This isn’t REALLY a list. Really. It’s a couple of lists. And that’s different. It’s rather listaceous, actually.

The good news is within the lists below there are no new diseases or injuries for me to whine or obsess over, and in a lovely divine twist – that last health alarm turned out to be a Good Thing.

LIST #1, also called “Stuff I’ve Thought Repeatedly Would Be Good To Tell Y’all Soon”

1. God thoroughly and completely answered the prayer of Geekwif in the comments of the last section and turned that whole 5ths Disease thing into something pretty good. The treatment for it is steroids, which is helpful for a concussion. EXCELLENT.

2. So Ethan-11yr will be on steroids for awhile, and it was good for the dr to check up on the knee and the head and the 5ths disease all at once. Did I tell y’all that a few days after the stitch came out of his knee (from where a largish stick had been embedded) – and AFTER the concussion – that Ethan-11yr took a long bath and the nasty knee scab softened up, opened up (ooooh, y’all I am SO sorry. maybe this is why i didn’t mention it before) and OUT CAME  MORE OF THE WOODEN STICK. Like, “hello! i was in there too. With the rest of it a WEEK ago, and then conveniently stitched iNSIDE, but now i’d kinda LIKE OUT. So, ta-da. Here I am.”

3. I think that was the day of the MRI, so I was a bit distracted. Ethan-11yr came out and showed me the small gaping hole in his knee, from whence the “souvenir stick” emerged, and I just held his knee and put my cheek on his leg and closed my eyes.

4. I started by saying there would not be new injuries in this list. Technically you have to overlook that. It is not new to ME. It is only new to you because I couldn’t stand to gross you out like that before, and am for some reason perfectly fine with it today.

LIST #2, otherwise entitled, “Wind Assault.”

1.  No sooner had I confessed my liking of the crazy strong winds we get here, than I needed to take Caden-7yr to a baseball game in some SERIOUS windy conditions. But, hey, no big deal. It was 92 degrees. I put on shorts that were on the shorter side, a loose drape-y, soooo comfortable v-neck top, flip flops, big sunglasses to keep dirt out of my eyes, and a baseball hat anchored onto my head with a ponytail pulled out the opening in the back.

2. And that was wrong, y’all. Wrong. ALL wrong unless you’re feeling a bit Janet Jacksonish. (Which I never am, incidentally)

3. Caden-7yr runs off and I am standing outside the fenced in field near home plate talking to a mom. At this point, out of the corner of my eye, I notice someone way over  ON THE PITCHER’S MOUND… spit. A coach from the other team. A coach from the other team with little foresight. Or a coach from the other team who just moved in from someplace else and who does not understand the physics of the wind here. Or a stinkin coach from the other team who just wanted to stand on the pitcher’s mound and SPIT and see if the mom way far away and outside of the field would actually get HIT with the SPIT and jump up and down and wipe it off and turn and glare.

4. NASTY. (Hand sanitizer in the purse, always, just for such unforeseen freak wind/spit accidents.)

5. The scoreboard was not working. I think the wind had broken its spirit.

6. No one could hit the ball. It comes out of a machine that pitches (at this age, and in this league, yeah – machine-pitch) the ball at 35 mph. But those balls had a 50 mph tailwind and the kids could hardly see it, much less hit it.

7. The loose, drape-y soooo comfortable v-neck shirt gave me many opportunities to engage in hatred. That shirt is fine when gravity is predictable. But when the wind is blowing sideways at 50mph, that shirt can actually be almost blown completely off quite easily. Unbelievable. I gathered up loose material and tucked it behind me and leaned back in my chair and tucked some parts under bra straps, crossed arms, and then prayed that it would be enough.

8. The shorts were a bad idea. Even though it was 92. Bits of rock, sand, dirt, trash, spit, and other debris flew through the air and slammed into that exposed flesh with surprisingly consistency, force, and pain. After awhile, i tucked my legs up underneath me to try to protect them from the onslaught and then my chair and I promptly blew over and smashed into the ground. So the legs kept me upright. I had not noticed. Since the legs were numb by that point from the sandblasting.

9. I fixed the chair, fixed the shirt, sat down again and tensed every leg muscle I had in order  to dig in and hold onto the ground with my feet.

10. They won (a very low scoring game). Afterwards, Caden-7yr and I were extremely brown. Dirt caked every inch of us, and when I removed my sunglasses, there were circles that looked like they’d been drawn on.

11. We got in the car, closed the doors, and the silence was intense. The wind had been a loud roar for two hours, but the car shut all of that out. We relaxed. Breathed. Talked. And then I felt something….and checked… and there was a ladybug in my bra. A very creative thinker of a ladybug who had found shelter from the wind.

12. I laughed and got it out and Caden-7yr shrugged and said, “yeah. i saw it go in your shirt right after the game.”

13. “WHY didn’t you mention it?”

14. “I was trying to keep my mouth shut so dirt wouldn’t get in it. And I figured it would be a nice surprise.”

15. Only boys would think that finding a bug in their clothes might be a “nice surprise.”

16. We survived that game. Technically, they won. But everyone out there survived it, and that felt like far more of a challenge than the win.

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