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Comic relief finally came into play last night after a rather upsetting week.
The pain of losing a relative and close friend a few days apart really did take their toll on me mentally.
The first thing to put a smile on my face was when I called my children last night, as I do every three days. They both attend different schools and had their sports carnivals on the same day. I could have attended both as they are only a few kilometres apart had the schools provided an itinerary of what events were happening and when….but they didn’t. I explained to the kids and they were fine with it.
When I called them last night, my daughter (11) gave me a rundown of her day. She qualified for the 100 metre final but was disappointed at coming in 4th. I said that there was nothing wrong with that but she had to go through THREE heats to qualify. This was followed by a lunchbreak. I was starting to cramp up just listening.
To add insult to injury, she was unexpectedly put into the 800 metre race. She said she was disappointed with, again, coming 4th. I said “How many people were in that race?” She replied, “Oh, about twenty!” I told her that I wouldn’t make the finish line….& I wasn’t joking.
I then asked my son (14) how he went. He said that he came third in the 100 metre race. I was a touched surprised as three weeks ago he qualified fastest for this distance. He went on to tell me that he forgot his sports gear and was running in his school trousers and shoes! He finished 4th in a field of twelve. What did surprise me but it shouldn’t have is that he won the long-jump by just under a metre. His legs go up to his shoulders so, as I mentioned previously, I shouldn’t have been surprised.
The next ‘pick-me-up’ happened this morning. I was mowing our block of land which is rough and just under an acre. I hadn’t even traveled ten metres when my left hand brushed along a barbed wire fence. It brushed the fence just long enough to tear a strip of skin from the middle knuckle of my left hand. As the weather was rather windy & cold at the time, I didn’t give it much thought and pressed on.
The final straw of diversional therapy, if you will, was when I had one ‘lap’ to go. I knew that there’s a nasty divot in a certain area. With a bit of hindsight you know when you’re near it. This bit of hindsight let me down. As the right, front wheel of the mower hit the divot, it threw the lawnmower, with me attached, off at a jolting 45-degree angle. Had it went the opposite way I would have been fine. It went the wrong way and a moderate back injury from the age of nineteen came into play as a sharp, shooting pain went from my right iliac crest, down the back of my thigh and around my knee.
The last 20-or so metres were agony but I managed.
Without consciously being aware of my hiccups, I went inside and Mum almost passed out. I was hobbling like Quasimodo and the blood from my knuckle had, without my knowledge, trickled down rather profusely. My hand looked like one of those rubber comedy/horror hands.
I had nothing else to do for the day so I had no qualms about getting some Percutane rubbed onto my lower back, having a cigarette and a coffee to wash down two pain killers.
Today should have been a nightmare. It wasn’t. In light of recent events, today was a breeze.
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