Eventfull weekend...

It started at about 4:15pm on Friday afternoon. I was 15 minutes from the end of the work day when my cell rang. The caller ID said it was one of my brothers (the middle one who used to live with me), I thought it was strange that he was calling at that time of day so I answered. It turns out that it was the lady in the office where he works (also the place where I used to work). She informed me that he had been hurt and needed medical attention. I spent a few minutes on the phone with her getting the scoop on what had happened, where he was going to go, and how he was being transported.

Apparently he was working on a snowmobile shock-absorber - he was adjusting it to be able to do some diagnostic testing for a customer who said that it wasn’t working properly - he was standing over the top of it turning the adjuster when the pressurized chamber of the shock broke loose from the seal and exploded in his face. He was hit in the nose by a piece of aluminum the size of a baseball that was backed by about 400-500psi of air and oil. It broke his glasses and the light fixture above him. He later said all he heard was a loud “pop”, everything went blurry for a second and then he felt the blood gushing out of his nose.

He was very lucky, if that thing had hit him in the eye, the mouth or square in the nose he would have been much worse off, but apparently it must have hit his upper lip and then glanced off of the left side of his nose. According to the doctor the x-rays didn’t look like there were any broken bones, just a couple of lacerations on and in his nose that required stitches. That process was very painful even to watch. The Doctors orders were for him to return the following day so the packing could be removed, and then in again in a week to remove stitches and re-check the x-rays.

The poor guy. He spent the weekend at my house to recover, his whole left side of his face has been very swollen. He said though that surprisingly the pain wasn’t too bad. It just felt like he had a head cold with a stuffy nose and that it was nothing more that just really irritating.

Saturday, I got up bright and early and went to Step-Dads house. He offered me some money to give the downstairs part of his house a good cleaning. So I spent the morning working on that while he, my grandma and some of his family had a yard sale out front. I had my iPod cranked up and was enjoying giving everything a good once over. It strikes me as really funny that I feel like cleaning my house is such a chore, but cleaning someone else’s can actually be enjoyable. Anyway things were going good. After all of the cleaning had been done and the yard sale stuff cleaned up, he made a delicious late lunch/early dinner of steak and ribs on the BBQ. It seemed like everyone was having a really nice time eating and visiting, enjoying the nice weather and clean house.

Unfortunately his dogs decided that this was too much excitement and they began to fight with each other. They had to be forcibly separated three times, they were fine but the last time poor Step-Dad got his finger bitten in the process. He had a nice bleeding puncture wound on his right thumb. It’s a damn good thing I’m not squeamish when it comes to blood and gore. I removed one of the dogs and put her in the bedroom and then came back down to clean up his finger. It must have been pretty deep because it bled a lot! We cleaned it with peroxide and once the bleeding was under control I put some antibiotic ointment on it and bandaged it up. I told him to keep a very close eye on it and to go to the doctors immediately if it started remotely looking infected. (As of Sunday he said it was swollen and very painful and that he was going to check with his doctor on Monday).

DH had been feeling lousy all day (he got my cold) so as soon as we got home he went to bed. I fed my dogs and then spent some quality time visiting with my brother, just me and him. I haven’t been able to do that in quite a while, it was really nice. Don’t get me wrong, the peace and quiet has been nice since he moved out, but sometimes I still miss him and our visits. After a couple of hours and a few beers we decided that we had had enough and went to bed.

Fortunately Sunday was better. Brother and I went to church and to grab some lunch. We left DH sick in bed at home; he stayed there all day, and has surprisingly been making an effort not to be so whiney and needy while sick. Afterwards Brother helped me set up my newly acquired 20 gallon fish tank. I have been wanting to upgrade my 10 gallon one but didn’t have $250 to spend on a new, larger set up. When I saw it sitting out at the yard sale I asked how much and he told me to “just take it if you want it, I’m done with fish”. A freebie - SCORE! It took a while but it looks awesome! At least something good came out of the weekend! The rest of the day I worked on cleaning my house, and trying to unwind from such an eventful weekend.