Of course nature has a way of keeping score. Like life, there must be challenges and trials associated with any level of beauty. For Otto, that trial seems to be losing different pieces of his scalp in continuously increasing amounts with each trip. For us as a family, it seems to be racking up as many injuries and trips to the ER as is humanly possibly. Allow me to illustrate:
In October we visited the farm. We had been there less than 24 hours when fate attempted to force me to chop off my finger with my mother's extremely sharp kitchen knife. We of course, went to the Emergency Room where the doctor poured a bunch of superglue into my finger, charged me several hundred dollars (as Emergency Room doctors so graciously do) and sent me on my way. One beautiful scar later and I am as good as new. In December, we again visited the farm, and Otto ran headlong into a cupboard that was very unfortunately built into the kitchen wall and spent the next hour moaning on the floor while I wiped up a few drops of blood and examined the dent in his skull.
In April, we again visited the farm. Not to be outdone by the last two times, Otto (while holding up a future living room wall while my very talented amateur building father nailed it together) received a 2x6 to the head which blew straight INTO his head from a 12 foot ceiling structure above him when a 30 mph wind picked up.
One thing you must know about my talented but amateur building father is that he is a man of many trades. He is also a farmer who was raised with the attitude "If you are still conscious, you are probably fine." Even if you lose consciousness, that point may still be debatable. I likewise, was raised with the same attitude. And then I became an ICU nurse. Poor Otto was doomed from the start if he ever wanted a sympathetic woman to share his life with.
So, it was not surprising when my father's first thought when the board gracefully passed over his head and completely creamed my husband's was, "Oh I hope he doesn't drop my wall!"
Otto was as brave and strong as any aspiring farm boy could hope to be. After leaving his bloody mark to forever stay on the living room wall of my parents dream home, he hobbled home, and there I found him sitting on the kitchen floor, with blood matted through his hair and half way down his head. After rinsing him off in the bathroom sink, and pulling out several chunks of scalp and hair in the process, I gave him a few advil, and very sympathetically went to book club with my mother.
Upon arriving home, the continuation of bleeding coming from his noggin suggested the need for another expensive trip to the emergency room. But fate couldn't get me down, oh no. I went to four years of brutal school and had five years of training in an ICU that often sent me home feeling more beat up than Otto's head. No ER bill for me Colfax Washington, not this time! You will not win!
Of course when it finally stopped bleeding long enough for me to pull it apart and realize that even with a flashlight I could not see the depth of it, I started to suspect that my dad's previous suggestion of "just let it scab over by morning" was not wise. (And then I thought, "Why am I listening to him anyway??? He tried to kill my husband!!") So I did what any poor calloused ICU nurse wife would do. I poured rubbing alcohol down it to make absolute SURE that no infection could survive, and then I super glued his head back together.
Here are the before and after pictures:
So now, I have saved our family another 750 dollars to put towards our hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt we are about to incur. Otto has a charming bald spot where he was recently scalped, and an awesome scar for posterity to know how tough and awesome he is. I'd say it was a win all around.
So Fate: 2, Emily: 1. I can't wait for our next trip to Washington to see what I can glue back together to even the score once and for all.
And I'm not going to lie and say I didn't enjoy it just a little. Sorry Otto... someday you can practice stitches on me.
