Injured again.
It was the kind of fall that makes you go back to bed with the front door unlocked in case the paramedics need to get in. I kept the phone handy so that if I woke up immobilized, I could call for an ambulance.
I’m no stranger to freezing rain. I live in Montreal after all, and have seen the city destroyed by freezing rain in the past. But this round of rain had only just begun to freeze. I thought I could safely get a walk in with Inheritance Dog before the streets became treacherous.
I didn’t even make it off the front porch before I went flying and took the last concrete step in the back. Two inches to the right and I would have been paralyzed from the waist down for life. Luckily I angled myself away from a spinal injury by catching myself with my hand. But that meant my hand got horrifically mangled in the process because I hadn’t even put my gloves on yet.
My body wanted to lie there for ten or twenty minutes while I recovered, but I had to get to my feet immediately and hobble after Inheritance Dog to step on his dragging leash before he wandered into traffic. Dogs are dumb.
I covered the worst wounds of my shredded hand with a wadded tissue so I wouldn’t fill my glove with blood. Then we went for our walkies. Because dogs gotta shit regardless. I don’t actually know if he dropped a load or not while I limped around the block. I was too fucked up to notice, and decided I was going to be lax about poop-bag duties this one time.
Once we were back, I threw some food into the dog bowl and crawled into bed. The moment of truth came after a three-hour nap when I got to find out if I was pissing blood or not. I wasn’t, but the suspense was palpable. I figured that one was a coin flip.
This was a few weeks ago. I’m mostly recovered, but I’m back to wearing a brace on my wrist at night. After stopping me from killing myself in two bad falls, those wrist bones are begging for mercy and promising a lifetime of annoying pain to counterbalance the finger I snapped in the bike crash.
It’s hard to pick up the pieces when I keep breaking things.
That doesn’t mean I’m not trying. Work is slow, but I’ve been running more promos lately. In fact, if you want to get a free e-copy of Sex Tape, that’s currently happening on Amazon. Act fast though, because I left it until the last day to mention it here. Likewise there are 99-cent sales on the e-book versions of the Longshot trilogy right now. I’ll try to give more of a heads-up in the future as I feel less and less like I’ve been hit by a truck…and stuffed in the back of an ambulance that flipped on the highway, got written off by the insurance company, and was then towed to the junkyard crusher with me still in the back.
The fire-stick runner raises a hand defensively, pleading for mercy as she approaches the crowd waiting in ambush.
The crowd caught up with her moments later with expected results. This year’s fire-stick runner was, I must say, exceptionally tasty if slightly overcooked.
Yesterday, we woke up to the end results of a snowfall that has officially shattered all previous records for the most amount of snow in a single winter season. It’s been relentlessly white all winter. Even with a few periods of heavy melting that reduced what’s on the ground to about half as much as it might have been had it remained below freezing all through these past few months, the amount of snow stacked outside is unbelievable. While I was clearing a western-front-style trench through the front path so the rescue dogs could find us, I realized the pile of snow on the lawn was now about as tall as I am. And I’m not a little man. It’s now a full-body aerobic workout to fling the snow high enough to make it to the top of the stack. The possibility of an avalanche is very real.
Finally, confirmation has come via the 
Eyestrain Productions 