good one chau....

sigh...so many things to share today!....

1) 1 month left until Dan comes home and the family is reunited!  yeah!!!

2) I am watching little Herman now - we snuggles quite well on the couch...Hannah is jealous, but oh well, it makes her a bit more snuggly as well...

3) Shooting in a downtown bar in Tuscaloosa late last night? Crazy, not many details right now, but it's a bar I've only been to once during the day, it's in an area called Temerson Square where they concentrate a lot of bars.  The city has been making a push to move the bar scene from "The Strip," which is the part of University St that is close by the UA, to downtown where there is less of a concentration of residents...

4) So...the good news is, I'm ok and on the mend!  The less good news at least yields a good story, not the best story, but a good story - not related to the shooting above (directly anyway)...sigh...

I walked the dogs last night to the park near city hall...it's a nice quiet park with not a lot of foot or car traffic.  The dogs ran around some (Herman on the leash because he is a major major flight risk) and I guess by "dogs" I mean just Herman because Hannah was totally pooped by the time we got to the park.  

While walking home, we walked by Kyle Office Solutions, just a couple blocks away from home, and spied a couple feral kittens..black as night and unsuspecting of the dogs...Hannah loves to chase them for a bit, and then they sneak into a crack that she can't get her big honking head in, so I encourage the behavior most times (bad owner...bad owner)...for whatever reason, I underestimated her excitement along with the added confusion of having Herman in on the chase...cats separate (the one Hannah was after actually ran full force into the glass door at Kyle Office Solutions, fell down, shook its head, then ran for the bushes - that was actually pretty funny and the most vivid memory I have of the whole ordeal), a split second later the dogs have circled around me in opposite directions chasing the two cats and I am down on the sidewalk, both leashes in hand.  Why did I not let go of the leashes?  I just don't know...

Glasses flew off somewhere, dogs are bewildered and standing around panting.  Thankfully my chin helped stop my fall.  I quickly got up and assessed the situation - dogs, a-ok, cats - not caught nor killed, glasses...um...somewhere...finally found after stooping over and blindly groping at shadows...blood... dripping...from....where? scrape on the left knee and left elbow, bleeding but not gushing, mild scrapes on my right hand...blood dripping onto my shirt, and skirt....head ok, blood.....ah! from the chin that broke my fall...no biggie...nothing broken, just a little sore, so I hobble home with dogs in tow, blood still dripping - yikes!  chin is a mess, but doesn't hurt too much...so I try to stop the bleeding with my t shirt sleeve and slowly get home, trying to look away when cars drive by so they don't think I'm a complete freak.  That's all anyone needs - to stumble upon a confused asian girl in the south walking a 70 lb dog and a 5 lb dog covered in blood...not the best Monday night I've had...

When I finally get home I ditch the dogs and make my way up to the stairs to start the cleaning process...flip on the light and look in the mirror - oh boy...the "small scrape" I though was on my chin is actually a 2 cm gaping wound...this is beyond bandaids and cotton swabs.  So...do I go to the emergency room? Wait until morning?  I quickly decide a chin wound is nothing I wanna mess with - there's no easy way for me to clean it myself so I say bye to the pups, grab a wash towel to stop blood from dripping all over myself, and drive to DCH (Druid City Hospital) by the University.  Adrenaline eases off a bit and things start getting sore.  Finding parking at the ER is never all that easy..maybe because you're at the ER and likely hurt, confused, panicked, emotional, etc...anyhow, I finally get myself situated and walk into the ER and I try to hide the blood covering my body as families are in the waiting room staring at me.  I fill out some paperwork and wait in a chair, texting feverishly to folks while waiting to keep myself looking busy and avoid eye contact with others...at this point it's 10pm, a lot of waiting goes on (not until about 11:30 do I find the remote for the TV in my room to check out about 10 minutes of some random TLC show - Four Houses?  Didn't watch it enough to understand the premise but something about women in Dallas being catty with each other's houses and their design techniques)...Four stitches later on my chin, and two on the elbow, and a lot of gauze and a tube of Polysporin later, I'm ready to be discharged at 12:30am...sigh..what a night..all I want to do is go home, try to clean off the blood off of my new skirt, and hit the hay.

Just before that happens I go to walk out the exit where the metal detector is and find security guards at the exit with worried faces.  I walk up and one security officer says "Can I help you Ma'am?"  confused, I just answer - "I am just trying to leave, my car is parked out in the ER parking."  The two security guards hum and ha for a bit and one tells the other "Go ahead, let her leave," then he turns around and says "Ok, once you leave the building go straight to your car and get the he-- outta here.  We have a shooter on the loose and the hospital is on lock down."  My thoughts: WTF?!?!  a shooter? like here in the hospital? like in the next county over?  Details please??  He mentioned it was in downtown so at least I knew to avoid that area.  As I walk through the doors, the "Ma'am" security guard tells me "I see you hobbling there, but once you go through these doors go straight to your car as fast as you can and go home"...yes, me the gimp...hobbling about..sigh..

I got home just fine, hearing sirens in the distance and I came home to excited pups and just hit the hay.  Just now we're getting more details about the shooting - an isolated incident - not just a random shooting, even though 17 folks were shot, thankfully no one was killed.  A few updates here...what an eventful night...

 I took multiple pictures of my various wounds...I'll probably post those up soon on an album all on its own, lest those who are queasy or eating a meal want to stay away...wounds are cool! scars even better!!

xo for now

p.s. the wound is on the underside of my chin, so hardly visible, lest Dan thinks he's got a horribly disfigured girlfriend now...