Originally, this site served as my venue to write on things relating to religion and Mormonism. I’ve since decided to move that kind of content to Religious Reason, a relatively new site of mine. Old post originally found here can now be found there, along with new content that fits the subject matter. New content on this site will be of a more personal nature. I hope to catalog some bits and pieces of my personal life for friends and family.
I am a probably the coolest guy in my class. All the other students want to be my friend, eat lunch with me, or tell me their stories.
The catch? The other students are six years old.
A cute girl wrote me a note this morning:
To: Danyol
From: [First Grade Girl]
Will you stay hir forever and will you eat lanch whith me pleas PLEAS!
How did I get so lucky? Last night, my wife badly sprained her ankle. She has to stay off it for the next four weeks (that means back to the crutches…). As she’s in her 34th week of pregnancy, she needs all the help she can get.
We tried to get a substitute, but we were too late. Since the sprain happened around 9pm last night, we couldn’t put in a request until after 10pm. That wouldn’t usually be a problem, except that today is 6th grade teacher training and no subs were available. Mrs. AlohaLarsen would need to stay and teach.
Needless to say, I committed to be a semi-permanent volunteer in Mrs. AlohaLarsen’s class. So far, I’ve:
- Pushed my wife, sitting in a rolly-chair, around the classroom and to and from the school library.
- Made my wife elevate her foot (I used a giant, purple stuffed frog to make it as comfortable as possible – her classroom has a jungle theme, and evidently giant purple frogs are a jungle staple)
- Learned the correct way to write a capital “M” (the kids made fun of me for getting it wrong not once, but twice)
- Made a quick trip into town to get my wife a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger from Wendy’s for “brunch”
- Played a word-spelling game where you reach high up for “tall” letters (like “d” or “t”) and crouch for letters that go beneath the line (like “g” or “y”) as you spell. The words today weren’t all that exciting – words like “down” and “which”
- Other miscellaneous activities, like filling and filing homework folders. My wife is going to get as much out of me as she can while it last.
I may miss my glorious time off that I’ve gotten so used to in the past month, my other blog won’t have nearly as many posts, and I may not finish watching Law and Order: SVU (at least I finished all of Star Trek: The Next Generation; is Jean-Luc Picard the most awesome Star Trek captain or what?!), but I actually look forward to the next few weeks of helping my wife out. Few couples get to work so closely together like this, and this will give me the rare opportunity to get a perspective on her life outside of me that I couldn’t get otherwise.
Here’s to the next few weeks of repeating first grade!
My friends out there will remember that my lovely wife spent some time late last year in a boot. On her way to watch the October General Conference with some friends, she was hit on the freeway as the last car in a four or five car domino (to see an example of what humble Californians like us are up against, check out this YouTube video of a snow storm earlier this year).
She wore a medical boot and used crutches for over seven weeks. Luckily, she was in the earlier (and skinnier) second trimester of her pregnancy, and balance wasn’t as difficult.
We thought we’d paid our Karma-tic dues this year, with both of us suffering bone-breaking car crashes, and that’d we’d be able to remain maim-free for a little while, at least. Alas, it was not to be.
We were visiting the home of some friends (some of the same friends that my wife was on her way to see when she broke her foot last time). It’d been a wonderful afternoon and evening, and we were headed down stairs to say thank you and goodbye to our host. I don’t really know what happened – it may have been the steep, carpeted stairs, or it may have been the slick church socks that I was wearing, or perhaps I’d had one too many drinks (just kidding on that last one), but my feet swept out from under me.
I caught myself soon enough, but not before my feet had knocked my wife’s feet out from under her. She took a short topple of her own, but not before jamming her foot on the banister post at the foot of the stairs.
We were soon surrounded by a flock of wonderfully caring mothers who doted on my wife with the precision and love gained only by a lifetime of selfless motherhood. A doctor who lived in the neighborhood generously agreed to take a look at my wife’s foot, and helped order x-rays for us at the hospital down the street. A childhood friend of my wife and I helped her hop back out to the car, each of us under separate arm-pits.
An angry emergency room registrar and a few x-rays later, we were on our way home with the diagnosis of a sprained ankle. Prescription? R.I.C.E. – rest, ice, compression, and elevation. The “ice” and “elevation” parts are simple enough, as we’ll be done with that by midweek. The “rest”, on the other hand, includes staying off the foot for the next month.
That’s right. My sweet, 34-week pregnant wife is now back on crutches, her muscle build-up from the last time she was on crutches mournfully atrophied.
The good news is that baby is fine. My wife didn’t land hard, and baby’s been moving since (in fact, last night was quite active as the adrenaline that mom pushed through her system made it’s way to his). We’ll see our baby-doctor tomorrow to make sure.
Can you believe it? It’s lucky I married such an incredible woman, and she’s taking it all in stride. I’m very proud of her.
