Mortaine’s Blog

I’m going to be offline until Monday. Thanks for everyone’s good thoughts and wishes– my left wrist still hurts, I feel like I was in a car accident, but hopefully nothing’s broken.

Moving was not just emotionally painful today.

I woke up sore, especially my knees. Ankles were a little touchy, too. I nearly tripped on the steps going down to the bedroom, but saved myself a fall.

While packing, I had to take my shoes off because my left toes were chafing and getting blisters.

I dropped two heavy wooden shelves on my left fingers, crushing them between the shelves and the bottom of the bookcase. A small bag of ice for the fingertips, which hurt enough to make me cry out when I tried to close my hand.

Then, less than thirty minutes later, I was trying to bungee a chair into the moving truck. Naturally, I lost my grip on one end of the bungee cord and it snapped up and hit me in the face. Good news: it missed my eye. Bad news: my entire right cheek looks like someone slapped me really hard. Add more ice to the bag and hold it to my cheek.

And then, the parking lot.

John and I went out to Erik’s Deli for lunch and I dropped off my sewing machine at the repair shop at the same time. On the way back out to the car after lunch, my right foot hit the curb wrong and I tripped. Normally, this would be a stumble, maybe with me flinging my hands out to catch my fall, but no. Oh, no. I had to miss on the stumble and trip my left foot as well. I faceplanted into the asphalt.

I swear, I thought I screamed, but it turns out I was silent going down. John wasn’t looking at me when it happened, so he just noticed I hadn’t answered and he turned and saw I was on the ground.

For several seconds, I did that quick “oh my god I’m on the ground” and then I thought “FUCKING HELL” and kind of sobbed a little. John by now had realized and come to me, and since I was in my own personal whirlwind of self-pity, he got that horrible “oh my god my wife’s unconscious” sound in his voice as he said “are you okay?”

Well, I wasn’t okay, but I could hear in his voice that he needed to know the basics. “I’m okay– I’ll be okay” I mumbled. At this point, I become more aware of my body. My left wrist, which has bent at an angle that wrists probably shouldn’t bend, having taken the majority of my falling weight. And my right hand, which is underneath my left cheek, keeping my head from smacking into the pavement. Damn, those are good reflexes. “I didn’t hit my head or anything,” I mutter, and hear one of the women who was sitting at the outside tables eating lunch say “She hit her head?!” with the kind of alarm that you know is gonna be followed by a 911 call on a cell phone soon.

John reassured her, and I slowly rolled over and got up, wiping the tears from my eyes. See, he’d gotten so worried so fast, it derailed me from crying, which is what I really wanted to do right then. So anyway, I hand him the keys and hobble around the car to the passenger side. I look up and the other lunch lady says “Well, you got bonus points, but blew it on the dismount” or something. It made me laugh. Which would have been nice, if I hadn’t fallen apart sobbing as soon as the car door closed.

I am… okay. Sore. I feel like someone slammed me into a concrete floor. Oh, wait.

John is my hero. After getting me home and putting more ice in my bag and setting it on my wrist, and me washing up a bit, we headed out to the house, where he, my HERO unloaded pretty much the entire truck, including the 7 bookcases and the 15-20 boxes full of books so I wouldn’t have to put too much on my wrist. He is, truly, my hero.

I love that man.

Oh, and then I left the rather full bag of ice on the bathroom counter on accident and it melted cold water all over the bathroom counter. We thought we had a leak!