Of Bombs, Blood and Motherhood

DISCLAIMER: To any agencies that would flag this blog due to the use of the words "bombs" and "blood" in close proximity together, don't bother. I wouldn't know gelignite from jello if you whacked me over the head with them. All I'm doing is rounding things up from last week, which is why there is a kluge of seemingly related yet unrelated words in the title of this post. Thank you for your understanding.

Ahem. Now that that's over with. . .

So Monday the Seventh of May found The Husband and I waking up in our spa suite on the 30th floor of the Luxor hotel. Anybody remember that date? Yeah. That Monday. The Monday a backpack bomb went off on the top floor of the parking structure killing one man and severely wounding a woman.

As we looked out that morning upon our lovely view of the parking structure and the freeway beyond it (so much for the fucking view of the Strip we were promised), we were startled to notice all this yellow tape. And hey, was that a pool of blood we saw next to an open car door? Holy crap! CSI vans! A staging area! Dude! So cool!

So we sat for about half an hour in our various states of undress watching the scene below unfold before our eyes. At first, we thought that someone had run through the parking lot shooting at somebody, because they were canvassing an area (you know, with a line of people about two feet apart from each other looking for stuff) that was really far away from where the blood pool was. Perhaps there were shell casings they were looking for.

We left the room for a few hours, and by the time we had come back, we noticed that they had abandoned the area they were searching previously entirely and now there was a whole slew of little orange evidence markers clustered around the open car. At least two dozen. Damn. That's a lot of shell casings we remarked. And damn, this is taking a whole lot longer than just a normal shooting. Something really bad went down. Whoo-nelly are some people going to be pissed that they haven't been able to get their cars for this long. Is that one of those stupid neon-y green Chargers down there? I can't believe that somebody actually bought that thing. It is soooo ugly! Ours is totally a stealth Charger and is obviously MUCH better than that. Have they added yet ANOTHER CSI van? Whoa! Oooh! They're towing cars now. Wow. There must be a lot of them with bullet holes in them. (The conversations Husband and I have can leap wildly from subject to subject in case you haven't noticed.)

Did we bother to turn on the TV to look at the news? Find a newspaper? Ask somebody about it? Nah. We prefered to speculate to ourselves about it. It was much more fun. It wasn't until we left the hotel that we discovered all the details about the event and the bomb. I have to say that I'm glad they caught the people responsible. They should rot for the rest of their life for this. All over a girl! Sheesh! Oh wait! Nevada has the death penalty. Buh-bye boys! Good luck with the trial, then.

*****

This past Saturday was a motocross event sponsored by our church. It was held at our local fairgrounds and was open to all comers. We figured that about 100 people would show up, so we planned for food for 200. Over SIX HUNDRED people showed up over the course of the night. Wowzers. Talk about being under prepared!

We were pretty well organized. The plan was that participants would divide up into their different ability levels. The pros, the amateurs, the novices, the beginners. There were three tracks - the baby track for the little ones just learning on their 50s, a middle track for the 80-90cc crowd, and then the big monster track.

The girls were going to stick to the middle track for the most part, although there was a period where the beginners and novices got to ride the big track, with parental units in tow if necessary. I followed Thing 2 around the track because after my turn around the big track with the quad group, I knew that she could get into trouble really easy. The big track was way too much for me on my quad, mainly because I prefer to ride trails and the track was all big jumps and tabletops - not many soft hills and turns like I like. And it seemed to go on forever. So when I followed Thing 2, I switched to the The Husband's Grizzly and it was much more forgiving. Thank God. I was banged up enough already from my go-around on the Trail Boss.

After we got done with the big track, the girls of course wanted to keep riding, so they went back on the middle size track and I went to lick my wounds and get some hydration. Just at about the time my mommy senses began tingling that it was time to insist the girls come in for a drink break, I got distracted by something and put it off for about 10 minutes. By the time I was getting ready to go back out and grab them, a friend came tearing up to me to tell me that Thing 2 had rolled and was down on the track. Fuck.

I hop on the Grizzly and dash out to the track. Thing 2 is shaking and crying, a blood everywhere. The culprit? A couple of small gashes on her chin, making everything look a whole lot more gory and worse than it was. She had taken a jump a little bit too fast, landed too hard and ended up hitting her chin on the handlebars and falling off the quad as it rolled. Fuck, fuck fuck. She's more scared than hurt, I'm being calm and collected but demand that somebody go relive The Husband from his flagging post on the big track so that he can be here too. He gets there in time for us all to head for the medic trailer so we can get her cleaned up and assessed further. The EMT on scene had already looked at her for possible concussion and her eyes were good, and all extremities were working fine, so we went ahead and moved her. The back of her head was a mess of dried blood, so we showered her off a little bit and off to the emergency room we went as a precaution. The Husband stayed at the track to hurredly pack up all our gear, then bring a change of clothes for Thing 2, and deliver a car for me to drive home in after we're all done. I wasn't about to make him stay with her after he had been out in the hot sun all day flagging for the track. He was more exhausted than I was at that point.

SEVEN FUCKING HOURS LATER at 2:30 in the morning, I manage to take my child - who only needed a bit of superglue to shut one of the wounds - home so that she can fall asleep exhaused. And thus began my Mother's Day. Whoo freaking hoo. At least mine was better than the mother of the 16-year-old kid who did a stunt jump off one of the big jumps on the big track and came off his bike down onto his forearm and snapped it like dry tinder. She had the joy of driving down to Loma Linda so that her son could be put back together. Luckily, he got one of the best orthopedic surgeons in the area to do it so I'm very sure he'll be just fine.

But damn. Is nothing easy in this life anymore? Guess not, or else it wouldn't be exciting, now would it? But personally, trips to the ER that could have been avoided by following up on tingling mommy senses are totally off my list of things to do ever again.

At least she still wants to go quad riding again. That's my Tank Girl. Gotta love her!