In One Month

One month ago Mud's daughter Addy turned 9. She had a birthday party at Pizza Putt. I'm still washing the germs off of me. I'm not crazy. I might be a germ-a-phobe, but that's all. Timmy's fever last weekend was definitely caused by a germ from Pizza Put that clung to the inside of his fingernails for this whole month. How did the germs get under his fingernails you might ask? Because, duh, he clung so tightly to the handle bars of the motorcycles in that motorcycle game. I'm telling you, I'm not crazy.




Later that night Mud made us happy chicken bathed in cream. And the children, they ate it.




And then they called to the baby inside Katy's belly. And they said, "Hey baby, you must come out now."




And Miss Cally said, well, she said, "look at me while I eat this homemade ice cream standing up on a chair."




And then that next morning while Cally dreamt about the indoor play gym at Pizza Putt Katy went into labor and with four short pushes and absolutely no drugs out came Hazen.

And then. Well, and then there came a day (Claire's birthday) when something happened like the time Paul Bunyan climbed to the very top of an extension ladder with his chain saw and cut a branch only half way through, which caused the branch to swing around and knock him off the very top of the extension ladder. And he had metal surgically inserted into his wrist so it would some day work again. Two weeks before the twins were born.

Or like the time I let Auggie stand and lean on the back of a kitchen chair, which inevitably fell because of the weight of his body and how when I tried to slow his fall with my pinky finger, which (in fact) only made me pull the chair out from underneath him, which (in fact) only made him fall directly onto the slate floor, which (in fact) made him break his arm in two places. Yes, something like that happened to the Abbotts.




We don't necessarily have to go into details. It involved a little her person on the back of a dad person, who happened to have skis on, skiing down a small slope with snow that was soft and hard and everything combined.




But now the sweet pea, the little peanut, is in a cast up to her chest.




And Mom and Dad have to lift her from here to there.




And they have to turn her like happy chicken in a cream sauce, every four hours.




And they have to make sure she doesn't get bed sores. Or infections down each of her leg casts.




And they have to feed Hazen. And rock Hazen. And change Hazen. And bath Hazen.




And they have to do the laundry, the shopping, the dishes, the vacuuming, the making of breakfasts and lunches and dinners. Oh, and the work, too.




But there is one thing that they don't have to do. And that's make this cherub smile. She was born with this propensity. I'm glad it's as contagious as the germs at Pizza Putt. Because after tonight, we're all infected with it.