Wednesday, April 6, 2016

And Then They Broke My Bed

Because of the awesome timing of O’s strep diagnosis last week, we cancelled the plans we had to have the friends of the girls (the Porch sisters, some might remember) over one day during spring break last week.

I wanted to prevent the younger Porch sister (Delaney) from being exposed to O’s strep germs and if Delaney wasn’t coming over, it didn’t really make sense for Nora to come over. Right?

I suppose I might be trying to justify my reasons for cancelling the plans. It just felt like too much at the time.

But then when I got home on Wednesday, knowing I had Thursday and Friday off work, Alyssa asked if she could invite a couple of friends over since the Porch sisters couldn’t come.

And since these would be A’s friends, leaving O free to rest (and annoy me because the antibiotics were kicking in and she was feeling much better) I said sure.

Lyss ended up inviting three friends over, which, as Tom rightly pointed out, isn’t ‘having a friend over’ so much as having a small party. Ugh! Which, you know, fine. She has a lot of friends, friends who are all friends with each other and she didn’t want to leave anyone out. I get it. And honestly, even with three extra teenagers in the house, it’s not really that much more work since they tend to disappear into Alyssa’s room for hours at a time, reappearing only to scrounge for food or drink or to harass the cat.

Usually when Lyss has friends over, Liv is right up in their space, asking me constantly if she can go with them to the girls’ room, if she can go outside with them, if she can just be near them. I guess this case of strep really hit her hard because she was pretty content to sit next to me on the couch while they were upstairs doing who knows what.

Oh, yes, I do know now what they were doing.

They were practicing the high jump. They were practicing it on my bed. That is until they broke my bed.

Yes, they broke my bed. They managed to snap the metal frame into pieces. It boggles my mind how I didn’t hear them from my place in the living room, which is right under the room in which they were practicing the high jump…on my bed.

After I’d put Olivia to bed that night, I went about my own bedtime routine. At that point, Alyssa came into my bathroom and said, “Can I show you something?”

It should be noted that she was wearing what looked like costume make up (dark eyeliner in exaggerated cat-eye), a skirt tied to her head with a Star Wars knee-sock and shorts over leggings. Obviously, they were doing some kind of dress-up thing.

I followed her down the hall and found my bed at an odd angle. The foot off the bed was pretty much on the floor while the head was still being supported by the unbroken end of the frame. Two of the three guest girls were sitting on the bed even though it was at this strange angle. I asked the girls to get up so I could look at the frame.

I then asked Alyssa how this had happened. She confessed to the high jump practice.

I impressed myself with my calm demeanor when I said to her, “I guess the lesson here is that you don’t practice the high jump on a bed.”

Then I made the girls help me while pulled the frame from beneath the bed and we put the box springs and mattress back on the floor. I calmly told Alyssa we’d talk about this the next day when here friends had left.

For the rest of the night, I had trouble sleeping. I was in the guest room with Olivia since she’d been ousted from her room by Lyss’s friends. I don’t know that it was the broken bed that had a low level of anxiety simmering in my chest or if it was a conversation I’d had with my mom the day before (more on that in another post…) but my mind wouldn’t shut down.

In the end, the bed is fine. Tom happens to be a very organized hoarder of sorts and had several bed frames in storage. He found one that works perfectly and all is well in that arena.

There were other, much more stressful things that happened the next day that made my mood plummet, but in the end, a broken bed was just a drop in the bucket in an entire day of let’s-just-get-through-this.

2 comments:

Julie said...

Wow, that stinks! I'm impressed with the "having girls over". We just don't do it often at our house. It stresses me out!

Kandi Ann said...

I just wanted to say that your blog is my favorite in the way Jane Maday's paintings are my favorite. The autistic mind thinks in weird ways. :o)