Very Nearly Bits 'n' Pieces

I've had lots of little stories swirling around, but they've been driven out of my mind by a visit from Jethro's parents yesterday.  His sister told us his mom has developed osteoporosis, and when I saw her she looked so frail and weak that I got extremely frightened.  She hasn't looked great for the past year, but it was always late at night when we'd see her and I thought she was just tired from work. She works relentlessly.  But yesterday she looked worse then when I'd seen her at night.  She's had some testing done, but Jethro wants them to do more and the trick is getting his parents and their doctor (who has known Jethro since childhood) to take him seriously.  He thinks her bone loss is happening too fast for it to be just regular osteoporosis and what he says makes sense.  But the old folks, which includes his mom's doctor, think he's just a youngster.  Perhaps if we frame it as "teaching the young upstart a lesson" we can get them to order the necessary tests.

And I'm sure it didn't help her when she saw Gwennie take a header from her bike yesterday.  I know it didn't do anything good for me.  Gwen was showing off and riding much faster than she should have been.  I'm not sure exactly what happened but I think she braked with the hand brakes which only stopped the front wheel, which meant that she (and the back wheel) went ass over tea kettle (in a whirling frenzy of madly gyrating bony little knees and elbows) - in midair - right over the front wheel.  She landed headfirst, somersaulted, and skidded a little on her back.  From a more detached point of view, it was one of the most spectacular bike crashes I've ever seen.  

I've always secretly thought that bike helmets were kind of stupid and why couldn't kids just be kids the way I was a kid, but that hasn't stopped me from religiously making sure that Gwennie and Emma wear them.  Maybe maternal instinct won out.  Or maybe, deep down, I just know that Gwennie isn't a kid the way I or anyone else was a kid and that she needs the extra protection.  I don't even want to speculate what kind of kid she might have been if she hadn't been wearing her helmet.  I heard the sound it made when it hit the concrete.

Anyway, she got a pretty decent scrape on her back and some little ones on her elbows and I think there was a little one on her nose, but that's it.  She was really really lucky.  And my heart has returned to it's usual verge-of-heart-attack state.