In which I don't go for a walk.

At the beginning of the school year, when Kim moved into her apartment, she called me and was very upset because she couldn’t find her ipod and was sure someone had stolen it out of her car! I tried to be helpful and told her to look carefully through her stuff because it’s small and she probably tucked it into something else as she was carrying an armload of her stuff into the apartment, but she had been looking for it and was furiously convinced that someone had stolen it!

It never turned up and she borrowed my iPod to use, and mourned the loss of her own iPod and also the iTrip I had just bought for her that enables the iPod to play through her car radio wirelessly. She uses it when she drives back and forth between school and home to listen to books she downloads, which lets her do her assigned reading painlessly – she’s an English major so she has to read a lot of books that we refer to as Medicine Books, that is, books that are good for you.

Today I saw that in her status on Facebook, she was happily announcing that she found the missing iPod! She was cleaning out her desk, because it’s nearing the end of the school year and she’ll be moving back home in a couple of weeks, and she found the iPod inside her housing folder at the bottom of a desk drawer. Oh, the happiness!

This afternoon Rachel brought Maddy over so we could take our two-mile walk, but we ended up not getting the walk after all. We went outside to get the stroller out of the trunk of Rachel’s car, and I was carrying Maddy, when we saw a friend across the street, and called her over to see how big Maddy has gotten. We crossed our side of the street and she crossed her side and we met in the grassy median, where we said hello and she admired the baby, and then we turned and started back across the street to the house.

At the time I didn’t know what tripped me, but I went pitching forward! (Later I saw that I had stepped in a pothole.) As I fell I rolled to protect Maddy (like a ninja!), and when I hit the ground, she was perfectly fine and uninjured – she didn’t even touch the ground – but I knew I wouldn’t be able to get back up with her in my arms, so I pulled her up with my free arm, and she dangled in the air by her arm for all of about 15 seconds until Rachel grabbed her and we got out of the street!

I was very shaken, and Maddy was also surprised, so we sat on the front steps and inspected my scraped knees, and decided we wouldn’t take a walk today. We went back in the house and made some dinner instead.

When Rich came downstairs from his office, we told him what happened:

Me: I tripped and fell but I saved Maddy! I saved her LIFE!


Maddy (Rachel really, in a squeaky Maddy voice): Poppa, I could have DIED!


Me: No, I rolled and saved you!


Maddy: My whole life passed before my eyes!


Rich: Really? What did you see?


Maddy: Bottles! Lots of bottles!


Me: (Sniff) My knees…



No one was impressed by my amazing ninja skills, except Carolyn, when I told her about it later. She’s a good girl.