The Accident, Part 1

Since I last updated this blog, I have become not only older, but wizer. For instance, I recently learned that New York City ambulances take nearly 15 minutes to arrive at your door.

I further learned that 15 minutes can be a really, really, really long time. I also learned that it is hard - albeit not impossible - to get pants onto someone who is lying on the floor, sopping wet, with a visibly broken arm. You see, my husband, Paul, slipped while running out of the shower to answer the doorbell, which was ringing rather incessantly.

"Just imagine how the person who was ringing the doorbell must feel," tisked a rather grizzled ER nurse.

I did my best impression of someone who wouldn't have any idea.

It wasn't worth telling the whole story, which starts with the 4 foot, 70 pound non-English-speaking woman they sent to pick up our 300 pounds of laundry. She was literally dwarfed by our giant piles of dirty clothing, which me feel a bit - well, dirty. And not just because I hadn't washed a load of underwear in a week. Okay, a month. (Those of you who live in New York, and hence don't have a washer-dryer, you will withhold judgement.) But I also felt just a bit Dickensean-villan dirty. I could just imagine the young woman coming to America, wide-eyed and hopeful, only to have her dreams, by which I mean her major organs, crushed by a giant pile of ironic t-shirts.

Shuddering, I decided to help Immigrant Laundress with the laundry, to prove that we are in fact not all like the people who force her younger siblings assemble anatomically correct "Sponge Bob Square Pants" novelty items in a poorly ventilated factory. No! Americans, even New Yorkers, are nice, goddamit.

I helped I.L. drag the laundry out to her cart. But unfortunatly, I didn't think to bring my keys, and double-unfortunately, the second front door (we usually have two front doors here, non-New Yorkers) locked behind me, even though the lock has been broken, literally, for as long as we've lived there. I guess they fixed it. Now I know.

So, I was cold and annoyed and locked out, and so I pressed the door buzzer. There was no immediate response, so I pressed it again. And again and again and A-GAIN!!! (I have a similar strategy for dealing with virtually all technology-related problems.) I though maybe Paul was just in the shower, and didn't hear me. Regrettably, I didn't realize that he was instead writhing on the floor in mortal pain. Again - now, I know.


Amazingly, Paul doesn't blame me at all, but I really wouldn't blame him if he did ENTIRELY blame the laundry service.

Other bits of wisdom gathered over the past week:

Sponge baths - just NOT as sexy as they sound. For either party involved.