Spectacular Accidents

Over the past week, I’ve met with some unfortunate accidents involving roller-skates and water. First, last Friday, I took Sofia and a friend roller skating at a large skating rink. I should have suspected trouble when they didn’t have my size in skates and had to give me men’s skates. I had just helped the girls get out of the rink to get a drink of water when a teenage boy slammed into my legs from behind and knocked them completely out from under me. I tried to break my fall with my hands, so I bent my wrists backward and they were the first thing to hit the floor, followed by my tail bone. I was stunned for a moment, but then got myself up and told the girls it was nothing so they wouldn’t be scared to continue. As we skated a little more, though, my wrists swelled up and my watch popped off, and Sofia said, “Mom, why are you so sweaty?” I decided we had better leave. I went to urgent care and confirmed my wrists were just sprained and not broken. However, they still wrapped them up tightly and told me to keep them like that for at least 3 days.

Wrists Day 5

At urgent care, at least 5 different people asked me what had “really” happened. Rudy thinks they wanted to make sure I got the story straight each time because they suspected he had abused me in some way. In addition, two nights later, I was picking up Sofia from gymnastics when a man asked me if I had tried to slit my wrists (he was trying to be funny). I turned to him and said, “Yes, but it didn’t work and I didn’t want my kid to miss gymnastics practice, so here I am.” He got up and moved a few seats away. I suppose it is strange to think of a woman my age roller-skating, falling, and hurting both wrists. Then again, if you know me, this is really no surprise. I suspected Rudy was embarrassed going places with me over the weekend with the wrapped up wrists, but he said he was more concerned about the fact that I couldn’t really wash my hands well for several days.

Later in the week, Sofia got sick with some virus (probably contracted it at the disgusting skating rink!) and it gave her very high fevers. One night I was waiting up until 1 am so I could give her another dose of Tylenol. I found I didn’t have much to do, or couldn’t concentrate long enough to do anything, so I was just kind of pacing around when I heard a dripping sound. I determined it was coming from the water cooler in our home office. I knelt down in front of it and found the leak – it was coming from the spot where the spigot (weird spelling, right? should I say faucet?) connects to the base of the water cooler. I gently touched the spigot to see if I could press it in a little to stop the leak, but the spigot just came right out of the base into my hands. All 5 gallons of water in the cooler poured out of the hole onto my face, my chest, my entire body. I didn’t even have the sense to stand up and try to stop it because I was so stunned. At the very end of the flow, I grabbed a cup sitting nearby and caught the remaining 12 oz, but the entire floor was flooded by that point. I guess I shouldn’t try to handle home related repairs in the future. The best I can say about this incident is that cleaning it up gave me something to do while I waited for 1 am to roll around!

My soaked leg, the floor, and the sad cup that didn’t help.

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