Falling

So today I fell down a flight of stairs, quite literally. My foot came off the top step and suddenly it was like being on the ice sheets on the streets of Farthest North Ice-Free Port, Alaska (ironic, isn't it? Ice-free port but no ice-free streets, but I digress.). And I went down, pretty much on my vertebrae, bumping along trying to stop myself with my thigh and my wrist while, most stupidly, trying not to break the glass items in my hand (note to self: throw them down and let them shatter! They are easier to replace then a back!). Coming at long last to a stop I sat up gingerly and promptly almost blacked out. Head between my knees. Breathe. Etc. Now I have a Frisbee sized bruise on my lower vertebrae & back that fits nicely right where the fabric of my waistline wants to rub and it is swollen and sore and the waistline doesn't help. I have a football sized bruise on my thigh.

Gorgeous red rocks, 2008

And I keep thinking...I've got to learn to stop being such a klutz. This is brought into stark relief by the fact that the Marlboro man fell down a flight of stairs in my sister's house the same day and shattered his ankle and is now in the rehabilitation part of the hospital. You can majorly damage yourself falling down - downs stairs or otherwise.

Desert Mountain Sheep, 2008

I went to lovely the lovely Peach Growing City in the Shadow of a Mesa (I'm taking lessons from Jo(e) on pseudonymous place names) for the weekend to visit with old friends and new and we were going on a lovely red rock desert hike when my new friend gasped and asked "are those bruises?" on my legs. I looked down, and sure enough there were - there always are because I am forever running into things or knocking things down. Luckily I'm only a klutz within man made structures - out in the wilderness I look much more like these desert mountain sheep we saw (pictured), hence my graduate school nickname of "mountain goat". I sure don't feel like one today though.