Learning to walk and chew gum at the same time

Well it has been an eventful few days for me.

My brother in law spent twenty plus yeas working as a police officer and now has retired and gone to work full time engaged in his real passion working with wood. He makes some of the most beautiful items that I have seen in his garage shop and loves doing it.

You can see an example of his work here under construction. If you click on the picture you will get a larger version.


Now I have been really looking forward to getting these book shelves so that I can gather all of my books that I have stashed in various nooks and crannies around the house. So I arose early on Thursday setting my alarm clock for 06:00 AM. When the alarm went off Linda nudged me so I got out of bed to silence the beeping as her clock was set for a latter time.

Now Linda sleeps in on occasion because she keeps her alarm clock on her night stand and has a habit of pushing that "snooze" button once to often only to find on occasion that it is much latter than she thinks. My philosophy is if you have to get up to shut it off you are already up and hence will stay up. So as I jumped up and started around the bed at which point I some how tangled my feet either with themselves or covers hanging over the end of the bed, I never did figure out which. The end result was that I found myself laying on the floor in the wink of an eye. Now those of you that know me will understand that I have a lot to hit the floor with even if it is only a ground level fall. I was lucky in that my head only impacted carpet and not a bed rail or table. Needless to say this was not how I envisioned my day starting.

The net result was that I spent most of the day sitting at the keyboard not doing a heck of a lot because I had some abnormal aches and pains. Lucky for me not only did John and Kenny come to put the bookshelves in but John brought a neighbor to help not knowing that I was going to be home. I spend the day as an observer as far at the wood work was concerned.


Now by Saturday I had somewhat recovered from my self inflicted problems enough so that I was helping stock the new shelves and enjoying seeing all the books that I have accumulated lined up in neat rows. As part of the rearrangement of the living room to accommodate the new editions we were moving some pictures and various wall adornments around one of which, a ceramic eagle, had to be placed on a different wall. I decided I could do that and thinking our step stool was in the basement proceeded to mount a dining room chair to complete the task.

Linda rounded to corner just in time to see me fall from the chair and literally bounce on the floor. Now I can't tell you which bothered me more as I lay there on the floor in pain wondering what had just happened. I really can't say if it was the pain in my leg, back and side or Linda yelling at me for what I had just done. I thanked her for her concern for my well being and dusted off my pride and got up off the floor. Now I'm sitting here contemplating if I'm going to be able to walk to go to work in the morning. I have been taking Advil all day with very little relief. So the lesson here kiddies is use the proper tool for each job and try to be a little more careful. Oh, and for some of us not to try walking and chewing gum at the same time.