vital

Just after I wrote about spinning the shetland on Tuesday (and right after I covered the house in fleece rats) my pager went off and I rushed off to a birth.
Number of hours without sleeping: 41
Number of meals missed: 3
Total Cups of coffee drunk to avoid falling asleep standing up: 11
Number of times I fell asleep standing up anyway: 1 (but I didn’t fall down)
Baby born: one baby boy, 3200g (7lbs 2oz) pretty darned cute.
Knitting done: one sock (ok, it’s a small sock, but I was busy) I always knit, or at least cast on, something for the baby during its birth. I’ll knit the mate and take it to them at a postnatal visit.
babysock
Funniest moment: When a nurse clearing away garbage picked up the sock I had just finished (she was watching me knit it two minutes before) and asked me quite earnestly “did you want to keep this?”. “Er…yeah, I knit that” I said (sort of wondering where she was going with this). “Oh” she said, replacing it on the table, “I thought you were just knitting for fun”. I was too tired to come up with a snappy response, so I just sort of stared at her. I mean, even if I did knit just for fun, which I suppose is mostly true, why would you throw away what you knit? I imagined knitting a whole sweater, then carefully sewing all the seams, then picking it up, showing it to your family, admiring it, then crossing the room and unceremoniously dumping it in the garbage. Maybe that thought isn’t cracking you up now, but last night, sleep deprived and hopped up on lousy hospital coffee, it was hysterical.
Number of nurses who think I’m nuts for laughing hysterically to myself: just 1 (I hope)
Today will be dedicated to restoring the house and family to working order, since whenever I disappear for a day or two it all gets pretty “Lord of the Flies” pretty quickly. Joe keeps the family alive, but by the time I get back home the house is trashed and nobody can find a hairbrush or that permission form for the astronomy thing. (Mom? Mom….Mom? I know you are sleeping but if you could just tell me where my blue hairtie is…Mom?) I try to appreciate the fact that I can just walk away from my family with no notice and with no idea when I will be back, and nobody complains. Joe calls friends, family and babysitters to make it work and I try to overlook that there is a chance that there may be cheese on the living room floor, or ketchup in the bathroom when I come home. It does make me feel vital that it takes a team of adults to do half of what I do when I’m gone.
Number of adults it took to replace me in a 30 hour absence: 4 (and not one of them did the laundry)