Baptisms and Broken Toes

Yes, it has been months since I've posted. Such is the life of a parent. Things have settled a bit. She cries a little less than she used to. Her sleeping is okay at night, horrible during the day. And Cheryl decided to stay at home with the the little monster...at least for a little while.

And we baptized her last Sunday. It was something. We did it at my parents' church...in Assyrian. So the 2/3 of the 90-something guests that showed up didn't have a clue what was being said in church, but they were good sports about it. Rene's dad was serving as deacon during the mass so it was very special for him. And little Emma wore the same gown that her dear old dad had worn at his baptism so many years ago.

After mass, we went to the church hall and had lunch. We had lasagna for lunch. We had a few no-shows, and the caterers had made some "just in case" food, so we had a little extra. We ate leftovers for days and still have some in the freezer. For dessert, we had fruit that my mom cut up, cookies and such that my parents bought, and cupcakes which I made.

You've heard "blood, sweat, and tears," but I bet you never heard it said about cupcakes. I made them at our place in Dublin and hauled them to Turlock. On Saturday night, we were doing the last-minute stuff for the baptism. My parents were cutting fruit, Cheryl and I were frosting the cupcakes, and Fate was chuckling over what she was about to do.

A light rain was drizzling outside. I took the boxed cupcakes to the back of the minivan (oh yeah, we bought a minivan, that's another blog posting by itself!) and was joyfully jogging back into the house, barefoot. My parents had some concrete steps put in front of their house a few weeks back. I introduced my big toe to the steps...hard! I heard a really unhappy crunch.

Swear words, cursing, yelling, and howling, I let the family know that my toe was broken. How did I know it to be broken? Because it was facing a direction it should not have been facing. Into the truck with my dad on our way to the emergency room. Thank all that is good in this world - the ER room was not that crowded. 2 1/2 hours was all the whole thing took and I went home with crutches. Yup, for my kid's baptism, I was on crutches. Kinda lame, but oh well.

As for pain, breaking the toe hurt, but the shot they gave me to numb the toe so the large scary man could set it into place - wow, that hurt!!! My dad actually held my hand as the four shots were administered. I thought they were using pliers to pull the bone out, it hurt so bad. The ER doctor that gave me the shot was a smaller lady with a great sense of humor and made the pain a bit more tollerable. She was happy to be at work and was joking it up with my dad and my cousin (who met us at the ER waiting room) like they had been buddies since childhood. At one point, the doctor was asking if she should just saw off my toe, to which my dad told her not to bother, she should just shoot me like they do to horses with busted legs...nice. So the small lady punctured my toe, there was blood after the shots, and the large man wiggled my toe a bit and put it in place and taped it all up. I felt nothing thanks to the miraculous wonders delivered through a foot-long syringe.

Anyway, the toe is set and I'm going to get x-rays again tomorrow and the kid is Christian. By the way, the official story behind the busted toe that I'm telling people is that I was attacked by Ninjas. Let's keep the cupcake and minivan business just between us girls, eh?