Exercise: too much, sort of.
Food: too much, or rather, too little water.
This body: can’t handle crouching.
Here’s the deal. I rented a City CarShare for an extra 3 hours beyond what I’d need to pick up Lily from school (Nana’s at a retreat, and of course, Theresa has to work, so….) I’d worked up a backlog of 7-8 errands to do, and headed out shortly after noon. It’s not exactly exercise in the relaxing sense, but I walked all around Bed, Bath & Beyond and Pastime Hardware, then drove home to quickly drop off my purchases.
At this point, I could have been intelligent and thought to bring a water bottle in the car with me. But I figured one of the other places I’d be going would have small water bottles near checkout, so I left the big Arrowhead bottle behind.
On to Long’s Locksmith, where I finally got all of our exterior door locks keyed consistently, then on to pick up Lily. Followed by the fateful decision to take her to Home Depot (which didn’t have what I was looking for…argh!), leading me to delay hydration even further.
Sipped some water when I got home, but mostly was distracted by more doing stuff: engaging with Lily until Theresa’s arrival, making them a salad for dinner, catching up with tasks on the laptop, and finally putting Lily to sleep.
Typically, I hum or sing to a bit to Lily by her bedside, then move to the rocking chair for most of the lullabies*. Tonight, I chose to stay by her to see if rubbing her back while I hummed could get her to sleep faster. Standing hunched over to do this quickly got tiresome, so I crouched down and sat on my heels for a good 5-10 minutes straight. Again, bad idea; I’m slightly anemic, I have low blood pressure, and I’m bony as all getout so these kinds of compressed positions are sure to limit blood flow in one way or another.
Final fateful decision, I stood up, focusing mainly on my sore joints as I stretched my legs straight, then held onto the frame of Lily’s bed out of habit because I sometimes get mild dizzy spells when I stand suddenly. Then I was trying to remember what I’d been meaning to do (sit on the rocking chair, but that didn’t really come clear until my thinking came into focus enough for me to perceive, in this order:
- Soreness in my left cheekbone, just before the ear.
- That I was lying on my side.
- Theresa’s face hovering near me with a very worried expression.
- A memory of a loud knock (cheek against wood floor, n’est pas?)
As is my wont, I tried my best to reassure Theresa that I was fine, resorting quickly to having her calm down so as not to upset Lily, who had been mostly asleep at the time, and probably had no idea that I’d fallen, let alone having a concept of passing out.
I am fine, by the way: no nausea, no more dizzies, and even my cheek feels fine after a good icing. Calling the advice nurse led to further consternation, but the woman was very understanding of my reticence to disrupt bedtime with a drive to E.R., and, after extensive questioning, got permission from the doctor on call to postpone my check-in with them until morning. She got Theresa and I to promise that Theresa would follow me around in order to slow me down if I fell again, but I get up repeatedly during the night to use the toilet, so T and I later agreed that I’d instead make sure to stand leaning slightly over the bed every time I get up and wait a few moments to make sure my head’s clear.
And the reason I’m peeing so much, per the last entry in Bowel Movement, is that I’ve been downing cups-full of water and an orange juice-based electrolyte drink that Theresa made for me.
* My lullabies are sometimes off kilter, because I’ve realized that the best tunes for night time tend to be somewhat mournful. Hence realtime lyric replacement to mask the true nature of No Surprises, or singing Il n’y a pas d’amour heureux in the original French so all she hears is the gorgeous melody and the soothing sibilance of the words, and not the deep expression of loss and separation at the root of the poem.
