By "doing laundry," I mean to tell you that I started at 7:30 by flinging every dirty thing in the apartment into the fitted sheet that I was ALSO going to wash (along with the top sheet and piilowcases, natch), and trudging across the parking lots of the complex toward the laundry room. This being the south, I guess the developers figured that most of the year is fine for trudgery, and that the quarter-mile walk would do all us BBQ-slurping slack-jawed Skoal-dippin' yokels a world of good. I accept this, and call it "the only exercise I'm getting today."
I looked like a summertime Santa, with a ginormous bag of "something" over my shoulder encapsulated in my green sheets, which, by the way, are the MOST COMFORTABLE SHEETS EVER and come from Target and are made of tee-shirt material and I love them.... Anyhoodle, I estimate that my two loads of laundry weighed approximately 30 pounds, which, by the time the trudge was over, got to feeling much heavier than that. Let's just say that Santa-ette was ready to divest herself of the weight of responsibility of the laundry, and so deposited her coins in the machines, dumped in the soap, stuffed in the clothes/sheets/towels (mostly towels, as Ms Santa-me didn't have a one left in the house, and did NOT want to pick one out of the laundry pile to dry off with in the morning, thus spurring on the laundry-isms of the evening), and hiked back to the apartment.
Then waited 35 minutes for the cycle to finish. Then hiked back, with 10 more quarters with which to do the drying. Then hiked back to the apartment for dinner. At 8:30. Partway through which I got a call from a friend, which distracted me for a while.
OK, it distracted me until almost 10. By which time, strangely enough, it's really really dark in NC. And I still had to go get my laundry.
More hiking, then fetching, wrapping the clothing/sheets/towels (some of which were still damp) up in the Merry Green Bundle Of Laundry Day, and trudging back to the apartment. In the dark, I'm sure I should mention again.
The dark was so dark that, while distracted thinking about "stuff," I rammed my big toe straight into the curb, thinking it was one of those bike access rampy-ma-bobbers and therefore level with the parking lot surface. I tripped, almost fell over, righted myself, settled my racing heart, and then waited for the inevitable.
Stars shone in front of my eyes, and they weren't heavenly. Pain raced up my leg smack dab into my brain, and it held promises of blood and bruising, which I couldn't see, because, of course, it was dark.
I limped back to the apartment, my purposeful striding of only moments before reduced to a Festus-like galumph, accompanied by the distinct feel of toe bones shifting aginst one another that formerly had been held firmly in place.
Thankfully the shuffle back to the apartment was short, and I could dump the ding-blasted laundry on the couch while working up the nerve to look at my poor foot. Oh, as much as I like gross stuff, y'all, I do NOT care for my own blood, or the blood of anyone I love. Squicks me out. I was nervous, folks, scared of what I might see when I finally was able to look at my pedal region for evidence of trauma.
Meh - the evidence was disappointing. One small cut, two contused areas, and a toe joint that was significantly more limber than it had been when the laundry was dirty. I was heartened that the pain I felt on manipulation was not quite as bad as a broken bone could be expected to be. All was going to be well, of that I was certain.
Except,,,,,,,,
this morning.
Ow. Oh ow. Crap. The spot under the cut was all pinkish and puffy (but not hot, so no infection). The grating of bone on bone was still there. Walking was signficantly more discomfitting that it should have been. The thought of putting on a shoe was enough to make me wince. If I had to guess, I'd guess that I chipped the joint of my toe by slamming it into that curb last night, and until the chip is absorbed or knits back together with the other bits that were knocked loose, I'm going to be experiencing some techical difficulty.
Thank goodness it's summertime, is all I'm saying. Flip flops, here I come.Also, thank goodness I'm not a dude, because as I see it, if I was, I'd have to wear shoes anyhow, because dudes don't wear flip flops to a corporate job.
Sometimes, just SOMETIMES, it pays to be a girl. Even a terribly clumsy one.
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Tomorrow, stories about pooping!
I was gonna do it today, but ran a little long on the broken toe thing. I promise you, you'll want to come back on the morrow to check out what's going on in the scatological part of my brain.
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