I guess this was bound to happen one of these days...

I have tons of stuff to update everyone on:
*how Chris' car died a sudden and violent death, de-railing our plans to buy a mega van
*how  Lucy gave herself a very unique haircut
*how I met up with my cousin and her husband and unthinkingly had them meet me at a place that was...ah, maybe a little too Baltimore 
*how our riding mower burst into flames (and how we met our local firefighters)
*the five million field trips, parties and concerts the girls have graced us with
*how we ran away from our troubles for one glorious week of relaxing and kayaking on the Outer Banks
*the end of my 18 year love affair with a pair of Birkenstocks, when they finally surrendered the ghost on the way to a Mumford and Sons concert.

Lots of stuff to talk about, and lots of videos and pictures to share (once I upload them.)  Right now, though, this is the story I am going to tell:

Today, Lucy stuck a cherry pit up her nose.

There was a moment when it was looking very, very bad.  Ruth had just woken up from a little nap on our blanket, the final tug-of-war between the school teams had just begun, and Lucy was crying frantically, frantically while the side of her nose bulged with a cherry pit that I could not see and was afraid to even try to extract.

It had taken a few minutes to even figure out what was going on;  peace and happiness were reigning one moment, and the next was chaos and Lucy began to scream that "this hurts!  This hurts!"  At first I thought she had been stung by a bee, but as I tried to calm her enough to ascertain the damage, it became clear that someone was really wrong - something unusual.  Finally, through heaving sobs, Lucy told me that there was a "cherry seed" in her nose.  And then I saw it - the bulge at the very top of her nasal passage, right by her eye.  I lifted her head back to see if I could see it in her nostril - no.  I gave a thought to my childhood friend Shannon, and tried to remember if it took actual surgery to remove carpet from her nose, or just a doctor's visit....A friend helpfully rushed to my aid and took charge of Ruth so that I could grab Lucy and run for the school nurse.

As we were nearing the door thankfully, miraculously, Lucy breathed down through her nose in such a way that the pit simply dropped right out and onto her hand.  She was still shaken, and for some reason began to cry again when I threw the #$*@ thing away, but I could handle that.  We made our way back to our blanket, and poor dazed Ruth, and spent what remained of the afternoon in a relief that was so palpable we no longer felt the heat.

She is doing just fine now, and even ate more cherries.  We've discussed heavily the need to keep the pits away from our noses and although the topic of cherries and nurses is likely to turn Lucy surly, I think we're all none the worse for wear.  What I find funny, after all that, is the fact that I did not see it coming.  I mean, who am I to think that I can breeze through six kids without a something-up-the-nose incident?  I do, at least, have enough sense to be grateful that it wasn't a worst-case-scenario-up-the-nose-incident.  Now that it is over, too, I can look forward to having one more bullet in the arsenal for when Lucy starts bringing boys around.  The boys you want sticking around are the ones who can stomach the thought of their beloved with a cherry pit stuck up her nose.