Nothing says Welcome Home like a Type II ankle sprain that keeps you on crutches for a month. But sometimes that’s what the Universe shows up with at your house warming party.
The ink was still drying on the HUD when disaster struck.
I’ve always been a sort of do-it-yourselfer. My friends find it mildly annoying. My mother sighs, but is secretly proud (come on, where do you think I learned it?). My boyfriend finds it obnoxious.
As I troop about the house, putting things away, I remind myself now and again to drink some water, maybe eat something, but mostly I’m just unpacking.
After twelve hours, my boyfriend is staring at me like it’s making him tired just watching me.
“Heeeeey”, he says, in that gently cheerful tone you use on a horse or a dog that’s overly worked-up, “you want to sit down and watch tv with me?”
“No,” I manage to breathe from behind a teetering stack of games. I’m headed to the basement with them. I catch Aggravation on the edge of the doorframe as it attempts a daring getaway. The basement really isn’t the sort of place Aggravation wants to be. He’s used to being in the hall closet where he can be played often.
I guess he never paid attention to his name.
Hours pass. My five year old has managed to put himself to bed. My boyfriend has managed to do the same. The house is quiet but for the pitter patter of my size eleven feet going up and down the basement stairs.
Three steps up from the bottom, a stair is missing the last 2 inches of its length. I’ve been cautious of it, but that was before midnight. Now, the sleepiness of the world is oozing down through the tree branches and squeezing under doors.
I take a box in my arms and pad down the stairs…all but three of them.
I gave those last few a miss.
Somewhere between “what the…” and “oh my God am I alive?” my toes missed that last bit of stair number three. I’m not sure how I managed to keep from mashing my head on the cement floor of the basement, but I think it involved hurling the box from my arms, because it was wedged on top of the washing machine across the room from where I lay motionless.
I had images in my head of my foot sticking out the wrong way.
Feet, unlike hats, should never be worn at a roguish angle.
I lay there for a moment and then looked down. The foot was still attached. I tried to move it and was able to, but only while the Canadian Brass marched up and down my spinal cord from my ankle to my brain and back again. They invited the New York Ballet as well, and I think maybe the Royal Philharmonic.
I remembered that my cell phone was up all twelve stairs, and that my son and my boyfriend are heavy sleepers.
I wondered if I could yell loud enough to wake one or both of them. I thought maybe I would try getting up first. It worked, but not well.
I managed to get up the stairs and over to the couch, where I sat down and put my foot up.
I closed my eyes and tried to fix it with the Force, or maybe I was just tired and resting my eyes. Either way, it still hurt when I opened them.
I stood up, and noted that the Canadian Brass, New York Ballet, and the Royal Philharmonic have now been joined by Insane Clown Posse. They are playing Havergal Brian's Symphony No. 1. This,if you are not a music nerd, is the piece requiring the largest orchestra ever. It requires 190 instrument players, plus a vocal choir of 600.
I decide it might be time to go to bed.
I lay there a moment and say to my boyfriend, who is asleep, that I fell down the basement stairs and hurt my ankle. He asks if I put ice on it.
I say no.
He asks if I have taken something for the pain.
I say no.
I try to convey that it really hurts.
“well if it were me, I’d put ice on it and take something for the swelling.”
I stifle the urge to either cry or punch him or both, and instead say “I know, but it hurts too much to walk.
After a few minutes, he says, rather put-out, “well I guess I better get up and get them for you or you probably won’t talk to me again.”
Well, yes.
Luckily, I’m in too much pain to hit him with the cricket bat he keeps by his side of the bed to bash the ghosts with.
There's no ice, so it’s a bag of peas, a glass of water, and an anti-inflammatory.
After that, the blissful sleep of the new home owner.
Until morning.
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