love our coffee. Even though we will be going to breakfast every day, we still like to have a cup of joe while we are dressing and waiting for Babygirl and her girlfriend to make themselves pretty (God, mom! We might see boys!)

My Chair. Before I hurt my back, I would head to the beach with a bag containing sun screen, water, gum, a watch and music. I’d spend the day basking under the sun on a blanket spread on the sand. Not any more! I can’t get up once I get down! So now my chairy goes with me.

Aloe Vera Gel. Because the fairest one of all *coughHubscough* will forget to use sun screen-every year, without fail!-and get burned and will spend the rest of the time crying that “It Hurts!”

And last but certainly not least:

After last year’s fiasco, I’m going prepared. I want to relax, so if you have sucky disco music, I DON’T WANNA HEAR IT!

I have never been one to suffer from coulrophobia-a fear of clowns. I have been to the circus and haven’t had a strong reaction to them. The guy down the shore in the dunk tank–while being nasty in his baiting of passers-by–has never frightened me either. I think I have always hated them strictly on principle. Men in make-up… how very Dee Snyder!

I’ve seen the movie “It” and Tim Curry made me laugh with his sneery threats.

I have also seen “Spawn” and John Leguizamo knocked the clown character into a new era of creepy, sarcastic sadism.

Alas, still not scared.

Perhaps I didn’t find them scary because the character was a clown. I viewed each movie with the understanding that, much like Godzilla was the monster, the clown itself was the character.

Most recently, I have found myself getting…..creeped out. The clowns that creep me out now are men. Men parading as clowns. The first of these was Sid Haig as Captain Spaulding in the Rob Zombie films “House of 1000 Corpses” and “The Devil’s Rejects”. I think he scared me because his character,a member of a sadistic,murderous family, could possibly be real.

Last night, I met the new focus of my clowny fear. Heath Ledger as “the Joker” earned every word of praise that has been heaped upon his portrayal in the current Batman release. His extremely dark sarcasm and over the top expressions were beyond the ‘creeped-out” stage. The fact that it is possible for a person to become insane makes the character downright scary. Just viewing the Joker in the movie trailers has been enough to make me uneasy.

Yes. Even though I felt uneasy with the trailers, I still went to the movie…..AND LOVED EVERY SCARY SECOND OF IT!

*and then I came home and had a bad dream……..a very bad dream……..mission accomplished, Heath.

Today I realized that  I have bounced. Not the straightforward, up/down bounce, but more like the “bounced off a pebble and skewed off to the left” kind of bounce.

The guys returned to work and I have Son1′s girl, J, here with me. Laundry is getting done, clothes are folded and are making it into the drawers, and other signs of routine are beginning to unfold. But it’s not the same.

We’ve spent the past week or so with family. Some traveled up here from Maryland and Florida and others have traveled down from State College. Weddings and funerals as the saying goes…..

Hub’s routine will slowly change. He can’t pop in to see Dad before or after work. Dad always felt like part of the business when Hubs described the  day-to-day grind and when he mentioned the names of the builders that Dad had done business with.

My routine is easier to get back into. The kids take my mind off of things. The little chores can be done with little thought.But still, the mind tends to wander…

My husband lost his father and best friend. It has been devastating to watch.

I, on the other hand, still have both of my parents. My paternal grandfather died when I was nine. I really didn’t understand. My paternal grandmother is still alive. She will be 96 this year.My maternal grandparents lived to the ages of 103 and 105. I met them only once in my life.

As I tried to comfort my children, I never said that “I know how you feel”. I don’t. They were incredibly close to their grandparents. I cannot imagine.

When my own parents die, will I be able to bounce ever again? As much as I can’t stand Mom’s attitude sometimes, she is still MOM. I dread seeing my Dad live without her. I would miss my Dad horribly. He understands me deeper than I think I understand myself. What would I do without him? What would Mom do without him?

Losing someone is like opening a gate into the mind. The ‘what ifs’ come forward begging to be considered. The fears hidden in the deepest recesses catch a glimpse of light and are visible. I feel like a child in the middle of the night, wondering what is lurking behind the closet door.

It is scary.

Yesterday at 3:55 pm -surrounded by his children and eleven

of his sixteen grandchildren-

Dad sighed and went to sleep.

Yesterday was for tears.

Today we’ll celebrate his life.

“““““““““““““

Thank you all for your support. I was told that I was the strong one. I have all of you to thank for that. I couldn’t have done it without you.

I called my mom (because it’s be a while with everything that has been going on) We said hello and I asked her how she and Daddy have been. I told her what was what  with FIL and she said she already knew. Son1 had run into my brother and filled him in.

What the Fuck?

Why didn’t she call me? She could have asked how I was doing. She has to know how hard it is to watch someone waste away! She could have stopped by to see if I needed anything. She could have asked how my husband was doing! She could have asked how my kids were doing! She’s my mother!

Why didn’t my brother call? I’m sure he told my sister and other brother. Why didn’t they call? They can all raise fucking hell if I don’t call a niece or nephew for their birthday. Oh God Forbid!!  They can stop talking to me if I pass on a Super Bowl party.

Fuck ‘em. I’m too pissed for words.