I was maybe a little too hasty in my despairing busy-angst last week, because I just sat up and looked around me and realized I have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BOOKED any evening this week and I don’t even have to drive Karin to or from any practices! (More on that in a minute) How did THAT happen? It’s like a shining oasis of empty calendar in the middle of a giant sea of crazy.
The reason why Karin isn’t going to practice this week is because she fell and hurt herself in gym class on Friday and we ended up in the ER because the school nurse was afraid her kneecaps might be cracked or fractured. She had been running 2 kilometers and her foot got caught between the asphalt and the ground in a little depression and she fell face forward and smashed both her knees. Instead of showing any concern, her gym teacher yelled at the girl who went back to help her and then told Karin it was her own fault for running in the wrong kind of gym shoes. I haven’t made a complaint yet about this, but I plan to, because I am utterly appalled by what Karin told me. She didn’t help Karin get to the nurse either, apparently, despite blood everywhere and Karin howling in pain.
By the time I picked her up from school about half an hour after it happened, she was swelling and bruising up spectacularly and we headed off to the ER only to sit there and sit there and sit there. It took nearly 2.5 hours just for her to get in to have X-rays taken and then another 2.5 hours to wait for a doctor to come look at them and give us a 5-minute diagnosis that she was fine, the bones were whole and she should take it easy this week. Hence, no practice and she missed a full-day soccer tournament on Saturday and an innebandy match on Sunday to boot. The swelling has gone down but the bruises are quite colorful and she still has a lot of pain and can’t bend her knees much.
That was the second time last week I had to leave work abruptly because of Karin. 🙂 The first time was for a much nicer reason, though. Anders found out from a colleague that the mobile U.S. embassy which was in Lund THAT DAY included full consulate services. I knew the ambassador was in town, but I thought it was just him speaking at the university and didn’t realize the scope. As it turned out, Karin was already in Lund that morning for a field trip so Anders snatched her (with permission of course) and took her to the photographer, while I raced home to pick up all the rest of her paperwork. We were able to turn in her passport renewal application with little trouble and that means we didn’t have to wait 2 additional weeks before our scheduled appointment in Copenhagen to get the process started. Since it takes 3-4 weeks minimum, we would have been pushing it to get her passport back before our departure date in December for Christmas in the States!
That’s not really getting caught up, but my head cold is pre-empting coherency, so Ima go lay me down and read instead.