Oh Crap, That's Going To Hurt (Part #1)

A Three Part Tale Of Epic Clumsiness
Part #1

Last Wednesday night, I heeded the warnings of my local weather.com page and prepared for a layer of ice to blanket the land. In preparation I had shopped for our food before the onslaught of the freezing rain, ran any and all errands that would be needed for the following couple of days, and upon completion pulled the wipers up off my windshield to avoid not being able to scrape off the ice when the time came. However, even though I prepared ahead for the ice, I am still a great procrastinator at heart.

I must confess that I was not nearly as prepared when it came to toting my garbage to the curb for the pick up on Thursday morning. I, truly, am a procrastinator to the core. It has not been unknown for me to wake up at 5am on the day a 10 page paper is due and spit one out in its entirety from start to finish. And my inner mind mechanisms treat the toting of garbage in much the same way as it would a term paper- I don't really WANT to do it, so I put it off until the unavoidable moment when it's do or die- sink or swim in a sea of black garbage bags. For me, that moment is each Thursday morning at about 7am because the Garbage man shows up at my curb shortly before 8 each week.

True to form, I woke up last Thursday morning in a rush to get the garbage out. And upon opening my kitchen door, I encountered the ice.

Ice, while it can be devastating, is truly beautiful when it coats the world outside. Trees glisten and creak under its weight, snow sparkles like a vampire should never, and our fence becomes a glistening fortress. This is the exact form of beauty that accosted me as I opened my kitchen door coffee-less, bleary eyed and rushed, last Thursday morning.

I suspect that if you know me, or have read a great deal of my blog, your gears are at least spinning if your mental light bulb isn't going off like a strobe by now. Anyone who's known me for a lifetime, or a few years, or a couple of months, or a day or so, or perhaps encountered me in a grocery store, or even so much as glimpsed me from inside a jewelry store, will be able to tell you without a nanosecond of hesitation that Chas plus a glacier of ice can not ever equal anything graceful. Highly entertaining perhaps, but never graceful.

I approached the ice with this fact fully on my mind. I carefully slid my way to the garage, and began toting garbage bags to the curb. Well, technically it was more like skating- my driveway was a giant sheet of ice and it slopes down toward the street. Not only did I have the skating rink of a driveway to maneuver through, I had gravity working against me as well. Have I mentioned that I was already being extra careful? Well, I was as careful as I could be, toting 3 bags of garbage so I would only have to conquer the driveway twice.

And I made it, too. I toted those three puffy black bags of garbage to the curb like a slightly tired gazelle. Congratulating myself on my lack of broken bones, I placed my hands behind my back and headed back up the glacial incline speed skater style. And feeling quite cocky and graceful I began the trip back down to the curb.

As I reached the sidewalk and turned from the driveway ice to the sidewalk ice, I felt my whole world begin to slip out of balance. My feet magically (and yes I say magically because by that point I had forgotten that it could actually happen) lost all traction. Did I mention that I hadn't had coffee yet? My first foot hit the sidewalk ice, lost traction, and slung its self magically up into the air about head high. My other foot, being attached to the very same body that was attached to the first foot, followed suit. Before I could blink I was staring at both feet, hovering quite horizontally a couple of feet in mid air.

I think at this moment I will take a few sentences to share what one's mind actually thinks when one finds themselves a horizontal ice queen. Now mind you, it happened quite quickly, but I had time to fully think, Oh crap, no traction! Crap, no traction for that foot either! Oh, hi feet, so that's what you look like... Feet? I can see my feet? Uh-oh, crappity crap crap crap!! THIS. Is going to hurt...

And that is exactly what flew through my head on my way down to the ice encrusted Earth. Somehow, I managed to land on a bag of garbage though, feeling grateful at hearing the 'poof' sound it made when I squished the air out of it. Giving thanks for my blanket of garbage, I assessed the damage. I discovered that due to my strategic landing upon a pile of garbage, I was quite fine. Feeling relieved, I looked up.

And that was when I noticed the garbage truck across the street, with the driver inside staring at me...