May 27, 2006

“Vacation, all I ever wanted. . .” (minus the head injury)

If your comments take a while to appear, or if it seems I haven’t been a good commenter lately, it’s because I’m on vacation, y’all. Yeah, I said "y’all". My family and I are vacationing in North Carolina at the beach; and after living in the Northeast for almost my entire life, it always shocks and amazes me how nice the people are down here. Nice, y’all, really nice. You may ask why I am blogging while at the beach on this gorgeous afternoon; but it’s because I am on hotel room nap duty. Lil C is out like a light and is enjoying her first uninterrupted nap since Thursday night. I’m blogging before digging into my pile of books I’ve been saving for such an occasion. It all works out.

So far, we’ve only had one little problem on our trip. This little problem has brought to my attention yet another difference between men and women. Let me ask you this. . . when you are driving and you put the car in reverse, do you simply turn your head and use your mirrors to see where you’re going? Or, do you need some help from your arm, as in drape your arm over the back of the passenger seat in order to facilitate your turning around? When I reverse, I turn my head. When my husband reverses, he puts his whole body into it.

Last night, this little physical anomaly caused some serious head trauma. We were backing out of a restaurant. My husband was driving. I turned around and was in the process of retrieving some toys that had been thrown on the floor by Lil C. The next thing I know, I am being clothes-lined by my husband’s arm. As he flung his arm from my seat, back to where it should be, he hit me with an outside block to the ear and head so hard that all I could hear for a few seconds was, "whop, whop, whop." When he made contact, my head moved at a very unnatural angle to my neck and sent pain shooting up my neck and into my head. I felt like the entire left side of my brain was throbbing.

So, as I’m reeling from the blow and trying to figure out what just happened, he decides to school me on not putting my head there while he’s reversing. Because his response wasn’t a resounding, "I’m so sorry. Are you o.k.?" right away, I was slightly peeved. So, I decided to accuse him of having a genetic defect that many men seem to have. . . the inability to reverse a vehicle without using their arm to turn their body. What is up with that???

A few sucker punches to his arm later (and one well deserved apology), I felt a little better about the whole thing; but that didn’t stop the raging headache that lasted until this morning. Ouch. I am hoping that this will be the last of the vacation injuries.

I am happy to report that when leaving a grocery store today and reversing, my husband was able to do so without the aid of his arm. It’s progress people. I’m hoping I can break him of this potentially head-rattling problem by the time our vacation ends. But let’s not talk about that, because this vacation has only just begun. . .