The First Christmas Casualty

Last night I brought home a Christmas tree.  I bounced around the house, giddily crashing through storage boxes and ransacking my garage, to find and gather all the seasonal goodies that make my Christmas tree shiny, blinking, and beautiful.  Each time I unearthed yet another Christmas treasure buried in a closet, I squealed with pure, un-ironic delight.

I admit that, in these moments, I am completely and utterly annoying.  Did I mention that I also sing aloud with every tune that plays on the "Sleigh Ride" Pandora station that I preset on my ipod?

Perhaps, then, the Fates were justified in punishing me.  As I was rushing to grab a roll of tape from my hallway closet, I closed the closet door on my head.  The plan, of course, was to pull my head out of the closet in time for the door to safely pass by, but apparently I didn't plan well enough.   Worse yet, in such a state of unbottled enthusiasm, I am incapable of finer motor skills and instead do everything with exaggerated gusto.  So I did not just swing the door, I slammed it.

I hit myself with the door very very hard on the right side of my head.  If I were living in a Tom and Jerry cartoon, surely, a gong would have sounded and animated vibrations would appear beside my head.  The impact disoriented me momentarily, and I stumbled backwards wondering what hit me.  It is hard to accept, in the initial moments, that one could deliver a blow like that to one's own head.

I now have a red, garbonzo bean-sized bump on my right brow bone.  One small consolation: if I do say so myself, my Christmas tree looks great.

The Moron Tax of Interior Design

Like most people, I keep my essential toiletries and various medicines in the bathroom cabinet.  This alone is not silly since, after all, that's what medicine cabinets are for.  In my house, however, the bathroom cabinet is installed directly over the toilet.  This arrangement breeds moron tax.  For, when you dangle your personal cleaning implements above a thing that regularly collects poo, you cannot trust fate to pass up the easy joke.

This is a list of the many things that have fallen into the toilet from my medicine cabinet:

Toothbrusth
Toothpaste
Floss
Various Pills and Vitamins
Comb
Facial Moisturizer
Mascara
Hairbands

To add insult to injury, each time the unlucky item tumbles from my hand and plops into the toilet, it usually sends a few drops of cold and unholy water out of the bowl and onto my leg.  The item also invariably then sinks into the deepest part of the toilet bowl where, more often than not, there is still some kind of unfortunate residue.

Morning Haze

I am not a morning person.  I don't wake up with a smile and hear the happy chirping of the birds outside my window.  Instead, I hit my snooze button at least three times in 10 minute intervals.  I don't spring from the bed, but reluctantly roll off and land with a thud on the floor.  At those times, my brain is not yet fully operational, and I am in an uncoordinated, unthinking zombie state.  I'm lucky if I don't drool as I stumble to the bathroom.

Consequently, I suffer a lot of injuries in the morning, and I tend to make the same mistakes again and again.  Frequently, I run into a bedpost.  I close the drawer on my finger.  I hit the door jamb with my shoulder on the way into the bathroom.

The most common injury I inflict on myself, however, also happens to be the most painful.  On at least four mornings of every week, I will try to close a door before I have moved my foot out of the way.  Because I have small, flat-ish feet, the door does not run into my toes but over them, scraping off my skin like a cheese grate until the door stops against the thicker part of my foot.  The pain is sudden, sharp and -- despite the fact that I do this so often -- surprising.  It always shocks me that my foot would fail to be on the same plan as the rest of my body.

"Foot!"  I yell in my own head, "How can you be so stupid?  You know that Hand was closing the door!"  

"It's your fault!" Foot whines, red and curling from the pain.  "I'm so far away, you need to check with me before closing the door."

"You need to pay more attention!" I spit back.  "The rest of the body was able to get out of the way.  You do this all the time."

And I stand there, annoyed and angry at my own appendage.