Oh, Heaven's Gate

After watching the Rangers game at the in-laws last Friday night, Rob and I scooped up our sleeping kids and drove home. There in the driveway, we paused a moment to make a game plan for a car-to-bed-with-the-least-amount-of-drama kid maneuver.

You got Silas? Yep. Does he need to pee? Nope, he should be good. Let's skip teeth tonight and make sure we do a good job tomorrow. Deal. Ready....break!

Rob grabbed Silas and headed inside. I hauled Jannika out and made my way after him into the pitch-dark house. As I was climbing the inky stairs with some trepidation, I heard a tripping, rattling noise upstairs followed by a muffled exclamation. That's right, I thought, Silas knocked down his baby gate into the hallway when he escaped from his nap earlier. Good thing Rob found it first..." And I started smirking at the mental picture I was conjuring up of Rob doing the quick step into Silas' room. I climbed the rest of the stairs, called out softly to Rob to make sure he was okay, and grinned (still smirking) with small relief when he answered affirmatively.

And then I tripped on the still-prostrate gate lying in the middle of the completely-dark hallway and went down like a sack of potatoes.

And when I say "went down," I mean it in its fullest sense. All my weight and the extra 40 pounds of sleeping-child-dead-weight I was carrying launched itself downward directly onto my knees (that landed quite squarely with a crunch on the wooden bracing of the gate). And as the rest of my body projected forward, I launched Jannika into the air (not on purpose), where she landed four feet away with a thump.

One week later, I still can't feel a 1"x3" oval of knee skin (webMD, my only affordable doctor with our crappy small-business-self-insured-plan, says nerve damage), and I still can't take any pressure on my knee without seeing stars and throwing punches. And you know how many bruises and unsightly lumps there are?

ZERO.

That's right.

For all this stupid pain, I have nothing to show for it.

I acquire bruises every other week - painful ones - that I have no memory of receiving. Rob attacking more monkeys in his sleep? Silas whacking me with a plastic golf club while I'm busy scolding Jannika? Who knows. The one time I'm all Oh, dude, THIS is going to be phenomenal to watch develop - maybe I'll even get an extra back rub from Rob out of this! Nothing. Not even the extra back rub. (He did get me ibuprofen after the fall, however...I think there was some lingering guilt for not giving me the heads up that HE DIDN'T PICK UP THE GATE OR WARN ME IT WAS STILL THERE.) Me? Still bitter?

So what's the point of all of this? Nothing. Just me wallowing in the one-week anniversary of the worst baby gate trip in history while I softly rub my oval of dead-feeling skin in self-pity... *sniff*

Go Rangers!!!