August 7, 2009: Liesl’s Big Fall

I awake this morning to the distant sound of a giant gasp and Dominica’s “oh my gosh” screams that had that ring of a mother’s panic.  I was out of bed and downstairs in a wink – no glasses on even.  When I got down Dominica had just reached the top of the basement stairs carrying a very unhappy Liesl.

Liesl had crawled to the top of the basement stairs and, we are assuming, crawled partway down them and then had fallen into the basement.  The stairs are carpeted and she didn’t make enough noise as she fell for Dominica to have heard her from the kitchen so we are assuming that she did not fall the entire way, but we have no way of really knowing either way.  It is a long stairway, fourteen steps, to have fallen down.  Luckily they are soft.

Liesl was very upset and cried for a while had no visible bumps or bruises.  It seems as though she just really scared herself.  Not nearly as much as she scared her parents, though!

We called the doctor’s office and they said that it sounded like everything was fine.  We just need to keep an eye on Liesl today and make sure that no signs of trauma appear.  They did not feel that there was any cause for concern or any need for us to bring her in unless some symptoms arose during the day.

So that got our morning off to quite the start.  Dad emailed to say that he was on the road around a quarter till nine this morning.  He was heading down to Dansville to get breakfast at the McDonald’s there.  If he makes good time that should put him in Peekskill around two this afternoon.

Dominica spent the day cleaning around the house.  We have both dad and Susan visiting this weekend so we really want it to be clean.  Although dad is going to be painting the living room and dining room this weekend so it only makes so much sense to do so much cleaning.  It is going to be a real mess all weekend.

Dad arrived in Peekskill at just before three thirty.  We visited for about half an hour but I really do not have any spare time on a Friday, especially a busy Friday like today with a large number of system upgrades to be done.

Dad was able to bring one of his largest car loads ever of stuff for our house.  This time a bit of furniture made the trip in addition to the boxes and bins.  Two more desks for the basement, one for Dominica and one for me.  That is going to really change the look of the basement office area for sure.  It has been so big and empty thus far.  Now I am going to have some serious desktop space to work on keeping clean – which will never happen.  It is going to be piled high with DVDs and books in no time.

Dad brought enough books with him that we now have nowhere to put them.  We have been putting off buying our next several bookshelves for a while and we really cannot avoid it any longer.  We are going to have to make a run to Ikea sooner than later to get more book storage space.

The painting crew came just after five to work on the house again.  The neighbour’s cat, Belle, was hanging out on our deck as usual when they arrived and we figured that since they were going to be staining the deck that it might be best if the cat was not out there because she would get in the stain and probably make herself sick and track the strain into the neighbour’s house.  She has been busy on our deck all day stalking Oreo.  She scared him good today and sent him running through the house to find me to take him out for a walk to get him away from her.  She even made Dominica jump with that particular attack.

So Dominica walked over to tell the neighbours that they should probably lock the cat up so that she doesn’t get into the stain.  We tried to convince the cat to go back home on her own but that didn’t work.  She let me pick her up without a problem so we discussed tossing her over but that seemed dangerous and scary (for the cat.)  She was all friendly while I held her.  We decided that I could just carry her through the house and around the front.  That seemed simple.  So into the house we went.

We made it halfway out of the front door when the cat completely panicked and tore the crap out of my arm as she dug her way up my left arm and chest over my shoulder and escaped into the house.  Poor Oreo went into a panic.  He is terrified of cats under the best of conditions and this was his tormentor loose in his own house!

Dad managed to somehow convince Belle to run out the back door where she attempted to hide in a corner until I went back out there.  Once I was out she decided that I was dangerous and she lept back to her own deck and was let in.  She had more of an adventure than she had been planning to have this evening.

The painting and staining crew arrived just after five and worked until eight this evening.  They did a lot of work.  They painted all of the trim around our house and stained the deck.  It looks pretty good today.  Hard to really tell until everything has dried but it will definitely look much, much better than it did up until today.  The deck was definitely not looking its best.  The previous owners of this house really let just everything go so that we would have to deal with all of it.

We ordered in dinner from Forno’s.  We didn’t feel like doing anything hard for dinner and I couldn’t really go out anywhere will all of the work that I need to be doing for the office tonight.

While eating dinner we watched Beverly Hills Chihuahua which Dominica had gotten from Netflix on BluRay.  Not exactly one of my top choices for movies to watch but it was cute I guess.  Definitely for kids without much to entertain adults.  Pretty cheesy and a little sad as they talk about the dog fights in Mexico city and shows dogs being kidnapped to be killed there.

We paid close attention to Liesl all day and she has had no signs of anything being wrong after her fall down the basement stairs.  She does have one small bruise under her left eye but that might be nothing more than rug burn.

After that we watched two episodes of Wizards of Waverly Place with dad as he was curious as to what this new show was that we have been watching.  Funny enough the show started and recognized Selena Gomez as the star of Another Cinderella Story.  So he is more up to date on the tween pop star scene than you would think.  Now if we just catch him listening to Demi Lovato music…

I worked from the laptop until midnight.  There is a ton of work to do today and tomorrow and Susan is coming around noon to go to brunch with us and to meet Liesl so I am trying my best to get everything done by then.  It is going to be a busy morning tomorrow.

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