A series of small calamities...

Nothing huge, just all bothersome.

Monday the girls usually have gymnastics in the mid-day. This is a class I arrange at a local gymnastics center for our homeschool group. We have between 14-17 kids each week. It's pretty fun, usually. They get to see their friends, work on gymnastics, and the Mom's chat. The coaching hasn't been the greatest lately and I've been disappointed - I could let them run around for free in the yard - I'm paying money so they can learn bars and balance beam and floor routines. Monday was the kicker though when the teacher canceled the class with no notice and then left when asked to come down and explain. There was a meet going on at another gym so the owner and office manager weren't there to intercede.

I did finally speak to the gym owner today and we will have a new coach next Monday. I'm giving it another week and in the meantime have been looking around at other gyms. There is another one out in Snohomish that we are going to try next week and we may end up going there. We'll see. It's been very stressful to discuss this with the 9 parents in the class and with the gym.

Back to Monday, after getting home from gymnastics (or lack of) Victoria slammed Madeline's hand in the bedroom door. It was very swollen with cuts across two of the knuckles. I called the pediatrician's office. Even though Victoria has been there and Travis has been there, Madeline has not. Therefore I couldn't talk to a nurse and the next appointment wasn't until Thursday. They recommended the Walk-In Clinic. I suppose I should either A. schedule Madeline for a well-child visit (because she hasn't been seriously sick, in, oh YEARS) or B. find a new pediatrician whose front desk isn't a guard station to the nurses. I do like the pediatrician so when we're off Cobra I'll go with A. I just hate having to pay money to hear my kid is healthy, you know? Just so I can get on the books and be allowed to talk to a nurse.

At the walk in clinic they did do X-rays since the cuts were right across the knuckles and they were all swollen. She is fine and the growth plates appear undamaged. I still remember the horrible story from The Friend magazine as a child about the kid who damaged his growth plates and had a child-sized hand for the rest of his life. (No offence to any people with little hands, it's just not something I would wish on my child, both Madeline with the little hand and Victoria knowing that she'd caused it.)

Later that evening I decided to go ahead and start updated my "Needlework: Stitch to Finish" book. I've been planning on distributing it in eBook format. (Don't get excited). It turns out the Word file on my computer is NOT the final file. At some point during the horrible time last spring that I call the Great Triple Crash of '08 I opened and looked through my book document and said "yep, that's the right one" but didn't scroll through the last 3o pages. Basically it's missing about 100 pages of information off the final version that was printed. And it was in color, so it's not like I could just scan a printed book to recreate the file.

The same "false" final backup was on our desktop and Brad's computer.

On Tuesday morning I went to the safe deposit box because I *knew* there was a final copy of the book on a CD/DVD in there, created before all the crashes. Well, the fucking CD won't open in Vista. I could *try* and pay a data recovery service but I'm looking at a minimum of $50 to upwards of $400 to *try* and recover the file from the CD. When opened in XP it wants me to format the disc.

Sigh. Many tears last night and I just went to bed around 8 p.m. Today I'm irritated but I have a greater sense of peace about it. Yes, it was an awesome book. It really was. I'm sad that it is gone and I'm mad because I went to the trouble of backing it up - it's the whole reason we have a safe deposit box. I was mad at myself because I didn't, somehow, keep the final file. Anyway, I could go on and on but I learned long ago that one just has to sometime let stuff go.




***
Today was a better day. We did lessons and I took Victoria to ballet and Madeline, Travis and I went to the store and she bought a little puzzle book and some spangle trim. I'm going to quilt a bit tonight and finish my color drawing the the MTP section I'm working on.