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I fell and broke my arm yesterday. On my birthday.

*sigh*

It was stupid how it happened. I was walking down the three stairs between our bathroom/closet area and the bedroom. Still in my pj’s, getting ready to take a shower. Slipped, lost my balance, went airborne. I landed hard on my ass, and would have been sore but OK. But instead, my left arm was flung backwards and struck the edge of the stair at my wrist. I heard the crack and knew it was broken right away.

“Oh shit, some birthday this is gonna be,” I thought.

In agony, I called my insurance company to get approval for a trip to the ER. I was denied. Instead, my hubz had to drive me to our local doctor’s office, where they could only look at it and say, “Yep, that’s broken.” THEN we had to drive 40 miles to a different center where I could get x-rays and see the orthopedist on call. We spent the whole damn day driving and waiting: in traffic, in lobbies, in lines.

I ended up with a purple cast from my palm to above my elbow, and a much-needed scrip for vicoden. One of the bones in my forearm is shattered at the wrist, but if kept very stable, will heal without surgery – hence the giant cast. In three weeks I can hopefully get it removed and replaced with a smaller, forearm-only model. Unfortunately, I’m having to learn how to eat, dress, do my hair/makeup, etc. with one hand, and the wrong hand at that. Writing is out of the question, typing is agonizingly slow, and driving is possible but terrifying.

Let’s not even talk about showering with a garbage bag taped over my arm! Luckily, I found and ordered this, and some of this stuff too. Hilariously, based on those purchases, Amazon decided to show me some other items they think I’d be interested in, including this (slightly NSFW). Um, thanks but no thanks, Amazon.

Where are my drugs?

Sometimes The Bean says stuff that’s just so out there, you have to laugh. Well, I have to laugh, anyway.

Sunday afternoon, I went and got my nails done and then hit the gym. When I got home, Bean wanted me to paint her toenails, so we headed up to my room to take care of that. While she was picking out the right shade of pink polish, I decided to change my t-shirt, because I was kind of a stinky mess. So I took it off, threw it in the hamper, and started looking for a clean one.

Bean looked at me and said, “Oh, Mommy. Are you gonna get all nakey?”

The way she said it, in a Very Serious Tone, just cracked me up. Laughing, I told her I was just putting on a clean one, then did so and painted her toenails.

I kind of wish I could ask her some follow-up questions, now that I’ve had time to think about it. Like, “What if I was getting nakey? Would that bother you? Did you want to get nakey too? Shouldn’t we all just get nakey?” LOL. Unfortunately, I’m sure she doesn’t even remember it now, her little three-year-old brain is too full of Disney princesses and race cars and chocolate chip cookies and other important matters.

Kids. They’re strange.

Even after she started eating solid food and drinking from sippy and then normal cups, my daughter had a hard time giving up the nightly bottle. So we didn’t push the issue. Every night, she took a bottle full of milk to bed with her. It soothed and calmed her, and sometimes you will just do ANYTHING that will encourage a toddler to go to sleep. Of course, she’s three and a half years old now, and that’s way too old to be drinking anything out of a baby bottle.

So I made a New Year’s resolution on her behalf, and January 1 we went cold turkey! I stole an idea from Nanny 911, actually. On that show, one of the nannies got two kids to give up bottles by taking all of the baby bottles out of the house in her big nanny carpet bag. She told them she was “taking the bottles to the babies,” since they were “too big for bottles now, and the babies really need them.” Does it make sense? No. Does it matter? No!

My daughter is a big fan of Dora, and she really loves her “Dora Helps the Super Babies” DVD. So I told her that we needed to send the baby bottles “to the super babies.” And when she wasn’t around, I threw all our bottles into a grocery bag and hid them deep in a cupboard.

OMG it worked! The first night was admittedly rough, and there was much whining, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. The next night it got easier – she asked, we reminded her where the bottles went, and that was it. The night after THAT, she told me all on her own where the bottles were, and that she was “too big for a bottle.”

A rare parenting success. Hella easier than toilet training; I should have tried it sooner! Please, let me bask in the glory for a moment.

There are lots of possible answers to the question, “Who is your favorite founding father?” Look at all the possibilities! There are so many cool dudes to choose from. For anyone who’d paid any attention in US History at all, it would be pretty easy to pick one of the “founding fathers” at random and come up with a rationale. You might not even have to hold a strong conviction about it, it’s just kind of a gimme question, and easy to come with an answer. Assuming you’re not completely ignorant, that is.

For example! You could say any of the following:

Benjamin Franklin – because he was so cool and multi-talented. He had a great sense of humor, was an accomplished writer, and invented a bunch of nifty stuff like bifocals and the glass armonica! Remember Poor Richard? The stuff with the key and the kite and the lightning? That Franklin, what a card.

Thomas Jefferson – because he was a true renaissance man. Not only did he write the Declaration of Independence, a stirring and moving document; he was also an intellectual and a strong defender of religious freedom and the separation of church and state. He started a university, was a governor, president, vice president, and secretary of state. Dude stayed busy!

George Washington – what’s not to love? The dude was a war hero, and refused to be treated like a king when he became America’s first president. He was, in fact, one of America’s greatest presidents, according to scholars. Also: wooden teeth, which cracks me up (but couldn’t have been very comfortable); Mount Vernon; the dollar bill…

And that’s just three of them. If none of those struck your fancy, you could still choose from John Adams, Alexandar Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay (source).

What I’m saying here is, if you were asked “Who is your favorite founding father of the United States,” and you couldn’t think of someone right off the top of your head, or you had to give some lame non-answer like, “All of them,” it would demonstrate a real ignorance – evidence of the fact that you had never given it much (or any) thought. One might assume that you were kind of clueless about history and other intellectual matters. One might assume you were so absorbed with yourself, you didn’t care about people from long ago who lived and died making our country the great bastion of freedom that it is today. One might think.

I’m just sayin’.

From “Phantom of the Opera.” Minnie Driver does some kick-ass lip syncing.