Friday, February 20, 2009

Valentine's Day and Donuts

The week before Valentine's Day TC and I came down with the worst case of the flu that either of us has had in years. We were so sick that we ended up having to have his parents come over and take care of us. Us =/= Grown ups. Our ever faithful puppy stayed with us the entire time splitting her snuggle time between the two of us. We both felt so bad about neglecting her while we were sick that we vowed to take her to the dog park on Valentine's Day.
I should have know when we got to the park and nearly everything was covered in ice that we should have gone home. Instead I thought that it would get better the further in the park that we went. I love this park because shortly after you enter, you hike down the side of a hill and are dropped of along side the Mississippi River. So here TC and I are hiking through the woods when we find ourselves in the middle of three inch solid seemingly freshly Zambonied ice. Upon realizing this dilemma, I promptly start to panic and fall hard on my butt. The last time I felt this much pain is when I fell rollerblading, in shorts, on gravel, down a hill. I still have nightmares of Mama J digging rocks out of my butt cheeks. Being the guilt ridden doggy parents we are we decided to tough it out and continue on with the hike.
I must admit that foresight and coordination are not my specialties. If they were I would have realized that they giant hill I slid down to get into the park, would now be the giant hill I would have to climb up out of the park. We slowly make our way back toward the entrance, me hanging on for all dear life to the chain link fence. Finally we make it to the ice covered stairs and they didn't appear to be all that bad. How wrong I was. I make it to the top of the stair case, can see the gate to exit and oh what is this... no stairs just thick ice on a 45 degree angle. TC had noticed this and had started making his way over to the side of the walkway where there was at least a chance in making it up. I however, trudged on straight up the middle. At this point am on a tiny little island of rock in a great sea of ice (on my knees by the way). TC is hollering at me from the sidelines to just suck it and try to climb. Seriously, it's ice on a 45 degree angle, exactly how would you like for me to accomplish that.
While all this is going on I have attracted quite the crowd of onlookers. I should also add tact and embarrassment to my list of things that escape me. Thankfully there was a young couple who were looking to find the falls that was near by. Stranger and TC tried to make a chain to hoist me up to solid ground. Unfortunately what happened was I couldn't get up on my feet and ended up sliding back down the hill. Luckily I was able to stop myself by bashing my forearm into a metal support post. Ahh, good times.
The rest of our Valentine's Day was very uneventful. Mainly because TC refused to take me to the hospital for x-rays as I was convinced I broke a piece of my tailbone off. I was also certain that piece of bone was now floating around inside of me and would eventually puncture my lung. We compromised by agreeing to just get a butt donut.