Category — Accidental things

Yeah, I know.  First world problem.  But listen.  I have proof that if I don’t have servants…at least maybe one hand maiden…it’s going to end up costing me my life.   The first order of business is to get me an ironing wench.  This one domestic chore alone has cost me burned flesh and a broken appendage.

We are going to rapidly gloss over the wine glass that fell off a high shelf and shattered all over the granite counter top a few days ago.  Had I had a kitchen serving wench, this likely would not have happened.  I probably would still have the $6 quart of Whole Foods strawberries.  (They were in the sink being washed when glass shards rained all over the place.  I figured that sacrificing $6 was a better idea than swallowing a white wine stem with my breakfast cereal.)

Okay, so back to the ironing.

Remember that heat wave we had in March in Chicago?  Yeah. Ten days of 80-degree heat.  I wore all sorts of summer pants that week which I washed and then hung in a closet ready for ironing.  Yeah, okay, so three months passed before I got around to it.

As I finished ironing the last pair, I somehow turned around and jammed my foot into one of the couch legs.  And by jammed, think Spanish Inquisition.  The leg lodged itself between the last two toes of my right foot.

After I stopped screaming i looked down to see the pinky toe pointing away at a 45 degree angle.

I’m pretty sure I screamed out loud: Fuck my life!   I knew the damn thing was broken.  (Have I mentioned this isn’t the first time I’ve broken a toe.  It’s actually the second.  Umm third.

Thirty minutes after original injury. Purple already starting.

Next problem.

I was supposed to leave in two hours for a concert at Ravinia where I would be meeting friends.   After a few minutes of pondering, coupled with some acrobatic limp-walking to test the pain level, I decide I would be able to pull this off.  (Mostly due to priority parking access that night, a fist full of Advil and a bunch of adrenaline.)

Fast forward to yesterday.

I had been looking at the toe all week, watching the entire foot go through all sorts of colors of the rainbow.  I decide that maybe skipping the ER wasn’t a good idea afterall.  I mean, what if I was incubating toe-lio or something dire.

It was about 9 a.m. and as a smart city dweller, I decide to Google breaking news.  Afterall, if 30 people were just rushed to Northwestern Hospital due to due to some bus crash or driveby shooting, going at this time would probably not be a good idea.   (Indeed there had been a bus/car crash, but on the south side, so my hospital wasn’t affected.  See.  Another example of how Google is your friend.)

I quickly pull together my ER survival kit: iPad, iPhone, charger, earbuds, water bottle, sweater, purse and throw it all in a tasteful leather Coach tote bag.   (You gotta have some style, even though you are limping.)

I decide to  jump on the bus (yeah, I know…I was being all hardcore about this) and head over to the ER.   (What’s not to love about a hospital that’s two blocks a way from Tiffany’s.)

In I walk in just before 10 a.m.  I was pleasantly surprised to see only a handful of people in the waiting room.  (Looks like they’ve already dealt with last night’s gun shot wounds and knife stabbings.)  I just loves me an ER that isn’t on lockdown.

I check in and am told that it probably isn’t going to take very long until someone can see me.

Look! New bracelets over the iPad.

Right.  I’ve been told hospital lies before, so you can’t fool me.  I spot a seat in the corner next to an electrical outlet and far way from two people holding puke buckets.   Not only do I have access to electrical juice, but I’m avoiding DNA that doesn’t belong to me.  I pull out my iPad and proceed to read my book.

That’s when the crazy train pulled into the ER.

Lunatic #1 tried to steal the laundry cart until security stopped her.  Then she started screaming for someone to bring her a Bible.   (Lady, don’t even think of looking at my iPad.  I will not be downloading King James or any other version for you.)

Lunatic #2 was a guy in a wheel chair with a rolled up pant leg.  I’m pretty sure he had some flesh eating virus because there was a big black hole in his leg and a whole lot of swelling.  He then announced to the entire ER that he needed to go outside for a cigarette.

Umm…in addition to whatever ebola thing was happening to his leg, I stifled the urge to suggest a CT-scan of his lungs.

Then my name was called to visit the triage nurse.  Sweet.  This is moving along nicely.   (May I brag?  Blood pressure 115 over 70.  Take that, bitches!)

Back to my seat for more reading.  Then at about 10:48, the ER doc comes to get me.  (I decide to trigger the stop watch on my iPhone.  I’m feeling a personal best coming on and I would like to have a visual record.)

A room with a view. (No my legs aren’t the size of torpedos.  Damn iPhone!)

He takes me back to one of the ER rooms, where I proceed to tell me that I have received my medical training from Grey’s Anatomy so that qualifies me to provide a broken toe diagnosis.

He looks at it and agrees that is most likely the case.  But, I’m supposed to sit tight and wait for someone to take me to X-ray.   (That’s doctor speak for “pull out your iPad and start reading again.”)

My eyes gaze up to the wall where I spot the following:  X-ray results typically take one to two hours.

Oh man.  Am I going to have to download another book?!

Just as I’m wondering if it would be too princess of me to consider ordering lunch in, a nurse shows up with a wheel chair to take me down the hall for an X-ray.

Three positions and a lead shield later, I get wheeled back to my room.

Me: Excuse me.  How long will it take to get the results?

Her: They are ready right now.  The doctor just needs to take a look.

OMG…I have somehow died and gone to the VIP line.   Am I really at Northwestern Hospital?  It’s starting to feel a little like the concierge floor of the Peninsula a few blocks away.

At 10:59, the billing lady comes in making sure that the hospital has all of the correct information so they can extract their pound of flesh from me at a later time.

She gave me that little roll of tape to take with me. How much do you want to make a bet that they charged me $100 for it?

At 11:15, the nurse arrives to buddy tape my two toes together.  (I have a doctoral degree from the College of Google, so I was already expecting this.)   Then she asks for my shoe size.  I say 7 and stifle the urge to say “wide.”  She brings over my charming black boot which closes via Velcro tabs.

The doctor walks in at 11:20 to confirm that indeed the toe is fractured and to give me follow-up instructions.  (Basically, I need to change the buddy tape everyday for the next two weeks.)

I walk limp out of the hospital at 11:30 a.m., about an hour and a half after I walked in.

Definitely a new personal best.  (I offer a silent thank you to local gang members who have decided to not stab anyone on Michigan Ave. Saturday morning.  You may now continue with your flash mob activities.)

After, going into another building in the hospital complex to top-up my transit card, I hobble over a couple of blocks to the bus stop.   I realize two things.  I had forgotten to stop the stopwatch and I need to take a picture of my new boot, which likely is going to end up being more expensive than a pair of Louboutins.

So back to the needing servants thing.  See my point?

Haven’t you been gushing over the pedicure all the way through this?

Hellooo Rantopolis readers!  I’ve been a little preoccupied with all kinds of H2O drama in the past couple of weeks which has sucked up much of my free time.

You see, it appears that I’ve turned into the Water Whisperer.  In fact, communities experiencing a drought may wish to hire me since I now have the ability to make water appear.  My singular talent appears to be making water magically appear through plaster.

Somebody needs to alert Monster.com to add a new job type to its search function.

The first sign was bubbling paint in the hallway between the condo in which I live and the one next door which I rent out.  When I noticed it my heart sank.  I knew that on the other side of that bubbling, flaking paint was the shower wall.

This was not going to be good.

My condo staff investigated the problem and said that they would have to put holes in the wall in the front and side of the bathtub to get to the pipes causing the problem. .  Of course, these were both walls that were tiled.  They were going to remove the tile, break through the plaster, make the repairs and then re-tile.

I sat back and thought about this.  What were the chances that they could remove and replace old porcelain tiles without breaking them?

I’m thinking zero.

So, this is how a little bubbling paint, turned into a decision to do a complete bathroom gut and renovation. Since I’m trying to sell the condo, I figured this probably would be the smart choice in the long run.

By the way, have you priced marble and shower systems, lately?  It’s a shame that organ-selling is illegal.

Having done several renovations in the past, I schedule the job with the contractor to coincide with my tenant’s vacation and start specing the new fixtures, tile and so.  Both time consuming and expensive, but I had committed to the project, so full steam ahead.

Then on Thursday morning as I was starting my day in the master bathroom, I dropped a Q-Tip on the floor.  As I bent down to pick it up, my head happened to turn slightly to the left.

That’s when I saw this hiding behind the toilet:

I might as well just shove a spigot into the plaster and turn this space into a water fountain.

You have got to be freakin’ kidding me?!!  Another water leak, in another bathroom, in a second apartment…just days apart?!!!

Have I been doing incantations in my sleep?!!  Do I have some sort of magnetic field around me which is causing copper piping to weep?!

Luckily for me, the problem was attacked immediately.  The toilet was removed, the wall was taken down, the problem was fixed.  (This time it was actually the toilet seal that was leaking and the water had wicked up the plaster.)

The wall was replastered, then painted.  Finally the toilet was replaced.

As for me, I am trying not to look at any walls for the foreseeable future.  Just in case my piercing eyes decide to escalate things by creating a water park in my living room.

Yesterday started like any other day by my taking a shower.  After I exited, I leaned into the shower area to wipe the back wall. Unknowingly, I had my feet planted on a wet hardwood floor.

Still not sure how it got wet.  I guess that will remain one of life’s mysteries.

The water caused my middle-aged lower extremities to attempt the splits.  (I believe the last time that happened Nixon was president.)  Until the trailing leg decided it wasn’t having any.

That’s when it decided to buckle, throwing me hip/side ass cheek on top of the bathroom scale.

This is the devil's toolbox.

Oh, the irony.

As I started to go down, I quickly tried to position myself to minimize injury.  My ass is definitely more padded than say…my wrist.  (Who said all of those holiday desserts didn’t serve a health purpose.)

So, I decided, ass it is!

But then I thought, I better try to prevent my head from striking something so I stuck my hand out.

Yeah, I thought of all of these things in the space of a second.  (I’m Greek.  Not only do we talk fast, but we also think fast.  I probably could also have found the time to assemble a gyro sandwich on the way down.)

So, here I am a day later with a huge black and blue mark on my hip/ass side region.  I also have a sore wrist and some stiffness in my upper left arm.

What I am most grateful about is that I didn’t break anything.  (I live in fear of breaking my hand/wrist since I write for a living.)

So the moral of this story is that it is much more desirable to have a broke ass than a broken hand.  And while a padded ass may not be ideal for skinny jeans, it is an excellent talisman against hip replacement.

I think somebody should pass me some dessert.