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Thursday, December 22, 2011

Not Rachel's Day

On Tuesday morning I took Rachel visiting teaching with me. She was excited to come because I visit teach her friends' mom and because it was a little slick outside so she could pretend that she was ice skating while we were walking. She wants to go ice skating so badly—she even remembered that my mom gave me my old ice skates from when I was little last year. Not that I was little last year. She just gave me the skates last year and the skates are from when I was little.

Because I'm Canadian. And Canadians do weird things like own ice skates.

Andrew used to think this was very strange. Perhaps he still does, I don't know.

We only go ice skating once or twice a year here. In Canada we'd go skating on the lakes, skating on the outdoor rinks (that were usually free), and skating on the indoor rinks (that usually were not free). It's like a national past time. Not so much in Utah, but whatever.

"I wish I had my ice skaters with me," Rachel kept saying, "Because then I would just zoom down the sidewalk."

I love that she keeps calling her ice skates "ice skaters." It's as if her true love gave her 10 ice skaters skating, or something like that. I also love how she thinks she's a natural at ice skating even though she's never been before—it isn't as if skating involves balance or skill or anything like that, right?

On the walk home we passed a bush and as we passed the bush the bush started shaking. We stopped and stared. We were a little terrified about what we might find but continued to stare at the bush, anyway, when a huge cock pheasant jumped out of the bush looking just as startled as we did. He stared at us for a couple of seconds and then took off flying right at us as if he was hoping we'd move out of the way. We did.

When we got home we left to run some errands "in the city." Salt Lake City, that is. We had to stop by Grandma Sharon and Grandpa Frank's, get some work from Harman, and do a little shopping at IKEA.

While in the checkout line at IKEA with our newly emptied cart (that truthfully wasn't all that full to begin with) Rachel decided she'd jump onto the side of the cart. She'd been riding while standing on the bottom basket on and off the whole time we were in the store but usually an adult had hold of the cart. This time the cart was just sitting there.

I was (very fortunately) holding Miriam because the cart tipped over on top of Rachel.

I'm not really quite sure how she was saved from being squashed by the cart. Andrew, a clerk, and I all lunged for it at the same time but none of us ever touched it. Rachel landed hard on her rear end and the cart just popped back up on its wheels—I guess she either didn't tip it far enough off its center of gravity before letting go or there was an angel standing nearby; either way, we're glad it didn't end up worse than it did.

Later we went to visit Santa and I already wrote about that and that ended up mishap-free but when we came home, Rachel was so wound up that she was bouncing off the walls. Unfortunately she found out that she isn't very bouncy.

She was spinning around in the kitchen and we kept telling her to stop but she kept on going.

Eventually she got so dizzy that she fell over and ended up smacking her forehead on the corner of a drawer (that was closed, so I'm not sure how she managed). She had an indent for a while but she ended up sporting a little goose egg.

At dinner she passed Miriam's cup to her but spilled and summed up her day like this, "I guess that's just one more bit of fwuble [trouble] today. But I just did it accently [accidentally]."

We put her to bed with a cold cloth (which in her mind is the solution to any ache) on her forehead. Miriam woke up at like five o'clock in the morning and I was up with her for a while so when Rachel woke up crying at seven o'clock I made Andrew get out of bed and deal with her.

She was inconsolable and incoherent. She tried to explain what was wrong but was making no sense. Andrew was worried we had put her to bed with a concussion but a few hours later when Rachel woke up again we learned that she just takes after her daddy and makes no sense when she wakes up in the morning. She was able to explain her nightmare over breakfast.

Here is the harrowing tale:

We were roasting marshmallows (once she said at home and once she said while camping; the location is irrelevant to the story) and there was one marshmallow left. Miriam and Grandma ate it!


That's it. That was the nightmare. That was the screaming and the crying and the thrashing and the mumbled shouts of panic.

All in all, I'd say Tuesday was not Rachel's day. She got to spend all day Wednesday and all day today playing with her Gillespie cousins—you know, since we're so related to the Gillespies and all. Michael we can legitimately claim as a cousin since Diana is a Gillespie and she married Andrew's cousin. But the other Gillespie cousins we have no reason to claim—except that we love 'em all. Anyway, Wednesday and Thursday have been much better days for her.

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