Fight

On the one hand, I found the safe deposit box key. And then there was much rejoicing.

On the other hand, I got in a fight with Garrett's bike. I fought the bike and the bike won.

Typically the boys' bikes are up for the winter, suspended from the ceiling of the garage. But we've been having a really weird February in which it rains but doesn't snow. The boys wanted their bikes down today. Earlier, Troy took Matthew's down and removed the training wheels because he's all grown up and practically heading to college. Then, the husband left to run an errand. At that point, Garrett wanted his bike down so I tried to lift it off the hooks. Somehow, the back wheel came off first, which I wasn't expecting. Then, in some inexplicable stroke of disaster, I found myself only really holding on to the handlebars, which rotated just as the bike lifted from the hook. The bicycle swung wildly over my left shoulder. In a split second attempt to keep the bike from falling to its broken death and to keep the vehicle that was parked in the garage from becoming hopelessly scratched and dented by a flying piece of recreational equipment, I absorbed the crash into my body. The bicycle slammed into my back.

I thought I had maybe ruptured every single internal organ. I gasped for breath. Garrett screamed, "My bike! Is my bike broken?" Then, he looked at me and finished, "Are you broken? Are you okay?" For a good five seconds I thought 911 was in my future. I had visions of all sorts of internal bleeding. Pain was radiating from the point of impact and hurting everywhere. I couldn't initially assess where, exactly, the pain was coming from.

I managed to limp waddle creep back into the house. I laid on the couch and asked Garrett to look at my back and tell me what he saw. I'm kind of dramatic so I was fully expecting that he would find dark black bruising. "OH! OH MOM! IT'S BAD!"

Break it to me quickly, kid. I can handle it.

"Mom. It's terrible. There are scratches and welts everywhere." (He's also kind of dramatic.)

Okaaay. Scratches and welts we can handle. And the pain is beginning to subside.

"And it's all red."

Red, just moments after being assaulted by a bicycle, is preferable to black and blue. I think.

I managed to hobble up the stairs to the bathroom mirror. I'm going to have a nasty bruise. And the bike definitely won that round. But I think I'll live.