Monday, February 3, 2014

Skipping Christmas

It's not that I skipped Christmas…  No, though I did read the book but that's not what I mean.  I just meant that I haven't written about our Holiday!

It was GREAT!! then it was briefly HORRIBLE! then it was mostly GREAT!

Let's just skip right to the horrible.

Christmas Eve, the girls decided they had to go sledding.  We had been sledding once before Christmas at a Hill of Death near our house - we will NEVER go there again.  It is extremely steep… there is nowhere flat to put out your sled so you can sit on it.  Branches everywhere… Just NOT GOOD.
So in order to erase that unpleasant memory from their brains, the girls decided they wanted to revive a Christmas Tradition we had performed a couple of times in years past and go Sledding in the Avenues!  On Christmas Eve!  Thing 2 was begging for me to commit to this for days ahead of time, I kept saying I'd be happy to go if we could but it's hard to say exactly what we'll have time for on Christmas Eve.  We shuffled things around, Hubby helped, and we ended up able to go.  I called a friend from down there and she warned me there might not be much snow, it had been really warm lately.   We were undaunted.  So we went.  It's a 1/2 hour drive from our house.

We were about the only ones there.  We took the dog.

I am the dedicated cameraman.  I had very little interest in actually sledding.  I let the first couple of runs go by.  It was actually quite fun, the hill opens onto a baseball diamond and since it was so icy they could really just glide along for a long time after taking the hill.  Are there warning bells going off in your head at that last comment?  There should be...

Then Thing 2 had a great run except the dog decided for some inexplicable reason to tackle her.  He took her out hard!

He nailed her in the face, and she probably would have cried if she didn't know she was on camera.  But she toughed it out and shook it off, and marched back up for another run.  We have watched the video several times and it just makes me cackle.  Especially knowing she's okay.

Then toward the end of the day I decided to make a run.  It was fun - really hard and icy, but fun.  The last run, the girls are about tuckered, and I thought Hubby would go with them.  He didn't.  I didn't want to but I did anyway, to be a sport.
This is what happened.  Hubby decided to film, he wanted to try out the slow motion feature on my camera.  So he captured it all in slo mo.

In case it isn't clear from the video, I bounced up, and as I was going sideways, I landed on the side of my sled, flipped over, SNAPPED MY NECK, scraped the crap out of both of my hands, and quickly stopped.  That little dead animal looking thing behind me is a pony tail thinger I add to my hair to make it look like I actually have hair.  It was flung violently from my head.

No, I did not go to the hospital.  I could walk.  Eventually.  But this is how I spent the next couple of days.


Hubby got me the brace from the drug store.  It was exceedingly uncomfortable.  I didn't wear it for long.  My hands were bruised up along the thumb and up into my first finger, and my left wrist has been kind of sprained.  It is the first of February and my neck is finally mostly back to normal.

So other than that, it was a great holiday!