Merry Ho Ho

My partner, Jordan, got a phone call from his mom. She was bawling.
She’d had laser eye surgery recently, and was to put medicated drops in her eyes every morning. This morning, still half asleep, she opened the small container on her counter, tipped her head back and spilled ½ a bottle of clear nail polish into her left eye. She called the poison control centre and they advised her to wash it out with tears.

I know it’s serious, but, still, kinda funny in a sick way.


I got to wear pants to work again today. My new ones (bought the weekend before I started, 30 days ago) had a hem malfunction. Both of them. The hems came undone. My local drycleaner was happy to get them repaired for me, so for one week, I was without half my work-wardrobe. Had to alternate 2 skirts between 4 workdays. Thank goodness for casual Fridays.

Anyway, back to today… I’m eating lunch with “the kids” (as I call them) at Arrow. The kids are my co-workers who are under the age of 25. I try extra hard to be cool and hip when I’m with these humans who are 20 years younger than me. Sometimes it’s tiring.

The four of us are in the lunch room, when in the distance I can hear my cell phone ringing. (Well, it’s my ‘courtesy phone’… my phone is broken. And, according to my latest communication with them – unrepairable. And my $200 three year warrantly? Invalid due to the nature of the damage. But I digress.) I’m not sure how to use this clunky black phone, other than to answer it and dial out. If I miss a call, I have no way of finding out where that call originated from.
I jumped up real quick so that I could race down the hall to my office to grab my phone. I expected it to be Drew, and I didn’t want to miss his call.
I took a giant step forward and said, “Oh, that’s my cell…” then I fell flat on my face as my other leg had the lunch-room phone cable wrapped around it.

Down. I disappeared from sight. I landed like a 200 pound sack of potatoes between the table and the fridge, right in the doorway. I missed cracking my head open on the door casing by less than an inch.

My knees were burning, I had skinned both of them. My arms felt jolted as I had tried to brace my fall by grabbing the floor as I careened toward it.

“Are you OK?”
“What happened?”
“Oh my goodness, did you smack your head?”
“Your knees must be killing you… are you alright?”
“Did you see her go down?”

I hopped back up like one of those inflatable punching clowns and said, “Man. Good thing I had pants on today. If I’d been wearing a skirt, I would’ve had to quit. Just walk out of the building and never return.”

Jordan was in our office when I limped in. He raised his eyebrow.
“The phone cable in the lunch room was wrapped around my leg…”

I’m sure he thinks that all women over 40 should be put to pasture.