Falling ... In Four Parts

For a professional dancer, I'm very clumsy; and since I am not a professional dancer, I am very clumsy. Before getting into my latest fall, let's take a glance back at some memorable trips and tumbles and crashes ...

When we lived in Miami, it was in a gated community, which was nice because there wasn't a lot of traffic going through the hood, and lots of people had pets roaming the streets so they were relatively safe. We used to walk our dog, Dengoso ... this was pre-Ozzo ... around the block a few times each day and one day I was taking Dengoso on his morning constitutional; it was a bright, sunny, cool day in South Florida and we were enjoying the journey in solitude. We saw no cars, no people, no other animals out that day; even the birds were quiet.

As we circled the block and headed back, I started to cross the street; naturally I looked for traffic, naturally there was none. We started to cross when it happened.

A pebble, roughly the size of a marble had somehow made its way to the center of the roadway unnoticed and I stepped on it just right. My ankle turned and down I went to the asphalt, letting go of Dengoso's leash. I hit the roadway pretty hard, but I shook it off and started to stand when I saw it ... In our quiet hood, vacant just moments before there were now two cars stopped on either side of me as I lay on the ground and some ten or twelve people also out walking that day; even Dengoso, who made it across the street, sat on the grass, shaking his head at me, too embarrassed to believe what I’d done.

A few years later, we’d moved to Camden, and one day I was unloading the car in the garage. I put a few things away in the garage and then started inside. There are two steps into the house that I have climbed without incident for months and months, but this day  for some reason, one of my feet nipped the lip of the door landing and I began to fall, into the kitchen from the garage steps. As happens when I fall—I don’t know about you—it all goes in very slow motion. I remember the feeling, I remember seeing Tuxedo watching me, wondering if this might be his chance to escape to the outdoors, but mostly I remember looking at the kitchen floor as I was about to hit it and thinking, ‘God, that is ugly flooring.’

The next fall was after we’d had a dead tree taken down in the front yard. We had a friend that wanted the wood and so I was taking the rather large cut sections from the side of the house, across the yard, and setting them on the side of the driveway to be hauled away. I had made several trips and had many more—the tree had been at least forty feet tall—and was walking across the front yard when I stepped into a small divot in the ground and started to go down. My brain told my feet to run faster so I could stand upright and avoid the tumble so I did that awkward kind of falling, kind of running thing for about ten to twelve steps when my brain finally screamed, ‘Fuck it, protect yourself.’ And down I went into the yard … just as our friend pulled in to collect the wood.

This latest fall wasn’t so much a fall as it was, well, I don’t know. Last Monday, Carlos had an appointment  and I had taken the day off to drive him. This time I was walking down the steps into the garage, but, well, even I don’t know what I did. I usually step down right foot first, but for some reason I went left first and then my right foot, confused as to why it was going second, clipped the back of my left leg and I started to fall out of the kitchen into the garage, and onto the concrete floor. I think though it was all ablur, that I tried to grab the door handle, and then tried to step down backwards on my left foot, while the right was in mid-step. But my right foot was not to be outdone by the left, and it hit the concrete first, hard. Luckily I didn’t go down to the concrete, though my right knee did get it twisted and I spent the week hobbling and icing and wrapping and cursing my clumsiness.

Finally, a week later, and while there’s a dull throb, I am funny upright and ready for the next tumble.

What?

Bobservations

I’m still nursing my side after my tumble out of bed and so one night I decided to sleep on the couch so I could try sleeping on my back in a more stationary position.

It worked well, except all three cats opted to crowd me on the sofa, while Other Daddy got a king-size bed all to himself.

And as I was readying my Couch Nest, Carlos asked if I wanted him to move the coffee table; I said it was fine.

“But it’s glass. That would really be bad if you fell off the couch and through that.”

The pain in my side is a reminder to punish him when I’m better.

The couch was nice for a couple of nights, but then I created a Bed Nest for me, and so I slept in our bed again. It worked very well except for the continuing Dream-On-A-Loop where I was falling out of bed, screaming, “Not again!”

Lastly, this morning he was making coffee and he muttered something about doing a ‘half-assed job,’ and I reminded him that it wasn't so bad because he usually does a ‘quarter-assed’ job.

Laughing hurts my sides.

Matt Gaetz, a rabid ______ butt boy and Florida Republican congressman, has hired a speechwriter whose ties to white supremacists were too embarrassing even for the _____ administration.

Gaetz, a complete moron, announced that he was “very proud” to have Dr. Darren Beattie as his Special Advisor for Speechwriting, even knowing that Beattie was fired by the _____ administration in 2018 after his ties to white supremacists were revealed by CNN.

But, hey, he’s a _____ Republican, so it’s gotta be white and it’s gotta be hate.

I’m not saying this means anything, but a photo from the 2000 St. Joseph’s High School yearbook shows an even younger, then senior, Pete Buttigieg being dubbed “Most likely to be President.”

Carry on.

This week, after a group of employees told Bethany Christian Services they would walk out of the job unless their policy of denying LGBTQ people the right to foster or adopt children, was changed, the group announced it was changing their policy.

Take a stand, and see what happens.

This week an Illinois police officer pulled over a black man because his license plates were expired. The man, Ka’shawn Baldwin, told Officer Roger Gemoules that he was headed to a job interview, so he could make some money and pay for new tags.

Then it happened … Officer Gemoules told Baldwin he could not drive the car on expired plates and then gave the man a ride to his interview.

Gemoules said he was just trying to show that police officers are real people too:

“With everything that’s been going on recently in the community around here, police get a really bad rap.”

Baldwin, for his part, was stunned:

“Normally cops, where I’m from, they don’t really do stuff like that. It meant everything. It brought my spirits up.”

Baldwin and Gemoules hope to stay in touch, even with Baldwin getting the job after Gemoules gave him a lift.

Lovely.

Over there to Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has said he plans to name a Golan Heights town after _____.

I imagine soon after, the town becomes a ghost town.

Meanwhile, I have named my ant farm ‘Benjamin Netanyahu’.

In the My God Does This Man Have No Shame file, Iowa’s racist Republican Congressman Steve King says that the censure he faced earlier this year over controversial statements about white nationalism gave him a better understanding to the suffering of Jesus Christ.

Yes, he believes that being called out for his racist, white supremacist speech is akin to what was done to Jesus.

Fuck off, Stevie, you’re the least Christ-like person on the planet.

Resistance at work … California, Nevada, Washington State, Oregon, and New Mexico will continue to let transgender troops serve in the National Guard. All 50 states—and four U.S. territories—have their own National Guard units that are primarily under gubernatorial control and that chain of command could allow individual governors to challenge—or at least test the limits of—_____]s new anti-trans policy.

The march goes on …

Back to the Fall … I spent most of Saturday in a chair with a heating pad, so I watched a couple of movies. The first was The Catcher was a Spy with Paul Rudd, middle, as Jewish ballplayer, closeted homosexual and WWII spy Moe Berg. Rudd is just so darned cute, even in this drama, Plus, it also starred Mark Strong, top,  as German theoretical physicist  Werner Heisenberg .Strong is a balding man, and an attractive one at that, but in this film he wore a hair-piece; still, though, hot.

Speaking of attractive bald men, I also watched Submission, the story of a college professor who becomes obsessed with a student. The deliciously adorable Stanley Tucci played the professor and I learned, through the pause, rewind, replay feature on the DVR, that he has an amazing ass. It was a brief shot, and although they gave Stanley hair in the film, the Tucci Tuchus more than made up for that.

Here’s Strong and Tucci with hair; I find them hotter as bald men..

Overheard At Home

Back story:

Last week I was out in the yard cleaning up dead branches that had dome from the trees. There were several very large branches that i hauled across the yard to the driveway to be cut up and taken away.

While walking back across our yard ... our hilly, uneven terrain of a yard ... I stepped into a small divot and began to fall. Slow motion; I saw my hands in front of my face as I fell, trying to brace my fall; I felt my feet moving faster, taking long steps in the hopes of avoiding the impending fall. I began thinking ....

I'm falling. I'm falling. I'm falling. Nope. Nope. I'm gonna be okay. I'm gonna be okay. Good. Good. Uh oh.

And I hit the ground. I was relatively unscathed, but I landed on my elbow which smashed into my side, which was incredibly sore almost instantly.

Now, luckily, no one saw this fall because that would have felt worse, but ... the next morning I awoke after a terrible night's sleep ...  couldn't sleep on my left side at all ... and Carlos asked if it still hurt and I said:

"Only when I sneeze, cough, hiccup or breathe."

And he replied:

"Then don't breathe."

#ThatsMyHusband