Two weeks ago I fell down the stairs. Loudly. Dramatically. With just bucketloads of cursing.

Our laundry machines are in the basement. (Why we have a basement in Florida next to a river is a subject for its own newsletter, but it seemed like a good place to put a washer/dryer at the time.) I began my ill-fated trip innocently enough, with a heavy bag of dirty laundry in either hand, leaving very few hands open for grabbing banisters in the event of sudden fallage.

Topplage? Plummetizing.

Whatever.

Artist’s rendition of me, as I handsomely tumblenté down the stairs of my mineshaft in search of terrifying demons to banish.

Dirty clothes live in the bedroom, which is upstairs. There is a staircase with a window at the landing, originally for poking a corpse’s feet out of as the corpse-carrying-guys reached the turn on the stair. (Corpsehumpers?) Last month Lena fell down those stairs while she and I were trying to carry a sofa up them. She got banged around pretty good, and while mostly better after a few days, she still complains of feeling like she’s sitting on a golf ball.

We don’t do that anymore. Call if you know a good sofahumper.

Because of Lena’s mishap, I carefully descended the stairs, taking great pains to stay safe. In the kitchen both dogs decided they needed to be directly under my feet, which was entertaining … or would have been if I were watching the video of it happening to someone I hated instead of being an actual participant … but they listened when I told them to fuck the fuck off and I exited the kitchen without injury.

Only the stairs into the basement lay between me and my ultimate goal … the washing machine. You know what’s about to happen now, don’t you?

The scary staircase, with the downstairs lights turned off for added creepiness!

On the very top I overstepped the stair just enough and lost my balance. With a heavy bag in both hands which I somehow forgot how to let go of (thus insuring the maximum possible weight fallinating on top of me once I reached the bottom), I tumblized past three safety handles we installed in the walls, cracked my skull numerous times into both the aforementioned walls and some surprisingly solid metal shelving, and landed hard on one already sketchy knee.

Lena claims she would have heard me fall just fine from two floors up even without all the screaming and cursing, but I didn’t see the reason to take that chance.

I think this wall is improved with a head-shaped dent in it.
Conversely, I do not think my head is improved with a wall-shaped dent in it.

Although I had no symptoms of a bad concussion, I had plenty of signs of a minor one, which meant I was just fine to grab my cane (I’ve always wanted an excuse to use it) and hobble to the Literary Lounge, a local bookstore that recently started carrying my books. (1080 Edgewood Ave S. Check ‘em out. They’re good people.) Terry, the owner, gave me cash out of the till to pay for the books, and I somehow got it into my head that she needed the small bills she was handing me, so I tried to give her the biggest bills in my wallet back so she would have all her small ones.

You may notice a lapse in logic here.

Happily, Terry is a good person who pushed my money back into my hands and sent me home to rest. About this time my knee started swelling like a grapefruit (it had been several hours) and walking became a thing of the past.

The shelves of the Literary Lounge, displaying a tiny fraction of their wonderfully curated selection. And me. Also displaying me.

The concussion was all better the next day, and the bruises were mostly faded after a week or so. I’m still limping but I can go for slow walks around the neighborhood and the whole thing continues to be good for sympathy points from Lena, so I suppose it wasn’t a complete waste. She wants to move into a flat house which seems less and less stupid the more I consider it, but it does seem cheaper to just move all my shit into the living room.

Well, I won’t be moving my shit myself. That’s what sofahumpers are for.

The first book of my new series, Wrong Way to Heaven! Go check it out here!

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