The Ranger is a sort of rumpled red. It was less rumpled when Hammer owned it, but when Hammer transferred to a little
island in the Pacific, he sold it to my dear friend, Viking. Viking
maybe wasn't quite ready for her first vehicle to be something as big as
the Ranger, but in time she learned how to take corners without taking
them OUT, and it really does suit her personality.
That was about a year ago. This summer, we came back to hauling the rumpled red Ranger everywhere. We like it. This weekend, Viking had to work, and permitted me the use of her truck so that I could get a couple of the girls to Bible Study Friday night, and generally tool about with it all weekend.
Saturday afternoon, went to go see Oz the Magnificent (the message of which I actually really needed then, so, beautifully timed), and was lounging in the back of the truck, waiting for a friend, and observed a candy bar wrapper skittering across the parking lot.
The Gentleman's mentor, MedDad, has a saying about convictions - that a conviction is a belief you're willing to die for, or at least it's something you live out. You can argue about a belief without it ever showing up in your life - conviction does. I suppose that means I have a conviction about litter - it falls under, "If you see a problem, and you're able to FIX the problem, why wouldn't you?"
So, the plan was to hop out of the truck, capture the errant wrapper, stuff it in my pocket, and return to the truck.
The plan did not figure in one foot being slightly less committed to that hop than the other.
So I fell sideways about 8 feet to the pavement. Fortunately, training kicked in and I rolled, taking off a lot of the force of impact from my right shoulder. Unfortunately, situational awareness ALSO kicked in, and while I rolled facedown and could have continued to my left, I was also aware of that being the traffic lane, and I used my left arm to stop progress.
That may have been a mistake. Had there been traffic, would have been the right move, but there was not, and my arm wasn't strong enough to stop that much force without some serious damage. (And the Gentleman's appreciation for building physical strength to prevent injury suddenly makes much more sense now.)
What followed was pretty graceless, but I made it back to the truck.
Later that night, the Gentleman and I were joining friends for a cookout (read: throw a dead tree on a fire ring. Stuff some branches underneath. Set fire to it. Let hot dogs and marshmallows commence.), and while helping to clean up, I made the disastrous decision to lift a bag of marshmallows with my left hand.
That was about a 7 on the pain scale. (My pain scale has 8 as "curled up on the floor in the fetal position.") Hrm.
Monday morning, take my beautifully bruised (y'gotta see this one - it's a piece of work) arm down to medical. Our medical is a little goofy - just about anything but sheer stupidity is all covered under our work insurance, but if something isn't life-threatening, there are only specific hours when you can get it checked out. Weekend is not part of this.
X-rays say nothing is fractured. The nice friendly medic and I were both, "Yes, we already know THAT," owing to how it was performing. I can use the hand fine, I just can't rotate my arm or lift anything over two pounds (I tried lifting a filled waterbottle out of the Gentleman's sink the day before. It was a little humbling.).
The theory is that I have bruised/strained the tendons in and around my forearm, and managed one BEAUT of a bruise (this is probably my new record for bruising. As far as I can tell, that's not from the pavement at all - it's from the bones and everything else hitting the INSIDE of the skin really hard.) inside my left arm. The rest of me's got minor bruises and scrapes, but an unusable left arm has me a little queasy about the upcoming Tough Mudder on the 15th. We'll see what develops.
That was about a year ago. This summer, we came back to hauling the rumpled red Ranger everywhere. We like it. This weekend, Viking had to work, and permitted me the use of her truck so that I could get a couple of the girls to Bible Study Friday night, and generally tool about with it all weekend.
Saturday afternoon, went to go see Oz the Magnificent (the message of which I actually really needed then, so, beautifully timed), and was lounging in the back of the truck, waiting for a friend, and observed a candy bar wrapper skittering across the parking lot.
The Gentleman's mentor, MedDad, has a saying about convictions - that a conviction is a belief you're willing to die for, or at least it's something you live out. You can argue about a belief without it ever showing up in your life - conviction does. I suppose that means I have a conviction about litter - it falls under, "If you see a problem, and you're able to FIX the problem, why wouldn't you?"
So, the plan was to hop out of the truck, capture the errant wrapper, stuff it in my pocket, and return to the truck.
The plan did not figure in one foot being slightly less committed to that hop than the other.
So I fell sideways about 8 feet to the pavement. Fortunately, training kicked in and I rolled, taking off a lot of the force of impact from my right shoulder. Unfortunately, situational awareness ALSO kicked in, and while I rolled facedown and could have continued to my left, I was also aware of that being the traffic lane, and I used my left arm to stop progress.
That may have been a mistake. Had there been traffic, would have been the right move, but there was not, and my arm wasn't strong enough to stop that much force without some serious damage. (And the Gentleman's appreciation for building physical strength to prevent injury suddenly makes much more sense now.)
What followed was pretty graceless, but I made it back to the truck.
Later that night, the Gentleman and I were joining friends for a cookout (read: throw a dead tree on a fire ring. Stuff some branches underneath. Set fire to it. Let hot dogs and marshmallows commence.), and while helping to clean up, I made the disastrous decision to lift a bag of marshmallows with my left hand.
That was about a 7 on the pain scale. (My pain scale has 8 as "curled up on the floor in the fetal position.") Hrm.
Monday morning, take my beautifully bruised (y'gotta see this one - it's a piece of work) arm down to medical. Our medical is a little goofy - just about anything but sheer stupidity is all covered under our work insurance, but if something isn't life-threatening, there are only specific hours when you can get it checked out. Weekend is not part of this.
X-rays say nothing is fractured. The nice friendly medic and I were both, "Yes, we already know THAT," owing to how it was performing. I can use the hand fine, I just can't rotate my arm or lift anything over two pounds (I tried lifting a filled waterbottle out of the Gentleman's sink the day before. It was a little humbling.).
The theory is that I have bruised/strained the tendons in and around my forearm, and managed one BEAUT of a bruise (this is probably my new record for bruising. As far as I can tell, that's not from the pavement at all - it's from the bones and everything else hitting the INSIDE of the skin really hard.) inside my left arm. The rest of me's got minor bruises and scrapes, but an unusable left arm has me a little queasy about the upcoming Tough Mudder on the 15th. We'll see what develops.
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