Surgery, Carpet, and the Center of the Known Universe

Where to begin with this strange tale?

It was a week after Bennett's big chin accident. The last day of school. Keith had agreed to take his single, lone, solitary (and somewhat annoying) scout on a camp out. Keith is an incredible scout master, no doubt. But all that time spent on one single kid? Who would rather play video games than start fires or tie knots? Not Keith's number one idea of fun. Bennett usually tags along with Keith on all scout related things but that night had social affairs. He had been invited to an end of school party and had no intention of missing it. So Leah gladly filled in on the scout duties.

The night went just fine and Keith's plan was to split as early in the morning as possible. But, you see, there was a perfect willow tree nearby. And if you've ever been out with Keith when he finds a willow tree, you would know that a good willow tree makes awesome whistles. So before he and Leah came home, he pulled out his pocket knife and carved a couple of whistles. Somewhere in there--get ready to cringe--Keith got bumped by one of his campers and his knife ended up taking a dime size chunk off the knuckle of his left pointer finger. Which, for a surgeon, just so happens to be a pretty important finger.

When they got home, Leah ran inside to tell me that "daddy cut off him finger!" I'm sure I don't even need to say that I pretty much freaked out. But Keith was cool as could be. He came inside, corrected Leah's slight exaggeration and quickly got his medical kit out. He then went ahead and skin grafted himself right there in our dining room. How's that for mad skillz??? He had managed to save his piece of skin from his knife blade and brought it home for a little surgery.

Seriously? EEEK!!!!

It was really bloody and hard to watch--but like any good train wreck, I watched in amazement. I kept telling him that he really should have someone with TWO HANDS fixing him but he pretended to not even hear my crazy panicked ramblings. (Fast forward the tale a couple weeks: his finger healed perfectly. I'm telling you, this man can literally fix ANYTHING!! He's the best there is fer sure.)

So, this whole surgery in the dining room really messed up our Saturday plans. Not that we had any big plans to begin with. But still. Total downer. So what else was there to do? We rented a carpet cleaner and gave our carpet a fresh shampoo. It was all we could come up with.

The kids had a birthday party to go to that afternoon so I left Keith at home to clean the house. (I'm nice like that.) When I came home a couple hours later, the carpets were clean and Keith had a crazy look in his eye. He announced that he was leaving town and anyone that wanted to go with him was welcome to pack a bag and get ready. He needed some fresh air and a quick recharge of the batteries. He needed to get outta dodge and forget about his splinted finger.

He was headed to The Center of the Known Universe.

And for anyone that climbs rocks, that is of course Yosemite.

To be continued....