I witnessed a horrific motorcycle-SUV accident on my way home tonight.
All I could think about was how lives had been changed in that instant. Both of the men involved–that wasn’t how they were planning on spending their evenings. They were supposed to arrive home in their driveways safely, but–because of a fraction of a second in which they suddenly collided–that was not to be.
It’s a sobering reminder of how precious life is, no matter how trite that sounds.
Thankfully, I had never seen anything like that before in my life. But there I was, sitting at an intersection. I was two cars back from the intersection, waiting in the left turn lane at a red light. I happened to be looking straight ahead, and all of a sudden I hear the unmistakable sound of metal on metal–a high impact crashing sound. I saw a few small parts of metal fly through the air, and then, horrifyingly, a body. It was then that I realized this was undoubtedly a motorcycle accident, which immediately made it far worse in my head.
I happened to have my phone out of my purse and next to me, so I picked it up and immediately dialed 911, as fast as my shaking hands could manage. Like others around me, I got out of my car, but I didn’t run into the intersection, since I had Nora in the backseat. I reported the accident’s location to the 911 operator, telling him that an SUV had hit a motorcyclist and that the SUV was now on top of him. In the meantime, people on the scene were screaming–some yelling at the SUV driver to “back up, back up, back up!” off of the victim.
The operator began asking me questions. Ones that I couldn’t answer given my distance from the situation. I turned to a nice man next to me and said that I was running up to the intersection, please make sure no one steals my daughter. (Kind of funny, now that the situation is over.) I ran to the accident scene and got my first look at the guy. He had visibly broken bones in his arms, but I could see him moving his arms and legs, and his chest moving up and down. People were trying to keep him from trying to move his neck/head. I told the 911 operator he was breathing, and asked the crowd around how old they thought he was. They said they thought he was mid-40s.
Moments later, the ambulance was on scene, and the 911 operator let me hang up. I noticed the poor SUV driver, sitting on the curb bleeding from his own head. He was older–looked like maybe he was in his late 60s, early 70s. Then he kind of keeled over and someone said they thought he was having a heart attack. I think he was just in shock.
I went back to my car to find Nora playing happily with her toy laptop in the backseat. I was glad that she was so oblivious. I sat in my car, shaking, and called Michael and immediately started crying. Traffic was at a complete stand-still, so I was stuck where I was, just watching as more and more first responders arrived on scene to help.
I have been playing the scene over and over again in my head. The noises, the sights, the people around me. It was just terrifying. I thought the guy was going to die. My first impression was that the SUV had turned into the motorcycle, but as I analyzed it all in my head, I think the motorcyclist actually turned in front of the SUV, not giving himself enough time.
Since then, I’ve seen one news report about the accident, which says that the motorcyclist has non-life-threatening injuries. Shocking based on what I saw, but I’m obviously hoping it’s true. I keep checking for updates. I guess it’s probably good news if one never comes.
I saw strangers come together to help a stranger today, which is always a nice reminder of the good in the world. And I obviously hugged my baby a little tighter at bedtime tonight, knowing how lucky we are for every day that we come home together as planned. For every day that we wake up to live another day.
Today was a strange day. It’s weird to have a Wednesday off, right smack in the middle of the work week. All day, we were confused as to what day it actually was. It felt like a Saturday. It felt like a Sunday.
It was just weird.
We didn’t actually do much to celebrate the 4th of July today–just took advantage of the day off by running a few extra errands, spending time with our girl, and being productive around the house during her nap. We did go to my in-laws’ for dinner–hamburgers, hot dogs, beans, mac and cheese, and corn on the cob–so that was decidedly a very “American” dinner. :)
Because the holiday fell during the week, some of the surrounding towns scheduled their official celebrations–parades and fireworks–for last weekend. On Saturday morning, my brother was marching with the fire department in one of the parades, so we met my mom (who had Hunter) and my grandma there to watch it.
The parade started pretty early in the day (10 a.m.), but it was definitely warm out, even then. And the parade was no joke–it lasted an hour and a half!
The kids were so, so good. Hunter actually stayed in his stroller THE ENTIRE TIME, which was amazing considering he is 3 years old and tends to be a bit wild (he is a boy, after all). Nora was good in her stroller for about an hour but then she wanted nothing more to do with it so we let her out.
There’s Ty! He’s the one right there in front, with his hand outstretched toward us.
Nora’s first temp tattoo! :) We were given SO.MUCH.CANDY at the parade–all of which we confiscated from Nora before she even had a chance to really see it–so it was refreshing when a local swim club came by with the tats instead! Nora is obsessed with stickers so I figured she would love this, and I was right. She proudly showed it off on her arm for the rest of the weekend (I removed it with rubbing alcohol on Sunday night without issue).
Michael smartly thought to bring chalk in case we had to occupy little ones and keep them in one place for a little bit. It was perfect!
Nora still took in plenty of the parade.
And did some marching of her own.
So cute! And so fun.
It was nice timing, because we were still able to get Nora home in time for her nap–which she REALLY needed, poor kid was worn out after so much activity in the morning!
Sadly, we went another year without any fireworks. It’s just too hard for us with a child as young as Nora. The fireworks around here don’t start until 9:30 or 10:00 p.m. and it’s just WAY too far past Nora’s bedtime. Do any of you brave fireworks with small children? I just can’t see it working out well. And to get a babysitter (one of the grandmas!) would be possible, but we would feel too badly because they’d have to deal with Tessa, who barks and trembles like crazy the entire time (she hates fireworks!).
I hope you all had a happy 4th of July. Don’t forget to send thoughts–or a little prayer–up for my brother and all of the other men and women currently serving our country so that we (and others) can continue enjoying the freedom that we do.
And just for fun, check out my little Nora, one year ago today. How is this possible?
Now, back to work tomorrow. Whaaa? :)
I have been meaning to write this post for a month, but I’m just now getting around to it. Oops.
Back when we still lived in our condo, one of the things I looked forward to most about moving to a house was the opportunity to try my hand at growing my own vegetables in the summer months. This winter, as we got closer and closer to spring, I began thinking about a veggie garden. But I had no idea what I was doing.
And honestly, I still don’t really know what I’m doing. But I’m experimenting, I suppose. Experimenting with guidance, because I did do SOME research, after all.
I had heard a lot of good things about raised garden beds and the method of square foot gardening. I had good intentions to buy Mel Bartholomew’s book on the subject, but uh… I never got around to it. Instead, I asked a lot of questions of friends and did a LOT of Googling.
We bought a raised garden bed kit (4′ x 4′) at Home Depot for around $30. Then I used Mel’s soil mix “recipe”–1/3 part peat moss, 1/3 part vermiculite, 1/3 part compost. I got all of my soil supplies at a local gardening store. To fill our garden bed, I think I ended up with about 10 cu. ft. of material. I mixed up the soil (eyeballing the amounts) in batches in our wheelbarrow, then filled the garden bed. Not before debating for weeks about where to put the garden bed, though.
We have a very shady yard. Our house faces south, so our “side yards” (which we don’t really have very much of) would get the most sun, except that the light tends to be blocked by neighbors’ houses. Our front and backyards have a lot of trees (which we love), so it’s just… shady. For best results, veggie plants need approximately 6 hours of sunlight a day, so we needed to figure out where in our yard that was possible. We debated between 2-3 locations, and observed the sunlight different times of day, trying to determine which area was best. It was sort of hard, as we were doing this in May, when the trees out back were starting to fill in with leaves again, but certainly weren’t as full as they are now!
We finally settled on an area behind our garage, and got busy. We laid scrap cardboard out to block weeds/kill the grass, and put our garden bed kit on top of it. Once filled with soil, I sectioned off each square foot of the garden with string so that I would have a guide for planting.
Then, I just needed plants.
I decided from the beginning that I had no interest in growing anything from seed. Call me lazy, but I would rather leave the seedlings up to somebody else. So, I set out to pick up a variety of veggie plants–from our farmer’s market, from our local gardening stores, and I even picked up one from Home Depot. Then, I needed a plan for planting–so I mapped out the locations of each of the plants in the bed on a piece of paper.
Anyway, I’m sure you want pictures, yes? Unfortunately, I didn’t take many, but here’s what my little garden looked like at the beginning:
This is actually before I even bought the zucchini and cucumber plants! Pictured above are six square feet of broccoli plants, one red pepper plant, four basil plants, and two tomato plants (one beefsteak, one lemon boy). The tomato plants have the little ring thingies (see? I’m such an expert) to help support them as they grow. The plant in the pot is a strawberry plant. Within a few days of this photo, I added three zucchini plants (occupying one full sq. ft. each) and four cucumber plants (two per sq. ft.) to fill up the rest of the garden bed.
At first, I watered daily. Then, I read that it’s best to do a deep watering, but less often, so now I’ve been watering every 2-3 days (mostly every other day, since it has been hot and dry here).
Five weeks later, I’ve got this:
Woot woot! Most of our veggies are singing. But our grass–well, our grass is crying. Poor grass. Did I mention it has been REALLY dry here? Also, don’t mind the wheelbarrow full of kindling in the background.
ANYWAY. Here’s a closer look at each plant.
Our red pepper plant has had this baby bell pepper on it for a few weeks now. It doesn’t seem to be growing very quickly, but maybe this is to be expected. At one point, it had a bunch of flowers on it, which I thought would turn into a bunch of peppers, but alas, only one. The rest of the flowers are nowhere to be found anymore. I don’t know, maybe we’ll only get one pepper out of this guy. I’m holding out hope, though!
Side note: Funny story about my inexperience as a gardener. At one point during my Google adventures, I read something about how you’re supposed to prune the flowers off of the plants so that all of the plant’s “energy” is focused on growing the fruit, not the flowers. So, when this pepper plant started flowering (it was the first to do so), I actually almost cut off the flowers! I was too chicken to do it, though, and it’s a good thing–since I now know that THE FLOWERS TURN INTO THE VEGETABLES.
Here’s a shot of a couple of our zucchini plants (we planted three). My father-in-law is in disbelief that we dared to put zucchini plants in a small garden bed like this because he’s convinced that they’ll overtake everything else. And, well, maybe they will. We shall see. Somehow I need to try to keep them contained as they grow–I think I can trim back the leafy parts, yes? Anyone with gardening experience care to share some expertise?
The zucchini plants are currently flowering like crazy–the flowers are really pretty when they’re open during the day! I noticed tonight that one of the plant’s flowers are starting to shrivel up and fall off so I’m hoping to get some zucchini babies soon!
Here is an above shot of our six broccoli plants. As you can see, some of them are doing better than others. I’m pretty convinced that the one in the bottom middle square isn’t going to make it. Poor thing. Also, you can probably see that something is chewing the hell out of the leaves on my broccoli plants. Everything else appears to be untouched, but whatever it is sure likes broccoli. I’m not stressing about it too much since the leaves aren’t the part we’re planning to eat. Unless someone tells me I should be stressing about it. Should I be? Anyway, no signs of baby broccoli crowns yet. Fingers crossed.
Oh, you can also see the little yellow spots forming on my zucchini plant leaves in this pic. All of them have it, but I have no idea what it is. Thoughts?
Cucumbers! I had some trouble with these guys, as one of the plants didn’t survive transplant. But, I replaced him quickly to give another guy a chance. These haven’t been springing up as quickly as other things, so I was starting to get worried about them all. But tonight I noticed that they are starting to form small flower buds, so YAY! I think they’re on their way.
Tomato plants are awesome. It’s so satisfying to grow them because I swear, it seems like they’ve grown another few inches every day that I go out there. And we’ve noticed a TON of flowers forming on them that we’re hoping will result in lots o’ tomatoes.
I was diligently checking for tomato babies every day for a couple of weeks–to no avail–but then suddenly BOOM! Within the last few days, we’ve sprouted babies!! Two days ago, we had two tomato babies, and as of tonight, we have SEVEN. I am so excited!
Last, but not least–basil. I had plans to grow more herbs this year, in separate pots, but didn’t get around to buying or planting them. But at least we’ve got basil, because this family? We like pesto. A lot of pesto. I’ve actually already harvested enough basil off of these plants–twice–to make a full batch of pesto. I’ve stolen various amounts of leaves for other recipes calling for fresh basil, too. In fact, this picture doesn’t do my basil plants justice because I just harvested leaves to make pesto on Saturday, so the bounty has been significantly depleted. Needless to say, basil is doing really well.
I forgot to take a photo of my strawberry plant, but it’s pretty boring because I swear it has not changed AT ALL. I am not holding out very much hope that we’ll be seeing any strawberries this year. Boo.
So that is my gardening experience so far. I’ve gotten a pretty big kick out of it and am pleased with our success so far. Assuming things continue going well, I want to expand the veggie garden next year–by at least one, if not two more garden beds. Imagine the possibilities! Wheeee!
What are you growing this year? What has been successful? Any failures? Any inexperienced gardeners out there with funny stories like mine (almost cutting off the flowers)? Do you have any comments or tips based on what you’re seeing in my little ol’ garden here?
Nora had her early intervention evaluation for her speech last Friday.
It went really well. We weren’t sure exactly what to expect in terms of cooperation on Nora’s part, but she was great. A little shy when they first arrived, but she warmed up quickly. We scheduled the appointment for early in the day–9 a.m.–so that she would be well-rested and at her “best.”
Two women came to evaluate her. One was an early childhood specialist who was there to evaluate her development–social, physical, cognitive. The other was a speech pathologist who was there specifically to evaluate her speech.
All they really did was play. And ask us a lot of questions. They brought a lot of props and toys of their own, to test specific things–covering an object with a blanket to see if she would look under the blanket, hiding things under cups and moving them around for the same purpose. Practiced “feeding” a bear with a plastic spoon, practiced laying the bear down and covering him with a blanket, etc. All things that they directed her to do that she cooperated with. They gave her a hand mirror to see how she would respond to her reflection, and she performed–smirking at herself and moving her head to take peeks at different angles. HILARIOUS.
They also looked at books–random ones that they pulled off of her shelf–and asked her about objects in them. Nora pointed accordingly. At one point they were going through a Sesame Street book and the woman was asking Nora about the characters. She turned the page and Nora’s finger went out immediately, pointing, and her little voice said, “Boon!” Both women looked at us. “Balloon?” one said. Yep. Pointing right at the yellow balloon on the page, she had said it with conviction. Balloons are one of her favorite things on the planet.
That’s the funny thing. As I mentioned in my previous post–ever since I made that call to early intervention, Nora seems to have made a lot of improvements. Picked up a few new words, even since I last posted–Balloon. More. MAMA. That’s right, she says Mama now. Every day, multiple times a day. It is awesome.
So, an hour or so passed, and they were done with the evaluation. They had put Nora through all of the “tests,” and had asked us all of their questions. The full report with all of the results won’t be ready for us for a few weeks, but they told us her scores right away–and told us outright that Nora does NOT qualify for services.
Exactly as I suspected.
According to her scores, Nora does have delays. Not only in speech, but in the social and cognitive skills, too. BUT her scores were borderline normal, just a bit below. They said that the reason for her lowered scores in the social and cognitive areas were all for things related to speech, so… well, it all makes sense. That was why we were in this position in the first place.
At the end of the day, Nora’s delay is considered “mild,” and children need to have a severe delay to qualify for services. And Nora doesn’t, which is honestly a relief. They expect that she will catch up on her own, reassuring us that the range of what is “normal” at this stage of development is extremely broad. Some kids are talking in complete sentences. Some have only a few words. It’s just the way that it is.
Given the small sample of children in my family that we’ve since “surveyed,” it sounds like not really talking until after 2 years old is not as uncommon as I might’ve once believed. Two of our nephews were late talkers. So were a few of my cousins’ kids. All are bright, healthy children who eventually caught on–by themselves. No therapy needed.
So, it is what it is. We continue to do what we’ve been doing. Narrate our day, work with her. Encourage her speech. We do a lot of object identification exercises. Singing. Reading.
In six months, if Nora still seems to be below the curve, we’ll have her re-evaluated. But I’m not worried.
I see the light at the end of the tunnel. And there are a lot of words there. :)
Michael and I are taking a random vacation day tomorrow. But here’s the thing: We’re using it to work our asses off–not behind our desks, but in our house.
Nora is going to daycare.
We’re setting out on a home improvement extravaganza.
I haven’t shared a kitchen update with you in FOREVER–I haven’t even shown you (officially) what our cabinets look like with the doors on. But I’ve been procrastinating mostly because we have not done ANYTHING to it in weeks and weeks. I knew that our productivity with indoor projects like this would plummet once the weather was nice, hence my original goal of getting it done before late spring/summer hit. Oh well, what can you do? It’ll get done eventually.
Tomorrow, our main area of focus is actually going to be on our guest room. My dad has been up to visit a couple of times since we moved here, but he has literally be staying in an empty room with a bed. And that room is actually the room we plan to make Baby #2’s some day, so we need move to the official guest room. We’re painting, need to finish the six panel door installation, and more. We’re hoping to work on a few other miscellaneous projects, too.
It’s pretty sad when you have to take a vacation to get things done around your house, huh? Such is life with kids… :) I’m actually really looking forward to having eight straight hours of uninterrupted DIY time.
Have you ever taken a vacation day just to get stuff done? Have you ever taken more than a day to tackle a big project?
About
I'm Heather. I'm 33 and have been married to Michael for seven years. Together, we have two beautiful little girls we love more than anything, and a miniature dachshund who drives us crazy. I'm a full-time working mom who has very little time for my own "stuff" these days, like home improvement, cooking/baking, cake decorating, and photography. Despite the team not making the playoffs since 1999, I'm STILL a Buffalo Bills fan, which I think speaks to my loyalty AND sense of humor. I can't wait to pick up the pace with travel again some day... you know, when we're done being ruled by tiny fists. Welcome to my blog.
