A Motherly Sacrifice Gone Painfully Awry

For my birthday last week, Jeffrey got me a pair of black rubber drugstore shape-up type shoes.  You know, the ones with the big, curving soles that will apparently tone your butt while you walk around picking up dirty socks and wiping noses?  Yeah, those.  I didn't ASK for a pair of those, since I believe that they are fundamentally ugly (I'm not a big soled type of gal, which ruins me for espadrilles, which apparently means I can't be fashionable this summer, which honestly is not that big of a shockeroodle), but when I saw these at the drugstore when we were shopping for our vacation, they looked like a combination of Crocs (those awful rubber shoes with holes that are good for gardening and beaching) and Mary Janes, so I thought they were cute.  And Will remembered and Jeffrey insisted on getting me a pair of them.

I was pleased that Will had remembered I liked them, although both of us were unpleasantly surprised about the largeness of the soles.  So I wore them around the house the night before vacation and then pretty much ignored them the entire time we were on the island, mainly because...well, I'm a clumsy person.  It's true.  How I managed to be a dancer in high school is beyond me, because honestly, I have a hard time walking across a room without tripping or banging into something large and multi-cornered.  The idea of walking in the sand on those large rocking chair soles was laughable.  I wore my flipflops, y'all.  It was glorious.

We got back on Saturday night, an evening spent hazily unpacking and trying to get used to not living on island time.  I wonder why that feeling of relaxation and well-being disappears after vacation?  The kids drank lemonade that night for supper, because I couldn't face a drive to the store to buy milk.  They had milk at breakfast and I gave them yogurt cups for dessert, so come ON, people.  They had calcium.  I promise.

Sunday morning, I woke up early to go to the store and get some milk and the Sunday paper.  I put on the shoes Jeffrey got me because I wanted him to think I liked them.  The sacrifices we make for the kidlets, y'all.  They will earn us sainthood, I'm pretty sure.  When I got back the kids were up, but Will wasn't, which was probably the reason why I didn't take my shoes off when I walked in the door as I usually did:  I hit the ground parenting.  This would come back to haunt me fairly quickly, when I hit the ground in actuality.  As I walked into the kitchen to get some cereal going, the treacherous birthday shoes decided to take advantage of my innate clumsiness and settled themselves into a groove in the Slippery Ice Rink of Hell (otherwise known as my kitchen floor) while my body went forward.  What happened next seemed to happen in a bubble of silent and perfect pain:  my ankle turned so violently that things inside it crunched and crackled and all of my weight came down on it and I fell like a stone, banging my elbow on the cabinet as I did and luckily landing mostly on the carpet of my dining room floor.  And then I commenced to screaming.

Y'all.  I have a fairly high tolerance for pain.  I laugh at paper cuts.  I refuse medication for all but the worst of headaches.  I made it through River's birth without an epidural--which is why I can tell you that in the four years since her birth, I have not felt pain such as I did in my ankle.  It was the kind of pain that makes you feel nauseated, that makes you cry even if you don't want to, that makes you, as I did, bite the (fairly hairy--my GAWD, did I not vacuum before I went on vacation?) carpet in your dining room and SCREAM at the children to get their father.  And then you keep screaming because it HURTS SO BAD (and you have dog fur in your teeth) and then your husband gets there (and your dog, who is not happy about the screaming) and your kids are trying to comfort you (by patting your head, which is beside the point) and you are literally rolling around on the ground trying to crawl away from the pain and perhaps bury yourself in your husband's ribcage and thinking weird thoughts about Biblical origin myths and then your husband tries to take off your shoe and you scream some more and contemplate divorce.

What?  You haven't ever felt that kind of pain?  Well, lucky fricking you, because it Teh Sucks.

Anyway, Will got me to the couch and immediately got an ice pack out.  The ice pack was left over from one of his more asinine injuries wherein he sprained his ankle VERY badly during a school retreat.  Don't ask.  I prefer not to think about it.  He slapped an ice pack on me and wrapped it expertly with a leftover wrap and I groaned and moaned and acted basically like a giant, ankle-injured infant. Seriously, ice on an injured ankle is, I think, maybe the second ring of hell.  Ow.  Wee.

I realized that I needed to go to the hospital, which meant finding a place to stow the kidlets and saying a few prayers, chanting, and lighting various candles for protection against the horrors of the local hospital, which is centrally located on the seventh ring of hell.  Shudder.  Children stowed and me installed on Will's old crutches, we headed off to the hospital.  (Yes, I know that I had vowed never to return...several times.  But that's big talk when the crisis is over.  When the crisis is happening, I want--in this order--my mom, a shot or six of vodka, Fluffy--my childhood and current pillow, bless her heart--, and a medical professional to hold my mess together.  Call me weak.  I dare you.)

The hospital was surprisingly not horrible.  There was nobody else in the waiting room, which did not smell like homeless people.  Huzzah.  The triage nurse was cheerful and actually, you know, there.  I was ushered back immediately into my own little curtained area, which was CLEAN.  The doctor came quickly to examine me and exchange sardonic comments with Will and I about the three sixes of ankle injury care (I forget them and invite you to look them up...they got tedious after a while, kwim?) and shoes.  The x-rays happened right after that and were given by a technician who was so funny and who looked so much like my cousin Michelle that I wanted to leap up and give her a big hug.  Very shortly after that, the doc came back and told me that the ankle wasn't broken (which shocked me, frankly), but it WAS sprained and that I'd need to take medicine and wrap it and ice it and Will nodded sagely as if his medical experience with ankle injuries came from Johns Hopkins and not falling from another dude's shoulders whilst attempting to crawl onto a balcony.  Ahem. The longest wait was for my simply FAAAAABBBUUULLOUS nurse dude to come and wrap my ankle and strap me into some sort of medieval torture device to stabilize the joint.  He was awesome, seriously.

The rest of yesterday I spent in a gigantic grump of large grumpitude.  Sitting on the couch with an iced ankle sounds like a lot of fun, but it totally isn't.  It's annoying, especially as the world turns without you and the kidlets sort seashells without you and your poor husband has to do Mommy AND Daddy duty.  AT THE SAME TIME.  I watched a great deal of Phineas and Ferb yesterday, which was fine and dandy, really.  And I worked on my crocheting skills (having given up on knitting, which makes me want to eat my own face.)  And I ate coconut shrimp brought over by Silly and read the newspaper and...uh.  THAT'S ALL.  It was horrendous.  I hated it.

Today, my ankle feels a bit better, although it is still throbbing snarkily at me.  I have washed a load of clothes and am slowly emptying the dishwasher and dealing with my sordid refrigerator. Later, I will weed my garden spot and think about actually planting something in it.

And then I'm going to go burn those damn shoes and stare moodily into the fire, thinking about how not all sacrifices for our children turn out well.

Lesson learned, people.  Lesson learned.