Thursday, August 24, 2006

The Mysterious Disappearing Week

I had two more blog entries planned for the week, but since I'm a pantser not a planner, you're getting this whinging little rant about the days I lost this week.

I was up all night Monday. See, I was trying to place an order on Amazon US. My brother gave me a gift certificate for it for my birthday, and I had no idea what to get but since shipping takes so long from the US I thought I'd better get to ordering. So I browse around, la la la, and have a genius idea. I can't get my face soap here, but they have it on Amazon. I find it. I put it in my cart. The prices are so good I throw in another bar of soap and a lip gloss. Yay! Add a couple of books and I'm done.

Go to checkout. My item total is like $47. They want an extra $50 for shipping. Huh?

Turns out, the Burt's Bees soaps don't come strictly from Amazon, they're in conjunction with Drugstore.com or something and they obviously don't want to ship internationally. So I tried to change the shipping addresses to have them sent to my mother. Then she could ship them to me. (Trust me, this was exactly as exciting to actually do as it is to read about.) I changed the address on the wrong items. I couldn't fix it. I finally did. Shipping costs down. All well.

Until it hit me that the whole point of ordering the stuff from Amazon was so my Mom wouldn't have to go ship them to me.

So I cancelled it all. Meh. I'll fix the order later. It was 4 am.

And the Faery woke up, and didn't want to go back to sleep. So I put in Season Three of Nip/Tuck and ended up watching five episodes--I'm only two away from the ending of the season and finally, finally finding out who The Carver is! I have my suspicions, oh yes. And when did Julia become such an idiot? Your ex husband says your son's girlfriend is a racist, and the girlfriend stands in front of you and says he's a jerk for giving nose jobs to "Jews", and you tell your ex he's out of line? Huh? If one of my girls ever has a boyfriend who says something like that to me I'd kick the little bastard out of my house and tell him never to come near my child again. Anyway.

So basically, I was on my third or fourth wind, and finally went to sleep at like 1 in the afternoon, napped till 5 or so there you go. Tuesday's, as they say, gone with the wind.

Yesterday I almost broke my finger. I was trying to kill a fly. Since there are no screens on the windows, we occasionally get these little flying bastards in the house. I was getting ready to start dinner and nobody likes to cook when there's a fly around, right? Just like nobody doesn't like Sarah Lee. The fly landed on the ceramic-tiled kitchen floor. I grabbed what was handy, which turned out to be a semi-empty cigarette pack. I snuck over to within slamming distance of the fly. I slammed. The cigarette pack fly from my hand and I slammed my middle finger hard on the tile. The fly, of course, buzzed away, laughing, while I screamed and tried not to pass out. He got his, though. The hubs came in and got him with a rolled-up magazine. Ha! Ha!

Meanwhile I can barely move my finger. We had dinner. It still hurt, and I realized I couldn't really bend it well. So I went to the hospital. Digging up change to pay for parking was fun, as I could barely use my right hand (yes, you have to pay to park at the hospital here, which must be great in a real emergency.) The nurse in her frumpy blue dress prodded my finger, asked me to bend it, then told me I probably just overextended the ligaments and so should take ibuprofin and flex it a lot. So that's what I've been doing. Flexing, taking Advil, and watching an amazing bruise blossom under the middle joint of my middle finger.

Ow.

Please make me feel better, and tell me about something clumsy and stupid you've done?

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ohmigawd I've had those Amazon issues. Grrr. Wanted to order from a few shops only to be told I couldn't because the other shops don't ship here. Amazon ought to SAY that for each shop.

Something clumsy.. I am usually covered in bruises around my shins and lower arms cos I constantly wander around in thought without looking where I'm going.

And I have perfect vision, so don't try to be nice and tell me I might need glasses.

*grin*

Ann Aguirre said...

I got run over by my own car once. And nobody was driving it.

And hi!

Robyn said...

Annie, I can't touch that one. Did have to dig a receipt out of the trash once before it was picked up for the week; we have a big green dumpster-style can. I fell in head first, legs flailing. Managed to knock it over before the garbagemen got there.

Stacia said...

I agree with Jenn, Isabella. I wear contacts and still bump into stuff. Plus I think my husband might be passive-agressively trying to cause me harm sometimes by constantly leaving his shoes right in the middle of the floor. The number of times I've tripped over them or stubbed my toes on them...urgh.

Yes...Amazon...grrrr...glad I'm not the only one who has problems!If the three of us write to them constantly, you think it will make a difference?

Stacia said...

Hi Annie! Thanks for stopping in!

Getting run over by your own car is pretty bad. Dislocating my toe is the worst injury I ever caused myself. I'm in awe.

Lol Robyn!! Oh that gave me a good start to my day!

Bernita said...

My list of stupid di-does is " too numerous to mention..."

s.w. vaughn said...

I was sitting at my desk with one leg tucked under me for a few hours working. I stood up and broke my foot.

Seriously. My leg was so asleep it couldn't take any weight at all, but I didn't know that. I just fell and heard something go snap.

The family thought it was hilarious. All I did was stand up!

Anonymous said...

I once pulled my motorcycle into a parking space next to a rather attractive red head -looking and feeling really cool. She smiled at me, I smiled back. The next thing I know I was laying on the asphalt with the bike on top of me. I had forgotten to put the kickstand down. What a jerk. -JTC

Anonymous said...

s.w. - my mother did that same thing when I was kid! she'd been sitting at work, stood up and broke it. luckily she worked in a hospital. ;)

s.w. vaughn said...

Too funny, Isabella! In retrospect, of course. Good thing your mother was already there!

Ann Aguirre said...

Come back with me, if you will, to 1988, autumn. I was a freshman in college. I had a job and I was late for said job, but I needed gas. I drove a very crappy pumpkin orange Plymouth Horizon.

So I stopped at filling station off a busy street. It set on top of a small hill, so the parking lot slanted and the pumps were at the top of the rise.

I hopped out, filled up, and then went to pay. When I came out, my car wasn't where I left it. Imagine my horror when I saw my car rolling gently toward the busy street, gathering momentum as it went down the slope.

All I could think was, My dad's going to kill me! So I sprinted and somehow manage to get behind the car. Yes, I truly believed I was the Bionic Woman and could stop a moving vehicle.

The car knocked me down and ran me over. But I was actually lucky. My body altered the trajectory and it bumped up against the metal Chevron sign, which did stop it, instead of going out into traffic.

What did I do, you ask? I got up, crawled into my car, and went to work: 8 hour shift at a convenience store. "Hey, why are there tire tracks on your pants...?"

After work I went to the student medical center. I had bone-deep bruises for which they prescribed Darvocet. Mmm, pink...

Lynne Simpson said...

Annie, it's funny how in moments of panic our brains get the idea that we have superhuman powers. When I was about the same age, my huge land yacht of a car rolled off like that, and I was trying to stop it with the door handle. Finally, sanity set in, and I threw open the door and managed to get to the brake pedal before the car flattened anything.

You're very lucky you weren't killed. I can't believe you went on to work! Being run over by a car would be a decent excuse, right? :-)

I haven't ordered anything from Amazon in a while, even though I have a gift certificate. Maybe I'll talk my husband into hassling with them. :-)

Stacia said...

Oh, these are all so funny!

So did you get her number, JTC? :-)


I've fallen when my foot fell asleep before. Never broke anything, but then, I manage to wound myself pretty well without breaking bones.

Oh, Annie. Did anyone at least try to help you? It's amazing how we humiliate ourselves with our cars, isn't it? It once took me four tries to get my food and change from a McD's drive-thru. I dropped the money I gave them, tried to get out with my seatbelt on, unbuckled it, got out, realized I hadn't put the car in Park, it rolled over the money...and after it all I was so embarrassed I started to drive away without my food!

Tee-hee, Lynn. I guess we always do see ourselves as Starsky & Hutch or something! The Duke brothers, leaping in the car through the open window!

Ann Aguirre said...

Oh my god, December, the McDonald's story was too funny.

Nobody tried to help me but then, at barely 18, I was more worried about being humiliated in public in front of strangers than whether I might be injured. My thoughts were in this order: "My dad's going to kill me! Ow. Shit, I hope nobody saw that. Let me get the hell out of here." And then a looooooooong time later, "huh, I might be seriously injured..."

It never occurred to me to skip work because I had to have that money. My scholarship covered tuition but not books or living expenses.

Anonymous said...

OMG Quinn, I'm sorry to laugh but OMG Quinn!

I'm only laughing because once I called myself being humane and caught a fly in a glass to release him back into the wild outside and ended up locking myself out of my apartment, at 4 am, in my pajamas with no shoes on.

I had to walk three blocks to the nearest pay phone and beg someone for change so I could call a lock smith. Never again. Now flies and other assorted creatures die on sight.

Reading everybody else's plight makes me feel like I'm in good company. Amazingly I've never broken anything but I have cut myself very badly and suffered a second degree burn from when I worked at McD ooohhh soooo long ago.

I didn't realize it was such a pain to order from Amazon. You would think that they would be more "Global" friendly but apparently not.