Lately I've been sick with the flu, or a cold, or whatever is going around these days. I seem to have caught it from my mother, who brought it home from the elementary school where she teaches. I find it both amusing and unfair that I spend all my working hours with kids and their compounding grossness on harnesses and the rock wall in general, but I get sick from my mother.
In any case, we've both been taking Nyquil (or cheap store-brand equivalent) and we ran out last night, though we didn't discover it until Mom tried to go to bed, around 10:00. At the time, I was pretty sure there was still a box left in one of the medicine cabinets, because I remembered buying at least three the last time I went to the store. But Mom swore up and down she had looked everywhere, so run down to Fred Meyer before they close and buy some more because you have the new car and as such you are obligated to run errands for the family and besides I'm already in my bathrobe...
I guess this isn't really that big a deal, aside from the fact that I have a limp from a foot injury and my right arm is in a sling due to shoulder bursitis.
Anyway.
I bought another three boxes of Nyquil, plus some other groceries, which in total ended up being more than I could carry one-handedly, so I had to use a cart. Being more or less the only person at the store this late at night, I had been able to park practically at the door (except for those troublesome handicapped spots). I pushed the cart the whole five yards' distance to my car, got everything loaded into the trunk, and then had to take the cart back into the store because if you're that close there's no cart-return-collector-things nearby because that would be LUDICROUS.
But it turns out no one else seems to think this is the appropriate thing to do. There were three other carts just sort of left strewn around the parking lot within spitting distance from the door, so I gathered all four in a remarkably short amount of time (given that I only had one useful hand). The last of the carts was tucked in the corner of a parking spot bordered on two sides by curb and sidewalk, which meant I had to push the other three into that one in and then back up with all four of them before returning to the store.
Feeling ridiculously pleased with myself for managing to get all four together with little real difficulty, I started backing up--and rolled over my overly-long jeans pant-leg. I had unfortunately thrown on the ill-fitting pair (the first I could find) for speed's sake, having been so suddenly forced/volunteered to run an errand in the middle of the night.
Now several inches of denim were trapped and four carts' momentum kept rolling, pushing me over unexpectedly until I crashed to the asphalt on my back. I eventually caught my breath again and stood up, shoulder aching, nose bleeding (though that happens all the time these days, so it was probably unrelated to the actual fall), and grumbled my way into the store because I'll be damned if I give up on it halfway.
Avoiding catching anyone's eye, I managed to get in and out again without further incident, then returned to my car. Glad the whole ordeal was over, I swung carefully into the driver's seat--without using my injured right arm--and slammed the side of my skull into the door frame.
When I got home I burst through the door shouting that Mom had better be grateful, only to be shushed by Dad, who told me Mom was asleep. Apparently she found that other box of Nyquil after all and had already gone to bed.
I almost cried. Which would have just made my congestion worse.
