Party Injury

When you say a party begins at 6pm, it never fails that some guests will arrive at 5:30, maybe even 5pm. If enough guests do this, your party is actually starting at 5pm.

Note- it will not end an hour earlier; you just have less time than you think to get that shower you've been putting off.

And so that's what happened. More than an hour before the party, guests began arriving. At 5pm, I ignored the party guests and jumped in the shower. I dried my hair, got halfway dressed, and began putting on my make-up. I don't usually wear much make-up anymore, but since lots of people would be taking pictures, I figured make-up was a good idea.
While applying mascara to one side, I heard my 10 yr old daughter let out a loud, long scream. I paused... I listened. Another scream, as loud and long as the first. Mascara wand frozen in mid-air, I listened. Another scream. Yup, she's hurt.
I replaced the mascara wand, grabbed a shirt and headed upstairs. The kids had been playing the "Door Game", where some kids go into a room, and the younger sibling tries to come in, and the older kids slam the door in their faces. Or, in my daughter's case, they slam the door on her finger. Hard. By the time I got to her, the nail was already deeply bruised underneath, and she was icing it. She was crying so hard I thought she might vomit.
I was well aware that to calm her down properly was going to take a while, and it was already 5:40pm.
In 20 minutes, the rest of the guests would be arriving.
And I only had half my face done!
So I told my daughter to pick up her ice and follow me. I told her the best place to calm down would be on my bed.
As she cried tears and snot all over Ron's pillow, I finished my make-up.
After getting her breathing under control, I told her to tell me about a happy time she remembered, the happiest. She told about going to Sarasota and feeling the sun on her skin, and going to Siesta Key Beach and Connor digging the biggest hole in the sand she'd ever seen. She told me how he'd had to reach farther and farther into the hole to make it bigger.

"He dug for hours and hours!"

As I was blotting my lipstick, I had a calm and happy daughter, and party guests were arriving. My daughter's friend came in and sat on the bed with her, and told her lots of "It could be worse!" stories. And the day was fine, after all.