the scariest day of my life

we went to the dog park today. evie was playing along the edge of the path, where there are trees, sticks, and some "stick up" sort of branches or small trees that have snapped off over the winter.

she's three feet away, and i see her fall. she screams, cries--i grab her and when she pulls her hand away from her eye i see a bunch of scratches across her face, mostly in that path of flesh where we get dark undereye circles. jeremy and i check out what she'll let us see and think, for a moment, it's okay.

then she lets me pull her eyelid back, and i see blood. jeremy takes off running to get the car, i take off running with evie. people are staring, i assume they think some dog bit her.

the whole time, our little one is saying she doesn't want to go, she doesn't want to see the doctor, etc. i'm running with her and telling her we trust the doctor, they will make it okay. the minute i saw the blood i though she had damaged her eye, would be blind, all the horrible things you'd imagine. i thought all my internal organs fell through my pelvis, i really wanted to cry.

i jumped in the seat, held evie and tried to strap us both in. jeremy drove nascar-style to the hospital.

thank god for sparrow hospital. i ran into the er and said she took a stick to the eye 10 minutes ago. they got us right in, and after only a few minutes determined there was no damage to the eye. an hour or so of different eye exams followed to make sure, and the doctors, nurses, physicians assistants, etc were amazing. spectacular. they even kept her stocked with popsicles, showed her everything they'd do before they did it, and played silly games with her.

the doctor told us we were really good parents. it's nice to get a compliment like that, esp. given the situation.

i have never been so terrified. sometimes being a parent can be so frustrating or mundane that you forget how lucky you are, how blessed. holding her on my lap with a sock pressed over her eye, running with her thru the park--it was like having her born all over again, that fright and wait and oh-god-what-if-something-is-really-wrong.

it looks like the stick (which i suspect was a small tree, snapped off at its base) went through her skin, then scratched her lower inner eyelid. i cannot believe how lucky we were, how lucky she is. the doctors tell us the human body will always reflexively find a way to protect the eyeball from injury--as such, they haven't seen more than a handful of direct eye injuries in the decades they've been there.

i think i'll be lighting my saint's candles in the morning, and saying my thank you prayers, if not walking down to the catholic church here.

i can't believe how lucky we are, but i am so grateful for it. evie is our heart and our soul, and seeing her in any kind of pain (though she took it better than i can imagine myself taking it) just made me feel like everything had left my body.

so for the next seven days we will apply ointment to her wound, give her some really strong oral antibiotics, and give her carte blanche to have as many popsicles, as much ice cream, watch as many movies, as she wants. i was so relieved, i told her i felt like buying her a (non-conflict) diamond.

so do me a favor and say a little thanks to whomever you like to say such things to. i'll be saying mine, and saying another to maggie and ben, who rescued our dog from the hot car while we were in with evie.

i hate stupid words

i think we all know how i feel about the word "interesting"...whenever someone uses it (esp. in a critical/academic setting) i want to punch them in the face and say "admit that you're a nitwit!". because either they are idiotic attempting to masquerade as intelligent, or their lazy vocabulary portrays them as an idiot when, in fact, they're not.

anyhow.

i'm not the only one: the book blog man from the new york times has his own list.

bonus points for reading the 200+comments.

i love snarkiness.

hillary clinton lives in a glass house

and yet is still throwing stones.

i like her less and less each day. and certainly less after reading slate.com this morning.

awesome mcawesomeness

normally, i think the whole "schmooze" aspect of business/government is deplorable and complete bullshit. when jeremy told me he was going to be schmoozed in detroit at an elite eight game, and opening day at comerica park, i almost knocked his block off. especially because he professes to not be "a sports junkie" (which i clearly am).

imagine my surprise, and delight, to learn HE IS ALLOWED TO BRING A GUEST! ta da! we get an entire, sweet, free weekend in the big d! and (the highlight) we will see justin verlander pitch on opening day!

the only suckass side effect is that i won't be able to go to the STARS concert (boo!) but we do get an entire weekend together, taking in college basketball and professional baseball, and having a few beers. woot!

lesson learned:

just because he's a democrat doesn't mean he's a good person.

my favorite part: in the statement below he casts his implication in a prostitution ring (which is a federal offense, as he had his lady of choice come from NYC to DC)as a moral, not legal, infraction.

news to you, eliot: you can't pull the "it's a moral, not legal or government matter" unless you really did not break the law, a la bill clinton.

Spitzer Said to Be Weighing Resignation - New York Times

“I have acted in a way that violates my obligations to my family and violates my, or any, sense of right and wrong,” the governor said. “I apologize first and most importantly to my family. I apologize to the public to whom I promised better.”

“I have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself. I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family.”


***

i find it hilarious how dems and progressives were just biting at the bit to vote for this guy. little more research, eh? even his political career has been marked with scandal. geez.

i think this makes kwame's issues seem smaller.

so this is exciting

on what's wrong with baseball

ESPN Page 2 - Page 2: You can keep your fancy stats

The first thing we need to do is go back to our roots stats-wise. Stats pages on this and other Web sites should get back to basics. I suggest these time-honored baseball accounting practices, laid across the page in the traditional format: games played, at-bats, runs scored, hits, doubles, triples, homers, runs batted in, batting average and maybe, if there's room, stolen bases. That's 10 items. For pitchers, there's games, games started, wins, losses, winning percentage, saves, innings pitched, hits, strikeouts, walks and ERA. That's 11, which might be too much. Forget strikeouts. If the guy's getting people out, it will show up in his ERA.

What else do you really need to know about a guy? If you can't tell how good a player is from those basic stats, there's something seriously wrong with you -- I mean brain-damage wrong. If you can't tell how good a player is from those basic stats, then maybe your daddy was drunk when you were a baby and he dropped you on your head and never told anybody because he was too embarrassed or didn't remember. If you can't tell how good a player is from those basic stats, maybe you ate some lead paint in the basement or crashed your motorcycle and hit your head against a telephone pole. If you can't tell how good a player is from those basic stats, maybe Timothy Leary was your family doctor, or maybe it's just that you don't know very much about baseball.


*******

baseball, more than any other sport, throws a lot of money at men who will never be regular players in the big leagues (see: drew henson). sometimes you spot a bargain who turns into something special (see: mike piazza) but then again, in cases like that, it helps if tommy "slim fast" lasorda is yr uncle.

the writer has an interesting point--there's always a stat that makes an argument for keeping an unproductive player on a team, and we all know stats lie.

what's sad, at least for me, is seeing baseball slide away from the mythic instincts of it's greatest managers, the "well, he was was due, so i put him in" kind of gut feeling that leads to some of the sports greatest moments (kirk gibson's homeruns). it's no secret: i love jim leyland for the same reason. he answered a question between innings last season in the same old school fashion. joe buck (or someone equally as annoying and inane) asked, how can you tell who will be a great hitter? jim leyland: the ball sounds different coming off their bat.

ta da!

crap stats can't replicate that. they can't make a case for keeping todd jones as your closer despite the fact he starts sweating with nervousness before the national anthem is over. they can't explain why marcus thames is still with the tigers and craig monroe is not. those are the instincts of leyland and dombrowski. and, more often than not (def. more often than b.s. stats), these guys are right.