Great summer trip....to the ER

Since Mr. Dog spends so many weekends working on our third world hovel house, it is always a treat when we have some project free weekend time to do all that normal family stuff. This was one of those weekends, and we'd been enjoying it. Saturday we spent hours at the park, went out to lunch and then lounged around the house. No trip to Tahiti, but a great summer day in the sun. Sunday, although we had some afternoon projects planned, we decided start the day with a family walk in the neighborhood. Get the kids and dogs out for a bit of exercise, then hit the local toy store on the way home.

We'd fed the kids, an I just needed to finish pulling myself together, so Mr.Dog deciding to take advantage of the downtime said "I'm going to do a little work outside while you eat and get dressed, then we can go." Sure, since I wasn't ready, why not use that time to make some progress? I'll tell you why, within minutes Mr. Dog reappeared gripping his bloody mangled finger. "You need to take me to the ER."
Yes, every great weekend walk starts with a trip to the ER, right? Turns out in trying to save time putting the yard waste bin out to gather up the lilac branches he'd piled in the driveway, Mr.Dog decided to put it over the fence, instead of opening our broken gate because it would be easier. Well, easier, if by easier you mean more likely to crush your finger and rip the tip off. So we packed the boys in the car, got to the hospital, got checked in and settled in. It didn't take long for the ER staff to bring crayons and coloring books for the boys, a very kind gesture on their part. However within minutes my stress level was going through the roof. I realized having both boys in the hospital rolling crayons all over the slick ER floor was only going to lead to further injury, and there was nothing to distract me from the gore of my husband's injury. As you may know Dr. Doug Ross and Dr. Luka Kovac only exist on TV, so I ushered the little troublemakers out of the hospital and over to a local coffee house with a children's play area. Mr. Dog was to call me when he could go home. Hours passed, the boys, full of chocolate milk and cookies grew bored of the play area. We packed up again and headed off to run any errand I could think of that might kill time. Bandages. We'd need bandages right?

While we were heading over to the store to stock up, Mr. Dog called, they were stitching the top of his finger back on, he had managed to break the bone in the very tip of his finger as an extra bonus, but he should be able to go soon. Unfortunately, "soon" means different things to different people. We thought 15-20 minutes, in ER speak, it means more like another hour. Most of the delay was because Mr. Dog has a penicillin allergy, so after injecting him with antibiotics they wanted him to stick around and see if he would survive the treatment. Since he was in the waiting room, we thought we'd join him, but again, little boys and hospitals don't mix. My two little monkeys decided that the waiting room chairs made great climbers and I feared further injuries, so back out to the car we went. Finally Mr Dog was cleared to go home.
Our walk, needless to say, never happened.