I've had a most extraordinary weekend. I've been in something of a weird combination of states as I handled various matters of business over the past few days. Mostly they orbit around my daughter's work for her Gold Award project and getting my son's leg repaired.
So yeah we basically did that.
We spent Saturday and Sunday afternoons at the Knob Hill Pre-School, which doesn't actually have a name. The (Angels) are one of Redondo's kickass families and we know them through Boy's band days. Mrs. Angel is the preschool teacher there. The preschool is a property that's not exactly in the school district but is part of the South Bay Adult School and is on loan through a special arrangement. It's serving the community for that special niche of kids that didn't quite make the age requirement for kindergarten and nont-pushy parents. But the playground is old and a little unsafe.
Cap'n, aka 'Scholar' aka my first daughter stepped up and put together this project to upgrade the playground. It's part of the Girl Scout's equivalent of Eagle Scout rank. Her project was approved last week and we got down to business starting Saturday buying paint and beginning work on the jungle gym. We were all surprised by the effectiveness of something called Mr. Clean Magic Erasers. Got rid of all of the rubber shoe scuff marks on the fiberglass slide. Then we waxed it down with, what else but, wax paper to make it slipperier.
We found that there ought to be a little protien destroying additive to the water hose that will melt spider webs, but no current such product exists. So Cap'n had to get her hands dirty. We put Soul II Soul and EWF on the boom box, sanded down, rust-proofed, primed and painted all the metal climbing poles and handrails on the structure. Sometime on Sunday morning before I arrived to say 'yes boss' to my supervising daughter, somebody spilled the paint. So what was once red, became red with yellow. So one part of the monkey bars is going to be more orange than the other part, but the results looked fabulous.
As a side benefit, I got some excellent macro photography done onsite. Check it out here. I think you'll find at least one cool wallpaper for your desktop.
For Boy, we ran around on Friday to get his medical records, xrays and other affairs in order and pulled him back to the South Bay. Thanks to some good friends on FB, I got lots of recommendations for orthopedic surgeons that I ultimately didn't use. It turns out through some bizarre rule that even though two of the recommended doctors were in my Blue Shield, my family doctor could not refer me to them. So the other great doctor who wasn't in my plan got the referral instead, and somehow my plan will cover it. As the singer from ABC said in 'The Look of Love', don't ask me WHAT it means. Still, it was an 'urgent referral'.
It seems that the doctor at CSUF was a little zealous and bored, perhaps, when he recommended surgery for the break, which was a spiral fracture of the distal tibiofibular articulation with a 2mm posterial displacement of the fragment. I guess he was overly concerned about the severe tissue swelling over the lateral malleolus. I would be, but then again what do I know?
We showed up at South Bay Orthopedics, and hey wait a minute. I've been there before, with Cap'n's Osgood-Schlatters. Well, we see Dr. Z who has the serious mitts, handshake like a prizefighter, and he puts the thing in perspective with a couple grunts, somewhat disappointed that he doesn't get to cut Boy open. I too was hoping for pins and Frankenstein hardware, but once again, Boy seems charmed and floats away from disaster. He gets a green cast and two scripts for meds, and we're out of there in 90 minutes. No more hobbling on crutches for him. He can walk with a cane. Well, a cane and vicodin.
So there we have a net positive. I'm feeling the resiliance in my family. Everybody has come through their crises with some difficulty but with good results.
As I drove boy home for the evening Sunday, I noticed a line of jets on approach from LAX stretching back to the east, their landing lights in a string. I had my Red Bull and Modest Mouse on the box having just filled up the tank. Yeah it cost me 68 bucks, but I had it, and the truck is tuned. I think of all of my driving now as an excursion to do business away from the homestead, rather than as escape and discovery as I did in my youth. Home is a good place to be and we demonstrated that we can expand that realm of security this weekend. We do actually have a fairly awesome civilization here.
On Saturday afternoon, with Boy in his cast and Cap'n in her bandana, we were listening to Soul II Soul doing the work and I mused out loud how much fun it will be to help them get their first houses together. Yeah. We'll get there.
Recent Comments