Gah. What a couple of days.

Sunday night I went to bed feeling unwell. Monday morning was no better. I was late leaving the house due to having to use the bathroom, and had a miserable ride in, only to have to duck into the ladies' room the moment I got there. I was also feeling queasy most of the morning. You know things are not right when oatmeal and yogurt upset your stomach.

By lunch time I was spoiling for a migraine. Unfortunately there's no way to treat it at work...it takes total quiet and a fairly dark room. But I had so many things I wanted to get done...I ended up skipping lunch hour and ate at my desk, just to keep going. Finally, when all that I needed was done—it was about two by then—I gathered everything up, placed some things in signature bins, and asked permission to go home.

The drive home was a trip in itself. I kept my eyes on the road in front of me trying not to be distracted by my headache, so I wasn't sure quite what was going on when smoke started billowing from the left lane as I approached Riverside Drive. Then I heard that distinctive "whoomph" that happens when two half-plastic modern cars slam into each other. A bright blue pickup truck spun into my line of view, skidding backward toward the right lanes, its side bashed in and its windshield crazed. I immediately slowed down and nudged the car safely toward the breakdown lane, but the truck stopped well away from the far right lane I had been in. For a moment, I looked at the truck, then, as people started passing me, I inched back into the lane to get past the accident scene, then pulled over again to call 911.

Man, I hope no one was too badly hurt. I didn't see the other car, but the blue truck was a mess.

By the time I got home, it felt like Ricky Ricardo was beating out "Babbaloo" on the left side of my head. I took two extra-strength Tylenol and retreated to the spare room with a fleece blanket over my head.

We had a quickie supper and later watched Antiques Roadshow and then House off the DVR, and finally Castle. Was everyone else's opening scenes on Castle messed up, or was it just the Dish Network feed? It was all background music and no dialog. I thought they were just doing the opening differently until no one was talking in the opening scene where the couple with the little girl comes home to find a dead man in the daughter's bed.

After yesterday I was anxious to get off to work this morning and finish up what I started. Not to be.

For most of her life, we have confined Willow to the kitchen/dining room area at night. She has her food and water there, and she sleeps in her crate, which is left open. But since October she's been waking us up in the middle of the night with these short, sharp "lonesome" barks. She's not barking at anything, just because she's alone. Anyway, we discovered quite accidentally when we didn't put up the gate one night that she does not bark if she's allowed free run of the entire floor. So what we've been doing is tossing books and things onto the sofa (so she doesn't try to sleep on the "warm soft puppy bed" where Mama sits; it's okay for her to sleep on "Daddy's chair," and we've found her there many a morning), putting up the larger gate at the top of the stairs so she doesn't wander downstairs, and putting the old baby gate that we used when she was a puppy across the arch to the hall that leads to the bedrooms.

On the days when we both get up together, James leaves the bedroom first. He usually puts the gate aside, but this morning, absently, he put it back in place. A few minutes later, when I came out of the bedroom, I had my hands full with my big purse, my accordion folder which is full of the hard copies of my purchase orders and all their printed backup, and my shoes (I put them on while booting up the computer to check the weather and traffic). With all that in front of me, I couldn't see that the gate was still in place. So I walked right into it, got my feet tangled in it, and fell flat out onto the floor in front of Schuyler's cage, arms still clutching bag, portfolio and shoes.

Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Unlike James' fall a few months ago, I didn't scrape or break anything. But boy, did I raise an immediate and huge "goose egg" just under my right knee (of course it's my right leg; it's always my right leg). It had struck the metal piece that adjusts the width of the baby gate. James got me a bag of ice before he left for work and I plumped it on the spot immediately; still, it spread until it was between the size of a dessert plate and a dinner plate. I kept ice on it, 15 minutes on and 15 off, for about two hours, and swallowed some ibuprofin, but the pain was pretty intense and it hurt to walk for a while, although I kept moving just so not to get stiff. Finally I just gave in and stretched out on the futon for a couple of hours, and fell asleep.

To my surprise, when I got up I could walk normally, although the bruise was rapidly purpling and it hurt when the fabric of my pants touched it. I was very encouraged. It looked like I had dodged the bullet.

Alas, the approaching evening has not been kind to my body. Now my left leg, especially the knee and below, hurts, in tandem with my right, as well as my left shoulder and elbow (the arm I was clutching my purse and portfolio in), and just under my right wrist where it appears I barked myself. Both ankles are stiff and I have a sore spot just under my left ribcage.

Basically I feel like the time I fell face-first on the concrete floor in the shipping room at Trifari. At least this time I didn't break my nose!

In the midst of an analgesic afternoon I decided to watch a couple of things I'd recorded months ago and never seen. The first was a History Channel special based upon a book I've thought about buying, Ship Ablaze!. This was the story of the side-wheeled excursion boat General Slocum, which caught fire in the East River on June 15, 1904, with a Sunday School picnic group of German-Americans aboard. All but about 300 people of the 1,300 folks aboard died because the crew was untrained in firefighting and the hoses did not work, plus the canvas life belts had rotted and broken apart, and the lifeboats were tied down. In the end, the only person who paid a price was the captain, who did the best he could to save the passengers!

What was really interesting was that there were two elderly women in the special who were children who survived the disaster. One woman died soon after she was interviewed for the documentary, in 2002, and the other, who was just a baby at the time, but remembered her mother's burn scars growing up, passed away in 2004.

Also watched Remember 1929: Year of the Great Crash, which was a British-made documentary about the "Roaring '20s" and the inevitable result. Some really nice film footage that I'd never seen before, starting with World War I battlefield scenes, including Calvin Coolidge speaking (and he really had an old time Vermont twang!) and street scenes in Harlem at the time of the Renaissance, with a super 1920s music score, from jazz to Crosby singing "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?"

Labels: accidents, health, history, sickness, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 6:59:00 PM

Comments:

Understood completely about the accident at the gate. I was riding home from work a few weeks ago, and I fell off my bike while trying to go around a big patch of ice! Considering the damage I've done to myself falling off my bike in previous years, I escaped with a goose-egged right elbow and a dented bike basket that was already banged up to begin with...but hoo boy, was I sore the next morning! :P

# posted by  Emma : 7:27:00 PM

 

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