My Birthday, My Ass

i have finally gotten around to finishing this post. are you so excited?

well, fine, whatever.

so.

the last few years haven't exactly provided me with the best birthdays.

29 sort of fell in the middle of a series of unfortunate events...though 29 wasn't quite as bad as the previous years, which had included a divorce (26), a funeral (27), and a trip to the emergency room (28).

so as i sit here in the safety of my own apartment (read: not falling down), i will now detail for you the saga of my foot woes (because if *that* doesn't sound enthralling, what does?), which culminated on my birthday two years ago. it was My Greatest Moment of Breezy Elegance.

unless we consider the other My Greatest Moment of Breezy Elegance, which was not on my birthday, but for which i have a photograph of my ass.

i think this is going to be a long post.

anyway.

so two years ago i went to go see the fireworks with my then-boyfriend, El_G, and, yes, had a few drinks. and before you go and start thinking that my drinking affected my coordination, i'll point out that probably it didn't -- my coordination has issues regardless. the drinking did, however, affect my thinking (which, sure, proved disastrous for my coordination).

see because here's what i thought. i thought, as i got to the top of the stairs of our floor, and saw El_G unlocking our apartment door, that it would be a GREAT idea to be sweet and cute and fun and RUN over to him to hug him. yes! because RUNNING at your boyfriend out of the blue makes all sorts of sense. thank you, $4 beers.

and so, all of four feet away from El_G, i took off running towards him.

but one step into my sudden sprint, my sneaker caught on a bit of uneven carpet and i totally lost my (already inept) balance. and yet, because i was already sort of running, i couldn't just fall. i had to try to recover.

you know? how when you trip as you're walking down the street you can sometimes catch yourself? where it takes a few steps but you regain balance and then are okay?

right, well, that's what i tried to do. because $4 beers make you think this is possible.

because $4 beers allow you to temporarily forget that the hallway is only so long.

so yep. while i was in the middle of trying to recover -- half-hunched over, still in mid-run -- i ran out of hallway and slammed into the wall.

and went through it.

let me say this again. my entire body ran full-speed into the wall which appeared way too early. and because of some stupid physics laws of motion bullshit, slamming into the wall made me stop moving forward.

yes, my elbow had stopped me (by going through the drywall), and the rest of my body, with nowhere else to go, just crumpled.

on top of my foot.

and then poor El_G, who had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what in god's name his girlfriend was doing, only managed to turn around in time to see the crumpling motion, followed by my gasping for air (since in addition to knocking out part of the wall i'd also managed to knock the wind out of me).

and by the time he was able to ask me what on earth had happened (because it is only right and proper that a boyfriend wonder why his girlfriend would suddenly decide to run headlong into a wall), i had started with the crying.

not a little crying, either. the kind of crying that happens when you are drunk and embarrassed and also in more pain than you've ever been. pain that would not subside. pain that made you wonder if you'd ever walk the same again, because you'd just fallen on the same foot you injured in a freak dating accident.

[sidenote, freak dating accident: several months earlier i had agreed to go on a date with a guy from online. (because we've established that that is what i do.) and after 94 manhattans AND a seemingly endless pitcher of sangria, my big clunky high heel met with uneven sidewalk. and i went down. and this was problematic because i was on a very awkward first date wherein the man expressed interest in marrying me about three drinks in. and so when he helped me up and put me into his car to take me back home, he suggested i consider moving in with him. all i could think was, "DO NOT CRY, IT WILL ONLY MAKE THINGS WORSE."]

and so after a night of agonizing pain, El_G dragged me to the emergency room. and when all was said and done, it was discovered that i had broken nothing, but pulled *every* tendon in my foot. and you might think that sounds better, but the doctor was very somber in explaining that i was actually unfortunate, since breaks heal better and hurt less.

which of course i appreciated.

so to summarize My Greatest Moment of Birthday Breezy Elegance: my last-minute decision to enthusiastically hug my boyfriend resulted in an (expensive) trip to the emergency room and my being able not to put pressure on the foot for SIX weeks, not being able to walk normally for four months, and gaining a ton of immobility weight. which i've since lost, though my right foot is still slightly bigger than my left.

hi? kristy? remember when you said this was actually about your ass? who cares about your big, ugly foot?

oh, right.

so my ass then.

My Other Greatest Moment of Breezy Elegance has nothing to do with my birthday. but is worth telling because of the picture.

four summers ago i was a LOT of fun to be around. i was living in my soon-to-be-ex-house in the soon-to-be-ex-suburbs avoiding my soon-to-be-ex-husband and feeling absolutely miserable.

and so i thought that taking a few days to go visit my sister and her boyfriend would be a great idea. they had just moved to a new, beautiful apartment in boston (complete with guest room), and i thought it would be nice to get to know my sister's apparently-serious boyfriend better.

on one of the days i was there, my SisterHealy had to go off and do something. which meant her BoyfriendBrian and i had to find something to do without her. which meant (duh) heading down to the beer garden*.

and of course i thought, "gosh, this will be nice. i'll get to hang out with brian and learn more about him and we can bond and gee, won't this be swell."

and you know, probably it could've been. swell, i mean. and actually, it even started out okay. but see, me? at that time? complete and utter basketcase. and adding copious amounts of wine? DOES NOT HELP.

in the course of the many hours we were there, i dragged poor Brian through the various and fun stages of my emotional instability, ranging from hating men ("but not YOU, brian!") and not believing in marriage ("but it would be SO GREAT if you married my sister!") and also hating the northeast and EVERYTHING in it ("oh, but um, boston's okay...") to being absolutely completely ecstatic about how really i'm starting the newest and most exciting stage of my life ("everything is really just fabulous, brian, it really is truly is fabulous, it just really, really, is...").

so on the tail end of one of my very long, incoherent explanations of why everything is really fabulous, i had to go to the ladies' room.

located down a flight of stairs.

and i was feeling great. brian (who'd gotten about 4 words in edgewise) was SO GREAT. my life (while completely turned upside down) was going to be SO GREAT. being left by my husband was SO GREAT because of how LIBERATING it was. (for those 15 minutes, anyway.)

so you know how when i was feeling great at the holiday party and thought skipping down the hallway was a good idea?

i decided after 372 glasses of pinot grigio that i would just casually, lightheartedly (because everything was SO GREAT) swing myself down the stairs by the handrails.

me.

so there i was, hands on handrails, SWINGING DOWN THE CONCRETE STAIRS, when -- guess what -- oh yes, my hand slipped and my ass came crashing down onto the edge of one of the stairs.

i was shocked and mortified (no one had seen me), but i was so buzzed i thought it maybe wasn't so bad, though boy was it ever painful.

and when i came back to the table, i tried to explain to poor brian what i'd just done, but he didn't seem to understand the impact it'd made. or perhaps his eyes were just permanently glazed over from my being incapable of shutting up.

anyway, there are two endings to this story.

the first ending is that brian and i eventually went home and my sister was slightly amused by the extent of my drunkenness but mostly not, especially when i threw up all over their guest room.

(by the way? brian? thanks for marrying my sister despite her family.)

the other ending is that the drive back to connecticut was painful. and when i got home, i inspected my ass and discovered THE BIGGEST BRUISE THAT HAS EVER EXISTED. ever. it was enormous and dark and terrifying. it is a wonder that i didn't kill myself (though to this day i can feel a line of scar tissue across my ass).

and so here for you now are the pictures i took with my timed webcam of my breezily elegant ass. please understand that they are in no way photoshopped (because really, you have seen my photoshopping skills), and are also a bit fuzzy since they were taken two days after the fact and by a low-grade webcam.

but still.









*which is what would have happened if we had to find something to do with her, too, but that's not the point.