Klutzes Anonymous, Redux

Years ago when we had the water leak in the basement and were trying to figure out where it was coming from, we tore up a couple of boards on our deck. Of course, it turned out the water wasn't coming from outside the house, but rather a cracked pipe inside, but we left the biggest of the boards torn up. We are lazy that way. We recognized that the deck needs to be replaced anyway. We educated all the kids about the hole, and even though it is in a bad location at the top of our steps in front of the gate, no one ever had a problem with it.

About, oh, three? months ago, we got a quote to have the deck redecked, and in the course of doing whatever he did to create his estimate, the guy put the board back in the spot, but of course didn't nail it back down. So since then we've had this loose board that the kids would occasionally step on or loosen slightly, but nobody ever fell through, I guess because they are so light and quick. So we left it like that, and I half hoped that the bear or racoons would fall in, and I also felt it was a cool booby trap in case someone tried to come up on our deck in the dead of night to break into our house - we'd at least hear them coming from all the swearing when they fell in.

BigDaddyFish wasn't feeling well last night, so he didn't take our trash or recycling to the curb last night. This morning he was running late, so he missed the trash truck, but recycling only comes once a week so we wanted to get our bins out. I grabbed a full, wet, dripping bin and headed down the stairs, BDF right behind me with a pile of wet cardboard boxes. We came back up the stairs, me in front and BDF behind me. I am neither light nor quick nor accustomed to carrying trash/recycling down the stairs, and my propensity for klutzy behavior is well documented. Down I went, arms a flailing, landing of course with my left shin hard up against the diagonal edge of the solid part of the deck, catching myself with the middle of my right forearm against the railing. Fortunately, the railing held. Unfortunately, it didn't give very much. BDF told me not to move, but I was pissed and embarrassed, so I yanked my leg out of the deck, shrieking through my closed mouth where I was biting my lip to keep from embarrassing myself even further, and limped to a chair.

The pictures above were taken about an hour later. BDF pulled the board back up so that people can see where they have to step so they don't fall in. I'm calling a guy today who gave me a good estimate to re-deck the deck. I'll take a picture later of my leg later - right now it's just a faint mottled purple under my whiter-than-pale skin and slightly swollen, but I can tell by how fraking much it hurts that it's going to be spectacular.

Make me feel better. What klutzy thing have you done recently?

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I was lucky enough to be one of the featured BlogHer blogs on the ivillage home page over the weekend with this post. Someone else even linked to me from their forum. Thank you, whoever you are, and I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's like that a lot around here.

Comments

[hokgardner]

I'm wincing on your behalf. That sounds awful. I've been lucky lately. I haven't taken any falls, but now that I've said that, I'm probably going to go head first down the front steps this afternoon.

[Agincourtdb]

You're lucky that you didn't get stuck there and get *eaten* by the bear.

[Becki]

The most klutzy thing I have done lately? I was able to stick the corner of a metal door into the back of my foot about 1/4 of an inch. I know, I know, I am so talented I should be on America's Got Talent!! Or maybe I should change my name to Grace....