6.09.2005

some good, some bad

let's talk about the good first, because the bad is so bad that it makes me feel totally shallow regarding the good.

the good - I got some new clothes and they feel great. the rigamorole to get the clothes wasn't fun (it took over 3 hours to get 4 new shirts and 2 pairs of pants) but wearing the clothes in the last 2 days has been wonderful. I broke my rule of spending more than $20 on a shirt and got some great tops at, oddly, ann taylor. is it ann taylor? yeah. ann taylor. it didn't sound right at first, like it was really amy taylor or something. anyways. and I also did something crazy and got a....deep breath....$56 pair of DENIM KNICKERS from express. I still haven't taken the tags off them because that's just totally insane. I'm not sure I'm keeping them. anyways. that's the good.

the bad - I nearly killed bella. I nearly brain damaged her. I am still so wracked with guilt. I brought her up with me to bed, I placed her on the bed about a foot away from the edge of the foot of the bed, sitting up, facing the head of the bed. I turned around for the proverbial "one minute" and thud. it makes my heart ache to just relive it. she somehow fell backwards and off the bed and must have turned completely around midair and landed ON HER FACE on the splinter-ridden hard wood floor of our bedroom. it was loud and thudding enough to have sean race up the steps before she even had the breath to scream - and before I even had the breath to scream. I picked her up immediately and flew to the steps to scream for sean, who was already up them, and the wails were piercing. amazingly, and this is something I have to remember any time there's a good deed to be done in the future, as I'll have to repay this for years, there was no scratch on her. no blood. no broken cheekbones, no busted nose, no black eyes. we were spared from my stupidity.

I know every baby takes a tumble at least a few times, but what I did - it was just stupid. in that it was preventable. I hardly slept that night for checking to see if she were still breathing and not in a concussion-induced coma. it was awful.

anyway, tonight I begin packing for my lonely trip to las vegas. that means laundry. a mountain of laundry. and tears. I don't know how I'm going to get through it, especially with all this almost-killed-the-baby guilt I have now.

the very meek bright side is that maybe $56 denim knickers and self-imposed mommy guilt will prove to be the very good luck charms I need to be able to win big in vegas and justify the amount of spending I've been doing lately.

ps, I tried to find the knickers in question on express' web site. I had to do like 5 searches to even find express' web site address in google, and I still wasn't able to find it outright. it's http://expressfashion.com - but damned if it isn't SEOd or even PPCd for searches for "express clothing" - DUH! so I made an affiliate happy and clicked through a link on someone else's site. and now I'm cookied for at least 3 months. and for those who don't know me, this gives you a clue as to what I do for a living.

9 validations:

Missuz J said...

Sophie suffered 2 big falls as an infant. The first and most traumatic was when she fell out of her crib. I was in the kitchen doing dishes, and had put her down for a nap. I heard her crying, and thought--I'll let her cry it out for a while. She didn't stop so I checked on her. When I opened the door and saw her sitting ON THE FLOOR I was totally dumb-founded. She had chosen to pull herself up for the first time in her crib, and had flipped over the bar. Guilt. Crashing guilt. I took her to the pediatrician, and she was fine. Needless to say, we lowered the mattress that day. The second time she fell was exactly the same thing that happened to Bella. Luckily--I hate laundry, and she fell on a pile of dirty clothes that were by my bed, but I freaked out, called my mom and husband and doctor.

Denim knickers? Sounds hot!

hazel said...

if by "hot" you mean "going to make you sweat rivers while you're in 108 degree heat in las vegas" then yeah, I know. if you mean "hot" as in paris hilton hot, well, then thank you.

NME said...

The fall must have been super scary - for you even more than Bella.

Congrats on the new clothes purchases. I'm glad Ann Taylor worked out for ya. Can't wait to see some of the new duds.

Gary Daring said...

Patrice, I swear sometimes I think we lead parallel lives. I also went on a shopping spree, at Ye Olde Navy, where I plucked a pair of cargo shorts (are they still in?), a so-thin-it-should-probably-be-mesh T-shirt, a short sleeved brown polo with blue, yellow and white stripes, a couple short-sleeved button-downers (actually one has snaps. snaps!), and my first pair of flip-flops in, i don’t know, 20 years. My last pair’s toe-thong cut the crux of my toes so badly that my big toe gained about 5” in length. I couldn’t wear my split-toe ninja boots for seriously like 3 weeks.

Also: my mom totally dropped me down the steps when I was several months old, and then again when i was 26. Hence my inability to pass vocabulary tests all through grade school. I still remember slamming into the kitchen door at the bottom of the steps. But, you know, kids are resilient, so don’t beat yourself up. The ancient Romans used to hold their children by the ankles and dip them in lava for chrissakes.

MC said...

When I was a kid, we were doing the crazy trios at Skateaway, and I was in the middle of my friends Jodi and Eli, and when we whipped around, they somehow flipped me up in the air, and I came down on my head so hard that I tasted metal. And not a concussion in sight. I have one hard head.

Oh, when I was a littler kid (preschool age), I decided to balance on a playground ball at the Woolworth's, kind of like my hero Bozo the Clown. How do you think that went? Again, no concussion, but the screams could be heard from miles around.

From the bed to the floor isn't a hugely long distance, and it sounds like Bella is fine. And this will make you more aware so that she doesn't ever have the chance to fall from, say, a changing table (which Bill did when he was a baby) or the crib (a la Sophie)!

Congrats on the new clothes! And have fun to Las Vegas! And maybe I should have just sent you an e-mail instead of writing the mother of all comments! And when is this heat going to break?

Okay, I'm done.

dasereht said...

Main Entry: rig·a·ma·role

Pronunciation: 'ri-g&-m&-"rOl
Function: noun
Etymology: alteration of obsolete ragman roll long list, catalog
1 : confused or meaningless talk
2 : a complex and ritualistic procedure

Nice!

Glad Bella's okay (don't beat yourself up too much). And I can't WAIT to see you rocking some denim knickers. Me-ow.

Anonymous said...

The great things about babies falling is that they don't have a sense of falling, so they don't tense up. Her body just absorbed everything and wasn't hurt. I know that it scared the shit out of both you, but that's to be expected. It does seem to be lousy timing though with the Vegas trip so close.

I can't believe that knickers are back. Sigh. My worst picture ever was my 8th grade class portrait and I was wearing white corduroy knickers. Of course, you can't see the knickers in the picture, but I know they're there!

Kodi said...

Bella is fine, you're fine, your husband is fine. GO HAVE FUN IN VEGAS, AND DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT! I dropped my daughter once, and freaked out. I remember the guilt. But you really should enjoy your trip, and not worry about it.

Jen O. said...

Are knickers the same thing as
cullotes?