Please Note Today's Date Before Reading

Yep. It's Friday the Thirteenth.

I'm going to start with today's question before launching into the Saga of My Day Thus Far. It's a good read. You're going to want to keep up.

First, let me just say how strange it is what questions I pull out my big mixing bowl. I promise you that they are selected completely at random, yet they always seem somehow topical.

SarahJanet wants to know, "What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?"

What is the answer to life? Well, life doesn't have an answer because it's not a question. Life is a highway, and I'm gonna ride it all night long. That's life, that's what they say. You're riding high in April, shot down in May. C'est la vie. And the meaning of life? I refer you to the Monty Python film of the same name. I mean, if that doesn't explain it all to you, I don't know what will.

What is the answer to the universe? Again, the universe is a glorious puzzle without a solution. Some riddles just don't have answers, you know? And sometimes they have a lot of different answers. I'm thinking the universe is one of those riddles with a lot of different answers, and they're all right. Or all wrong, but I suppose that depends if you're a glass half empty kind of a person.

And what is the answer to everything? Being nice to other people is the answer. The rest is just commentary.

Now, let me tell you about my craptastic morning so far. At this moment, I think the answer to everything is having a close call that makes you grateful for all you've been given.

Even if what you've been given is 5 more inches of snow in the middle of April.

Today, I had to take Emma Bo up to the ER. See, we were up visiting with my Dad. He lives on the second floor of my sister's big house next door. Bobo visited with Grammy Bonnie while Grandpa snowblowed the yard (see above), and I took Bug to school in Grandpa's truck.

I got home and bundled Bo back up, and as we were preparing to leave, we heard Gramps put the snowblower back in the barn. Usually we don't take the back stairs down through the barn, and choose instead the inside stairs that lead to the front porch. But we went out to see Gramps.

He met us halfway up the stairs. The stairs he built to replace the old ones that he deemed not safe. Only these still have only a temporary railing since it's too cold to work out in the barn still. He's going to make a regular one when it warms up. Hell, if it warms up at this point.

Anyway, Dad comes up, and I say a few words with him, when out of nowhere, Em reaches for the railing. She never does. I go down with her, holding her hand and walking between her and the railing. But, 3 year olds are wily, and she launched off on her own. Only she stumbled on the top step, and fell under the railing all the way down to the barn floor below, landing on the bottom step.

I swear my heart stopped. It's about a ten foot drop. Imagine going off a second story landing. Now imagine watching your baby do it and it's like you're both going in slow motion and you just can't get a hand on her. And it's not like she fell down a flight of stairs, and bounced and rolled from stair to stair. She went from top stair to floor. Boom.

We took her bleeding and screaming to the ER. They gave her a CT scan and some codeine, and the good news is that nothing is broken. She seems to have broken the fall with her face, however, and has a very bruised and swollen nose and upper lip. She is very, very cranky now, but she's had some more medicine and is taking what I hope will be a good, long nap.

Of course Dad's blaming himself for not putting in a proper bannister, I'm blaming myself for not keeping one hand on her at all times (since I know there isn't a proper bannister), and both of us think we should have been able to catch her before she fell, but we just couldn't.

I am immensely grateful that our local hospital is well-staffed with some of the nicest people God ever put on the planet. They kept us at ease and treated her swiftly and as gently as possible. And also that she didn't break her neck in the fall.

The ER doc said we were lucky it wasn't one of us. Three year olds bones are really flexible since they do so much growing, and thus the bruises. She said had one of us grownups fallen the same way there would have been much breakage, and we'd probably be having reconstructive facial surgery today.

I really could have gone without that today, you know?