Adventures in The Sublimely Ridiculous

Charlie's car is acting up again after spending 4 days in the shop a week ago. I wake up to; "Honey, do you need your car today?" I know when that's the first thing I hear in the morning, we're off to a craptastic start. I roll reluctantly out of bed to get dressed since I have to follow him over to the repair garage, and as I do, I notice a nasty twinge in my left wrist and my right leg. Ohhh, that's right. The beginning of this craptastic day was preceded by my craptastic evening yesterday.

I had, as usual on the weekends, waited for the heat of the day to die down before taking Ellie on her walk. She does, after all, wear a black fur coat, and though taken down for a summer cut, it's still a black fur coat. I wouldn't go for a walk in the summer heat with a jacket on. So I'm certainly not going to make my dog do it either. I digress. It's now a pleasant evening, so Ellie and I head through the neighborhood toward the park. It's a gorgeous Sunday and the park is absolutely full of people. Family barbeques here, a birthday celebration there, soccer game going on the great lawn, the basketball and handball courts are full, picnic blanket laid out with a couple snuggling around the sleeping infant between them. I love it when it's like this. Ellie prances, pulling the leash further out on its retractable reel. She's happy. Life is perfect. Then...."SPLAT!" I step on a broken tree branch, my foot landing on it just so that it twists my ankle underneath me and I fall hard; face first, right into the sidewalk. Ellie thinks it's a game, turns around, runs back to me wagging her tail, and as I'm lying prostrate, begins to lick my face. My first act is to look around to see who saw, which I notice causes a mass chain reaction of necks and heads turning quickly away. Everyone in that crowded park saw me. Everyone.

I get up as fast as I can, brush my leg off, look at my torn capris, and my road-rashed knee which is now beginning to bleed, and I do that thing that George Carlin always said people do when they trip while they're walking...I turn back to look at what tripped me. Like that's gonna change anything. I look up again to see who's watching and again, I get the look-away headsnap from park spectators. My wrist, ankle, and knee hurt like hell. But not nearly as much as my ego. At least I know that one will not hurt so much tomorrow because I'll never see any of those people again. However, for right now, I can't get out of the park fast enough. When I get home, Charlie gets the first aid kit and helps to patch me up. I feel so much better after the cocktail too. I call it a night. Tomorrow will be better. Right?

Well, guess not. My husband's car isn't willing to cooperate this morning, much like my leg and wrist. I limp to the bathroom, run the appropriate brush through teeth and hair, then begin the process of plugging in my plastic "sight discs". After struggling with a process that usually takes me a nanosecond and applying both contacts, I look up in the mirror and notice that I cannot see. At all. How is it that I just put my contacts in, but I am still blind? Then I realize that I've put BOTH contacts into one eye. Shit. This is going well. I remedy the situation (I think), then swiftly turn, knocking my regular glasses off the bathroom counter. They crash to the floor, the frames going one way, and one of the lenses flying into the corner BEHIND the toilet. SHIT! I bend over to pick them up, and on the way down, I hit my head on the bathroom doorknob. DAMMIT! I sit down on the bathroom floor and start laughing. I mean, a giggle turns into a laugh, the laugh turns into tears. What the hell is going on in my world?

I put a new bandaid on my boo-boo'd knee, rummage through my sock drawer to find an ACE bandage for my aching wrist, and go out to the kitchen where Charlie is waiting to take his car to the repair garage. "Everything okay?"

"Peachy. Just peachy. Let's go."

After Charlie drops me at home and leaves for work with my car, I think to myself that now would be a great time to crawl back into bed and ignore this day. But then I think if I did that, I might miss even more sublimely ridiculous adventures today.