Monday, November 17, 2014

Possessed by a dragon

I'm breaking my blogging hiatus for the very important reason that I need to make fun of myself publicly. Telling these stories privately is just not meeting my standard for proper self-deprecation anymore.

Here is a story from last year that I've loved to tell recently:

One Friday night, Jason and I went to the grocery store. It had been a long, tiring week and I was ready to go home and go to bed. It was dark out, but one of the places we passed had a lit-up parking lot that was PACKED. Not a single parking space was vacant. It seemed there was some big event I didn't know about.

I turned to Jason and said, "I wonder what's going on there - that place is hoppin'."

He looked at me and said confused, "Are you kidding? That's a car dealership."

So there's that.

Consider that a warm up for this past month of my life.

Early October, I caught what I affectionately call "my dragon cough". This cough lasted for weeks and weeks, and made me sound like I was dying. While I was coughing in the bathroom once, my dad came to see if I was OK because he assumed I was throwing up. Dragon, indeed.

While in Dallas a few weeks ago, I suppressed my cough long enough to run into a sub shop to grab dinner. I didn't want to hack up a lunch all over the sandwich fixin's, so I fought the urge to cough with all my might. By the time I left the shop, I was on the verge of a coughing fit. And so, in the privacy of the rental car, I coughed and coughed and coughed. Then I coughed some more.

In fact, I coughed so hard that I TORE THE MUSCLE BETWEEN TWO OF MY RIBS.

This is perhaps the least cool injury in the history of injuries. Since then, I can't sleep on my left side, have trouble sitting up from a laying position, and am generally six shades less cool than I was even in middle school.

I went to the doctor thinking I had cracked a rib but after X-rays she determined I only tore a muscle. How is that even possible?!

Now, the initial injury is embarrassing enough, but on Thursday, after a few weeks of healing, I re-injured the same muscle.

"How?" you may ask.

By trying to hole punch too many sheets of paper at one time.

Against all odds, my bizarre injury found a new low of coolness.