Day 84: jinxes, various

[extemporanea]

I have come to terms with my own faint lack of control over my own limbs, as evinced by various Incidents over the course of my existence, an incomplete and annotated list of which includes:

• that time I completely displaced my kneecap practicing waltz steps in the dorm at youth camp, and had to be driven to hospital in the back of a bakkie over really bumpy dirt roads;
  
• that time I partially displaced my kneecap dancing at a CLAW party;
  
• that time I fell down the stairs at work;
  
• that time I turned too sharply between my desk and my kettle at work, being presumably desperate for tea, fell over and dislocated my kneecap, necessitating an ambulance trip to a hospital;
  
• that time I fell over absolutely nothing in a bookshop (I still think it was an invisible iron bar, thanks Wicked Witch of the West) and had to lie on the floor gasping for a couple of minutes before the pain receded enough to sit up;
  
• that time I miss-stepped coming out of a restaurant and described a beautiful 90-degree arc to the prone position on the tarmac;
  
• that time I slipped while leaning into the fridge for the cat-food, resulting in a dislocated kneecap, torn ligament, two broken bones in the elbow and the complete disruption of a planned role-playing game for which Phleep has still not forgiven me. (These days I only give kibble to my cats, having apparently learned something from all this).

So probably I should not be surprised that I can damage myself even under lockdown - particularly, I suppose, when the most wholesale of the above injuries was achieved in the comfort and safety of my own kitchen. I stubbed my toe very badly on the basket in my study the other night, while wandering through to close the front windows for the night. I thought I'd broken it at first, it was horrendously painful for about 24 hours, resulting in excessive limping, swearing and flashbacks to the DVT experience of standing up and almost passing out from the pain as all the blood rushes to the feet. But it improved rapidly after that and is now just a bit stiff and interestingly bruised. Being a klutz doesn't, apparently, stop just because one isn't moving around much.

I also appear to have a furniture-shopping jinx, hopefully localised and temporary. My desk chair is of the elderly persuasion, having been inherited from the Evil Landlord, whose company was getting rid of a bunch of old furniture. I have sat upon it heavily for approximately a decade in pursuit of my main addictions (the internet and videogames, the Earl Grey is incidental) to the point where it's now so worn that I retain comfort only by dint of three cushions and a cunning pillowcase arrangement holding them in place.

So I ordered a spanky new office chair from Makro, who deliver and are usually pretty efficient, except... nothing happened. For a month. After which I phoned them, and they said, oops, not sure what's happening, and then a day later sent me an email to say they'd cancelled the order.

So I shrugged, and ordered an even spankier one from Waltons, and ... nothing happened. For two weeks, after which, slightly wiser to these things, I phoned them, and went through four separate people while being misdirected once and cut off twice, and they terribly apologetically discovered that the order had been accidentally sent to the stationery warehouse rather than the furniture one, and was thus languishing in a state of limbo and confusion. A nice lady phoned me yesterday and assured me my delivery will arrive on Monday, but frankly I will not be at all surprised if it turns out to be a water-cooler and is also incidentally eaten by eels en route.

The excessively watery nature of my forebodings can probably be attributed to the fact that we have had bucketing rain and cold for three days. I'm rather enjoying it, although Jyn persists in venturing into the rain and rushing back all complaining so that I can dry her with a towel. So far the house has only sprung one new leak, so hopefully the jinx configuration has shot its bolt for the nonce. This entry has been crossposted from my Dreamwidth blog at https://freckles-and-doubt.dreamwidth.org/. The comment action is all over there, and supports OpenID.