The Weekend After

I'm beginning to emerge from my Thanksgiving-induced coma, brought on by excessive cleaning, cooking and eating. It feels exactly like having finally beaten a bad case of the flu. My body is weak and unwilling to exert the slightest effort.

That must factored in when the accident occurred today. Wm was insistent, in his little boy way, that I play with him. I also owed my mom a phone call, and since multi-tasker is my middle name, we decided to ride bikes while I called my mom. Perched on my daughter's bike, which unbeknownst to me had been adjusted to accomodate my husband (my one-foot-taller-than-I-am husband), I absentmindedly began to ride.

I've ridden bikes all my life, and though I definitely have a few miles on my old bones, expected it to be like - well, "just like riding a bike". You never forget. What I did forget was to check the gear and the brakes. Phone to my ear, I hit the brakes which were like hitting the stop button on the DVD player. Stop it did. I did not.

Laying on the driveway, I yelled to the phone, now in pieces, "Hold on, Mom" as I assessed my injuries. Surprisingly, I felt okay. I retrieved the phone, only to discover blood on my jeans.

"See, Wm, Mommy isn't good at riding bikes," I told him, hoping this would get me out of bike riding for, well, eternity.

After finishing the phone call, I found I had a nice hole in my knee, small, but deep.

Tonight, my family asked if I was okay.
"Sure. Not that anybody would even notice if I died, except when dinner time rolled around and it wasn't made."

Lauren, the oldest, put her arms around my shoulders, murmuring a protest as Anna said, "Ahhhh, nooooo, that's not true. What about lunch and breakfast?"