So I go to the gas station to fill one of my tires–not the one from last time, a different one–that James said looked a little low. I check for a pressure gauge. No gauge in the glove box. Apparently it wasn’t there after all. Bugger.

So I go to the little mechanic’s shop to ask if I can borrow theirs for a minute, and as seems to keep happening, my obvious lack of skill meant that somebody came and did it for me, despite my insistence that no, really, I can do it, I just need to make sure it doesn’t blow up–oh, well, if you insist… no, I got to be this age without knowing how to care for my car not because I’m a congenital idiot, but because my husband did it, and…well…

It’s the south. Mechanics dispense free air and relationship advice in equal measure. Eventually you learn to accept these things as part of the social landscape, and smile when they suggest that if you ever need to talk or get an oil change to come on back, now.

Then I go to leave, step on a large rock, my ankle turns hard, and I go down like a ton of bricks.

I spent the first three minutes after I sat up trying to determine if my ankle was broken, because it hurt like mad, and I felt the bone go “clunk.” Fortunately “clunk” is not “snap,” the pain subsided, and I can walk on the bloody thing, so it appears to be okay, but I have a bone bruise like you wouldn’t believe, and the side is excitingly puffy and swollen.

Plus I skinned both knees and abraded my palms, and I know from grim experience that skinned knees no longer heal the way they did when I was ten. Now the damn things stiffen up, I bruise like a member of the Russian royal family, and it leaves scars that I’ll be trying to shave around for the next decade. Plus it’s embarrassing. Skinning your knees is like chicken pox–it’s just not a thing adults do.

Ah, well.