Kid Amnesiac

This Saturday, I was beginning to wonder if my 2011 self-reinvention campaign was such a good idea. Last February, when I first decided to get in shape, it was almost a joke. Could a life-long exercise avoider and klutz really run and do pilates without hurting herself? Amazingly, the answer was yes. For a while at least…

Then what I think of as the old Jessica reappeared on the scene. The way I saw it, anyone could fall on a dark rainy run as I did in January. And anyone could have missed the first day of spring training because of a sick kid. And most everyone has missed a season or part thereof due to an injury.

But who in the world beside me would ever suffer a vacuuming injury? About a week ago I was replacing the exhaust filter, or at least trying to, and Could. Not. Get. The. Cover. Latch. Open. So I pulled and pulled and pulled and even put my feet on the unit to provide additional leverage. And thus, with all of my body weight engaged in the task, I finally released the compartment cover. At which point in time it flew out of my grasp, hit me directly in the face, and split open my lower lip. Really! I had to ice my lip and apply pressure for upwards of 20 minutes before I stanched the flow of blood.

And it doesn’t end there. Friday I took Simon up to our attic, which I am in the process of rehabilitating from an in-home storage facility cum garbage can to usable play space. It’s still a little rough up there, but the huge amount of baby equipment and seven large boxes of toys and clothes I removed at least allowed me to visualize the space’s potential. If I have the drywall fixed where some leaky sky-lights caused damage, put on a cheery coat of paint, and buy a portable air conditioning unit, this will give Simon more space to play. It won’t be Pottery Barn perfect, but it will do nicely.

Flush with excitement from my cleaning, I hauled Simon upstairs to see how much more room he already has for his train set. After setting up a play tent and browsing online for bean bag chairs, it was time to head downstairs. Laptop in hand, I made my way first. Then Simon called for me to check out the funny way he was planning to slide down the stairs. It was a potentially dangerous maneuver, and as I spun around to caution him, I lost my footing and fell down about five steps myself.

There was at least one bounce, possibly two, before I landed hard on my right hip, right shoulder, and neck. My tush is sore, my back and shoulders ache, and I have an extremely limited range of motion in my neck. I done banged myself up but good.

As a result, I spent much of yesterday thinking that perhaps I had pushed my luck a bit with this whole running thing. Maybe I really am too klutzy and I should stop before I get hit by a car or cripple myself for life. Or was that just that pain and embarrassment getting to me?

So I did the math:

Total running-related injuries to date include:

• one skinned knee (healed in one week)
• two strained calf muscles (healing in progress).

Total couch-potato/cleaning/computer injuries to date include:

• one strained hand tendon (from knitting and computer work, since healed)
• one busted-up lip
• one totally messed-up neck (mostly remediated)
• terrible vision (which took one giant improvement leap when I quit grad school, another when I went part-time, and yet a third when I left work altogether, putting my prescription back to long-forgotten undergraduate and/or high school levels)
• various minor cooking burns
• two cooking knife accidents bad enough to require stitches.

Looks like I had my thinking backwards. I mean, yeah, 2012 is not off to a great start when it comes to bodily harm, but I’ve done more damage to myself while in my house or engaged in “safe” work pursuits than I ever did while out running. My house looks a ton better since I hurt my calves, but if I don’t get out running again soon, I may be too banged up get started again!