porphyrin's son Robin hospitalized

Many of you have probably heard this already, but porphyrin's son Robin suffered a severe eye injury and has had eye surgery. Little boy eager to help daddy remove wallpaper . . . putty knife . . . eye . . . ow ow ow. porphyrin and mrissa have updates (he'll probably be discharged today).

A very bad night

5:15 Peg gets home. Talk with Rob. Fiona is at school. I ask Rob whether he is picking her up, and he says that he doesn't on Monday nights; she's driven home by her friend Corwin's Dad on Mondays. (Rob and Corwin's dad share car-pooling duties on Mondays and Tuesdays, when both girls have after-school activities.)

5:25 Rob and Delia leave for Delia's 5:40 karate class. The plan is that I make dinner to be ready at about 6:30, giving me 15 minutes to eat with them before leaving for my 7:00 sparring class.

5:30 Fiona calls. "Where's Dad? He's supposed to pick me up." Perplexed, I tell Fiona that Rob told me that he didn't think he had to do so. "But Dad always drives on Mondays." I tell her that either Dad or I will come to pick her up.

5:35 I call the dojo to see if Rob has arrived there yet. I am told that he isn't there but Delia is. I ask to speak with Delia. "Where is Daddy? Did he leave to pick up Fiona? Fiona called asking where he is." Delia replies, perplexed, "I don't know where he is. He just dropped me off without saying where he was going." I curse under my breath and tell her, "Then I have to go pick up Fiona and Corwin. If he gets back, have him call me on the cell."

5:40 I leave a note for Rob, telling him what's going on in case he gets home, and adding that we will get him a cell phone because it is driving me crazy that he doesn't have one. I get changed into my gi, kiss the prospect of dinner goodbye, grab my sparring bag, and head out to the high school.

5:50 On the way there, I get a call on the cell from Rob, who is calling me from the dojo (he'd briefly gone to the pharmacy to get a prescription, which is why he wasn't at the dojo when I called earlier). I pull over and take the call, tell him that Fiona is expecting him to pick her and Corwin up. "Oh. Oh, right. Mondays. Yeah, I do those. Okay, I'll go get them." I refrain from swearing at him. Barely.

6:00 Arrive back home. Look through the cookbooks. Start making corn and red pepper chowder, something I haven't tried before. I look at the clock. If I hurry, I can still get it done by 6:30.

6:25 Fiona arrives home with Rob. "I have to get something to eat right away and then Daddy's driving me back to the high school for a robotics meeting." I tell her that dinner will be ready in five minutes, and she can wait that long. "I don't have time to wait that long," she says. I lose my temper. "You can wait five minutes for me to get dinner on the table. The robotics meeting isn't going anywhere." Fiona stomps up the stairs, furious.

6:30. I call for Rob and discover he isn't in the house. Neither is Delia. I call up the stairs for Fiona, who descends in high dudgeon to tell me that Rob went back to the dojo to get Delia.

"You mean she wasn't with you?" I ask, surprised.

"No, Dad had to drive Corwin home. So he didn't have time to go back to get Delia before driving me home to get something to eat."

I groan and wonder why the hell Rob didn't get Fiona something at Subway, right by the dojo. "That means I'll have to drive you back to school. Which means I'll be late to my own karate class." I put dinner on the table, the corn chowder, and start eating. Fiona, still furious, barely tastes it. I roll my eyes and tell her to get her shoes on and go out to the car. "Where's your coat?" I ask her as we head out the back door. (It's January. In Minnesota.) She flies into a fury again. "It's in the back of Dad's car! Which I thought I was going to be getting in again in one minute, but instead he went off without me. Which is why I don't have my coat."

6:45 Leave home with Fiona. Drive toward the high school

7:05 Arrive at the high school and drop Fiona off. I give her the cell phone.

7:15 Arrive for my class, which started at 7:00. Kit up for sparring. It feels really, really good to hit things.

7:40 Sparring class is over. Use the dojo phone to call the cell phone that Fiona now is holding to see if her meeting is over yet. No answer. Apparently, there is no cell phone coverage in the high school. I call Rob, who tells me that Fiona hasn't called there, "but she said she'd come outside Door 3 at 8:00."

7:45 Leave dojo

8:00 Arrive at high school. Wait outside door 3.

8:20. Where the hell is she? I go inside the school and try to find the robotics meeting. The school is huge, and I don't know where the meeting is. I wander all over the school but cannot find her.

8:30 Come back outside again to see if she's emerged yet from door 3. She hasn't.

8:40 I go back inside the school again and in desperation, ask to use the cell phone of someone else in the building. I call the cell phone. No coverage. I call the home. Rob says that Fiona said she'd be meeting in the wood shop. The man who kindly lent me the cell phone tells me that the school doesn't have a wood shop anymore. I barely refrain from tearing my hair out.

8:45 I run down a janitor who directs me to the robotics meeting. Inside I find Fiona. "We'll be done at 9:00," she tells me. With great self-restraint, I refrain from dragging her out of the meeting, tell her that I'll be waiting outside door 3.

9:00 Fiona finally emerges from the meeting and comes out door 3. Drive home. Rob reports that he ate two bowlfuls of the soup "even though it was pretty bland," but Delia barely ate any of the soup, either.

Rob and Fiona are getting cell phones just as soon as I can possibly arrange it. I don't want to go through an evening like this again anytime soon. Garraharhwwraaowaow.