A Blow to the Head

Well, I injured myself yet again! As you may have already perceived, I am not the most graceful of persons. I was lying on our bed talking to my husband as he changed out of his work clothes, and in a moment of exasperation (and melodrama) over something he had said, I flopped back against what I anticipated to be the pillow, but was in fact the headboard. So I am now typing with one hand while clutching a bag of frozen corn to my head with the other. I am the coolest person ever...
My hubby always says (jokingly, but not really, you know?) that he hopes our children inherit most of his genes in the physical coordination department. And I have to agree. Manual dexterity, hand-eye coordination, and so forth have never really been my strong suit. Growing up, the hallway in my parent's house was always covered with the grimy prints of my hands from where I had passed by, groping at the walls for support. This went on probably until about age ten. Ah, well. I was a good reader, though! Great reading comprehension. This did not exactly win me cool points when teams were being chosen for kickball, but most of the time my nose was too buried in my book to notice that the crowd around me was thinning out.
Another painful childhood memory was tennis lessons, which were free at the local tennis court, with the catch being that the instructors were advanced students from the local tennis club. They are not the most sensitive of God's creatures, high school kids, and my instructor had nicknamed me "Ballerina" by the end of my stint with the racket, in an obviously tongue in cheek reference which did not exactly bolster my ambition to give the whole tennis thing another go the next summer.
Speaking of ballet, I also took lessons in dance, of the tap, ballet, and baton twirling variety. This is a somewhat tender spot, as I actually did like dance (as opposed to tennis) and cherished delusions of one day perhaps joining a dance troupe in Paris. So, imagine, if you will, ten little girls, aged eight to eleven, all dressed in airy tutus and opaque pink tights, executing tight little pirouettes across the dance floor. Now imagine, following in their wake, an eleven year old girl already with her full heighth and... womanly shape, if you will, including thighs which resemble plump sausages stuffed into pink casing, careening across the room, aim wildly off, her twirls ending abruptly when she spins herself into the wall. I am in no way exaggerating.
So I guess that's it for today. If you happen to know me and are ever curious about my various bumps and bruises, rest assured that they are self-inflicted, and maybe, if you think about, say a little prayer that the klutz gene ends with me!

Women's Work

So, today I was trying to be all helpful and productive (plus I was actually out of bed and had my coffee before 8AM!) so I went outside to mulch and pick up the roughly a zillion sticks that last week's storm had blown around our yard. I'm supposed to go out to dinner with my mom tonight, while my poor husband has to mow the lawn, so I thought, maybe I'll be a nice person and make his job a little easier by clearing the yard for him. Nice, right? No! Terrible idea. No good deed goes unpunished, that is my lesson of the day. To explain, here is a blow by blow account of the inner workings of my mind for this tragic episode of attempted helpfulness:
Hmm, Addy is awake, so she'll have to go outside with me while I mulch. But wait, the bags of mulch are still in the garage, and I can't just leave her sitting in her stroller alone outside while I drag them all to the backyard. She might get stung by a bee or something, who knows! I'll just put her in her exersaucer while I take the bags out to the back.
(Sarah puts on sandals, brightly assures daughter that she will return momentarily, and heads to garage.)
Oh, wait- these bags are big. And there are a lot. It's going to take me forever to get them all back there. If I can even lift them, which is doubtful. Better get the wheelbarrow.
(Sarah takes look around garage.)
Oh wait, no wheelbarrow. Where is wheelbarrow?
(Sarah takes second look around as if expecting wheelbarrow to sheepishly emerge from its hiding place.)
Oh wait, wheelbarrow is in the backyard. Husband was using it.
(Sarah walks around the house to fenced in garden, which at the moment is more of a weed garden.)
Aha! Wheelbarrow. Oh dear. Upon closer inspection, wheelbarrow is filled with.... packed in dirt. Why, why is wheelbarrow filled with dirt?! Oh well. What to do? I need to break up the dirt and get it out of the wheelbarrow in order to fill it with bags of mulch, that's what I need to do. Obviously. I'll just go get the shovel.
(Still unperturbed, Sarah heads back to the garage to find shovel. Finds shovel, returns to backyard.)
All righty then, now to break up the dirt. Oh good, this is working. Now to dump it out...
(Sarah attempts to tip wheelbarrow, but instead it wobbles and falls on its side, nearly pinning Sarah's leg and spilling its contents into the one part of the garden that actually is a garden and should not have mounds of dirt randomly tossed into it.)
What... No, no stop that! Why....
(Sarah rights the wheelbarrow, fumbles around for a bit, and then manages to overturn it on its other side.)
That's better. All right, an empty wheelbarrow. Mission accomplished. Oh wait, the mission was to haul mulch to the backyard. Well, one step closer anyways. Off to the garage to get the bags!
(Sarah heads off triumphantly towards the garage, but her triumph is short lived as she is immediately opposed by the rogue wheelbarrow, which is attempting to flop to either side with every step.)
Oh, come on... What the heck. All right, let me just see what the trouble is here...
(Exasperated, Sarah bends over to inspect useless wheelbarrow, forgets that all wheelbarrows have portruding handles, and slams left eye directly into one of said handles. Sarah puts hand to her face and wonders how she will explain black eye to concerned acquaintances. She then looks down with her good eye and realizes that tire of demon-possessed wheelbarrow is completely flat. Sarah returns to house, defeated, to find her poor neglected child yawning pitifully, her sad, tired little head lying on the tray of her exersaucer.)

So, there you have it, folks. Don't attempt helpfulness! You will only get hurt! A woman's place is in the house, that is another moral to my story. Also, if you have a baby, you shouldn't try to get yardwork done. You will end up feeling like a negligent mother who should be hauled off to jail. And those are my words of wisdom for today.

It's a Small, Small, Small, Small World

Everything I have dealt with today, literally and figuratively, has been small. For instance, this afternoon I spent a good hour folding, sorting, putting away, and reorganizing my daughter's bitty little clothes (her wardrobe could clothe an entire neighborhood of underprivileged children, but that's another story, and has mainly to do with my mom's addiction to ebay.) I have turned over and then refilled the same basket of little bitty toys approximately four times already, rinsed off of tiny bowls and spoons the remains of several tiny little meals, and shortly thereafter changed several tiny but potent little diapers. My vocabulary consists mainly of tiny little words, many of which are not even, technically speaking, words at all.
So you get the idea. Sometimes it's just hard to feel that my day is really worthwhile. Are the waking hours in which I spend my time with a dog and an infant really counting for anything in the grand scheme of things, or are they just disappearing, one after another, and with them small fragments of my brain, my personality, and my sense of humor (to say nothing of my sense of style, which lately seems to consist of whatever covers the lovehandle/stretchmark portion of my midriff)?
I know the answer to this, of course. I just wanted to sort of send this question out into the universe, so I could hear it and then know that of course it's rhetorical.