Of course you realize that this means war...

It was one thing when you sent me, tra-la-la, down the scary, cement fire stairs. Tricky, but I survived. And I knew it was ON.

Then all those times when you tried to bring me down off my bike seat. You tried, OH YOU TRIED, but you missed. And you left all those big purple dents on the inside of my thigh. But still I survived.

But this time you go after my mother? A person’s MOTHER? Well this time you have gone too far, Gravity. This time it is WAR.

No kidding – my Mom was doing her daily walk of fitness and goodness and getting of the exercise last week, just like a good girl should (and this girl never, ever does), and she just caught the tippy tip of her toe on an uneven patch of pavement and went DOWN. Face FIRST down! And somehow she had left the house without both of her hands or something, because only one of them got out to break her fall. So. To recap: she broke her quick, forward, sidewalk-bound decent with her right hand and her left face.

This is something you are going to want to avoid. Think of this as a PSA or something: the more you know about not smashing your face into the sidewalk (and now the swirly gold star and it’s rainbow friends and the four piano chords of knowledge…) She looked SO BAD! And actually the badness came in waves of badness.

First night she just looked like somebody very much not her. Big, fat mouse under the eye, and big fat chin to go with it (a matched set – you get a much better price if you get them together) and the rarely-seen split lip both outside AND INSIDE the mouth. The amazing thing was how specific all the damage was located! I approached her from her right side and thought “wow, she doesn’t look bad at ALL! This isn’t such a- WOAH!!!!” and then she turned around and facial fatness all up and down her face. So not right!

All that first night the question was “get a stitch inside the lip or not? Yes? No? Still bleeding, still bleeding, STILL bleeding…” The thing was we knew that if she went to the ER for the fat, ever-bleeding lip they’d want X-rays and other stuff and she’d be there ALL night long, so she really needed to want that lip stitched up for this to be worth it. Instead we went old-school and stuck a tea bag in her mouth for a couple of hours. Luckily she likes tea – were it me there’d be that pesky gag reflex to keep having to deal with on top of the tummy full of my very own blood.

(hey, are you going to finish eating that?)

So then the next day her face went back to being really close to the right size and shape, but by then the color had arrived. Oh the array of reds and purples and almost-blacks! I told Dadtastic that he might want to avoid going out with Momtastic for a while because it did NOT make him look good! (but what can I say? Sometimes she just doesn’t LISTEN! [too soon for the domestic abuse jokes? Sorry. My bad.])

But wait, we're not done. A week goes by and the purples are starting to get green and yellow at the edges and the face it just about the right shape all the way around. Yay! So, to celebrate, Momtastic decided to go out to her alley garden, get her foot caught up in her bean trellis and GO DOWN AGAIN! FACE GODDAMN FIRST!!! So she comes to the Father’s Day bar-b-que with fabulous new purple on her already-purple, freshly fattened-up chin, plus a big, red gash all scabbed over. You know, it’s what all the cool kids are sporting these days.

I have told her that if anything else falling-down-related happens I’m going to get her a football helmet and insist she wears it from now on. I am SO not kidding about this. Oh, and Gravity?

Bring it, bitch.