Sunday, Bruise-y Sunday

Sunday, August 20th started out as a pretty great day. The kids woke us up by protecting the world from evil, thanks to the VRBO host's kids' collection of costumes,

Spider Linc, Spider Linc!

Sylvie Stark

and then we set off downtown to enjoy our last day in Annecy. The view from the little canals along the main park was absolutely gorgeous. I had to force myself to sit by the water and enjoy said view, because the kids were taking a ride on a carousel that was so fast it was making me dizzy from the ground!

Look at all the little boats!

Le French swan has no interest in your pathetic tourist offerings. 

 Apparently Sylvia was a little dizzy too, but her brother helped with that.

 We had a laugh at "Le Bananas" Stand, and I am deeply ashamed to admit that Josh made the Arrested Development joke before I thought of it.

 And then we all enjoyed the enormous, precarious wooden barge-swings near the waterfront. Sylvia even got to do her favorite French activity of all - peeing in the grass when there are no bathrooms available. No picture of that one!

 Then after some time at the small, crowded, Lord of the Flies style playground, we decided to walk to lunch. On the way we found a little piece of home, which was of course closed on a Sunday.

 Then we had a noon reservation for lunch at a place known for its raclette and fondue. One last taste of savoyard cuisine before our planned departure for Avignon the following day!

 Surprisingly, the fondue was pretty terrible. Josh and I shared one, and it was not emulsified at all, rather the pot contained a big hunk of melted cheese, surrounded by watery wine sauce that wouldn't mix together. The first pot even had pieces of red plastic floating in it, so they had to make us a new one.

Luckily, the kids' raclette was good enough to make up for it! Rather than bringing a searing hot raclette machine to the table, at this place they melt the cheese inside the restaurant constantly, bringing you a small plate of the fresh stuff every time you're ready for it. They both had their fill, and then amused themselves trying to keep a fly off of the rest.

 After lunch, Lincoln resumed his self-appointed sister-carrying duties, and we headed back to the apartment to do some more packing and change into our swimsuits.

 We walked back to the waterfront park on our way to rent a motorboat and enjoy some final Alpine views - and the day did not disappoint!

Lincoln is the little green dot; Sylvia is the tinier purple dot to his left.

 This was our view of Sylvia, essentially every single time we went to a big park. The minute her feet hit the grass, she took off running at top speed, relishing the chance to be first and fastest when her brother didn't try to keep up. Trying to embrace the European, devil-may-care attitude of childrearing, we allowed this. Within reason.

 At the waterfront, we gave an ID and waited for a boat to be ready. Well, we thought we'd just wait, except that they ushered us onto a bench next to the dock. The bench is actually ON the dock, above the water, and has a pretty sizable gap between the seat and the back - exactly the size, as it turns out, of Sylvia.

When we sat down on the bench, she scooted her little bottom back while leaning her body forward a bit, and hit juuuuust the right angle and velocity that she rocketed THROUGH the gap in the bench and into the lake below! (Let me pause a moment to tell you that the water in this part of the lake is about eighteen inches deep with a soft, sandy bottom. She was not in serious danger). And somehow, in one of those "adrenaline-fueled mother lifts car off of her child" moments, my instincts took over and I SHOT my arm over and grabbed her by the ankle at the last possible moment, holding her dangling upside down over the water before pulling her back through the ridiculous gap, only her hair and hat having touched the lake! Josh even managed to retrieve the hat.

Sylvia was very upset, of course, from the shock of the fall and the scrape to the back of the leg that resulted from my quick retrieval. A few minutes of hugs - during which I had to struggle not to laugh uproariously at the absurdity of the whole thing - and a few minutes in the cold lake water had her back to normal. The boat rental people must have thought we were a total mess.

At last we received the keys to a small, puttering motorboat that doesn't require an operator's license. And after what I can only describe as a painfully inadequate lesson in boat-driving, we were off!

We had the. best. time. The kids each got to pilot the boat a couple of times, in between Lincoln's pretending to be scared and Sylvia's life jacket-impaired snuggles with me. We did a Facebook Live video for the first time, showing our friends and family the gorgeous views and wishing they could be here with us. And I took a couple quick videos of the kids' captaining skills.

Finally, after it had been about an hour, we decided to head back to the dock and exchange the power boat for a small, safe, cheaper "pedalo," or pedal boat. We'd had one earlier in the week - the adults power it with foot pedals and steer with a rudder while the kids ride. Then it's easy to jump off and swim around in the shallow water, which they'd been asking to do all day. We managed to steer the big power boat back to the dock, pay, and switch into the pedalo without incident.

And that's the last time "without incident" would be said for the day. We pedaled out into the shallows, found a quiet spot, and prepared to swim. Josh stood up first so he could help the kids into the water and, in a freak accident, slipped on a water spot and fell off the boat.

That wouldn't be so bad - I bet we'd still be laughing about it - except that his left foot slid at a horribly unfortunate angle and became trapped underneath the pedals. His body was fully off the boat but his leg was wedged in tightly, leading to a terrible strain on his ankle and knee. The pain was brutal, and it showed. The kids were terrified and it took me...a few seconds? Half a minute?...what felt like an hour to throw myself over the center console, take his hand, and pull him up high enough to free his leg. All of a sudden Josh was in the water, the kids and I were in shock, and our first summer in France had taken a really shitty turn.

The details of what happened next are pretty boring, so I'll be brief - Josh helped the kids swim for a minute or two but Lincoln was crying the whole time, from shock and fear at seeing his dad so badly hurt. So they climbed back up and I pedaled us to the dock. Somewhere in there I wrenched my back, so both of us adults were limping back to the apartment. We bought the kids ice cream we'd promised earlier in the day, but Lincoln was too upset to enjoy it - he didn't stop crying for more than a few minutes from about four or five p.m. when it happened until he fell asleep after 9:00. I scrounged up some dinner for the kids and then called the VRBO host Thierry for help finding an emergency room - which of course Josh had to walk to, uphill - and dropped him off there while I brought the kids back 'home' to bed.

The knee wasn't broken, but the MCL, the ligament that runs along the inside of the knee, is completely severed and may require surgery. It bruised horribly for weeks - purple verging on black in huge patches from heel to mid-thigh. The E.R. at the Clinique Generale d'Annecy was pretty useless, prescribing only a small, soft brace and 500mg Tylenol capsules. It's been almost a month now since this happened, and Josh still isn't cleared to drive, or walk much of a distance, or climb stairs except when strictly necessary. We've gotten a pretty stark view of socialized medicine, the good and the bad, and we're about to see more of it when we learn this week whether he needs surgery.

The best day of our vacation turned into an absolute disaster in an instant. But despite that, the next day we'd drive to Avignon and do our best to have some more fun. As you can imagine, the results were mixed!