ATVs_suck

I haven’t been all that prolific a blogger since the beginning of the year when business suddenly blew up (in a good way) but I really dropped off the planet in the last couple of weeks, didn’t I! Unfortunately, it wasn’t all wine and roses…my brother Todd was in a serious ATV accident a couple of weeks ago and after he was transported to a Denver hospital via Flight for Life, my whole family converged on the Mile High City. My brother, who recently retired after 27 years in the Navy, who made it through tours in Iraq and Afghanistan injury-free, came home to get jacked up in the woods of Colorado.  Go figure.  His list of injuries was mind-numbing: broken ankle, broken collarbone, broken neck vertebrae, broken ribs–some in two places–dislocated shoulder, and the two worst offenders…a collapsed lung and hemorrhaging on the brain.  It didn’t look pretty.

One of Todd’s best friends, who is an EMT, happened to be with him.  Luckily, Eric had a neck brace in his truck, and he borrowed a card table from a fellow camper to carry Todd to the truck bed.  They drove him to where the ambulance could reach him and the ambulance drove him to the helicopter.  If the Flight for Life nurse hadn’t inserted a chest tube before they left for the hospital, we’re told he would’ve been a goner.  Our family’s indebted to you, Bonnie!

Fortunately, there’s a happy ending to the story, but we haven’t quite gotten there yet.  Todd may or may not need surgery on his collarbone, he will need to continue doing breathing exercises to get his lung operating normally, and he’ll need to take it easy for a while but eventually he should be great.  There’s no permanent brain damage–phew!  We’re hoping he doesn’t have to stay in the hospital more than another week.

I haven’t had the mental bandwidth to keep up with blogging, but there’s so much to talk about, I have to jump back in the fray!

Season 6 of HGTV’s Design Star is ramping up for its debut next month, and they’ve announced the cast already so I’ll be researching all of those folks and doing my usual cast critique soon!  Also, Dallas designer Josef Hudson forwarded an article about this year’s show, which will feature all sorts of celeb guests and a new host.  It sounds like they’re going to borrow a page from Top Chef and elevate things a bit…at least I hope so!

And my second article hit Williams-Sonoma’s Designer Marketplace blog while I was away, so I’ll be posting that as well.

Stay tuned!