It was bound to happen…

Long ago, before Chase was ever a twinkle in his daddy’s eye, I got a really good deal on a pair of mission style couches that I loved.  They have served us well these past ten years and have held up unbelievably well.  Unfortunately, they have wooden arms with sharp corners. Up until now, and by some sort of miracle, Chase has never seriously hurt himself on them.  It really is amazing due to the fact that his balance on some days is along the lines of falling every couple of steps. 

It seems like sometimes when bad things happen, there seems to be some cosmic lining-up of planets that just propels the event forward, as well as all the precursor events that set it up perfectly to happen.  Let me give an example.  One summer when we lived in Utah, I decided to have a yard sale.  Always a bad idea. :) I advertized well and the place was hopping, so much so that I had to send my little sister Cortney down to the bank to get more cash for change.  While she was gone, I had about six people trying to ask questions, haggle, and pay.  In the midst of the flurry of activity, I had a great idea and called Kristen to see if she wanted me to sell her old bike that she had left in the garage for the summer.  She said yes, so I rushed into the garage and pulled out the first bike I saw and put it on the lawn.  Within minutes, with Cortney still getting change, a man wanted the bike.  He immediately accepted the $30 Kristen wanted for it and left in a hurry.  As business started to slow in the next minutes, a sickening thought came into my mind…was that Kristen’s bike I just sold???  It had looked pretty new now that I thought about it.  I rushed into the garage and there sitting in the corner was Kristen’s bike.  It quickly dawned on me that I had just sold Cortney’s $700 mountain bike for 30 dollars.  I was immediately sick to my stomach.  Cort returned a short time later and I had to tell her the news.  To her 19-yr-old credit, she was totally forgiving and nice about it, but I was still sick.  I closed down the yard sale as quick as I could and went driving around the entire Orem/Provo area checking yards to try to find the guy I sold the bike to.  Of course I didn’t find it, but I looked for hours.  So the chain of awful events went like this.  Cort leaving to go get money.  If  I hadn’t sent her, she would have been there to tell me it was her bike.  Me deciding out of the blue to call Kris about selling her bike.  Tons of customers at once had me flustered and I didn’t hardly even look at the bike.  And then the guy coming within minutes of me putting it out and knowing a good (great) deal when he saw one, bought it immediately. And how much do you think I made at the yard sale???  I think it was about $200… $500 less than Cort’s bike was worth.  It was like a sick chain of events that lined up perfectly for disaster. 

And so it was for Chase.  All these years without a major accident with the couch corners, and then our TV broke.  You may be wondering how our TV breaking could have anything to do with it, but remember what I said about the cosmic chain of events.  Well, when our TV broke, Spence moved into into the living room to get it out of the way so that he could set up our little TV. 

This is where the tree normally is set up.

The broken TV had been sitting in the living for about a month taking up a lot of space when I got out the Christmas tree.  And where do you think I usually set up the tree??  In the living room, right where the broken TV was now sitting.  So I looked for other options.  The only other place I felt I could really fit it was in the family/TV room between the couch and the piano. 

This is where the tree ended up.

But in order to fit it, I had to move the couch about 6 inches, which put the corners of the two couches 6 inches closer together.  The couches sit diagonal to each other and the space between them at the corners is the only way to get into the family room and then on into the kids bedrooms.

The arm on the left was the culprit. It does look sharp.

I should have know that would cause problems for Chase, but I was only thinking Christmas trees.  About a week and a half before Christmas, Grandma and Grandpa Platt were over for dinner and a little bit of Planet Earth.  Chase was standing in front of the couch showing off his ability to say “planet erff” when he took a pitch forward and caught the corner of the couch right between the eyes.  I grabbed him and saw that it was bleeding, so we got a towel and held it to stop the bleeding.  When we had it stopped enough to check for damage, we could see a slice that had punctured right down to the bone.  We were going to head for the ER, but and quick call to Dr. Wilson at home (thanks for answering Sean) and it was decided to just go in first thing to the office and get it stitched.  I sat on Chase (sounds weird, but it is the best and only way to hold his head still) with his head secured between my knees, while Spence did his best to bandage it good enough to hold until morning. 

8 am, and we were off to Eager for stitches.  They putting numbing cream on we waited for it to take effect.  Then after some discussion between the doctor, the nurse, and I, it was decided that I would sit on Chase with his head secured between my knees while he stitched him up.  I wish I would have had a video of me climbing on top of Chase on the procedure chair and then raising the chair up to where Dr. Wilson could stitch Chase’s forehead which was held tightly between my knees.  It wasn’t funny at the time, but I’m sure it looked pretty funny.  Chase cried the whole time, but once we got the numbing shots in, the blue stitches went in pretty quickly.  Luckily Darryl Greer is now Sean’s assistant, and he gave Chase all kinds of toys and entertained him as best as he could.  We had to put him on an antibiotic since the bone had been exposed.  I bet you are all wishing I had got a shot of that! (the bone) :) We really appreciated all that they did for us at Mtn. Ave. Clinic.

A week later we went in to get the stitches out. After looking at them, Dr. Wilson wanted to leave them in a few more days, which put it right at Christmas.  They weren’t going to be open, so he asked if we could just take them out. Now I don’t want to accuse Dr. Wilson of not wanting to go through the whole crazy procedure to hold Chase down, but it was convenient that we would have to be the ones to take them out. :) I got home and Spence just took them out the next day…he’s used to me sitting on Chase so that we can doctor him! :) By the way, I would recommend Spence’s services to anyone who needs stitches taken out….he could probably put them in to! 

 The day we took the stitches out.  (Notice the other scars from similar incidents that weren’t quite so bad.  Chase’s eye area takes a lot of abuse.)

I’m sure you all have stories of cosmic chains of events.  I’d love to hear them.