Dignity/Adulthood/Whatever

We’re home again and I am, as they say, a hot mess.

On Friday afternoon my mom took the kids to the splash park, Matt went for a run on a trail he found in Bozeman, and I took my journal and my book to the Leaf and Bean. The day was hot, and it felt so lovely to duck into the coffee shop for awhile and sit at my favorite little table in the corner by the window. After awhile the sky burst open in a sunshower, and I watched the water steaming in the streets. By the time I left, they were dry again. I headed towards my car, looking forward to going home to change for our night out alone. And I tripped. Spectacularly. Over nothing. I twisted my left ankle and landed mostly on my right knee and my hands. My hands were only a little scraped, but I didn’t need to look down to know that my right leg was a mess.

And I didn’t look down--I didn’t look anywhere but straight ahead as I limped towards my car. Thankfully, I’d at least turned off Main Street by this time, so there’s the slight chance that no one actually witnessed my undignified fall; I hope not, anyway, because no one asked if I was all right, and I’d rather think it was because no one was actually there than because my hometown is full of jerks. Anyway, I tossed my stuff in the front seat and sat there for a moment, trying to relax enough to drive myself home and dabbing ineffectually at my bloodied knee with a scrap of tissue. (I have to admit that my main concern was how ridiculous my bandaged knee would look with the cute little dress I was planning to wear. And it was pretty ridiculous, but there was no way I was not wearing that dress. I bought it two years ago just to wear out on fun summer date nights, and I never wear it any other time.)

“Oh, Baby,” Matt said when he saw it. “Wow. See, this is why I worry when we go hiking.”

“I DIDN’T FALL YESTERDAY.”

“Yeah, but...I’m just saying.”

He has a fair point. Matt and I hiked up to Heather Lake on Thursday, which is something like 10 or 11 miles round-trip. (More for Matt, though. After we’d been hiking for about ten minutes he hustled back to the car at the trailhead to grab a rain jacket “just in case” -- we’d be gone several hours, and the forecast tentatively predicted thunderstorms. We ended up not needing it. He also turned back to search for my sunglasses, which I realized went missing from my head somewhere between Emerald Lake and Heather Lake. He didn’t find them during the 15 minutes he was looking, but I discovered them next to a rock on the way down. They must have slipped off my head while I sat down to adjust my boots.) Apparently, I’m klutzier than I would like to admit. (I would, however, like to take this moment to tell you all that my new hiking boots plus my new stupidly expensive inserts plus the way the guy at REI showed me how to tie my laces kept me from having blisters, which is a first. I HIKED FOR FIVE AND A HALF HOURS AND I DID NOT GET BLISTERS, except for one tiny one that barely even hurt so it doesn’t count. This has happened exactly zero times; I figured blisters were just something I would have to deal with if I wanted to hike with the big kids.)

When my dad saw my banged-up knee, he seemed confused.

“So wait, what did you trip on?”

“Nothing.”

“You just...fell down? Over nothing?”

“YES.”

“Did you black out first or something?” he asked, genuinely concerned.

“This is just what Shari does,” Matt offered helpfully.

Fast forward to Sunday night. We’d arrived home by early evening, in plenty of time for dinner, but since we’d been gone for ten days there wasn’t much in the fridge. Matt picked up some milk and a few other essentials to tide us over until our veggie box arrived on Tuesday. I didn’t have much of an appetite after sitting in the car for most of the hot afternoon (temperatures were well into the 90’s by the time we left Spokane around lunchtime), and the only thing I really wanted to eat was pho, so while Matt set about making macaroni and cheese for the kids I went to get some. I was back home with it in twenty minutes. And I’m not sure whether I was just tired and careless or whether the container was unusually full, but when I went to dump the noodles and tofu into the steaming broth, it slopped right over the side and all over my fingers.

I don’t think I’ve ever been truly, painfully scalded before. I was standing right next to the sink and thrust my hand under the faucet within seconds, so it could have been much worse -- but when I pulled my hand out of the water, thinking all I’d need to do was run some cool water over it for a few moments, I nearly screamed. I’ve never felt anything like it. It didn’t stop burning.

Matt filled the sink with cold water and I kept my left hand submerged while clumsily fiddling with chopsticks with my right hand. The phone rang as I slurped my pho at the kitchen counter. It was my parents, calling to make sure we’d made it home, and I had to admit that I was standing there with my burned hand in the sink while I ate dinner. I assured them it was fine, though; when it was actually in the water it felt mostly perfectly okay. They told me to be careful, and we hung up.

I pulled my hand out of the water, planning to dry it off and help Matt put the kids to bed. I made it halfway across the kitchen and turned right back to the sink. It hurt so badly I couldn’t keep from yelping. This confused me, since on the surface it didn’t look all that bad. A little pink, maybe, but certainly not alarming. I gritted my teeth and sprinted into the study to retrieve my phone. Back at the sink I spent fifteen minutes googling terrible things that can happen to seemingly innocuous burns when left untreated. The internet basically told me that I should head to the ER or I might as well go ahead and bid farewell to my hand. Burns to the hand can be “quite serious” and are not to be messed with.

Once again, I lifted it experimentally out of the sink. I didn’t see flames on the surface of my skin, of course, but it certainly felt like they were there. I told Matt I was planning to just cut the damn thing off. He sighed and said that was a terrible idea, but I didn’t really feel like I had his full attention. (The children did. Settling two children into their regular old beds after ten days of camping and driving and grandparents and fourteen deserts every day is a little nuts.)

“The problem is that I’m holding it together too well,” I said to him. “I’m just too calm. If I allowed my voice to betray the amount of pain I am in, you would all be terrified and rush me to the hospital.”

“Well, do you think we need to go in?” Matt asked reasonably.

“No,” I muttered. “But I’m going to have to sleep with my hand in a bowl of cold water all night long. At the table.”

“Sorry, Baby,” Matt said, as he chased our daughter down the hallway with the dental floss.

I sat there feeling sorry for myself for awhile. I tried to appreciate the fact that Matt had taken over everything since I’d rendered myself completely useless. I told myself that my hand looked more or less fine, so if I could just get through the first few seconds of burning when I pulled away from the cold water I’d be fine.

But every time I tried to keep my hand out of the water, I wanted to scream. The internet told me that this sensation should last only five to ten minutes. Maybe twenty or thirty. After an hour, the hand would surely be lost. In the meantime, I could try painkillers. I sprinted into the bathroom and held my hand underneath the cold water tap while I awkwardly tapped a few tablets out of the bottle of ibuprofen.

“Did you take ibuprofen?” Matt called out the next time he heard me yelp.

“Yeah, but that’s not enough,” I said. “I need a gin and tonic. Possibly two. The only way I am going to be able to get any sleep tonight is to be a tiny bit tipsy.”

He seemed unconvinced, but he was distracted and I am bossy, so he made me a nice strong one. I alternated between sipping that and trying to read a few pages of The Cuckoo’s Calling. Matt eventually went to bed, and I sat there with my burning hand and my scabbed leg and felt absolutely pitiful. Shortly before midnight, I wrapped my hand in a cold dishtowel I’d thrown in the freezer and managed to fall asleep, no doubt in part because of the gin.

Thankfully, my hand felt much better in the morning. Still tender -- the thought of putting it in warm water to shower made me cringe, so I put that off for the better part of a day -- but much better. As in, I felt there was the slightest chance I would pull through, and possibly be able to pick up the dog from the vet and make the kids' lunch.

So I survived all that only to lock myself out of the house yesterday, for the second time this summer. I am just not feeling like a very competent human being these days.

The first time it happened back in June, the kids and I were on our way to the splash park and it was fairly late in the day. We could have just played in the backyard and waited for Matt to come home; we could have even walked to Starbucks for a treat, since I’d managed to grab my wallet along with our towels and sunscreen. Yesterday, though, I was supposed to pick up my friend Becca and take her to the airport to catch her flight back to China. Also, it was barely noon. Waiting for Matt was not an option.

Thankfully, my brother lives only ten minutes away, has a key to my house, and happens to fly airplanes at night so is generally home during the day when I am prone to fits of stupidity like this. I was worried that I’d wake him up, but I didn’t see any other good options.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s up?” (Oh, good. He sounded awake.)

“HI. UM, WHAT ARE YOU DOING RIGHT NOW? ARE YOU HOME? BECAUSE I LOCKED MYSELF OUT OF THE HOUSE AGAIN AND I HAVE TO GET BECCA TO THE AIRPORT BECAUSE SHE IS FLYING BACK TO CHINA AND IF YOU COME OVER RIGHT NOW I WILL BUY YOU ALL THE THINGS.”

He laughed, like he was totally used to me sounding so unhinged, and drove cheerfully into our yard a few minutes later. I hugged him (he was covered with sawdust or something from some mysterious project he’d been working on, but I did not care), told him he was my favorite person in the whole world, and took off. I managed to retrieve Becca and take her to the airport without incident, so there’s that.

Someday, I might manage to behave like a real adult, but my scabs are going to have to heal first.