WHAM!
Well, how often do you use the passenger sideview mirror anyway? And what could be so tragic in a trash can’s life that he’d attempt to end it by hurdling himself in front of a minivan? Maybe Mr. Trashcan wasn’t really suicidal. Maybe it was just a desperate cry for help — otherwise he’d have thrown himself in front of a vehicle traveling more than 20 miles an hour.
Twenty minutes later, I met my husband for lunch with my most pitiful, “How much do you love me?” expression and whimpered, “I’d like to say I’m surprised this happened but, I’m sad to say, I’m not.” He wasn’t either. He fiddled with the shattered glass, “Well Karen, look at it this way — it’s the perfect way to wrap up the week you’ve had.” That would be the week I spent one day with an ice pack on my nose, the two days with the heating pad on my neck, and four days with my hand in the ibuprofen jar.
Tuesday morning after yoga, I arrived home energized and motivated to tackle my “To Do” list — chores I’d put off until the procrastination made my face break out. As I pulled it down, the rear hatch of my minivan — the one I’d been shutting four years without incident — grew two feet longer and smacked me on the bridge of my nose.
I scraped myself off the driveway, stumbled into the house and found an ice pack. I crawled toward the bathroom to assess the swelling in the mirror, when out of my peripheral vision, I spotted the largest doggie present Hank ever left on my (new) carpet. I kept crawling.
My nose was a lovely shade of blue and widening by the minute. I decided to write down The Door Incident in case I passed out, lest my rescuers assume I saw Hank’s pile, fell, and hit my nose on the doorjamb. I held the icepack in place with one hand, opened the junk drawer with the other, and pulled the pen cap off with my teeth. Thirty-two ink-filled plastic pieces went airborne. I spit out the ink, looked at the clock and realized it was eight long hours till Happy Hour.
I called my husband at work for sympathy, but got his voice mail. My best friend was at work and my mom’s Florida answering machine announced, “Ha ha, I’m at the pool and you’re not.” I lowered myself onto the couch and turned to my last source of solace — HGTV — which I couldn’t see because the icepack covered my eyes. Somehow just listening to Candace during Divine Design didn’t cut it. I clicked the mute button and lay there thinking of everything I wasn’t getting done — dinner, laundry, ironing, mopping, mending, the dog pile in the hallway….
I decided that ice pack should stay on the rest of the day.
Karen Rinehart is a newspaper humor columnist, public speaker, and the creator of The Bus Stop Mommies™. She is also author of Invisible Underwear, Bus Stop Mommies and Other Things True To Life. You can read more of her work at karenrinehart.net. Karen lives in Concord, North Carolina with her two kids, one husband and goofball dog, where they attend St. James Catholic Church. (Well, they leave the dog at home.) She enjoys hearing from readers across the States and as far away as Australia, Japan and England.
