And he didn't even get the bad guy...

Paul, Schmoo and I went to visit our cousins overnight last week, and we had a great time hanging out with them. A couple of hours before we'd planned on leaving, we were all hanging out in the front yard when our 8-year-old nephew, Danny, went to jump his BMX bike off of his new ramp and ate it on the landing, hard. He had some scrapes and bruises, but fortunately his biggest injury was just to his pride. Witnessing this seemed to make Paul nostalgic for the days when he and Carlos rode their own BMX bikes around, and while Danny went inside to get doctored up Paul started riding his bike. I admit that I goaded him on, saying that I wished I had the camera so that when he ate it I could send it in to America's Funniest Home Videos. I guess he was trying to please me, because about 15 seconds later he was lying bleeding and broken in the street on the other side of the ramp; a victim to the same crash Danny had just endured, only about twice as fast.

He tried to tough it out for a few hours, but when his shoulder had swelled enough to merit calling him Quasimodo he finally decided to give in and go to the ER. In case you were wondering where the most ghetto, most unhelpful ER in the state of California is, it's in Moreno Valley. We waited an HOUR just to get triaged!! Good idea to make people wait to get triaged in an ER, right?

Anyway, Paul came away with a grade 3 shoulder separation, which means his clavicle separated from where it meets up with the scapula (shoulder blade) at the ball of the shoulder pretty bad, as well as a mild concussion. They outfitted him with a really sexy sling to keep it immobilized and some pain killers. Orders are to keep the sling on for 3-4 weeks until it's healed, then on to some physical therapy. This means he's on the desk at work for the next month, which bummed him out completely, but we're really grateful that it wasn't worse. He hit his head pretty dang hard and that concussion could've been really bad.

Here are some pictures of the carnage, I didn't think to take any until tonight so these are five-day-old injuries, they looked a lot worse the day of.

This was a wicked looking road rash on his arm

You can barely see it now, but he had a mean scrape the size of my hand from his ear running up toward the temple

Looking melancholy in his dorky cast, he likes to hang around Oscar to make himself feel less loser-y. :)

This is the look I get most of the time: "hey mary could you please (fill in the blank) for me? I'm so pitiful, I know you'll help me out." :)

I called my dad and told him about the accident, and he chided Paul for not sucking it up until he got on duty and then having a fall so the department would pay for all of it, hahaha. Nice, dad.

love, mary