The Scary Tumble

Okay, so I spent the first week and a half of August helping the daughter and son-in-law move from Pennsylvania to Georgia. I was the grandkid wrangler and the relief driver.

The wild child--aka Mowgli--is 9 years old now, and doing pretty well with his autism, as long as you keep him busy. His parents prepared him really well for the move--by the time we were packing things up, he was mostly worried that we might not get the basement television in a box. We found him trying to pull it up the stairs by its electric cord...

Rocket Girl is 18 months old, and very busy too. When the movers came and we were desperately throwing things in boxes as fast as we could go, she got her own little shoe-box-sized cardboard box and carefully put Bob the Tomato, a book and a stroller toy in it. She was packing too.

So, we drove to Georgia--a day late because one of the cars broke down and had to spend a day in the shop. Then the same car wouldn't start after our overnight stop in Virginia--but after we jumped it off, it started every time after that. (Turned out, the connectors were bad, not the battery.) The daughter didn't make orientation for her new job, because of all the car issues, but we got there before school started.

The bridge--with boy

The new house is down a slope from the street--a fairly shallow slope with a straight driveway, and a parking area at the bottom. Then the lot drops steeply down to a really cool creek behind the house, with a curb at the edge of the parking area to keep cars in place. There's a bridge over the creek, and wild child spotted it immediately. He loves that creek, and that bridge. When she was house shopping, the daughter described this house to me as "The Calvin & Hobbes house" because it's the kind of house C&H would have loved--the back yard slope is one of those Calvin would go sledding down, complete with "terraces of death."

When the movers arrived, Mowgli was anxious to get "his" television out immediately, and so climbed up in the cab of the truck. Three times in 30 minutes. His mom took him bicycle riding around the neighborhood to distract him. When they got back, she watched him pedal around the moving van, watching the car coming down the street, to make sure he was careful. Then when she got around to the end of the van, she saw him riding his bicycle down the driveway. And apparently he forgot about brakes.

Mom's hollering "Brakes! Brakes!" He's going faster and faster. The movers are yelling. And Mowgli speeds across the parking pad, hits the curb and goes airborne. He landed about five or six yards down the hill.

Do you see the tire tracks???

He got a bad bruise in his crotch, and tire tracks across his forehead. The bicycle fork got bent. Other than that, he was fine. And the next day, as we went out the garage to the scene of all the excitement, he informed us that we needed to be careful of "the scary tumble." That may now be the name of the hill...

I stayed in Georgia a few more days, long enough to get Mowgli registered for school and go out to meet his teacher. And now life goes on.

I'm going to be doing some traveling this next month, getting Daddy's cataracts seen to. He apparently doesn't remember how he's supposed to see, so he doesn't realize that he can't see now. But I do have time for writing, between trips to Austin. I've been very good and written every day this week. Even when we had our fire adventure.

I took a half day (after writing) and went shopping yesterday. I am now outfitted from the skin out, head to toe. I bought a new hat, shoes, draws, jeans and shirts. I bought a present for my niece's wedding shower--but the shower is on my birthday, so while I'm going up there sometime next week, I may not stay through Saturday, because the shower is so late in the day. If I come home, the fella will take me out. We went out to Benno's on the Beach for his birthday today. For the next week, the fella will be older than me. ;)

Which reminds me. I need to go get my driver's license renewed. At least they've reopened the DPS office on the island, after our last hurricane.

Surf's up this weekend because of Isaac, but fortunately, that's all we've gotten from it. Y'all take care.