It’s been an interesting week. Last Thursday, Scarlett fractured her arm on the playground while swinging with her friends at a birthday party. I wasn’t watching her, because I don’t watch six-year-olds play at the playground when my friends are all drinking wine and facing in the opposite direction. It was truly a lovely party, until the moment when my child was screaming bloody murder that she needed to leave right then, and would stay for absolutely not one moment longer, except for what’s that you say, a cupcake? Yes, I will take that on my way out.

I was planning to just take her home, but something about the way she was carrying on told me that this situation was pretty serious. It’s hard for me to tell if an injury is really an issue or not, as I can’t usually get close enough to see, and Scarlett has enough drama in her personality that it is often unclear what is real and what is pure performance. This time, though, it seemed painful.

We left the emergency room three hours later, and on Monday we got her official bright pink hard cast, which she will wear for six weeks. As I said on Facebook the day after the accident, the worst part about it is that it creates more work for all the people who are helping me, meaning Rob, my sister, my assistants…basically a group of people who are not looking for more responsibility. But such is life, and of course I am also impacted by her fracture, because I now find myself waiting longer for help, because she is the priority.

The good news is that she’s already getting used to the cast and is able to dress herself and eat more easily than we had expected. The bad news is that she’s been in a little bit of a funky mood, and recently yelled at me that I was an “idiot git”, a delightful phrase that she picked up from the Harry Potter books. She also told me she was running away, to which I replied “Great, see you later”, because Rob is out of town this week and honestly I have had enough.

We tried out two new caregivers this week, and it was challenging. Perfectly nice people, but I’m always uncomfortable getting help from strangers, especially the kind of help I so intimately need. So, while I think they will both work out in the long run, there were some trying moments, and if I could open a bottle of wine right now at 1 PM, I probably would. But I’m alone on the back deck, even Otto has gone off with his dog walker, and I’ll have to take my solace in this moment of privacy, if the definition of privacy is: loudly dictating a blog within close proximity to a bunch of neighbors.

While one of the new caregivers was here last night, the wheelchair footrest broke, stopping in mid-air and refusing to go any further down. Anyone who drives or has driven a wheelchair might correctly observe that moving around in it with the footrest in the air is not the easiest thing in the world, and that getting out of bed or using the bathroom with the footrest in the air are nearly impossible tasks. So I whined about that for a while, using some of my most foul language, and probably considerably alarming the poor man who was here to help me for the night.

I emailed the wheelchair company, without using profanity, and then while I was putting Scarlett to bed, the footrest started sort of working again. And then just now when I was talking about it, it stopped working, because technology and machinery don’t like me, a fact that I think has been well established on this blog. I know many people will offer to take on the horrid wheelchair company for me, but I’m all set. If my own efforts don’t result in any progress, I’m going to see how they react to a disgruntled first grader who curses in British.

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