Household Items Are Hazardous to Your Health

So there I sat last night, minding my own business and doing a crossword puzzle, when it happened.

In grand style.

With all the grace of a 6'4" cross-dresser in 6" stilleto fetish boots. And all the beauty of that same cross-dresser in fishnet stockings and a hot pink boa.

I fell asleep while doing the aforementioned crossword puzzle, toppled forward off the pot, and woke up with a jolt.

With my face mashed against the wall, the handle of the plunger sticking in my rib cage and under my boob, my legs half in the tub and half against the sliding glass doors on the tub, and my ass sticking straight up in the air. All while I was contorted like a pretzel.

Hubster heard the enormous crash and came running, but it was too late. I was already stuck like a swollen cork in a wine bottle.

You have to understand something about me and bathrooms. Ever since I was a kid, I've had this thing about being alone. And I do mean ALONE. If I heard a single noise in the hall, all action stopped dead. When I got married to my first husband, I'd make him stay on one floor of the house and I'd go on the other just to use the bathroom. If he was being funny, he'd wiggle his fingers under the door and growl at me. That was enough to keep me from entering a bathroom at all if he was within a mile of the house. Even when I married Hubster, it took 15 years for me to finally be able to use the bathroom with him on the same level of the house (or, in the case of our old house, in the same wing - it was a one-story with two wings and a center section). Part of that phobia remains with me to this day. For instance, I can barely use a public restroom, and god forbid if I have to use the bathroom when we're at someone's house. I'd rather die.

And I damn near did. If that plunger had a slightly sharper end or had rammed me in another place...

Like my eyes, you filthy-minded people. Another place could have been fun.

Anyway, he had to come unravel me, which was no small chore. I'm lucky I didn't break my nose, what with all that weight careening out of control and smacking my face into the wall.

Later that night, I walked straight into the post that used to be a wall, but which some previous owner of the house had cut down until it was a mere pillar. I didn't see it.

Then I was packing up an order at the dining room table. All our furniture is sized for a very large house, which means that our table barely fits in here. If you look at our front room, it looks like a tiny box crammed full of stuff. Nothing matches, because we've got bits of furniture from all different rooms stuck in here. My poor macaw has been living with my mother for a year because I don't have the room for him. He's very social and needs to be in the same room with us. Hubster is supposed to build a platform for him, but you know how that goes. Anyway, when these houses were originally built, the dining room had a wall with a door that led outside to a small covered area. On the other side of that small covered area was the garage with a door leading into it. Someone else took that small outdoor area, made it part of the house, and converted part of the garage into a bathroom (not up to code, I suspect), and then built off the back of the house into the backyard. That's my studio. Of course, this house has an old cast-iron grate in the floor which supplies all the heat for the house. My studio has neither heat nor A/C. I don't need to tell you what that means. So where this formerly outdoor covered used to be is now a weird square that you step down into, and then you step down again into this tiny hallway that my studio is off of; if you keep going, you turn left (the other bathroom is on your left then) and into the garage (which is now too small to hold even a Mini because of the bathroom which juts out into it). This little ledge that the formerly outdoor area has is part of the dining room floor. If you happen to be the unlucky person who is sitting at that end of the dining room and push your chair back, chances are good that you're going to go flying backward. That's where I sit to pack orders, since my studio is packed wall to ceiling with boxes, and my computer sits at the other end of the table. You can picture what's coming next.

I finished the order, weighed it, and pushed my chair back so I could stand up and go the computer to print out the postage label. I managed to push the chair back just fine. What wasn't fine is that I wasn't completely out of the chair when it went over the ledge. I went over the ledge with it and landed flat on my back with my legs sticking straight up in the air and my head on the floor. I moved my eyes to the right and saw the nice doodad on the back of the chair an inch away. Oh shit.

Once again, Hubster came and untangled me. This time, I wasn't so lucky. I hurt myself, but not on the outside - somewhere inside where I couldn't quite pinpoint it. Suffice it to say that I limped a lot and had a hard time sitting down, even in the Monster. And standing? Forget it.

I figured that was enough mayhem for one day and that I would be safe for the rest of the evening. I should know better than to assume anything.

Hubster had gone to sleep, so I was on my own. All I was doing was knitting while curled up in the Monster. How on earth could anything happen?

How indeed.

This time, I reached forward to pick up my pattern, which had fluttered down to the floor when a gust of wind hit it. Not a problem, right?

Not unless you lose your balance and fall forward flat on your face. On a hardwood floor. And then you can't get up because half of you is stuck on the floor and the other half is stuck in the chair.

That one took me a good 15 minutes to get myself out of.

It's the medication. It has to be. I was a star athlete in high school - even lettered in softball. I can swim for miles with the grace of a dolphin. I can even turn the radio on without electrocuting myself.

But something has happened, and whether it's the meds, a conspiracy of everything in this house to kill me because I hate living here, or just getting older, I don't know.

But something has happened, and I don't like it.

I think I'll stick to activities like gambling, where all I have to do is feed money into a slot and whale away on a button.

But I can't play blackjack anymore.

I might slice open my finger on the edge of the cards.