Freezer Motor And Defroster: $395ER Visit: $500Being Able To Mention 'Butt Crack' At Least Once In Your Blog: Priceless

Saturday was a very expensive day.

It started off with a visit from the refrigerator repair man who was here to investigate why our freezer couldn't freeze ice cream and couldn't churn out more than one ice cube a day, which is about 4999 units less than is needed per hour in this household. There seems to be some sort of Amityville curse going on in our house, but instead of mutilated bodies turning up we are left with dead appliances strewn around. There's the thrice-returned coffee maker (more on that riveting topic later), the dryer that, unless the timer is turned to a specific point on the dial that must be mathematically calculated by the position of Saturn, keeps going and going, drying forever until your clothes are turned into brightly colored pieces of inedible beef jerky. Then there is the freezer, which is now working thanks to a new $395 motor and defroster installed by a morbid character named Boris who was wearing a shirt that was so dirty I was tempted to ask him if he could step into a big vat of Clorox before working on my appliance that, you know, held FOOD. We also had the pleasure of staring at his lovely butt-crack the entire time, which begs the question, "Why do they all have this universal talent?" I imagine a class in Butt Display, where the teacher coaches them through the precise art of Crack Revealing, "Now, bend over just a little bit more, while at the same time scooting forward on your knees. There ya go, buddy. More, more, more, just a little bit further over. We almost see it...Bingo! Hello, crack! Good job big fella!"

The day ended with Kiyomi having to be taken to the ER.

We were getting ready to go out to dinner and the girls begged to take a couple more spins around the backyard on their scooters. I was taking this opportunity to give the refrigerator another good WIPING DOWN just to make sure I had eliminated any last traces of live cultures that may have taken up residence on Boris' shirt and jumped ship into our food storage device, when I heard the sound of metal crashing onto cement, dead silence, and then screaming, I threw down my sponge (it was glowing now) and ran outside to assess the damage. Kiyomi had fallen and had a big raspberry on her arm but appeared to be fine, trying to explain the ill-fated scooter maneuver to me between big sobs and gasps. We went inside, cleaned her up and in a few minutes she was happily watching TV. A few seconds later, though, she started crying pretty hard, saying her arm hurt REAL BAD and she couldn't move it. Even though the whole time she was telling us this she was gesturing emphatically with that arm, we have learned not to trust our own judgment, because of what happened almost five years ago when she was two.

It was the second day of a three day stay in Monterey. We were in our hotel room and Kiyomi was doing her usual monkey theatrics, jumping on the bed and screaming, and Kira was on the other bed conjugating verbs. I was just turning to tell Kiyomi to stop jumping on the bed, acting like a monkey, when she slid off and landed on the carpeted floor, on top of a comforter. Well, she started howling like a banshee, since, well, that's just what she did all the time anyways, but this time she continued on for a bit longer than usual, but we assumed she was fine, since WHO GETS HURT FALLING ONTO A BIG FLUFFY CLOUD? Rigel and I took turns holding her and carrying her around, and finally she fell asleep. She woke up around a half an hour later, seemingly fine, so we decided to go to the aquarium as we had planned.

She was acting pretty normal when we got there, except for the fact that she didn't want to budge from her stroller and usually there was no way we'd be able to keep her in that thing without strapping her down with an entire roll of duct tape. As the day wore on, I also noticed she was pointing at everything with her left arm and not really using her right arm at all, but again, we were basically clueless and continued with the abuse, pushing her around in her stroller, expecting her to enjoy the marine life while her chances of becoming a concert violinist slowly diminished. Finally at the end of the day, the fact that everytime we'd try and pick her up would result in piercing screams convinced us to take her to the ER.

When we got there the doctor assured us her arm wasn't broken, as he said that a two-year old with even a slight fracture would be inconsolable and wouldn't allow anyone to move their arm, as he was doing at that moment, cranking it up and down like the handle on a slot machine. They took some x-rays and while we were waiting for the results they took us into separate rooms to ask us exactly what happened.

It finally dawned on me after a few seconds that they had separated us because they thought that maybe she hadn't fallen off the bed, onto a fluffy cloud after all. Omigod, they thought we were BAD PEOPLE. People who do THOSE BAD THINGS to children. I started to get a little warm under the collar, not because I felt guilty, but because I was praying with all my heart that Rigel didn't use this opportunity to answer any of the questions with his usual sarcastic humor (those of you who know Rigel KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT.) I could only sweat bullets as I imagined him answering the question of how it happened with, "Well, hell no, I didn't see her fall off the bed, since I was too busy beatin' my woman, dangnabit!"

Finally we met back in the examination room and I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw he wasn't in handcuffs. My joy was short lived, though, since the doctor was now staring at Kiyomi's x-rays on the light box and motioning like a madman for the nurses to come and take a look cause holy shit SHE HAD BROKEN HER ARM IN TWO PLACES. None of us could believe it, especially Rigel and I since now we were starting to feel the hugest heavy pile of guilt starting to build up on top of us and imagined the years of therapy she would have to undergo in her adult life in order to reconcile the fact that her parents had put off taking her to the ER for a broken arm (in two places!) all because they had to see some FISH.

Needless to say, THAT is why Rigel drove her to the ER at ten o'clock on Saturday night, which caused him to call Kiyomi's injury 'the most x-rayed, over-sterilized, heavily-gauzed, expensive arm-scrape in history.'

But at least I had some ICE to put on it when she got home.

Archive File: Offspring | Family | This Life

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