a clean break

Well, Dancing with the Stars has had its first tragedy, folks. No, Wozniak isn't waltzing again. It's my kid's radius and ulna. Yesiree, as if my life couldn't get another stinky layer in its chaos sandwich, my baby girl has gone and busted her forearm while doing the "tornado" with her choreographer sibling. I guess, when you have two jacked up Icelanders, a plastic dinosaur and a mommy drinking on the sofa then you know there's gonna be trouble.

It was an open and shut case really. By the time I heard the scream, it was simply too late. I jumped up from my Real Housewives of Orange County & bucket of merlot and made a beeline to the back bedroom and was intercepted mid-hallway with a hodge podge of snot, accusations and "'but, Moms!" And that's basically all I can report. The perps claim they were twirling and then ka-boom...the victim fell forward on top of a pointy T-Rex with her right extremity tucked underneath. No blood splatter or fiber analysis has led Mama to believe it was anything more than a freak accident, but still somewhere in the dark, boozy recesses of my mind, I blame the damn bunk beds. I've hated those things since I bought them on a Craig's List special over a year ago. In the last few months, I've seen T. swing like a howler monkey, dangle her Care Bear by the throat and even hoola-hoop on top of the blasted thing...all the while, being afraid a senseless crime just like this one might happen. And it did. That precious, kissable bratwurst arm has gone crunch. But when your big sister leads like Attila the Hun, what's a poor curly top to do?

Looking at the skeletal horror of it all at our Pediatrician's office, Geez and I were aghast at how both bones were snapped in two. As luck would have it, we were referred over to an Ortho- one of the best in town who just so happens to specialize in four year old bratwurst arms. He confirmed the breakage but told me he had some family coming into town and couldn't set it for another four days! And this was after I had already idiotically kept her home for two days thinking she had a sprain! Did I drop the Mom ball or what? It was a guilty verdict alright and I was ready to give myself the death penalty. Oy. I just don't get me. Double Duh..I should have known it was broken. My T. is a big wad of happiness and as tough as a boot when it comes to pain and she had cried over this particular boo-boo for a half an hour straight. They proceeded to give me the facts, ma'am and set her up at the hospital for a "reduction" first thing Monday morning. Why do they call it that? It's not like they cut off the broken part or anything. In the meanwhile, Nurse Ratched did the honors and splinted my little tyke. I almost had to have a shot, and I don't mean the kind with a needle when they immobilized her arm in a super duper shell-like gauzy thing. I left the room and my angel's wails..turning it over to Daddy as I figured he owed me one.

Over a long, gimpy weekend...awash in my peri-menopausal, rapidly failing but refusing to downsize parents, Energizer Bunny children, out of shape, blubbery, middle-aged, bummed out endocrine blahs, I decided then and there I was going to have to put a cast on Mama, if I was going to try and mend the stress fractures going on in my life right now. That's why I've decided it's high time to just say no to high time and get down with some serious cardio & up with some good on-the-wagon living...cutting out all the toxins- liquid, chocolate-filled and human. Having let my Grey Goose fly the coop for now, I'm just about close to a week into my Perrier sipping, power running phase of rebirth and would like to say I feel better, but the jury's still out on that one.

My one-armed bandit passed with flying colors..literally...and now has a shiny new bright purple plaster sleeve. Yeah, it's pretty jazzy these days. When my hubby broke the same arm, same place on his sixth birthday back in the early 1900's, they gave him a boring off-white jobbie, complete with an ether suffocation knock-out. All would be well if our munchkin would wear her sling but she refuses because "it is too boyish looking mommy". As I had sat out in the waiting room, a big ole drama queen..fretting over my baby's broken bones, I looked up at the TV and saw the frightened eyes of that young soldier the Taliban's holding. I thought of his mother and the depth of fear and uncertainty in her heart and I felt guilty. I thought of my tiny little worry and the sweet ride back home where my girl would finish up a long afternoon safe at my side, nibbling popcorn and watching The Wizard of Oz. I thought of all the fortune morsels tucked into my multi-tiered Dagwood and I felt grateful. That night when I watched mine sleep, I prayed for that boy to make it back to his mother's arms...a place where all of us truly belong.

Yep, this roller coaster ride is one that won't be pulling into the station anytime soon, so I'm just gonna have to dig like a miner to find the humor and ride the loops and dips as best I can. Since I didn't marry for money, there won't be any bio-identical hormones to gobble. We may want to call this phase of my blog, Mama- The Blue Period. No pun intended.

commentary: a giant leap from ohio

By BOB GREENE
CNN Contributor

All over the world this weekend, people are peering up into the night, trying to catch a glimpse of a sliver of the moon. They're thinking about the moon because of Monday's 40-year anniversary of mankind's first lunar landing. And more than a few people are undoubtedly allowing themselves to dream of traveling to the moon themselves.

It's not going to happen. For almost all of us, it can be said with certainty: We're never going to go to the moon. But there's good news: We can go to Wapakoneta.

Wapakoneta is a town of barely 9,000 people in northwestern Ohio. It may be, in its own quiet way, the most inspiring single place in the United States. I-75 runs right past it; in your car, it's there and then it's gone before you even know it. Yet if you make the decision to leave the interstate and turn onto Bellefontaine Street, which takes you into town, you will find yourself thinking about life's most glorious possibilities in a way you seldom have before.

Each time I go to Wapakoneta, I try to put into words the feeling of walking those small-town streets, and each time I fear I come up short. But the lesson of Wapakoneta remains constant. A boy from this town -- a boy born here, a boy whose father, a mid-level state employee, was required to move from city to city some twenty different times before ending up back in Wapakoneta for the boy's high school years -- looked up at the Ohio sky and decided that he would soar.

If the town at times felt cloistered and confining -- if the horizons the boy could physically view on the flat landscape of Auglaize County appeared circumscribed -- he did not let that stop him. Down through the ages, it was the one task that was almost beyond conceiving, never mind beyond doing. Until, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong, of Wapakoneta, walked on the moon.

You want to talk about the strength of the human will -- of the American will? You want to talk about absolute proof that no matter where you're from, if you set your heart to it, you can do anything? Take a trip to Wapakoneta. Stroll through the neighborhoods, stop in at the stores, maybe catch a movie at the old Wapa Theater on Willipie Street. Try to imagine being the boy who did exactly that, when no one knew his name.

His family had to pick up and move so often, because of his dad's job, that no one could have blamed him if his only desire had been to finally cling to one place.
But he decided that if he was destined always to be in motion, then he should make the most of it. He was fifteen when, his family living back in Wapakoneta again, he signed up for lessons at the airstrip north of town. He had made up his mind: He wanted to escape the earth's bonds. The moon was not the dream. The moon was merely the eventual landing strip. The dream was to fly.

Walk around that town. If you're feeling hemmed in by life, if all your prospects seem to have dried up, if you feel stuck in place, walk around Wapakoneta. Then ask yourself: Is there anything that can stop a person whose belief in what he can accomplish is fierce and unyielding enough?

There is a little museum in town -- you can see it from I-75 -- that is dedicated to the life of the boy who once walked those same streets. The thing I have always loved best about the museum is the display of newspaper front pages from around the world on the day after the moon landing. Every front page in every city in every country on the globe ran huge headlines announcing that the impossible had become real: that a man had walked on the moon. Some of the papers said just that -- that a man had reached the moon. Some made it more parochial -- they said that an American had walked on the moon. But the Wapakoneta Daily News said it in the only good and proper way it could be said, in that town, on that day:

"Neil Steps on the Moon."

We all need to be reminded, from time to time, of just what we can do. We all, no matter where we live, have moments when we think that the odds are just too great, that life's grandest accomplishments are for someone else. And it's probably true that none of us will ever know the feeling of stepping onto the surface of the moon. But this is really not about the moon. This is about the limitless capacity of the human heart. So if there are moments when you begin to question what is out there for you, here's a suggestion:

Come to Wapakoneta sometime. And look at the sky.

the fourth of july

May your lives continue to spark in all that you do!