Toeing the Line

Sometimes it’s the little things that make life beautiful.

Yesterday morning, after getting out of the shower and wrapping a towel around myself, I walked back into my bedroom and smashed my left pinky toe against the side of a full-length mirror that’s leaning against one wall of my room. Ow, that wasn’t fun, I thought. But I didn’t feel much pain.

Then, as I started to get dressed for work, I looked down at the toe and saw that it was covered in bright red blood.

Ow.

I’ll spare you the gory details, but basically, the blood kept flowing and wouldn’t stop, despite my applying pressure to it with toilet paper. If I’d been thinking, instead of running around in my usual rush to get ready for work (created by my consistent practice of staying up too late at night and then hitting the snooze bar the next morning far too many times than is healthy), I would have sat down somewhere and elevated my leg. But no. So the blood didn’t stop. It did slow down a bit, though, so I Neosporined it (ooh, just created a new verb there) and wrapped a bandage around it and put on my sock. I sort of hobbled around for most of the morning, although not in a major way, because the pinky toe really isn’t as necessary for human balance as… well, as any of the other toes, I guess.

Later in the day I took off my shoe and sock. The part of my sock that had covered the toe was caked in blood and there was a little gash on the top of the toe.

Okay, so much for sparing you the gory details.

And I would have blogged about this last night — as well as been on Instant Messenger, which I told someone else I probably would be — except that when I got home from work last night, my phone line was dead.

So I went out and bought a new phone cord. Came home and plugged it in. Still dead, as Chevy Chase used to say about Francisco Franco on SNL.

Tried plugging the line into my computer modem. That didn’t work either. NOOOO!

So I called up Verizon and they tested the line and after all was said and done (though probably more was said than done) they told me they could send someone the following morning (a.k.a. this morning) between 8 a.m. and noon. Okay. Could be 8 a.m., could be 10:43, could be noon. How Delphic. And they told me that if any work was required inside my actual apartment, the fee would be 82 bucks for the first half-hour (or maybe it was for the first hour) and 30-something bucks for every additional half-hour, because I don’t have a maintenance plan.

Who makes 80 bucks an hour? Not even first-year law firm associates make 80 bucks an hour.

I’m a dialer-upper, so with no phone line I had no Internet access. A whole night with no way to chat online or surf the Web or blog.

I managed to ride through the low-level panic and withdrawal symptoms by watching TV and doing the crossword and actually talking to someone on the phone (my cellphone). Yep, turns out you can actually use the darn thing to talk to people with your larynx. I will note this for future reference.

In the end, everything went smoothly. I went to bed way earlier than I would have, I slept until the phone guy called at 9, I read the paper until they showed up at 10:45, and they didn’t have to repair anything inside my apartment. Turned out they needed to fix a wire outside.

So now I’m blogging at work, which I rarely do.

And I guess I’m better off today than I was yesterday. One healing toe, one repaired phone line, a few hours’ extra sleep, one fewer chance to get crabs.

Ain’t life grand?