I Had It Coming

It seems that about once a year I have an absolutely terrible day - a day frought with pain, destruction and travail wherein the fates conspire against me.

I can accept it because: I guess I've got it coming.

Take Sunday for instance:

After church I grabbed my two brand-new-upholstered boat seats, sat them up on the deck of my boat and went downstairs to grab a screwdriver. I walked back outside just in time to see a gust of wind catch the driver's side seat and blow it off the rear of the boat; landing upside-down on the top right corner, ripping the upholstery, piping, and seam.

I stood there for a minute in apopleptic fury at the wind not doing what I wanted it to, grappled with my emotions, subdued them, stuck the screwdriver handle-first into my pocket, and jumped in the boat to install the now-damaged seats.

Forgetting I had left the seat-installation-screws in a cup on my dresser, I went back inside, dumped the screws out of the cup into my hand, then dropped them in my pocket.

Back in the boat I lay down on the floor to screw the seats in, jammed my hand into my pocket for a screw, and immediately buried four shirtpins 1/4" into each of the first three fingers on my left hand.

Whoops! I forgot I put the screws in the cup with the shirt pins, but it really hurt - which reminded me.

I shifted my weight onto my right side to extricate my hand from where it was, literally, "pinned" inside my pocket...and managed to roll over on the screwdriver - crushing my $275 cell phone into useless oblivion.

Bleeding profusely, I attempted to arise and, as I straightened at the waist, four more shirtpins buried themselves in the top of my left thigh. The shooting pain from the thigh-pins threw me back down into the floor of the boat where I landed again on the screwdriver...raising a lovely blue-black bruise on the top of my right hip.

I managed to flop out over the gunnels and into the driveway, panting and bloody, only to land directly in front of the running hose - which soaked me.

At this point Tyler came outside and offered me an Arnold Palmer in a nice cool glass and a BLT sammich; both of which I accepted from my position on the driveway. She did not seem curious as to why I was laying in the driveway, instead she looked down at me with one raised eyebrow and said "you about ready to go?"

After finishing my sammich I managed to successfully install the (brand-new, ripped, torn, seats) and get underway without further incident or damage, other than to the Arnold Palmer glass; which I accidentally broke.

We put the boat in the water on Lanier and motored across the bay to John's house where I immediately ran the boat up on his dock, gouging it (see previous post).

I motored back across the lake below max RPMs, then made Tyler back the trailer down into the water to avoid further interaction with calamity.

We made it home in one piece, but I consider it a miracle.