I took it. Not so hard.
What is hard is walking right now, since I channeled my inner Grace Kelly (NOT) and did a dive into the asphalt of a particularly gritty and scrapey and HARD street in our little cute holiday-decorated downtown. The specific circumstances are uninteresting (although they involve a screaming baby, a vanload headed to a locked house without a key, and me running after them trying to beat a red light), and if I admitted to you that I tripped over nothing but my own feet then I’d have to be really embarrassed, so rather than describe my moment of folly I’m going to skip right ahead to the misery that is me NOW. My left knee is, like, way bigger than it’s supposed to be, and my right knee is slightly less way bigger than that. The left has an oozing scrape the size of my palm, and the right is barely scraped but black and blue all over. My left hand has a couple of minor scrapes on both the top and the bottom – don’t ask me how I did that – and my right palm has a silver dollar sized scrape that has lots of gravel pieces in it still because I, yes I who delivered an 8 pound + baby without any pain relief, am too chicken to clean it properly. As the day goes on it is getting harder to walk, and I’m not really sure whether I *should* keep trying to walk and work it out, or if I should be resting. I started to read on WebMD, and began to feel sick to my stomach, and now the badass woman I became last April (totally "natural" childbirth, did I mention?) has receded back into the distance and the big wussy baby I have always been is back.
Anyway, just typing about it is giving me the willies so I’m done. I’m glad my flying leap happened post-LSAT, as writing with this bandaged hand would have been more awkward than writing with an unbandaged hand was (when was the last time YOU used a pencil? Because for me it has apparently been a while. I had a hand cramp in seconds, and cried in vain for a keyboard, oh, had I but a keyboard on which to do my writing sample! Then I could revise! Then it would be legible! Alas, Law School Admission Council, ye should remove Thyselves from the dark ages and Gette Wythe The Programme.)
The family came up to visit this weekend, and we tried to get cute pictures of the cousins together again. I think this time was more successful. At least, Jack tried to eat Ella’s face and it sort of looked like he was kissing her, and that’s better than the WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU look that we couldn’t wipe of his mug last time we tried to photograph them. They are quite a pair. Listen here, three years ago I was buying Christmas presents for my boyfriend and living alone in my house with my cat. Now I’m a married dog owner who’s knee deep in short people. It’s like I got shot by some sort of wacked out Cupid, who shoots arrows tipped with Responsibility Juice instead of Love Potion.
Speaking of my darling little tax deductions, we’re about to assemble ourselves into a respectable looking holiday-time family, with as much velvet and/or sparkles as possible, and hobble our way over to a holiday Christmas party. These people whose house we are partying at (AT WHOSE HOUSE WE ARE PARTYING shrieks my inner grammar angel – YOU SOUND LIKE SUCH AN EGGHEAD retorts the devil on the other shoulder, scoffing, a curl of smoke rising from the participle dangling from his lips) – ahem, so like I said, the hosts of this party have a home that is at the top of a mountain, while the street where we park is at the bottom of the mountain, with approximately forty steps between. We have about an hour between Jack’s dinner time and his bedtime, and I’m fairly certain that the bulk of that hour will involve me scooching up the stairs on my butt.
With that, I’d better go start getting ready. It takes a while, what with the injuries to all of my appendages, and the flailing thrashing infant who is very good at targeting my boo-boos with his enormous head. Happy 2 weeks before Christmas Vacay begins!
PS – There is nothing lonelier than a 30 year old woman at a standardized test with a bunch of yong’uns,who has to pump her baby some milk in the bathroom during the short break, and the kids are horrified because they’ve never seen anything like it, and no one will look her in the eye. I won’t get all Woe is Me about this, but nursing your kid can be hard to keep up at times like that. I’m discreet, I always cover myself and my kid up, but people still are like MY EYES! AUGH! MY EYES! And I feel like a leper. Pout.