Soda: It's Not Just for Decorating

So yesterday I started the day in a burst of productivity. I swept, dusted, and steamed the floors in the entire house. I even stopped procrastinating and put the rug grippers I'd gotten from Amazon a month ago onto the slippery rug in the entry way. It took a couple of hours, but the house was gleaming. Even Eleanor's room, which generally requires a rake, shovel, and wheelbarrow to traverse safely, was clean and organized. 

After Mother and I went to the Georgetown Library, I braved the grocery store, so that I could be done with errands. I came home with half a dozen reusable tote bags full of groceries, plus a 12-pack of Sangria soda to celebrate the end of summer. (The kids find it amusing that HEB sells a booze-flavored non-alcoholic drink. Although it is essentially carbonated fruit punch, they feel slightly rebellious when drinking it.) 

Now, it's Texas, it's summer, and it's 4:00 p.m. It feels like Satan's sauna. I can practically feel my produce wilting, my milk curdling, and my chicken sprouting salmonella in the trunk.

And no matter how hard I try to convince myself that, really, it's okay to make multiple trips into the house--it is not okay to make multiple trips out of the house. I sling all six bags over my left shoulder, grab the Sangria soda in my right hand and lurch, rather unsteadily, up the hill to the front door, which, at least, I've left unlocked for myself. 

I step up into the hallway. With my left foot in the air, the half dozen grocery bags give a little lurch. I put my foot down in a hurry and my weight shifts to the left. My right shoe goes up, but not far enough, and gets caught under the rug. The rug that I have just affixed rug grippers to, so that it doesn't move. Despite the 69 one-star Amazon reviews, it actually doesn't move.

If you're wondering, they work.
Entirely too well.

So, I'm precariously balanced, leaning, lurching and my foot is now caught under a persistently gripped rug. There's only one way this is going.

Down. It's going down.
Except, this cat is going to land gracefully on its feet.

Fortunately, the Sangria sodas broke my fall. I'll let you think about that one for a minute.

Sangria sodas. 

Broke my fall.

Remember back in the 80s, there was that comedian, Gallagher, whose shtick was that at some point in his show, he'd hit a watermelon with a sledgehammer and everybody in the first three rows got drenched in watermelon bits? It was pretty much like that. 

Because of the six bags in my left hand, my entire weight fell on my right hand. The soda carton slowed my fall and probably kept me from breaking my wrist, but the resulting impact created a lovely fuchsia splatter. All over my clothes. Pooling on the floor. Under the rug with its still-firmly-attached rug grippers. Three feet up every wall and the front door.

On the outside of the front door.
The soda eruption was so intense it violated the laws of physics
by spraying both the inside and outside of the same door.

So, after unpacking and then wiping down every grocery item and grocery bag, putting my clothes in the washer, taking a shower, washing the walls and door, and remopping the floors everywhere I walked doing those things, I asked Mother if the rug was washable, and it turns out she was pretty meh about the rug. Just trying to take off the rug grippers made the backing disintegrate. So it went into the trash, brand new rug grippers and all. Thus fully negating much of the morning's accomplishments.

And then we had a good laugh. For one thing, nothing else in any grocery else broke or shattered. Not even Betty's drinkable yogurt or the salsa. Not even the nectarines got bruised, and you can bruise a nectarine by picking it up, purchasing it, or even staring harshly at it.

Beyond that, though, I felt blessed. Weird, right? No, I feel blessed a lot, on an almost daily basis. For those of you who didn't spend much time with me six years ago, I slipped in the bathroom and fell, twisting my knee. I didn't have the resources to deal with it, so the knee injury chased the tail of an Achilles injury and after three years or so, I could barely walk. I couldn't stand more than a minute without wanting to collapse. I had to haul myself to my feet, then I'd stand there, holding on to something stable until I felt I could walk. My maximum shopping trip was two stores. I walked down stairs sideways, crablike, and hauled myself up them with the rail. A friend told me not too long ago that he'd felt guilty for inviting me to go out with them because I was clearly in so much pain. 

Since I finally (through a generous, and quality-of-life saving, gift from Mother) went through the (agonizingly, worse than a c-section painful) Airrosti therapy process and then continued building strength on my own, I can do many things I couldn't do, but I don't take any of them for granted. When I stood up and gave a presentation for an hour a couple of years ago, some staff came up afterwards and asked if I was okay because I looked a little flushed. And I had been thinking, "WOW! I just stood up! For an hour! THIS IS AWESOME!" I took the kids to SIX stores this tax-free weekend and then we went swimming. Every time I get in the car, I remember that a few years ago I had to use my hands to lift my legs into the car. And, when I fell yesterday, I got up. On my own. On the first try. Rather easily. And, yeah, I'm a little stiff--but I can move. Even though it's been a few years now since I finished Airrosti, every day something happens to remind me how far I've come and how blessed I truly am. Yesterday, oddly enough, it was pulverizing three cans of soda and walking away.