Day 30 (thank goodness)

Well! This final day of November/NaBloPoMo has been rather eventful.

First, I decided El Guapo and I should hit the greenbelt this morning instead of our usual walking route though the 'hood. I don't know why, exactly. I just felt like seeing some cactus, I guess. This being Texas and it being November and whatnot, the greenbelt was positively lousy with white-tailed deer. All does, no bucks. Absolutely gorgeous.

Can ya see 'em?

Mr. Awful Adorable was on his best behavior, curious but not the least bit interested in any sort of up-close investigation. I snapped a few photos with my cell phone camera and we walked on. A couple of seconds later, we saw a doe tearing full-speed through the brush with two unleashed dogs in hot pursuit. The owners came looking for their dogs soon after, shrugging it off and saying that they just couldn't hold onto them with all those deer around. Um, maybe don't walk your dog through the greenbelt during deer season, then? Just a thought. (The "dumbass" is implied there, right? Good.)

The afternoon was spent in the company of an absolutely adorable young man (like seriously romcom-level adorable)(hush, I am old enough to be his youthful, hip auntie) from a local family-run flooring company who came to measure our square footage and talk to us about laminates vs. engineered wood and how to get our dog to stop eating our house. So that was fun.

While he was finishing up my folks called to say they were in the neighborhood and wanted to drop something by, and P and I realized we hadn't eaten lunch and were STARVING, so the guy finishing and the folks dropping by and the lunch eating all sort of happened simultaneously and with a quickness, because I had to leave to pick up daughter H about five minutes later.

Daughter H has athletics right at the end of the school day, and she was still in her uniform when she walked out to my car, which wasn't unusual. What WAS unusual were all the bandages and the giant ice pack on her wrist. She (gingerly) hopped into my car and asked if it would be at all possible for her to get an x-ray, like soon-ish, because she had fallen while doing sprints and the right side of her body was one long road rash from shoulder to ankle and she couldn't use her right hand or rotate her forearm. Yep.

This was excellent timing, unlike the time she broke her collarbone (every family has an emergency room kid; H is ours) while P was out of town several years ago. P was home today, and fortunately able to take her for her x-ray because I had to pick up son C from his after-school activity and take him to neurotherapy. Whee! Parenting is never boring, I'll tell you what.

While C was getting his brain re-wired, I tried to get hold of P to find out what the diagnosis was for H, but my cell phone decided to quit working. Swell! Turns out she does not have any detectable bone breaks but she might have broken her growth plate. That takes a few days to show up, apparently. For now she's in a splint (and like a million bandages) and seems to be okay, though she's in a bit of pain. Argh. Worst belated birthday present ever!

Despite the moderately sucky conclusion, overall November was not a terrible month. The weather was nice, the kids and I survived P's absence for two weeks, and I managed to complete NaBloPoMo despite all our crazy busy-ness. Sure it was all quantity and very little in the way of quality, but IT COUNTS. And I even won a prize doing it, so that is way swell.

I also really enjoyed taking daily photos for the habit flickr pool this month. And my photos were even featured on the habit blog five times, on the 4th, 11th, 20th, 21st and 25th! Very cool! You can see the entire set of photos I took/submitted this month here, if you're interested (clicking on the thumbnails brings up bigger photos + captions). And I encourage you to check out the habit flickr pool proper because there are some amazing, inspiring, heartbreaking, encouraging words and photos there. I will definitely try to participate the next time they open it up for submissions. And you should, too! It's not scary at all, I promise! Everyone is so nice. If I can do it, you can do it, believe me.

So that pretty much wraps up November. I leave you with one last gratuitous dog photo:

I am a very good boy if there are deer nearby, but I will totally eat your entire house.

Alrighty! Thanks so much for hanging in there with me this month! Now go forth and have an awesome December!