Sunday, March 25, 2012

Murphy came by for a visit and behaved like the crotchety old fart that he is

Some of you may know how firmly I adhere to the belief that Murphy (of the Law of the same name) thinks we are BFFs and visits me far more frequently than others. I am sure that it sounds melodramatic to most and elicits a handful of eye-rolling. For all the cynics out there, try this one on for size.
Just before I was headed back to work from my maternity leave, just after Christmas 2010, I bought Orin a medical alert bracelet. I wanted to make sure that, since he was going to be out of my care at daycare and he was bipedally mobile, his medical needs were visible to anyone in an emergency situation.
It took about two weeks for the bracelet to arrive. It was a little big - I knew it would be - and we planned to remove a couple of links, replacing them as he grew. It spent a few weeks drifting around the kitchen - sometimes setting on the island, sometimes the lazy Susan and occasionally the window sill. In this time, my in-laws came to visit and my mother-in-law tidied up the kitchen. A couple of weeks later, it dawned on me that I hadn't seen the bracelet in quite a while. I chocked it up to being tidied someplace by mother-in-law and casually looked for it/kept an eye out for it for the next couple of weeks. It really did seem to be well-hidden, whereever it was.
Weeks turned into months and the bracelet was nowhere to be found. Dave was certain that it had ended up in the trash, since Orin had just come through a phase where he was quite proud of having learned to use the garbage can and put more than a handful of non-garbage items in the can. I was just disappointed, since it was $25 down the tubes AND we didn't have, what I considered to be, an important piece of our sense of security about Orin's condition and keeping him safe. That said, I just couldn't shake the feeling that it was still somewhere in the house.
Dave's persistence that it was gone finally wore me down last week - over a year after the bracelet disappeared. In preparation for a summer of fun and our upcoming trip to Disney World, I purchased not one, but two pieces of medical jewellery for Orin - another bracelet and a dog tag in case he has an aversion to the bracelet. As I hit the submit button on Friday night, I was hit by the feeling that now that I had placed the order, we would probably find the bracelet when we start moving things downstairs into the newly-finished basement over the next couple of months.
Fast forward to this morning, I am sweeping the living room. I move the recliner, the same way I do nearly every week, and find some toys and things under it, as usual. As I lean down to pick the items up, I realise that one of them isn't a toy, but a tiny medical alert bracelet. I immediately burst into a crazy, flailing fit that Dave likens to the typical reaction to being swarmed by wasps. I fly over to him, thrust the bracelet into his hand and hiss "less than 48 hours!!!!" It takes him about 30 seconds to catch up - "you placed the order already, didn't you?" and he starts laughing. He then exclaims, "insanity dance, justified", as he clues in to what my fit had been about.
I may have to tell Murphy that he is no longer welcome in my home - it works for vampires; it can't hurt to try it.

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