Skinned Knees

Thanks to a little bit of water on the kitchen floor, preoccupation, and momentum I have two skinned knees and a slightly bruised ego.  I wanted to cry. Not because I was hurt, but because I was surprised and embarrassed.  Luckily, I'm okay and even though this wasn't a life threatening situation afterwards I found myself analyzing my life and what/who is important to me.  So.....Today I am grateful for my skinned knees. I'm grateful to all of the people that I work with who were genuinely concerned about me (and helped me clean the yogurt from EVERYWHERE).  I'm grateful that the mishap made me think of other people, instead of myself. I even appreciate Kay's joke about racking up the frequent flyer miles.  I am, however, still a little buggered that after pitting those black cherries and mixing them into my yougurt they ended up in the trash.  Perhaps I will try again tomorrow.

If memory serves me correctly this was the night the kids and I went downtown (on the train) to see the Train concert.  It was Earth Day, which is a perfectly good reason to spend the evening outdoors and Malina had won two of the three tickets required to provide a night out on the town. The concert itself was a blast!  Despite the over-crowding we found a nice spot of to the left of the stage where we not only had a great view of Pat Monahan, none of us got crumpled or lost, and Hunter could actually see what was going on.  After the concert we were so happy to get a spot on the train none of us noticed that we had hopped on the University Line.  It took us an extra 40 minutes to get home and we were wiped, but it was one of the best concerts (vocally) that I've ever been to.  As fun as all of that was, it isnt the memory behind these photos which prompted this entry. 

When I came across these on Malina's Facebook page I couldn't help but admire and perhaps even slightly envy the relationship between these two amazing children who call each other brother and sister.  They antagonize each other, call each other names, hide in dark corners and scare the crap out of the other one (this usually evokes near misses in the wet pants dept. whether it be from being scared or laughing so hard), yell and get annoyed by the other, and they sometime say mean and hurtful things to each other :( .  They also help each other with homework, hang out, giggle and wrestle and play together, cry for the other one when something bad happens, hug each other, console and support each other and MOST importantly they love and (usually) respect each other.  Dare I say it?  I think these two actually LIKE each other.  Perhaps I did something right in their upbringing or maybe they (we) are lucky.  Either way, it's just another reason I'm blessed and I hope to hell I can remember that the next time they are on my last nerve.