Wednesday, February 20, 2008

burn, splat, and crash

Good (and bad) things always seem to come in threes, right? My clumsiness typically knows no bounds, but this has been quite a week for me.

Last Tuesday night, while cooking dinner, attending to River, keeping the cats from attacking each other, and generally working towards world peace, I set a kitchen towel on fire. I quickly noticed the inferno and pulled it outside where a good stomping took care of the potential disaster.

A woman walking past our house looked up and smirked as though saying, I may look like I'm laughing with you, but really I'm laughing at you. At least she had the grace to follow up that look with, "I do the same thing all the time, but I never think to bring it outside."

Dinner was salvaged, but it was close.

Yesterday, I spent a good hour making pie crust from scratch, steaming and sauteeing vegetables and assembling a quiche. Thom, River and I were all happy when it finally baked to a golden brown because we were a bit behind our usual dinner schedule. I pulled the hot pan from the oven and promptly dropped the whole steaming mass on the floor. Carnage was littered around our feet: splattered egg and broken ceramic mingling with my blue kitchen rug.

I stood there in horror for a good thirty seconds before I broke into the inevitable laughter and asked Thom what kind of take-out we were going to do.

Today, as part of preparing the house for the cleaners, I attempted to get Poe (Pissy McPooperpants) locked into the downstairs bathroom and away from the action. Apparently, last week she chased the poor cleaning ladies around the kitchen, swiping ankles and hissing. She wasn't happy with the prospect of being locked away and escaped my grasp a couple times. When I finally got ahold of her in the office upstairs, she was an angry angry cat and fought me the whole way.

Halfway down the stairs, struggling to hold Miss Squirmy I slipped and fell. I bounced onto my butt, slid down a few stairs and crashed into the wall. The pain in my ankle was incredible. Right away I could tell I hadn't done damage to my back, and thanked my lucky stars as I lay facedown moaning through the pain. After a minute, I got up and felt my foot. No broken bones! But I did sustain a nasty sprain.

Luckily my sitter was still around and agreed to stay the afternoon so I wouldn't have to be on my feet with River too much. I got my foot wrapped, iced, and elevated. And after Thom came home a little early, we went to his office to pick up a brace for my ankle (thank you Wellness Professionals!).

Dinner was take out.

It'd be pretty awesome if I could avoid causing irreparable damage to my home or body in the next day or two. I get real tired of too much take out.

P.S. Poe sustained no injuries from the fall, unless a sudden bout of conscience could be considered an injury--she's been snuggling and looking guilty all evening.

4 comments:

Andy said...

You have a RUG in your kitchen?? How brave of you. No kitchen rug known to man would survive in our house.

Summer Ryan Doyle said...

Ah, it's the kind that gets thrown in the wash every week. ;)

the author said...

This is very funny, Summer. I am comforted by it though, as I am constantly have household mishaps. Sometimes my absent-mindedness scares me. I have a collection of broken glasses and cups that I want to make art out of...some kind of a statement on bachelorhood. I will never, ever allow myself to use power tools of any kind...seriously.

But I'm glad you weren't hurt.

Jonathan

Summer Ryan Doyle said...

Thanks, J-man. Thom and I are notorious glass-breakers. We could have filled a gallery with broken glass art by this point.