My Right Foot Vendetta

I think I might have a secret vendetta against my own right foot. More specifically, against the toes on my right foot.

 

I know – weird, right?

 

But let me explain.

 

The other night I was trying to squeeze a newly purchased industrial size bottle of extra-virgin olive oil into my already overflowing pantry. It was on sale and these days I can use all the sale prices I can get.

 

There really wasn’t any room in the pantry, so when I maneuvered the olive oil container onto the shelf, a large can of tuna fish popped off the shelf and fell onto the floor. But to cushion the blow, it first landed directly on the fourth toe of my right foot before bouncing off and settling on the floor.

 

Lucky for the can of tuna fish; not-so-lucky for my foot. There’s a nice big purple bruise adorning that fourth toe. But at least I still have decently polished toenails thanks to my cousin Cathy who treated us to pedicures when I went “up north” in Michigan a few weeks ago.

 

But back to the pantry problem. When I moved in here last December and my friends and I opened the mountain of boxes that were stacked chest-high in the kitchen, we just shoved things in the pantry for temporary storage to “deal with” later.

 

I’m ashamed to say that “later” hasn’t yet happened.

 

And now it’s so overwhelming, I barely look whenever I take something out or put something in.

 

And this is a BIG pantry, folks. I mean, I can walk in and turn left or right.

 

Well, right now I can’t. The floor is warehousing all sorts of things that I’m hoping I can get to one of these days. Including storage bins and canisters to corral some of the very items I want to store properly in the pantry.

 

Everything is all piled in there willy-nilly without any thought to organization.

 

What I need to do is spend a day (at least) pulling everything out of the pantry and then starting from scratch. Clearly, I need to allow more storage space for things like bottles of olive oil and cans of tuna.

 

And, no, I’m not going to show you a picture of my pantry in its current state. Maybe once I get to organizing it, I’ll be brave enough to show a “before” photo – as long as I have an “after” photo for contrast.

 

So, anyway, back to this vendetta against my right foot.

 

It’s not the first time I’ve injured myself, thus, I'm labeling it a vendetta.

 

The last time was just a few short years ago when Vince and I were hosting a family gathering for Father’s Day. I even wrote about it here. I was lugging an armful of party items to the lower level and Vince asked me to bring a plate of frozen steaks to thaw in the downstairs fridge. I told him I was full up and couldn’t carry anything else on that trip – but he thought I could handle one little plate of frozen steaks.

 

Yeah…not so much.

 

As I started walking on the ceramic tile floor hallway toward the stairs to the lower level, the plate of frozen steaks slid off whatever it was stacked on and fell lip-first onto the second toe of my right foot.

 

The good news? The plate didn’t break. The bad news? My toe broke. I had a good-sized cut on that toe that took weeks to heal, and the toenail is permanently split and damaged. (So pedicures aren’t nearly as fun as they used to be.)

 

But at least Vince felt badly enough about it that I didn’t have to do much to get ready for that party – and he even took a few extra dog-walking shifts so I didn't have to hobble around while sporting that big white bandage.

 

I’m not sure it was an even trade, but whatever.

 

The final incident that I’ll discuss to further prove my vendetta took place the day before my wedding in September of 2009.

 

I was packing to head down to the hotel and was filling bags and suitcases with all the “stuff” I needed (and stuff I didn’t really need but wanted to have “just in case”).

 

I picked up my 4-inch Wedding Planning binder to put it in a carrying case all its own since it was so thick and heavy. It was a “just in case” thing because if I didn’t have everything planned by that point, it wasn’t going to get done.

 

Possibly I was thinking it had all the vendor phone numbers in case the caterer forgot which entrée they were serving – or the DJ forgot which song I wanted him to play for the father and daughter dance.

 

But at any rate, I dropped the 4-inch binder onto the floor. Nope, not on my foot. And at that moment, I thought to myself, Whew, was that lucky – or what?!

 

And then when I bent down to pick it up, I somehow took a step and kicked the thing – and felt a pain like you can’t imagine. A 4-inch wedding planning binder is NOT something one wants to kick the day before one’s wedding.

 

Fortunately, this injury didn’t preclude me from wearing my wedding shoes and I didn’t even limp walking down the aisle. So major crisis averted. The purple bruise I sported on (again, the second toe of my right foot), at least matched my wedding accent colors of red and purple.

 

I wanted to find a better photo of the wedding day "ouchy" - but I didn't have any luck searching through Facebook. So I thought perhaps I'd posted a blog about it. I couldn't find it, but imagine my surprise when I found yet another picture of a stubbed toe. (Here) And it was my third toe. So if I find a picture of my big toe and baby toe with bruises on them, I'd have a full house of injuries to that foot!

So maybe I don’t have a vendetta against my foot so much as I have a vendetta against my toes?

 

Either way, I need to be more careful against flying cans of tuna fish or frozen steaks or wedding planning binders.

 

Well, I’d better run. It’s time for me to change the sheets on the bed. That’s usually a good opportunity to stub my toe on the frame.

 

Hmmm. Perhaps I should invest in a pair of steel-toed boots?