Things I could be doing:
They are pretty snazzy though, don’t you think? Wouldn’t you just love to sample my mini caprese salads when they are skewered on such darling toothpicks?
There’s usually only a few seconds difference, the time between what you could have done and what you did do, what you should have done and what you didn’t.
I think about that stupid Gwyneth Paltrow movie normally after a fight. Hell, it’s never even a real fight. It’s me sitting in the passenger seat, all these years in all of these relationships, staring out the window and refusing to say what’s bothering me. I think about that movie and I think about what we could be doing if I just chose a different direction. I think about the conversations we would be having, the songs we’d be singing, the way we’d say okay, I’ll talk to you soon and really mean it.
It’s been a month since we’ve had a weekend to ourselves, but it was so easy to fall back into our normal routine of snuggling and Waffle House and running errands. But I made a wrong turn on an otherwise ordinary Saturday, only to wake up with my dress around my hips.
Yeah, you read that right.
I have this shoulder that has been known to pop out, but it’s so infrequent and it’s been so long since it’s happened that I stopped keeping up with strength training and forgot about it for the most part. Well, while innocently shopping I dislocated it, which is no big deal when you are as badass as I am and roll it back in. Only this time it was different. I felt dizzy and hot and off-balance. And apparently I fainted.
If you’ve never fainted before, I’ll tell you it’s a lot like sleeping. I was out for a little over a minute – can’t remember a dang thing about it – except for the acute feeling that everyone could see my underwear. I am fairly certain that that is what brought me back to the real world. And they even matched that day, so I shouldn’t have been so worried. But yeah, I basically woke up and frantically began pulling my dress down and crying, asking Ben how I got to be on the floor of Goodwill.
We spent the rest of the afternoon in the doctor’s office and me in a sling. And trust me, you have plenty of time to think about what you could have been doing if you never wandered away from that cashier’s line when you’re lying on an examination bed in nothing but a paper dress, which includes – but not limited – to dying my hair and dating John Hannah.
