Curious Calvin and the Treadmill

This is a story for strong stomachs and strong eyes. Don't scroll down if raw skin and puss bother you.

This is my treadmill. I run on this treadmill everyday as part of my training for Hood to Coast. I am really excited for the upcoming race, and spend much time each day on this treadmill. Last week, while Andrew was out of town backpacking Calvin touched the back of the treadmill where the red circle is shown above and his hand was sucked under the belt. I jumped off, pulled him out and felt the intense heat of his hand. I thought that his was going to be a contact burn as if he had touched a hot plate, but I was wrong.

I rushed him to the sink and put it under cold water which caused a new wave of screams. I looked at his hand and saw the cause. Exposed raw flesh. I freaked out. Andrew handles these sorts of things with his cool collected fire fighter rescue skills. I on the other hand freak out. I ran next door and banged on the neighbors door to find no one home. Where were my super awesome neighbors!?!? It was then that I decided I needed to call 911. As soon as help arrived Calvin stopped crying (Hazel slept through the whole thing) and we were told that he needed to be taken to the ER. Some other neighbors from down the street came to stay with Hazel and to help me get to the hospital. I was a little shaken up.

At the hospital they cut off the dead skin, cleaned the wound and bandaged his hand. The most traumatic part of the evening was forcing him to take the tylenol with codene which he spit out all over us. The doctor said that Calvin's hand should be fine but it will take a few weeks to return to normal. The injury did not go through all his layers of skin which will speed up the healing process. He should regain normal movement and use of his hand with time. We're going back in tomorrow for another check-up so we'll get more info on how things are healing.

Now on to the photos. Again, this may gross you out so stop here if you don't want to see the yucky stuff.

Picture 1- 24 hours after the incident (now that i'm looking at the pics they don't look nearly as bad as it did in real life.
Picture 2- 48 hours after the incident

Fun with Grandma

I spent most of the day in the Bay Area today getting my hair done and going into the office. I had a really nice day but the part I enjoyed most was visiting with Grandma Atwood. I haven't seen her in a while and it was nice to visit and hear of the things she had been up to. She showed me a great brochure advertising Baywood that literally made me want to move in. They sing, dance, swim, have great meals, play bingo, and go on outings. Everyone looked so happy in the photos and I thought that this would be a great place to live! My grandma is even in one of the photos that has been featured in the newspaper many times. She's turning into a local celebrity!

Before I left I showed her my blog and the blogs of my other family members. She was happy to see pictures and know that there were updates on her grandkids and great-grandkids at the click of a button. So, keep your blogs updated -- Grandma is reading, laughing, and enjoying every word.

Thanks again for a fun night Grandma!

"Sleeping in Hell"

If you click on the picture it will enlarge and you can see the fire pictures on the wall. The small fire engine on the bottom of the two smaller pictures is the first engine Andrew was assigned to as an Engineer. It has sentimental value!
We're planning to hang a few helmets (once I put up hooks on this shelf) and a turnout coat. I also have some antique fire grenedes that I'm planning to hang up someday on either side of the shelf. I'm sure eventually Calvin will want to ge them down and throw them so I haven't put them up yet.
This is Calvin's room and after his first night my dad asked what it was like "sleeping in hell." There are rope lights behind the crown moulding but you can't tell unless it's dark. At night it looks amazing! He's been in this room for about a year. I haven't gotten around to taking pictures of the "finished product" because I'm not totally finished with the room yet.

Really bad week

Well, it's been a few really bad days but today was the kicker. I haven't posted anything in a while thought I would share my woes with the rest of you.

Everything is breaking and I'm concerned that the next large item to break will be my car.

Two weeks ago my TV broke (or I mean the TV that my parents lent me which they will probably want back because 4 TV's in a house of two people is just not enough!). We could have gotten a new TV or had this one repaired for $300. We took the repair route and sent the TV out. Andrew brought our teeny tiny TV downstairs and put it on a folding table. This was the first of many eyesores.

Last Friday my Dish Network went out and after troubleshooting over the phone it was determined that my dish was broken. The soonest time a tech could come out (at my expense) was one week away. Trying in desperation to get a sooner appointment I threatened to switch to Comcast and said that they would probably come out tomorrow. They didn't seem to care which only feuled my fire.

I called Comcast all all was ready for the switch. Meanwhile, I had purchased a treadmill off CraigsList to use as I trained for the big race in August. I've been using the one next door but it's been too hot to run in their garage so I decided to get one of my own. After a few runs I realized that there was something very wrong with this treadmill. It will not hold it's speed and probably needs a new motor which will likely cost me more than I paid for the darn thing.

During one of my runs while rocking out to my tunes my precious ipod took a crap on me and stopped working. I thought the battery was dead and tried to charge it but nothing happened. This was Monday night.

So at this point in my story, I have a broken TV, broken satallite dish, a treadmill needing repairs and a broken ipod.

Tuesday the Comcast people show up. I was not home. The high speed internet never connected yet Andrew let the tech go home after he was able to connect it to his own laptop. Andrew also paid him for his services of which he did not provide. I came home and spent at least an hour on the phone with comcast trying to connect to the internet. I finally was able to establish a connection, but feared what would happen when i attempted to set up my wireless network. I couldn't possibly go on another run without my ipod so I took it back to Target and got a replacement. One problem down.

Wednesday morning...Calvin wakes up early. I send him downstairs to watch TV while I get back in bed. As I flip through the channels I'm trying desparately to find the disney channel or nickjr. As I find these channels and click on them a message comes up that I need to subscribe to these channels in order to get them. I find something that works and go back to bed. 30 minutes pass and he's in my room again. I send him back down but now realize that I have made a very bad decision. More money, less channels. What did I do! I wake myself up, call up Dish Network and beg for forgiveness. They reinstate me, but at the cost of two months worth of fees up front and other install fees. Also, I gave up my tech date for the dish and now have to wait one more week for service. Another problem solved, kind of.

Now that I've ditched comcast I decided to get my computer moved back to it's home and reconnected wirelessly. Before doing so I decided to do a few hardware updates by putting in a DVD burner and firewire port. They each clicked in easily and I rebooted my machine. A strike fear flowed through me when the computer failed to move past the Dell start-up screen. I powered down and tried again. Same problem. I picked up the phone and called Dell. Alex, (which couldn't possibly be his real name) tried to help but when he had me start taking apart my computer and pulling out the memory I started to get worried. I turned on my computer and suddenly smelled something burning. I pulled out the power cord and told "Alex" thanks but that I had had enough. He quickly reminded me that my machine was not under warranty. Thanks jerk "Alex."

After much crying over the possibility of losing everything I called a local geek who is currently running diagnostics on my computer. I am really hoping for a happy ending with this one.

Around 4:00 my TV (i mean, my parents tv) returned and is in full working condition. Only problem is I can't watch it b/c the dish is still down. Still, the TV is fixed so that's another problem down.

At 4:30 I showed up late for swimming lessons, failing to provide snacks to the class when it was my turn. I almost ran out of gas on the way home and rolled nicely into a gas station.

After wolfing down burger king (which was my only meal of the day b/c i was so sick to my stomach from the whole computer fire thing) we went home for bathtime. Literally seconds after getting in the tub I hear Calvin say something about Hazel's poop. Why, why, why do kids POOP in the bathtub! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! I can't stand it! I resolved that issue and put the kids to bed.

Why is everything around me breaking? Perhaps I've got the opposite of everything I touch turning to gold? It must be that everything I touch turns into crap. I'm trying to stay positive about the loss of my PC, the expensive repairs on my treadmill, and having to entertain my kids the old fashioned way for one more week. It will all work out. It can only go up from here, right?

Camping

When did camping become such a dirty activity? I don't recall as a kid being covered from head to toe in dirt after a quick camping trip, however as an adult, the dirt was very apparant. I didn't want my kids anywhere near the dirt so for two days Hazel stayed mostly contained in her port-a-crib or on the boat. Even the lake water grossed me out a bit. Everything was just so dirty. I think the reason I probably don't remember getting this dirty camping as a kid was probably because we didn't camp. My mom likes hotels.

This was the only picture that turned out because my batteries died right after. I guess this is a good way to remember the trip...with no dirt in sight.