I Can Get You a Toe by 3 O'Clock This Afternoon

After a long day of meetings on Tuesday, I was pleasantly surprised by how well the rest of the day went: my kids were home alone all day and they did all their chores, supervised the dog, played together without argument, and willingly did some reading; Ian had a good soccer practice-- he distributed the ball to one-and-all, hustled, and set a good example in the drills for the younger players-- and then we watched the absolutely perfect finale to Detectorists and decided it was a fantastic and fulfilling ending to a rare and brilliant series, noted that there is a metal detecting club in New Jersey (Deep Search Metal Detecting Club . . . The Deep Searchers would certainly get along with the Dirt Sharks) and we all started making our way up to bed . . . moments, while I was turning the lights off downstairs, I heard a pained screaming not in all in character of the previous events, ran up the stairs and discovered that Ian had jumped off Alex's bed and gotten his ring toe caught in the hole of the laundry basket, which resulted in his nail being ripped from the bed, a wicked cut along the rest of the toe, and a lot of crying . . . I thought I had previously enacted the rule: no one is allowed to get injured right before bed-time, but obviously I hadn't reinforced it enough (like the one about hanging your wet towel up after showering) and this infraction-- which was particularly close to bed-time on the night before the first day of school for Cat and I-- needed a lot of tending and care, including a soak in the tub, some minor surgery on the nail, and some staunching and bandaging . . . so I'm going to really reiterate the rule tonight and remind everyone that the curfew on injuries that need first-aid is 7:45 PM.