Aaron and I are both procrastinators. So it didn’t surprise either of us that we both planned on doing our Valentine’s Day shopping after we got off work. Nothing like waiting until the last minute, eh?

How did we spend our Valentine’s Day evening? Well, we had a lovely dinner of McDonald’s by the light of the TV, which was showing American Idol. We exchanged gifts. For me, the Kingdom of Heaven DVD and chocolate truffles. For him, Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses DVD and the book Son of a Witch, the sequel to Wicked.

After American Idol, it was House and then the remainder of the Westminster Dog Show as we ate some of the chocolates. Yeah, we’re true romantics.

Truthfully, we both considered calling off the whole gift-giving thing. Our anniversary is next month, and Valentine’s Day has really never been that important to us. I don’t need a special day of the year to demonstrate how much I love Aaron.

He’s my best friend, my lover, my husband, and the father of our precious daughter. He’s my partner and my support. He keeps me sane, makes me laugh when I’m down, and wipes away my tears. We don’t always agree (who does?), but we care enough about each other to work through any problems we may encounter. And I’m so grateful that I have him with me on this journey of life.

I love you, dear. Happy Valentine’s Day.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the year, I’ve gone back to school to try my hand at another career switch (which will make at least three since I graduated with my BA in History). This time it’s nursing. To test my abilities, I decided to enroll myself in the ultimate weed-out class: Human Anatomy. To make it even more difficult, it’s an online hybrid class – the lecture portion is online and I come in for a lab period once a week. I made a deal with myself that if I didn’t make it through this class, I’d give up any ideas at continuing on.

Well, now that I’m 1/2 of the way through the class, I think it’s time for an update. Turns out, I’m not too shabby with anatomy. My first two exams I scored an A on, and my first lab practical was also an A. I just took exam 3 on Sunday, and I don’t think I did quite as well. It covered muscles and joints, and well, who knew there were so many damn muscles in the body, each with weird, unpronounceable names?

We also got our first introduction to the human cadavers in the back of the room last week. As expected, the sight of these preserved and prosected bodies didn’t bother me in the slightest bit. In fact, I find them rather fascinating. They had been stripped of their skin and fat, leaving muscles, tendons, nerves and some bone on display, as well as organ structures.

Luckily, no one in my class reacted too strongly either. I heard that one student passed out in another section of the class. The only thing that bothered me was the smell. Oh god, the smell was awful. The preservative used for the cadavers is probably the strongest smelling stuff a person could ever encounter. Breathing it in, I could feel it trying to invade my lungs and preserve them. There is a large fan in the room to ventilate the area, but it doesn’t help when you’re standing right over the body to examine a particular muscle.

I now must shower first thing when coming home from class, also. The smell works its way into anything porous. My clothing, my satchel, and even my hair smells like a cadaver after class.

Still, I’m really enjoying the class, and being able to examine how everything works together on a real human body is a great experience. I’m fully expecting to pass the class at this point and continue on with my studies in nursing. And I now know that smelly dead people don’t bother me, so smelly living ones can’t be that much more difficult to work with, right?

– There’s something wrong when I see a Special K commercial featuring the Wiggles song “Hot Potato” in it. My head has never snapped up to look at the TV quite so quickly. Strangely, the thing that really caught my attention was hearing the song not sung by the Wiggles. Special K advertising using Wiggles tunes – think they are going for the mommy demographic?

– We have a new head injury record: three in a single weekend. You may remember the previous two: one from a cat dish, the other from COSI. The third happened this morning, on the Ohio State University campus, as Cordelia attempted to run after me because I had the gall to attempt to go to the bathroom without her. She didn’t make it up the step in the room, and the result was forehead meeting marble step. A quarter sized, purple lump now accompanies her other head injuries. A friend describes this period of toddlerhood as the “period of time when you think the parents abuse them.” I tend to think of it as the time when their coordination just hasn’t caught up to their speed.

– And finally, I had requests to see Cordy’s dishtowel Russian yenta, so I tried to catch her in action. Sadly, I couldn’t get her to do it. However, she did grace us with a performance of several Bible characters.

I present, Moses (“Let my people go!”):

And the Virgin Mary:

Sigh.

My daughter: large for her age? Oh, yes.

Coordinated? Not so much.

Spent the afternoon at COSI again, and as usual, Cordy finds new and creative ways to injure herself.

Today, not even 60 seconds after being set free in the play area, she collides with another toddler. They were both running and not looking where they were going, and the collision knocked both to the ground. Cordy started crying, and the little boy, who was smaller than her, was fine. A little soothing and all was good as soon as she saw the water table.

Later, she was playing up in the treehouse area, making herself happy throwing balls and looking into the air jets in the floor. Larger kids came running by, flying up the two steps nearby, then running back down the two steps. Cordy climbed up the steps and walked around the next level up. I could see the wheels in her head turning, as she analyzed how those kids were getting up and down the stairs so quickly.

Now, at this point, I should mention: she’s climbed up and down these stairs before. She knows these stairs well. She’s even given herself a carpetburn on those stairs when she missed a stair while climbing once. You’d think she would have remembered that incident and given those stairs a little more respect.

But this time, she decided she didn’t need to back down the stairs, and tried to step down them. My child. Walking down the steps. My kid, with the short legs, long trunk, and gigantic head. This can’t end well, right?

It didn’t. She got one foot squarely on the first step down, but then forgot that she couldn’t put all of her weight on one leg yet.

The next part was in Mommy Terror Slow Motion (TM): the leg on the first step buckled, throwing her off balance. This allowed her large head to pitch forward, since it’s the heaviest part of her body. The back leg was off the ground now, and I watched her free fall to the next step. The free fall was then stopped short by her head, hitting and bouncing off the railing.

I knew it was going to be bad when she didn’t cry right away. Her little face got red, then purple, as she built up pressure for the scream that was about to be unleashed. And what a scream it was! It stopped one of the older boys cold in his tracks, as he snapped his head around to look at us and say, “Is she OK?”

So we left COSI with a new lump on her forehead. My daughter, the klutz. I somehow think she’s got a long life of klutziness ahead of her (like mother, like daughter). Maybe it’s time to invest in a bike helmet. And make her wear it everywhere.

Note to self: Never claim it’s a boring day when the day isn’t over yet. Never. Fate has a strange way of making you eat your words.

Case in point:

3:48 pm yesterday – Posted about my boring day

5:45 pm – Aaron, Cordy and I are having fun playing together. Cordelia is holding a metal cat food dish (don’t ask). All in one swift motion, she drops the dish and proceeds to lose her balance and fall in such a way so that her face hits the edge of the dish, full-force. She now has a nasty, red lump just outside her left eye. I’m relieved it missed her eye, but that didn’t stop the mommy guilt from making an appearance, since I was right there when it happened.

10:50-11:50 pm – We hear Cordy over the monitor. She’s awake, but strangely she’s not crying, as she normally would be when awake in the dark. She’s talking and laughing and having a conversation with – her stuffed animals? the blanket? a ghost? Amazingly she did this for an hour. Close to midnight, I decided this was far too weird for me, so I went upstairs to check on her. She was still cheery, although when I picked her up I noticed she was very warm. Feverish, even. So, a dose of Motrin and some rocking, and then she went back to bed, with only a little fuss.

5:15am – I wake up to the sound of a cat yarfing, which is probably one of the worst ways to be jolted awake. It’s close by. In fact, it’s on the bed, on me. Our cat Dante not only threw up all over the comforter, but his little cat buddy Marlowe got hit as well. Marlowe, a little surprised to wake up in vomit, raced off the bed, taking care to run across my bare back and leave a little bit of partially digested cat food for me on my shoulder. I jump up to see if Dante is OK, and put my hand right into the mess on the comforter, and my foot into the little bit that hit the floor. Lovely.

My lesson has been learned. I will never say my day is boring until the day is completely over. Ever.