Since before February even started, I have been making plans for this weekend: my first weekend at home in a month! What would I do, I wondered, in order to perefctly relax after all the travel and excitement the month had in store for me? I’ve been fantasizing about wine and movies and making pizza and photo projects and the like, and I think I have a plan.
But before I get the chance to rest my tired self and restore my neglected apartment to a state of cleanliness and order (what I like to call an Awesome Day of Domesticity), my body and my apartment both decided to completely destroy themselves. Oh, yes. Here’s a list of what has happened so far:
1. Last night, while I was getting ready to go out to a play, my toilet decided to stop draining and my bathtub started backing up with dirty water. If you know me or you used to read my old blog, you know I have had problems with plumbing like this before — to the tune of five occurrences during a nine-month stint in one of my grad school apartments. Not good. Everyone says I was a corrupt plumber in a past life.
2. After the play, at a local “jazz cocktail lounge” (shut up, the place is cool), I was chomping down on some delicious lavash and hummus and I bit the inside of my cheek so hard that what’s left inside my mouth is like some ragged ground hamburger with bits dangling off. The dangly bits keep getting accidentally caught between my upper and lower teeth and thus getting chomped more. Did I just disgust you? WELL AT LEAST IT’S NOT TAKING PLACE INSIDE YOUR MOUTH, OKAY?
(Sorry, Reader; it’s not really you I am yelling at, you know?)
3. I got home, hamburger face and all, to find a repaired toilet and tub (THANK YOU, SUPER!) and a lingering smell of swampiness. Still swampy smelling in here the next day.
4. I was straightening an unruly pile of student papers — you know, when you grab the pile loosely and bang the bottom edge of it on your desk, the papers sliding through your hands, to even the edges? Well, as the papers slid through my hands, I gave myself a MONDO paper cut right in the web between my thumb and forefinger. On my right (writing) hand, of course.
5. And then, THEN. I managed to bang my knuckle into the corner of a legal pad that was sitting on my desk and gave myself another papercut on my knuckle. Right hand again.
6. Look, I know it is idiotic and babyish to complain about papercuts, but both of these are huge, deep, painful, and bloody. The knuckle one kept bleeding during my run later and actually bled through the bandaid. What the frak, right?
7. Speaking of my run, I just absolutely murdered my hamstring. Not the usually tight hamstring, but the other one! The one I thought was good! The hamstring I thought I could count on! It felt a bit tight at the outset, but by the time I had run about 2.6 miles I had to stop and hobble back in the general direction of the car due to the stabbing pain.
8. The above is entirely irksome and a bit scary — was my hamstring just too tight, or have I actually injured it somehow, some kind of strain, pull, or tear? I just can’t tell. It came on pretty gradually, so I don’t think it’s a pull or a tear. But then I’m not sure I even know what those terms really mean. I’m just repeating some words I heard here, folks. Well, except for “tear.” I know exactly what that word means and I’d prefer not to think about it. For now, I’m RICE-ing it and waiting to see.
I think after all this I deserve a pretty awesomely restful weekend, though, and to end on a positive note, here are some of the things I have in store:
1. Watching Whip It (again), which I just bought on DVD
2. Doing some leisure reading (finishing The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, and starting either The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo*, by Fellow Nordic Person Stieg Larsson — the Swedish title, interestingly: Män som hatar Kvinnor, or “Men Who Hate Women”)
3. Making pizza
4. Grocery shopping and Target shopping
5. Watching some Northern Exposure from Netflix
6. An Awesome Day of Domesticity
7. Drinking some wine, possibly Target Wine Cube Wine because, huzzah!, my Target has finally started selling wine, oh joy of all great joys.
So, what’s on the schedule for your weekend?
Raveling Out 
Oh, definitely read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo! It and its sequel, The Girl Who Played With Fire, read like an IKEA catalogue in parts (sometimes literally), but they’re very good.
Hope your weekend makes up for your lame day!!
I am having a date night with Philly! YAY! Which is excellent, since I think we’re starting to forget what each other look like. Oy.
Sorry about all that bullshit, but I feel you. I won’t even TELL you the story about taking the puppy to the vet today with The Boy in tow and ending up in tears in the parking lot. Yeah. That was fun. Hope your fun/relaxing weekend heals what ails you.
K – That was the one I was leaning toward. Good to know there’s a sequel out there because I’ll probably get into it and then be sad when it ends. That always happens.
C – Hooray for date night! Sounds like fun. Also, you will have to tell me about the vet thing at some point. Hope your day today is better, at least!
Actually it’s a 3-book series! The last one comes out in May, and I definitely already have it pre-ordered. (It’s already out in Europe, though, if you simply can’t wait.)
Ooh, excellente!