I honestly had better get a job fairly soon (it's close, I can feel it) before I sustain any more injuries of the kind that seem to have befallen me regularly since moving to the country.
I have...
- fallen while going up the basement stairs, slamming my shin into the old wooden stairs
- fallen while coming down the upstairs stairs onto my knee (still can't kneel on it without feeling a sharp, shooting pain)
- sliced several fingers with tools and knives (not to mention a number of my fingertips simply cracking from the extremely dry conditions of winter)
- almost broken a toe or two walking into furniture and doors
- slammed my head into the corner point of the kitchen cabinet door
- been thwacked in the face, very near my eye, by tree branches
- developed a humongous blister from raking
- sustained many deep bruises from the counter corners when cutting my path a bit too closely going into and leaving the kitchen
- put my sacroiliac out of whack (probably from sleeping on an inflatable mattress for the past 10 months)
- given myself a fat, bruised and purple lip with the metal handle of the two-wheeled cart
- And...in trying to open the garage door, had it fall down, off the tracks, onto Mom's car (denting and scraping paint from the back window area of her brand new car, sigh). I had to hold the entire garage door up with my shoulder, for about 25 minutes, while bracing the full weight of the wooden door with my legs, knees bent.
This most recent of challenges happened Saturday morning. Harry, Mom and I were going to pick up the garbage strewn along the side of the road, down to the corner crossroads and back. Unfortunately, there is SO much garbage thrown from passing vehicles on this small country road, that we needed the two-wheeled cart to collect it.
The cart is stored in the garage. When I tried to open the garage door, I must have done it too fast or not taken ahold of it exactly in the middle to balance the old wooden door properly (there are a number of quirky rituals at Mom's which, if not followed precisely will result in something such as what happened then).
The door came crashing down onto Mom's car.
I burst into tears.
Then, gathering my wits, I set about trying to lift it...and hold it off her car to prevent more damage.
Harry came around the front of the garage and I told him to quickly "go get Grandma."
He ran to the back door, went inside and told Grandma that Mommy wanted her.
I waited. The weight of the door settling into my shoulder.
Harry came back.
"Did you tell Grandma that it was important, Harry?" I asked him through the tears streaming down my face.
"Tell Grandma that it's important." And off he ran...again.
Harry was excited, sensing that something was going on, just not sure what exactly.
Grandma received the message calmly, not really knowing what was going on either. Harry actually quite often has something "important" to tell her, so she unfortunately didn't really recognize the real importance of this particular message.
And she was changing her socks. Had to put on her boots and coat and hat and...
Well, it took her a little time to get out of the house and respond.
I struggled to hold the door, shifting the weight further up my shoulder. Quite a bit of time had passed by now and Harry reappeared, followed in a few more minutes by Mom.
She came in the back door of the garage, saw what was happening and quickly came around the front to help.
I told her to call Gilbert, my brother-in law. I'd just seen him, not long before that across the road in the barnyard.
And off she ran.
She returned after some time had passed. I wondered really, what was taking so long to make a quick phone call?
She explained that my sister had said that Gil was not there, but she had called her son who was out in the woods hunting turkey. She hoped that he had his cell phone with him and turned on.
That was not good news.
Mom later told me that somehow she had disconnected the phone in the kitchen (an old rotary dial) while trying to make the call and had to use her cell phone. She does not keep her cell phone turned on. So, she struggled briefly to get it on and then made the call.
She returned to the garage.
Mom tried to help me hold the door, to relieve some of the weight, but I didn't want her to get hurt so I shooed her away.
"Just let me do it, Mom. Someone will be here soon," I assured her.
But we waited. More and more time passed.
Finally, my brother-in-law pulled into the driveway (my sister had called him on his cell phone and he had returned home as quickly as was possible).
Harry had been waiting excitedly and as he saw Gil get out of his truck, he exclaimed, "Oh, Thank Goodness, you are here. We really need your help. Do you think you can help us?"
He calmly replied, "Well, let's see," as he put on his gloves one by one and slowly walked over to the garage.
He quickly got the opposite side of the door that I was holding unstuck from the board that it had settled on, the wheel back onto the track, then the side of the door I was holding followed.
Everything back in place.
Ow.
The door, the track and the wheels are quite old...really old. The wheels are worn down and are a bit too small now for the track and that's why it is so persnickety when you open and shut the door. It's why you have to follow the precise procedure of grabbing the door in the middle to lift and in doing it slowly, so as to keep the "too small" wheels on the track where they belong as it opens.
I feel horrible about Mom's car. I really do.
She said it was "O.K." and added that at least I wasn't hurt or that the door hadn't broken the back car window, but I know it bothers her.
It would bother me.
It does bother me.
Something will have to be done with the chipped paint to prevent the rust from taking hold. She has a $500 deductible. It's really not worth claiming something like that.
Sigh.
Did I say that I feel horrible?
I do.
Mom was equally understanding when I burned her living room rug.
I had been popping popcorn (to string with cranberries for the Christmas tree) and I was losing my grip on the pot as I brought it into the living room to dump the popcorn from the pot into a basket, so I quickly put it down on the rug - thinking the rug would act just like a pot holder.
I know, I know, but it seemed reasonable at the time.
What I didn't consider was that the rug had some kind of plastic component to it, and it immediately melted to the pot, in what couldn't have been more than a one-hundredth of a second...
When I quickly tried to lift the pot back up, after regaining my grip, I couldn't.
It was stuck.
Stuck to the rug.
Melted to the rug, really.
 |
| Popcorn and cranberries for the tree. |
When Mom came home that night from work, Harry met her at the back door.
"Grandma, Mommy burned your rug." he happily reported.
I know who I won't be sharing any secrets with anytime soon.
Oh, and as I'm writing this...it has started to hail.
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