In the name of the hundred acre wood....

... I capture you!!

This is what my 4 year old son is currently shouting at my 5 year old daughter as they run the 'circle' through my computer room, living room, round the bend through the kitchen, into the toy room, down the hall, around another door post and back into the computer room.

In a Winnie the Pooh movie, Roo goes around trying to 'capture' a heffalump, a supposedly scary, big, hairy, ugly monster. What he finds instead is a cute little saggy skinned elephant, in pooh-land, called a heffalump. He takes his little lasso and throws it around the hapless little heffalump and utters those fateful words "In the name of the hundred acre wood, I capture you!" The little heffalump then goes frollicking off, with the noose around his neck, pulling roo behind him, thinking they're playing a game. He then turns and charges toward tiny Roo, knocking him over, and says something to the effect of "Now I wanna capture you!" followed by peals of laughter. The tiny Roo looks perplexed, since this is not how his capture was supposed to go. And he's not at all sure that he now wants this animal to be his prisoner, since up close he's not so scary, big, hairy or particularly ugly. In fact, he's kind of like Roo. Just a baby, lost in the woods, who wants to find his mommy, and ends up finding a playmate instead.

Is it possible that life is at all like that? That we chase after something, chase it chase it chaseitchaseitchaseit down. Mow it over, throw our lasso out to round it up, we get our prey within our grasp finally! We are the winners! We have conquered our prey! We have triumphed over the big, bad, mean foe we've been hunting.
Yes!
Now, I have my enemy in my sights.
I have my adversary in my grasp. Staring at me with their eyes. Wait a minute.
Eyes. That look like mine.
Ears. They have two ears too?
A face that their mother loved, and maybe their wife/husband/child does today.
Hands, feet, body, check check check. All present.
I have these evil doers in my grasp.
Now, what did I want with them? Why was I chasing them?



I just think that like the Pooh movie, like the Coyote forever chasing the Roadrunner, sometimes we chase after something for so long, for so hard, we forget why we started. When we do capture whatever it is we're after, we realize they're not so different than ourselves. They're doing what they can to survive, to protect their family and what they've earned. They want no more than what they've worked so hard for. They're not any different than us.


Now, what on earth inspired that? Hmmm. Maybe that requires some thought on my behalf. To be honest, there was about 3 more pages of that, that I have deleted. A rabbit trail that I didn't know my mind was interested in travelling. So I've deleted it from my page, but not from my mind.





So here we are on a Saturday night. I haven't posted in awhile, so I'll update a little. Nine days ago I got into a car accident. I was sitting at a stoplight one dreary, rainy, Thursday morning. I was slammed into from behind by a girl who was 19 years old. She did not have her lights on, did not have her windshield wipers on in pouring down rain, she was drunk and high. It was 8.30 AM. She failed the sobriety test, but passed the breathalizer, and smelled (reeked actually ) of pot, but did not have any on her, so the officer did not arrest her to my knowledge.

I went to the ER. I have some pretty serious whiplash. I've spent the week taking Motrin, Vicodin, and Flexeril. I take the Motrin in the morning, and all three at night so that I can sleep. I had a follow up with my own doctor, and she wants to see me in another 2 weeks for a follow up. It hurts to sit for too long, to stand for too long, to lie down for too long. All day every day. I have headaches most days that the Motrin doesn't fix.

James and I have an amount of money in mind for a BI (bodily injury) payment. How it goes is that we have the van fixed, at her insurance company's expense, I go to the doctor, at her insurance company's expense. When I'm feeling better, my van is repaired, and everything has resumed normalcy, then we talk about a BI claim, and how much money they're going to pay us. We have an amount in our minds. We do not think it unreasonable, given the amount of pain + suffering I've endured in the past week, the changes my husband and I have had to make, the hassle all this has caused us.

And we are forever going to be thankful that my husband was at home with my children that morning. If he had been in his normal schedule, he would've been at work, and I would've had a 2 1/2 year old and a 4 year old with me. The amount of pain I am in tells me that their injuries would've been 10 times worse.