Things are breaking around here. We haven’t had the best week. It started Friday night, when Tessa broke her ankle during the third quarter of the varsity basketball game. She got the charge call, but quite possibly ended her season. The entire game, she was getting tossed around like a rag doll. This was a game of street ball, and our girls needed a lesson in how to survive. To say the other team was rowdy would be an understatement. There was actually a fence between the visiting team and home team seating. As in, a chain link fence…in the bleachers. Can’t say I’ve seen a fence in indoor bleachers before, but maybe I just wasn’t paying attention. Anytime a call went their way, the crowd on the other side of the fence erupted in a rather overzealous way. I felt like our team just didn’t have the proper training to cheer for this game. And, I knew why the fence was there.

Anyway, by the third quarter, we were up, but getting a little beat up. Tessa had been on the bench for the entire second quarter because she had amassed three fouls in the first quarter. Just for the record, two of the fouls were a little shocking that they were called against Tessa, as she went hurling through the air. Anyway, Tessa came back in ready to go! She was everywhere. She got tossed several yards when a girl on the other team tried to rip the ball out of Tessa’s hands. Tessa tried to steal it. It ended up a jump ball, but not before the girl swung the ball around hard enough to toss Tessa. By the way, Tessa had the ball at the end of that. Shortly after that jump ball came the charge call. Tessa beat the girl down the court and set herself up under the basket. The other player outweighed Tessa by a good 40 pounds. Tessa went down after a huge collision, with the other player landing on top of her. A couple other players got bounced around too. As the pileup cleared up, Tessa didn’t move. There is no parent training for the moment when your kid is the one that doesn’t get up. Involuntarily, I got up. I went to the edge of my fenced-in area. I remember finding it suddenly tough to breathe. Tessa goes down plenty, but she usually bounces up better than the Michelin man. I didn’t know that I would bounce up when she didn’t. I wouldn’t even have remembered standing if I wasn’t up against a rather unusual mid-bleacher chain-link fence. The fence did make me wonder what goes on at these games.

Everyone cheered as she hobbled off the court, basically being carried by the other team’s trainer and our coach. I sat back down, unsure of my role. After a minute, I ran around the court to sit by Tessa. Nobody, including the trainer, thought it was broken. We thought it was a bad sprain. Tessa was in too good a mood for it to be broken. I decided to take her to the hospital the next day just in case. Travis no longer argues with me on this point, as he has a perfect failing record on predicting Tessa’s broken bones. He is 0 for 3. So now she has a cute blue cast for six weeks, maybe more. The Doctor said that he was surprised it wasn’t worse. The type of avulsion fracture she has is usually accompanied by a much worse twist fracture. I’m glad she didn’t get that.

The other thing broken is Crappy the Car (the Volkswagen CC, for those not in the know). Travis replaced the spark plugs because that is what the diagnostic thingy told him to do. He was convince that that would fix it because it clearly needed to be done. But that pesky check engine light went on again. So now we are waiting for the ignition coils he ordered to come in because the magical diagnostic thingy said that that is the next thing we should try. Good thing the trusty old 2003 Acura is suddenly available for him to take to work. That’s the drag about breaking your right ankle. No driving. Oh, there will be plenty of driving getting done, but I will be the one doing all of it. Just like the days of yesteryear. And Crappy the Car never surprises me with a check engine light. Sometimes he surprises me by not having that light on. Hey, it’s been running great since we spent $1400 in mid-September. That’s two months of unspoiled use. I should appreciate that. Let’s hope the ignition coils fix the problem.