A Night of Nights

Wow, I sure don't know what karma or whatever we had against us last night, but man, we can sure do without that again!! Not sure what I mean? Well, let me give you a rundown of our evening...

We were to meet Henrey and Kristy (our junior handlers) at our house at 5:30 last night so they could pick up a computer for their mom's birthday that they had purchased from me. It was to be a surprise for her, so her mom had no knowledge of this. I had everything ready to go for them when they got to our house, except for the monitor (a Sony 19" CRT, or the tv looking ones), which was in the basement. I asked Henrey to go get the monitor and showed him which one he could have. For those of you who don't know, I work in IT and have several computers and monitors at home. So, Henrey grabs the monitor and carries it upstairs. I ask him if he was ok carrying it, and he said, sure, no problem.

So, his sister goes out of the house ahead of us to open the doors of the car, Henrey right on her heels with the monitor, and me right behind them with the tower. All of a sudden I hear this HUGE crash and I get into the garage, and Henrey is laying on the floor next to the monitor, not moving his hand. It turns out that he went into the garage, cut the corner too sharp, somehow tripped on a cooler and fell, dropping the monitor on his hand. We all thought he had broken fingers (which we later found out that nothing was broken, just mashed like you do when you shut them in a car door). So, we got him back into the house, did some quick first aid, had the kids call their mom and head home (with the present).

After they left, we let the little girls out for a quick run around to stretch their legs and family time. We picked them up to carry them downstairs so they could eat their dinner. Sherilyn was leading the way with a puppy in one arm and the baby gate in the other. Next thing I hear was ANOTHER huge crash and a loud moan. I run to the top of the stairs, and Sherilyn is laying against the wall in a heap, (to use Kim's expression) like a bad yard sale. After making sure that Sherilyn was conscious, I see the puppy off in the corner shaking, so I go to her and pick her up to check her out. She was fine....scared but fine. We think that when Sherilyn fell, she moved the puppy out from under her arm, so her body would cushion the fall for her, as she landed on her opposite side. I quickly reassured her and locked her in her crate. Then, being the outspoken puppy she is, complained about being locked up...go figure.

I then began the process of assessing what Sherilyn had done to herself. Her glasses had smashed against her face and were bent pretty bad. She had also cleared one side wall of pictures on her way down. Then the big damage was a hole in the drywall at the bottom of the stairs the size of a seedless watermelon (it's not really that big as you can see from the picture). As I looked over her head and shoulder, I think that it was her head that went through the drywall, and was DARNED lucky that she didn't break her neck in the fall.

The bad thing is that we now have to fix the hole in the wall and maybe replace her glasses frames. Not sure about that until she takes them in to get un-bent. She also has lots of carpet burns on her side, a cut by her eye from the glasses hinge, and a pretty healthy shiner. The good news is that she has no broken bones, only a very slight concussion, and the puppy is fine and dandy. The tongue in cheek good news is that we found out that she does indeed bounce when she falls. :o)

The cause: She has a bad back which causes her siatic nerve to play havoc with her left leg. Near as we can tell, her leg went numb and gave out when she put her weight on it, and down she went.

We were very fortunate that everyone was ok and only suffered minor injuries. Oh, and the time span from start to finish....35 minutes combined for both episodes. I think I'd rather watch tv...