Tag Archives: beer

The Stress (Fracture) Is Really Getting To Me

limpingchickenSo I may or may not have a stress fracture in my foot.  I may or may not have had it for a few days now.  I’ve had them before, and I’m pretty sure that’s what’s going on now, but I don’t really know because…ahem…I haven’t been to the doctor.  I think I’ve blogged before about my dislike of going to the doctor.  It’s like some weird cult: they strip you down, clothe you in a shapeless one-size-reveals-everyone’s-backside garment, take your money, say a lot of strange-sounding words you don’t understand, and expect you to nod obediently.   The x-rays and scans and suction cup machines never show anything concrete, so you have to take it all on faith, and you keep getting bills for about four months.  Though, come to think of it, cults just take all your money up front, so that last part is not very cult-like.  But it is very doctor-like.  So, I’ve just been walking around on a (probably) broken foot.  It’s (probably) fine.

Actually, it’s really starting to hurt.  But I’m kind of getting into it.  “Check me out, I’m a tough guy!  I walk around on a broken bone like it’s nothing!  I chew gravel for fun and I laugh at pain!  Not only can I walk on a broken foot, but I can do it in heels–watch!  Oh, God…”  In retrospect, not the best idea in the world.  My office wife is pissed at me, mostly because she’s the one who has to drive me around while I heal.  Also, it’s getting more difficult to find work-appropriate shoes that will fit around the swelling.  And the top of my foot is starting to turn colors.  Still, I have not gone to the doctor.  I keep hoping it will go away on its own, not unlike my last few relationships.

Drinking-BeerI’ve been trying to take it easy once I get home.  Prop up my foot, maybe put a pack of frozen peas on it, crack a beer–nature’s painkiller–and watch a movie.  Except, I just realized I’m out of allergy medicine, there’s no one around to drive me to the store, and the nearest store that sells my medicine is four blocks away.  That sound you hear?  That’s my office wife laughing her ass off.  Well, maybe the non-stop sneezing will distract me from the throbbing pain in my foot.  Or maybe I’ll forget about how miserable my allergies make me when my foot falls off.   I’m all about the positive.  And yes, Office Wife, I will call the doctor tomorrow.

Oh, God.  I’m out of beer, too.  Now that’s a f*cking emergency!

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Little blind girl vs. the smoke detectors

Remember when I posted about my apartment?  I mentioned in that post that my apartment has cathedral ceilings: it makes changing bulbs for the recessed lighting a little tricky, but I manage.  So what do I come to find out but that the smoke detectors, which are my, the tenant’s, responsibility to maintain, are located right up there next to the ceiling!  Two of them!  One of them cunningly located at the very highest point of my ever-rising sloping wall!  Good joke, Management, very funny.  And I find this out when?  When they start going off and won’t stop because the batteries are running low, of course.

Now, I want to be clear about this:  little blind girls and ladders do not mix.  I can about manage a stepladder to reach the cabinet that some genius put right above the refrigerator (really? really?), but anything more and the world gets so fuzzy that I might as well be standing in a cloud, one step away from falling thousands of feet to a gruesome and very messy end.  So the smoke detectors were beeping and I ascertained that there was, in fact, no fire, no smoke, no alarm test, no nothing, definitely low batteries, and it was, naturally, Friday evening, right after Management packed up and left for the weekend.

It being Friday evening, I’d stopped for supplies on the way home, and by supplies I mean beer.  So I broke into the supplies and paced back and forth, sucking down the beer and trying to locate the smoke detectors which, until that evening, I had never thought to look for.  Having found them, and upon realizing I had no way to reach them, I assessed the situation, chugged the rest of the beer and started immediately upon another.  And here we come upon one of the magical properties of beer:  it can help you out of seemingly impossible situations.   As I slumped on the kitchen floor, clutching my bottle, both smoke detectors going full blast, an idea came to me.  Yes!  This will work!  There is nothing at all wrong with this idea!  Beer, you’re the best.

My fabulous plan entailed me, all 105 legally blind pounds of me, pushing my 5-drawer bureau across my apartment, over to my hallway, and using my stepladder to climb on top of it to reach the first smoke detector.  I then, and this is where it gets good, pushed the bureau back across the apartment over to my built-in wardrobe, put a small stool on the bureau, and used my stepladder to climb onto the bureau, then onto the stool, then onto the top of my wardrobe, from which I could just reach the highest smoke detector situated twenty feet above the floor.  There is no way I could have done this sober.  I distinctly remember the stool wobbling on my way down.  But I did it and I climbed back down, stumbled over to the couch and collapsed.  And had another beer.

The adrenaline has long since worn off by now, as has the alcohol.  But I still have my bureau wedged in between my bed and the wardrobe, and I can’t get it out because a) it’s at a really bad angle and 2) I weigh 105 pounds!  What was I thinking?  It may just have to stay that way for a while.  On the upside, I’ll be ready to go the next time the batteries in my smoke detector run low.

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