These pictures are from last week...
at least I think it was last week, harvest is all becoming a bit of a blur to me.
The good news is they're almost done. Although I'm not really sure what exactly "almost done" means. I guess it means there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and we're almost to the other side.
We went out for a quick Daddy visit, and to take him some food.
This was Elijah's first ride in the combine. He was nervous at first....that is one big loud machine, but he is a tractor kind of a boy. He loved it. I think he could ride in there happy as could be all day. Maybe next year I'll have to try out that theory if I get grafted into the harvest crew.
It's an excellent crop this year. Lots of grain.
It's not our farm, but a good farming year is good for job security.
It also makes harvest time more fun....and at the same time more work to get all that grain hauled off.
The weather has held really well, a nice late summer. Dry and hot are good conditions for getting the crop off..although it also makes the dry crop more flammable. There was a combine malfunction that caused two fires. Nothing adds some excitement to harvest time like a prairie fire sweeping across the field.
My hardworking man coming home late at night.
They don't do any threshing without the water tanks and the discers ready to both douse and dig, waiting in the same field...just in case.
The harvest on the home front is also quite bountiful. I have boxes full of tomatoes ripening faster than I can manage to do anything with.
I've been making and freezing salsa. I had planned to do more but...
well, I'll get to that part of the story.
On Friday we also dug out all the carrots still left in the garden. It took hours.
But I'm very thankful I didn't decide to put if off until this week.
On Saturday the Hubster, a couple of the kids and I skipped out of work and went to a wedding.
It was beautiful.
We got home super late Saturday night, then got up bright and early to head back to the city to meet with our church peeps. We had a busy afternoon in the city planned after church. We dropped two girls off at a birthday party, one boy off at a friends house, and two other boys at another friends house to be babysat. We had signed up for a "redeeming your marriage" class. It was the first one of 6 sessions. I was looking forward to meeting with some of our friends and working through a Paul Trip course on marriage. We were child free (for the first time in ages), running late, and there was Tim Hortons coffee waiting for us. We pulled up to the little rental room our church was using for the class and hopped out of the van. That's where things went bad.
I didn't realize our van was parked along the edge of a curb, making the drop off out of our lifted van even further (and unexpected). I hit the ground really hard. It was so fast I wasn't even sure how I managed to dismount so badly.
The pain was instant and intense. So many ouch sensors were triggering all over my body it took a minute to even figure out where I was injured...and what was actually a serious injury. I had a scuffed knee (ripped right through my pants), a scuffed/ bruised elbow, a twisted scuffed left foot, and an injured right ankle. Both my feet were bruising and the right foot and ankle was swelling. My hubby lifted me back up into the van and I think we both hoped I could shake it off and limp my way into the class with a funny clutsy story to tell. As the minutes passed the bizarre nausea, profuse sweating, hot flashes, shivering, and pain got worse and I realized that this wasn't something I could shake off and tough myself through. I told my hubby that I needed him to drive me to the ER. I was not ok.
That's when the panic set in. Worse than the waves of pain was fear that I was broken, and stress over the prospects of being busted.
The Mama can't be broken.
All I could think about was: I'm a mom of 5 kids,
one child with a physical disability,
I have a husband trying to get a crop off and working long hours....
boxes full of produce needing to be dealt with,
A messy house, full piles of laundry,
an empty fridge,
a mess of dishes from a couple rushed days, late nights, and an early morning scramble out the door for church.
I was not prepared in any way to be out of commission!
I wanted a do-over. I really could get out of the van in a much more coordinated, careful way.
I felt so stupid...
clumsy, frustrated, and helpless.
We decided to head for a small non emergency drop in clinic that has an xray machine. We only had to wait two hours. If we had gone to the hospital it would have been several hours. I remember too clearly the many hours I spent in an uncomfortable waiting room with a
busted up 1 year old Silas (we waited from early morning until after supper time, just to be seen).
I was initially scared that both my feet were injured.
My husband had to go get a wheel chair to get me into the clinic....although I couldn't set down my right foot on the foot rest. I had to hold my knee to keep my foot dangling without pressure on it.
It was kind of miserable. I have never broken a bone before.
I wasn't surprised that it was broken...I would have been surprised if it wasn't.
It is amazing though how one little bone can cause a persons entire body to freak out. That tip of the Fibula is what broke.
So now I'm home, hanging out in our recliner with a big old boot on my foot.
I'm very thankful that my left foot is just a bit twisted but not sprained or broken. It hurts if I move it wrong, spend too many minutes on it, or tweak it too much. I've never been so thankful feeling for one decent foot.
I'm thankful that I can hobble to the bathroom and back with crutches. It's the little things.
I'm also thankful that none of our kids were with us when Mama crashed out of the van. It would have been much more logistically stressful to try to drop kids off somewhere before heading to the ER.
I'm thankful that the break wasn't worse and that I didn't need surgery. Phew.
So now we figure out how to do stuff without mom's help for a little while.
The stress and chaos level was pretty high last night (getting home late with five kids and a broken wife), and this morning was a whirlwind of chaos and turbulent emotions.
Silas missed the bus and was late for school, although he did manage to eat breakfast get a lunch packed. Cece packed her own bag to go to Grandma's (with mom dictating and making sure her inhalors and skin medicine/ lotions got into the bag). Daddy dropped Silas off at school, and Cece off at Grandma's house on his way to work. Things seemed a bit calmer after that.
Until Elijah started freaking out. Even small changes in routine, household structure or family population cause him major stress. This turned apocalyptic for him for a few hours. Having mom sitting in a chair with a broken foot, unable to help him and do the things with him that she does every day was just too much. So much of the melt down behaviors are simply rooted in fear. I have to remind myself of that, or I end up overreacting myself. Aili did her best to help him, and I'm encouraging him to do more himself...but he wasn't having any of it.
"No thankyou! Mommy help me!"
Poor guy. I had to call Daddy to come home for a bit. I was afraid Elijah was going to hurt himself (or me) and he wouldn't let Aili anywhere near him. Daddy tucked him into bed for a nap and although he didn't sleep, it was a good reset.
The afternoon so far has been totally fine. In fact the house is eerily quiet with just Aili and Elijah home.
Last night when we stopped at our friends house to pick up the boys, Elijah was so sweet. He was shocked to see me using crutches (that kind of blew his mind a little) but he just kept rubbing my arm asking "ok mommy?" I could tell he was panicking a little so I kept assuring him that I was ok. I told him I fell down and had an owie foot but I would be ok. Right away he put his little hands on me and started talking to Jesus. He explained all about how mommy fell out of the van and broke her foot. and ended with a big "Amen!". It was pretty sweet. He has trouble understanding a lot of things, and my life is a series of re-explaining the simplest of concepts, but yet he didn't miss a beat in knowing who to go to with this little crises. He knew who could help us get through this little trial.
And help He has.
Last night I cried myself to sleep feeling quite desperate, wondering how this was going to work. Today I know we'll survive. That may sound overly dramatic...maybe it's the pain talking...but when so many people depend on you to be in top physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual form...it's scary to get knocked down to being dependent.
Today I'm thankful that my mom is watching Cece and Silas for a few days, and that Roman is still at a friends house. I'm extremely thankful for Aili who has been at my beck and call, has been doing dishes, doing some laundry, and looking after Elijah.
My mom brought over supper, and took away a box full of ripe garden tomatoes that were threatening to rot untouched in my kitchen.
I'm thankful that I'm generally so healthy and able bodied, that I have the luxury of taking it completely for granted.
I'm thankful that my husband took a break from hauling grain to come home and help me figure out this air cast I have...and then he went to town to get groceries. We usually stock up Sunday afternoons while we're in the city...that shopping trip didn't happen and if we wanted to eat something other than carrots and tomatoes groceries were needed.
I'm telling ya' this little trial is going to teach me a lot about dependency, setting aside my pride, and learning to be still. None of those things are in my nature. I'm a stuff done kind of a gal...not a sit in a chair all day, feeling about 100 years old, popping Advil, accepting help from people, kind of gal.
I've also realized that if you hit the pavement hard enough to break a bone there are all kinds of other places in your body, and muscles, that are going to hurt the next day too. Meh.
I'm feeling really pathetic and useless.
I can no longer BE the house keeper, child care, physical therapist, cook, gardener, baker, kid chauffeur....
maybe I can still teach school, I'm going to give it a few days though.
So now, for a while, I get to just be.
I get to be the student learning some hard lessons in weakness.
Soli Deo Gloria,
