Taken Down a Notch

There's nothing like a 4-year old birthday swim party to remind you of your mortality.

First, I can't I'm posting a blog entry at 1am on Saturday night, but I'm still wide awake after watching UFC 100. Brock Lesnar is a very large dude. Real good times tonight.

Ok, back to the swim party. One of my daughter's fellow princesses celebrated her bday party at the community swimming pool. I dropped by after work. It was the usual scene -- tons of little kids splashing around the shallow end in the arms of moms and dads, while the older siblings cannonballed into deeper waters.

I relaxed in the shallow end with my daughter. Naturally, she wanted to practice swimming to me. Well, she really doesn't "practice," or at least it wouldn't look that way to folks without kids. But if you've got kids or have spent time at a pool with little ones, you've seen the scene. The munchkin hangs onto the edge of the pool, demands that you stand about 5 feet away, and then she launches herself into your arms. Now, if the parent remains where the child insisted they stand, there isn't enough distance to take a single swim stroke, let alone actually swim.

But crafty parents slowly drift away from the edge after their baby launches into the water, forcing them to take a few strokes before mom/dad rescue them from drowning. I don't think Parenting Magazine would approve. However, just like everybody knows about Code Reds even though they aren't written in the field manual, same goes for these swim tactics. I can see other parents nodding approvingly.

Once the child reaches you, they're either celebrating their swimming abilities, or they're coughing up 3 gallons of water. But they've definitely got the death grip on the parent.

After a few seconds, it's time to return to the pool's edge. And, for me, this is when the pain happened.

Olivia immediately shifted around in my arms until she was standing on my lap and facing the wall ready for the return trip. Basically, she planned to use my lap to springboard back to the side of the pool. I used appropriate caution to protect my knee as she positioned herself. What I didn't anticipate, however, were her legs flailing around. As she attempted to gain traction on my quads, her legs often slipped below my lap. Now they were in the danger zone. She didn't catch me in the nuts. But it was worse. Oh, much worse.

The backs of her heels cracked sharply into my shin, EXACTLY where the 2 screws hold together my tibia. Holy mother of God; that f*ckin' hurt, even worse than watching Bartman snatch that foul ball from Moises Alou.

Eventually Olivia planted herself on my lap and finished her return trek to the wall. Sadly, I didn't get a moment to grieve. As the tears trickled down my cheek, my daughter's much larger friend landed in my lap. This girl delivered a solid 4 or 5 mule kicks to my shin before I could heave her to the edge. Actually, my initial reaction was to club the girl and let the lifeguard deal with her carcass. But I'm pretty sure the moms would've given me the business if I clotheslined this girl. Don't be so surprised. These are the type of parents who get pissed when baby seals get clubbed. No sense of humor. So I gritted my teeth and screamed out for my wife to replace me in the water.

Ok. I don't support clubbing baby seals. That was just a joke. Harpooning them, yes.

Anyway, these little girls are ferocious. I have no doubt my daughter will kick the crap out of the first boy dumb enough to pull her hair.

In the meantime, add "swimming with little kids" to the list of things I absolutely cannot do at 6 months.

Random Musings

I’ve got a couple of un-related things to share. Actually, they’re all related to my bum knee, but that’s pretty obvious at this point. I just can’t combine them in the same neat, packaged story as my previous posts, and alone they aren’t worthy of “feature” status as a stand-alone blog entry. But they’re still important enough (relatively, of course; “everything in life is relative” is one of my favorite expressions) that I wanted to share them.

• Fierce independence – On Thursday I continued my series of “firsts.” I got in and out of the bed on my own for the first time. I brushed my teeth in my own sink for the first time (previously Christina had brought a toothbrush and cup of water to bed). I used the grown-up potty for the first time (though I missed my urinal bottle, which is frightening). Later that day, I used the Cadillac of toilet seat risers for my first poop. I’m not sure which was odder – dumping on an elderly crapper without incident, or going 8 days between poops. And, drumroll please, I showered for the first time. Major adventure. I had to disrobe before crutching from the bed to the shower. There’s nothing more humiliating than naked crutching. We inserted a shower seat in the middle of the shower, held down by special adhesive bubbling. The seat is basically a white, plastic bench about as tall as a desk chair. There’s a red handle on the side furthest away from the shower head. I sat on the seat facing the shower door, with my left side closest to the shower head, using my right hand to grip the handle and leverage my bum knee. Getting into the shower was difficult. The doorway is fairly narrow, there’s a slight step up into the shower, and the shower seat is 1 foot away from the shower entrance. The placement alone is difficult to maneuver to, but then I’ve got to do it going sideways and backwards, on a potentially slippery surface, while keeping my right leg – which is encased in a multiple hefty bags to keep dry – elevated, and avoid banging it against things. This easily could be an Olympic sport. The shower itself was uneventful, though I felt bad for Christina because she had to sit just outside the shower, holding my right leg just off the ground. I did the best job possible. I still stink, but I’ll no longer turn heads. I figure I did no worse cleaning myself than little kids.

• Recurrence of shin pain. For the first time since Day 2, my osteotomy hurt. Perhaps the pain was a gentle reminder that I pushed myself too much during the day. Whatever the reason, I realized that life really sucks when your shin throbs uncontrollably.

• Home PT. With Christina’s help, I completed my first round of home exercises. After postponing the start of PT an hour or so because my shin hurt, we removed the knee brace on our own for the first time. Christina was more nervous handling my heavily bandaged knee than holding our oldest child as a newborn. We should’ve stuck on my leg a large “FRAGILE” sticker.