about the time I fell flat on my stupid face…

Okay, so it wasn’t flat on my stupid face.
firstly my face isn’t stupid.

As Jon Lajoie says in Everyday Normal Guy 2,

“Is my face stupid, how’s that even possible
a person can be stupid , but a face, that’s impossible.”

Anyway, it happened last Wednesday. As usual, I was running late for work. I have to get the 8am bus if I have any hope of being at my desk by 8:30, and the morning routine is that at exactly 7:35, I have to wake Roz up, get her dressed and out the door by 7:45.

This gives us time to stroll to the creche as opposed to belting down the stairs and running all the way there just to have her cling to my legs wailing before I make another mad dash from the creche to the bus stop. I’m not kidding here. there have been mornings where I’ve had to pry her fingers loose from around my legs, give her hugs and kisses and just leave her crying because if I miss my bus, I’ll be ridiculously late. And no, I’m not ashamed to say that on some of those mornings I’ve had to fight my own tears on the bus and curse the injustice of having to be a working mother.

So, last Monday…all hell broke loose. Or so it seemed. Woke up to really, really bad snow and the rest of the day was equally crazy: rain, sleet, snow, sunshine. Yes, day. Not week, day. they say in Ireland if you don’t like the weather, just wait a minute, and boy were they right. It was just insane. The lucky thing was that because it was snowing, I knew the ground was potentially lethal, so I woke Roz up at 7:30 instead and walked real slow to the creche.

Tuesday wasn’t as bad, and well, on Wednesday, the sky was clear and the day looked fine, so it was back to our normal routine. We got outside and the ground was wettish, but definitely not icy. The cars were covered in a thin layer of frost that was beautiful to look at, and I think that was my downfall…literally.

We walk past a shaded area to get to the creche and to the right of that is a small parking area. It never even crossed my mind to check the shaded part for ice on the ground.

One minute Roz was saying,

“and there’s ice-ies on the cars and the cars is beautiful”

and I was nodding away and just starting to say

“yes, the ice is beautiful,”

when I stepped up to the pavement, felt my foot slide away with my weight already poised to take the next step, and fell like a sack of potatoes onto the street.

Did I mention I had Roz in my arms?

I had Roz in my arms.

Luckily, my years of experience in falling flat on my face means I have nearly mastered the art of falling, and I didn’t put up a fight…not that I could, with a child in my arms. But I really did just collapse like a sack just going with instead of trying to break the fall.

My knee went scraping across the tarmac and I hit my upper thigh off the edge of the pavement but very intentionally kept a tight, close hold on Roz so that she just ended up sitting on the pavement with an,

“oh!”

of surprise.

I was actually quite proud of myself. And this was seconds. Yay me!

But what can you do when the clock is ticking right? I got up, picked my child up and limped on, trying not to look around in case I died from embarrassment. A woman was less than twenty steps in frnt of me and didn’t even blink. I don’t know whether she was trying to spare me the embarrassment of  commenting, or whether she just didn’t care. It was weird though cos she couldn’t not have seen me fall, yet not a muscle on her face twitched. Uber weird.

Roz was all concern though, scanning my face and saying,

“Mummy, you okay? you hurt? you want cuddles?”

and wrapped her arms around my neck giving me kisses when I said my knee was sore but I was okay. She’s such a sweet child.

We got to the creche door at the same time as one of the hot dads (effing typical!) got there. And me with my tights all torn and a bloody knee. Mortified does not even cover it. Then I wished the earth would just open up and swallow me up when Roz informed him,

“My mummy fell down. Her knee is sore, and Zaiya go ow! and mummy fell down and mummy be sad”

She calls herself Zaiya….Don’t ask.

So the poor man looks over at me all concerned and says

 “yes, I saw you fall and how is your knee? are you okay”.

Oh mortified times a hundred!

But you know what was worse, I then had to drop Roz off, and because I would have missed it, I hobbled for the bus, got on with my ripped tights and grated, bloody knee and went to work. Honestly, I don’t even want to know what people thought with me walking through the city. All I can say is thank goodness for Tesco because I popped in and got a cheap pair of tights that I changed into for work.

But you know the absolute worst part of it?

Roz will be talking and telling everyone about this for weeks! Weeks I tells ya.