The Face Plant

This week, in my haste to squeeze in too much in one day, I managed to do something I haven't experienced since I was a kid.  I fell down the stairs.  But it wasn't just your average tumble where you grab onto the railing and stop yourself mid-stream.  Oh no.  I was too busy carrying my Jenny Craig pizza in one hand and diet coke in the other to protect my fall.  

Picture the scene.  Me, balancing my yummy pesto pizza, a tall glass of my favorite beverage and a sharp knife while navigating the stairs and subconsciously thinking about all the things I had to accomplish that afternoon.  I made it to the third step and then somehow, my foot slipped and I went flying right along with my food.  The diet coke splattered across the left half of my basement carpet, the mozzarella cheese landed on the bottom step, the knife flew in another direction and I tumbled face first to the ground without having my hands free to break my fall.

For all intents and purposes, I should have broken my ankle, been stabbed through the torso, or blacked out from a mild concussion.  Miraculously, I managed to escape major injury except for a fat lip, a bump on my forehead and nose and some minor bruises on my arms and legs.  Within 10 minutes of my tumble, I had to shake it off and hop in my car to head to an assignment in Manhattan. Still in shock, I grabbed a few chips of ice and a paper towel for my bloody lip and raced out the door.  

When I arrived home a few hours later and had a moment to grab an aspirin, I thought about what had happened to me earlier that day and realized it's time to make some changes in my life or else next time, I won't be so lucky.  Nothing like a face plant to make you painfully aware that you need to slow down.  Or at least not carry a personal sized pizza, steak knife and diet soda while walking down a flight of stairs.  

The Birthday Diaries

So it's the day after my daughter's eighth birthday party. This year there were no party entertainers, no petting zoos, no circuses in the backyard...just a down and dirty party at the ice skating rink...with 25 kids whose parents dropped them off so they could run errands. In hindsight, it was actually a pretty scary proposition - 25 kids on the ice - many of whom didn't know how to skate. As I finished setting the table near the rink and got the veggie and fruit platter ready for consumption, one of my daughter's friends stopped by to tell me that even though her mom had told her to wear her helmet, she really could skate so would it be okay to leave the helmet on the sidelines. Stupidly, I said sure - but I told her I'd be watching and if I thought she needed the helmet, back it would go on her head.

As more guests continued to file in and I finally strapped on my skates, one of the kids came racing out to tell me that the little girl who told me she didn't want to wear a helmet had just fallen...and hit her head. Yikes! I raced out on the rink, helped her off the ice and proceeded to sit with her for the next 15 minutes as she held a bag of ice against her head and wept quietly. When she was ready to go back on the ice, I told her to strap on her helmet and not take it off for the rest of the party (except while she was eating of course).

Another 15 minutes went by and of course, another emergency. One of my daughter's other friends - whose dad had left to hit a few rounds of golf, had fallen flat on her back. She cried for about 5 minutes straight, we took her to the EMT and after she was checked out, she was given a clean bill of health to go back to the party and skate. Luckily, this was a minor injury so the partying continued.

After lunch and cake, the kids had about 10 more minutes to skate - nothing could happen in 10 minutes, right? WRONG. In the last 10 minutes, the third little girl whose mom had left the party because I had given her the green light that she'd be just fine, fell forward and landed hard on her knee and had to be carried off the ice because she couldn't walk. When the EMT examined her as her knee began to swell like a balloon, she informed me that we'd better call her mom because she needed to be checked out at the emergency room. I called her mom and she raced over and while another parent stayed with her as I cleaned up the party table, gave out goody bags and made sure no one else fell, the mom arrived, scooped her up and raced her to the doctor.

Thankfully, when I called the mom a few hours later, her daughter was okay - bruised but no broken bones. So after thinking an ice skating party would be a piece of cake, I think next year, it's back to the petting zoo or pony rides...or maybe just plain old pin the tail on the donkey. No more ice skating extravaganzas for us...it's way too stressful and as I learned the hard way - dangerous when the other kids can't really skate and their parents drop them off to run errands.