Baggage, Bewilderment, and You

A few days after last week's unfortunate ankle incident, I had to take a last minute trip out of town. Rather than schlepping through two airports on crutches, I decided to swallow my pride and hitched a ride in a wheelchair. Yup, it was just me and the elderly.

My first flight went smoothly and I made it through airport security in record time. It was almost as great as the time I was on crutches during a family trip to Disneyland. Almost.

On my return flight there were 4 or 5 other persons needing wheelchairs and, for some reason, the Phoenix airport only assigns one wheelchair attendant for two wheelchairs. Once this poor man finally hauled me and his other charge, a very sweet elderly woman, to the baggage claim, he asked about our bags. After I described mine he turned to my comrade. "How many bags do you have, ma'am?" "Oh, I'm not sure" she replied in a very sweet but clueless voice. "Okay, well do you have your baggage claim tickets?" The woman was getting confused and starting to look a bit flustered. "I don't know what those are. . ." she trailed off. He explained about baggage claim tickets and, after a fair amount of rummaging, she extracted her ticket sleeve from somewhere in the depths of her purse, presenting it to the attendant with pride. "It looks like you have two bags, then. What color are they?" She looked at him with complete confidence and replied "Black."

Now, I feel it important to pause in this narration and note three things. First, we were standing right in the middle of a busy airport's baggage claim with many, many people walking past, the majority of which were wheeling black suitcases. Second, seeing as she couldn't remember how many bags she had, I'm going to go out on a limb on this one and say that she didn't remember what, exactly, they looked like. Third, I watched this poor man's countenance fall pretty noticeably at this point in their amusing, at least from my perspective, interchange.

To his credit, he was extremely polite and patient through our whole airport parade and maintained that helpful attitude while checking the claim tags on every single black bag that rumbled past us.

Oh, and they finally found her suitcases. One black, one blue.

Pity Me, Party of 2

On Monday night I was volunteering with St. Mary's Food Bank (a very impressive organization) collecting food at Eddie's House, a restaurant run by a local "celebrity chef" type, during their food drive. On a trip across the slick, tinted concrete floor in my darling 2-inch wedges, I lost my footing and totally wiped out. The flat-on-my-back-and-several-people-running-to-help-you-because-you-look-so-awful-wiping-out type of wipe out. In front of an entire restaurant. And the heiress to the Home Depot fortune. And a bunch of NFL sports guys. Did I mention an entire restaurant? I have weak ankles and immediately felt my right one start to throb and swell. I managed to make it home, but that was about it. It looked like I had an orange protruding from my ankle. There is no more walking on this ankle.

After nearly a day of hopping around on one foot, I managed to track down some crutches and I've set up a little nest on the downstairs couch. Swelling in my ankle has started to go down, but it is still really sore. Part of the problem is that I have extremely low pain tolerance. For example:

• I've been known to spend a long time moaning over and nursing paper cuts. And then not use the finger for the rest of the day.
• During college I had a wart burned off my heel. I spent the rest of the entire day in bed with my foot elevated, crocheting, listening to Harry Potter on tape, and begging my roommate to bring me food.
• During graduate school I had a two moles removed, one on my arm and one behind my ear. I had to request more anesthetic halfway through the procedure on my arm (which, it turned out, was a benign tumor and I feel that justifies my pain response - sort of) and I cried through most of the procedure. The poor nurse had to hold my hand and prevent the tears from puddling in my ear. I spent the rest of the day moaning on the coach. Fortunately, my long-suffering roommates were willing to cater to my demands.

Some people ask how I expect to have children. I have three syllables for you: a-dop-tion. Think of all those children in need of a good home.

Given this history, you can imagine how well I dealt with my ankle pain. Which means that I didn't. I was a wreck. Fortunately, it really is starting to feel better and the swelling has gone significantly. Although, seeing as the outside of my ankle looked like someone lodged a baseball in it and now it looks like I have cankles, that doesn't necessarily mean much. Plus, I'm on crutches. I've attached a picture, taken just an hour ago.

Seeing as I'm shamelessly trolling for sympathy, here's another:

Feel free to pity me.

Why I Love Phoenix

It is mid-October, and I just got out of the pool. Temperature? A refreshing 97 degrees, but not the hot, miserable kind of 97 degrees. The breezy, comfortable, "autumny" kind of 97 degrees.

Oh, and my tan is coming along nicely. Thanks for asking. :)

546 Pictures? Don't mind if I do!

A few weeks ago my friend showed me this incredibly funny website. Someone posted random and very funny thoughts about life in general. Because some of them were a bit naughty, I won't share the actual website with you. However, because I am so incredibly generous, I will share with you some of my favorite tidbits:

• I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.
• Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.
• There is a great need for sarcasm font.
• I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.
• The only time I look forward to a red light is when I'm trying to finish a text.
• Was learning cursive really necessary?
• MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.
• Whenever I'm Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don't mind if I do!
• Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don't want to have to restart my collection.
• I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it's on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.
• It really pisses me off when I want to read a story on CNN.com and the link takes me to a video instead of text.

Enjoy!