The moving process proceeds, but not without some speed bumps.

Screen

Today has been a non-stop affair. As soon as I was up this morning, I went to the Jubilee grocery/hardware store in Hyrum and bought a screen installation tool and a length of screen. I came home and fixed the screen on the kitchen sliding door.

I had never installed or repaired a screen before. It's actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. I think it would have been easier if I hadn't chosen to reuse the rubber strip around the screen frame. I'm sure a new strip would have been a lot softer and easier to work with. But, it worked and now nobody can complain it's not done.

Plumbing... not for me

Part of finishing our downstairs bathroom, of course, is plumbing. Months ago (maybe years ago), my dad and I roughed in the plumbing for the hot and cold water to go to vanity sink, toilet (cold only, of course), and tub/shower. Since then, I've attached valves for the vanity sink and the toilet. To hook up the tub/shower, however, was a more complicated process — far more complicated than anything I've ever tackled before.

On Tuesday, I was hoping to get the bathroom done. It wasn't long before I realized I was being way too optimistic. At the end of the day, I vowed never to finish another bathroom during the rest of my life. There are places that advertise a complete new bathroom installation or remodel in three days or less. I'm probably closing in on three years here.

Anyway, I managed to get the copper pipes over to the valve assembly (some cheap single-handle valve) and the pipes up to the shower head and down to the faucet. But I was having trouble soldering the hot water line because there was still water in the line. The pipe won't get hot enough with a torch to melt the solder and it won't seal. I resoldered one piece of the pipe between two elbows a couple times trying to get it to seal, but every time I'd turn the water back on after, water would spray out of one of the elbow joints.

It was getting late — probably around 10 p.m. or so — so I called my parents' and asked if someone could come up and help me. I didn't really expect anyone to come up, but I was SO frustrated at that point. My brother was there and he talked to me. He told me about a trick he knew about where you shove some bread up into the pipe and it stops the water long enough for you to complete the solder weld.

I tried resoldering the piece again with the bread trick. It didn't work. I called my brother back. He told me I needed to clean the pipes real good. He suggested sandpaper. By this point, I had about three inches of solder left, so I called Chadd and begged him to go buy me some solder. While I waited for Chadd, I cleaned the ends of all the pipes and the insides of all the elbow connections. When Chadd arrived, I put everything together, inserted more bread, soldered it all up, let it cool, and turned on the water...

Steaming hot water sprayed out of the bottom of the bottom of the elbow.

Ooooh. I was pissed.

I had a job interview the next morning in Utah Valley and had almost forgotten about it. Once I remembered it, I was really freaking out. How was I going to get this stupid hot water line fixed before I left? How was I going to take a (warm) shower before I left?! How was Christine going to do anything without hot water?!

So, I decided to e-mail my interview contact and ask him if we could reschedule the interview. Christine was not happy about that. She said it was too important — more important than hot water. I then argued that I just didn't feel up to the stress of a job interview after the stress I'd dealt with working on the bathroom. This was frustrating for Christine and she said some not-nice things to me.

I didn't know what to do. Christine suggested she could call a plumber in the morning to finish the project. I thought about this for a while and decided it was a good idea.

So, I got up early Wednesday morning (with only 3-4 hours of sleep) and drove to my parents' house. There, I showered and changed into some nice clothes for my interview. Christine called a plumber who came around noon and fixed everything. Everyone came out okay in the end, I guess.

Packing in the packages we packed

Last night around 1 a.m., my brother brought his large horse trailer up and parked it in our driveway so we could fill it up with stuff.

Today, Christine's dad came up with his truck. Then, my parents came up pulling a flatbed trailer behind their Explorer. We put our couches on the flatbed and Christine's dad took the couches to Brigham City where they were going to be stored in Christine's sister's basement.

Meanwhile, we started filling the horse trailer with stuff.

Lucy's fall

Maya and Lucy thought the horse trailer was a neat thing. They ran in and and out of it. They played “jail” in it. They ate nuts in it. They drew on paper in it. It was like a big playhouse today before we started putting stuff in it.

Lucy liked to sit on the wheel fender step of the trailer and swing her feet back and forth. It was cute. I wish I had gotten video of her. She looked so content just sitting there.

Tonight, while we were loading boxes into it, we had a piece of plywood set up as a ramp so we could roll a dolly up into the trailer. The kids started going up and down the ramp with the scooter and Lucy's pink sit-on car.

They were having a lot of fun going up and down the ramp. They were yelling and laughing a lot about it — a little too much, actually. I told Maya I thought she was getting too excited and they needed to settle down. “Why?!” she asked me... like she always does every time I tell her just about anything.

Not two minutes after that, I heard Lucy crying. I turned around to see her on her back on the driveway concrete with her sit-on car under her. It looked like she had tipped back onto her back and probably hit her head. She was crying pretty hard. She was about two or three feet from the ramp, so either she fell off the back end of the trailer (which was about a 8-10 inches off the ground) or she was going down the ramp and veered off the side and lost control. In any case, she was hurt and was crying.

I ran over to her and asked her if she was okay. She was crying too hard to answer me. That told me it was more serious. I put my arms under her and pulled her up. She quit crying but she felt like she was gearing up to really wail hard. Then she leaned into me. I carried her up into the garage to the kitchen door. When I got to the door, I reached out with one hand to open the door and felt Lucy start to fall away from me. I caught her neck and shoulders with my free hand and looked at her. She was unconcious. Her eyes were half closed and her body was totally limp.

This was freaky.

I walked into the house. Christine and my parents were busy taping up boxes and packing things into boxes.

“Help!” I said loudly. It was all I could think to say. Noone responded. Either they didn't hear me or didn't think a call for “help” was worth responding to.

“Help!” I said again. No change. The continued to talk and work. I felt invisible.

“HELP!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. That caught their attention... and Lucy's too. She started to come to, her eyes opened up, and she started to move around. My mom took her and held her. There was a quick conversation and it was decided we should take her to the hospital.

I asked my parents to watch Maya while we took Lucy to the hospital. My dad followed me out to my car and said we should take Maya. “You could be gone TWO HOURS!” he said like it was clearly too much to ask to think he would watch Maya for up to two hours while we took care of Lucy.

So, I told Maya to get in the car and we left. Christine got in the back to keep Lucy awake and calm. Lucy seemed normal when we got to the hospital. The doctors and nurses thought so too and discharged her after an hour or so of observation. They also gave her a popsicle to see if she would vomit (which is a common in children after they hit the head hard enough to get a concussion). She didn't vomit.

The hospital nurse was impressed with Lucy and said she (and Maya) was very well behaved. They gave us some tips on things to watch for and told us to call if any unusual symptoms came up.

While Lucy was being examined and observed, I took Maya down to the vending machines. We got some Reeces Pieces and a couple drinks. We did some arithmetic with the candy on the table. She loves doing that and I love teaching her math.

It was about 11 p.m. when we got back home from the hospital. Christine put the girls in bed while I taped some garbage bags up around the horse trailer to keep any rain out of it.

When I came back in, I went downstairs to my office to do some more packing. As I was sitting there on the floor going through miscellaneous stuff, I started getting a little choked up. Holding Lucy's unconcious body in my arms was so weird... and scary. I just thought about how terrible it was that she got hurt bad enough to black out like that. On our way home, I thought it may have a been a bad move on my part to even move her after she got hurt. Hopefully, I won't have to deal with that again... but if I do, I hope I can be more safe.

Lucy has always seemed so fragile to me. Maya seems indestructable by contrast. Lucy is so sensitive and so tender both emotionally and physically, I can't help but worry more about her than Maya. So, it was just a hard experience for me to go through - seeing her get hurt like that.