Maybe Not Mother of the Year

I think I just lost my contention for "Mother of the Year"!
Yesterday, I arrived home from work around 3:20PM, after also running to the town library (to return overdue books, again!) and the bank. I sat down to deal with mail and homeschool papers. Twenty minutes later, Rachel and Samantha arrive from school and all the girls are sent outside to take care of the animals. I begin working on the 4-H meeting agenda in preparation for the meeting last night.

The plan was: as soon as the animals were taken care of, we would eat quick sandwiches and then head to the grocery store (my list had grown to about 30 items that we needed!) before the 4-H meeting. As I said, that was the plan.

Around 4:15 I hear loud crying and it's coming closer to the house from outside. Rachel bursts in the back door, yelling that Samantha fell and is "reaallyy bleeding," with all the drama that only Rachel can muster. So of course, I jump up and open the back door to see Samantha, literally covered in blood. Her head, runnning into her eyes, the front of her coat, her hands and her arms are covered. Samantha manages to tell me that she hit her head on a log. I look at her head and see that all that blood has come from a deep laceration just above her eye.

So why am I not Mother of the Year? Because my first words to Samantha are: "I really don't have time for this today." The look on her face was something akin to "Um, Mom? Do you see what I look like?" I then started issuing orders for a towel, ice pack, and washcloth. I phoned my other 4-H volunteers to see if they could cover the meeting since emergency visits are never quick and (of course) Sam was at work. I cleaned Samantha up of the majority of blood, stopped the bleeding on her head and gave her the freeze pop ice pack (hey, dual-purpose: after the injury is dealt with, she gets a treat!) to hold to her head while I drove her to the walk-in clinic.

Amazingly, they took her in right away and put in three stitches. She was very brave and held very still while the doctor put in the novicain. We were out of there by 5:30! So we made it to the 4-H meeting and the rest of the evening went off without a hitch. Except, I am still out of milk, bread, cheese, and baking powder.