Clumsy Chaos

I wouldn't say that I am typically clumsy. I can generally manage to haul arse about the place striding one foot in front of the other, without stumbling into furniture or falling head over tit. I can carry more stuff than would be strictly necessary to avoid making 2 trips. This drives Stevie mad cos he hovers and waits till the mountain of ill-matched shit goes tumbling out of my arms. But I am nearly always steady as she goes. I don't routinely cut myself with sharp knives and whilst I still have the scars on my left pointy pointy finger from when I was 20, learning to use a saw and I slipped - Yeh blood fountained outta that one, I am pretty safe with tools and sharpies.

But I have this theory that the wake from clumsy errors is in direct proportion to your ability to rectify any mess or disaster.

For example, if you are having a chipper smiley day and you drop a plate as you dance it out of the disher. Yeh it smashes, but you just turn the radio up louder and continue to sing as you sweep up the debris.

If all is good in your world, and you drop you keys down a drain grate, you smugly McGiver a hook from an old coat hanger and scoop 'em out, no harm done.

However, if you are a little under the weather and drop your sock under the bed, you might well sink onto the carpet and have a good old sob, after all it WAS YOUR FAVOURITE SOCK!

Or if you haven't slept well for a few nights and you break a glass, firstly it will always be a precious glass that your Nanna left you, that she drank from at her wedding in 1901, and secondly it will shatter into so many pieces that the floor looks like a sand pit.

So today after sleeping with Dog in the lounge room since Thursday, I am a bit weepy tired.

I was using the last little bit of joy I had, to cook up some filling for some wee party parcels that were a hit a few weeks ago. The cooking was done and I was up to cleaning away. Yippee.

The salt and pepper grinders were the last part of the tidying.

They stood there and just mocked me. Bastards!

They fit easily into one hand. I have carried them like that hundreds of times, maybe millions.

I casually swung 'em back to float 'em into their spot in the herbie cupboard and suddenly the fucking pepper grinder just jumped out of my hand and threw itself hard onto the concrete floor. Fucker!

It smashed into a gazzillion pieces and of course pepper corns went fucking everywhere.

I needed to get the dust pan from the garage and I worried that Dog, who has been allowed to sit out of her playpen today after her trip to the vet to have all her bandages removed, would wander over and spike herself, I was as quick as I could be - not very I'm afraid.

And then I set to cleaning it all up. Who would believe just how far shards of glass can fly?

I didn't fancy being head down bum up even once. And this was a head down bum up many times job. I swept and shovelled and then when I thought I was done, I saw a bit more of a glint a bit further away so I started again. Shit. Wet paper towels finished the job, I hope.

Stevie is never barefoot, but the Aussie girl in me sees my naked feet yomping about quite frequently and so I guess if I haven't been as thorough as I should have been, either Dog or I will be bleeding sometime soon.

Bugger. I don't fancy cleaning that up.