Yesterday, the last day of 2023 started out very pleasant. I had a good, unrushed morning. At noon'ish I left the house, stopped at Wendy's to get my Mom a chili-cheese baked potato and me a cobb salad for lunch.

At Mom's I had a nice visit. We ate lunch and I went online and changed her payment card for her Netflix service as her card had expired and also went online to try to change a refund she had received to a paper check. We then mostly visited comfortably in her living room, having coffee and trying out different cookies from a tin one of my nephew's familys had sent her right before Christmas. I thought most of them were 😝 🤧 .... but she wasn't quite as harsh of a critic as I was. I left her house about 5'ish so I could get most of the way home before dark.

While I was there, she shared some of her homemade fruitcake cookies, a recipe that her Mother had made every year. She had meant to put them out on Christmas Day for the Christmas feast, but had forgotten, so she had a lot of them. Yay ! I have one right here beside me now. It will probably be gone before I finish this post. 😊

SO ! Before I had gotten to her house I had stopped at a Dollar General where I bought some large bottles of water, potato chips and onion dip and a bag of candy. I wasn't sure if they would close early and didn't want to take a chance they would be closed when I left Mom's. Chips and dip is usually how I celebrate Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve alone. Not something I buy very often, so it is celebration junk food to me.

Mom wanted me to put some mail in the post office on the way home and the little post office here in my small town is not much out of the way of being on my way home, so I rode through and dropped those in the outside box. During that time, I decided I wanted a Cook Out style hotdog to take home with me. While in the line for my order, I also decided I needed a Cheerwine Float. For those that aren't familiar, Cheerwine is not alcoholic, it is a cherry cola soda. Normally around here, any kind of "float" is some sort of soda poured over vanilla ice cream. This place is notorious for it's variety of milkshakes, so their float is Cheerwine or Rootbeer over their thick vanilla shake. ANYWAY.... I got that and continued home.

Once home, I had the bags from DG, a bag from Mom's, a bag of food and a drink to get into the house. I have a carport, but it is on the end of the house that does not have a door to the inside and I still have to carry anything I bring home across the front of the house, up the steps and then inside. I had parts of it in each hand. When I got to the bottom of the steps, I could see pretty well because the outdoor Christmas lights had automatically come on at dark. I shifted all the bags to my right arm and had the lidded float cup in my right hand, so that I could put my left hand on the stair rail. I felt steady and had no qualms about going up and then.....

.... the front of my left shoe caught on the edge of the next step up and got me off balance ! For a billionth of a second, I thought I was going to catch myself with my right foot going forward, but something went more wrong and in a blur, I was down ! I had tripped and fallen UP the steps !!

😲 OUCH !!!

Once down, I laid there just a moment to try to mentally assess the damage. The outside of my right knee and my right foot were immediately whining and a few other places on my knees and legs were claiming scrapes. You see below, the steps are brick ! Not very compatible with skin as you would imagine.

Thing is, my hips and all of my upper body, had landed on the flat porch. The bags I had on my right arm landed under me and when I fell, I heard the potato chip bag POP ! LOL...my float had flown away too, but amazingly the lid stayed intact and very little liquid escaped. That WOULD have been a true sticky mess if it had all escaped and gone all over.

After I got my bearings and got myself turned over, I was sitting at the top of the steps rubbing around on my right knee and trying to make sure I thought I could stand on it. The fortunate thing for the unfortunate thing is that, because I was sitting on the porch, my legs and feet could rest a couple steps below and the wonderful thing about that is, these days with my age and having a knee already that is sometimes persnickety, if I were to fall and find myself on a flat surface with nothing to help pull myself up on, I would have a delima ! ...but this time, there I sat with my feet being able to be below the rest of me and the rails on both sides of the steps to help me up. Yay for falling in a place I could still get up from ! I slowly got up and found I could still put weight on both legs, knees and feet. I had already figured in my mind that if I couldn't get up, my purse was also another thing I had in my hands and my cell phone was there, so I was not going to have to lay out there till morning when some passerby might come to my rescue. Many days I consider cell phones a public nuisance, but in times of trouble.... they are gold for sure. Still, I was glad I didn't need it.

I slowly gathered my pile of bags and stuff and got inside the house. The place by then that was complaining most was the joint behind my right big toe.... and it was being a little loud. I hobbled around and got things mostly put away and took some preventative advil, while gathering my supper and treats to my favorite TV watching chair where I thought I would find something interesting to watch for the evening and on some channel I would watch the countdown at midnight.

As a note, I took a photo of the steps so you could see where the accident happened. LOL It all looks so innocent in the morning light.

Oh my this is getting to be a long post, but this next part added humor (mostly) throughout the ordeal. Like I said about when my upper body made it's final landing on the porch, The bags I was carrying landed first and the bag of chips had made a loud POP as I squished the life out of them LOL !!! Out of the chaos that had not settled yet, I had wondered if there would be one whole chip left in the bag and had to laugh. When I had first gone inside, I had put all the items on my art table near the door. When I was gathering things a little later to my TV chair where they would be convenient to reach after I got comfy and put my feet up (hoping to help stop some swelling that was starting) I picked up the bag of chips without realizing one whole end had been blown open, so some crumbs immediately flew out on the floor. I stopped, got the broom and dust pan and got them up before I could step on any or they made the floor greasy.

When I went back to the table a few minutes later, I found more chips of chips on the table, so I scooted them into a pile away from the edge with my hands to be dealt with later.

I got settled, finally ate my hotdog that was almost totally cold by then and then later I reached for the bag that had the candy in it. In the bottom of the bag, there was MORE chips of chips. I laughed.

This morning as I went out to take a photo of the crime scene, there on the porch was more chips of chips....LOL.... I didn't notice them them last night, but this made me laugh this morning too. My Mom, my Sis and I are all having a good time with the chip part of the story as I claim that the chip bag acted like an airbag to cushion the upper body part of my fall. No telling what all else would be banged up if it had not been there. It at least sounds funny that way.... right?

I didn't let that deter me from eating some of the chips left in the bag, barely any whole of course, with some onion dip. I claimed if there were not any big enough to dip with, I'd put some dip on a plate and some crumbs too and dip a spoon into the dip and then into the crumbs. One nasty fall wasn't robbing ME of my New Year's Eve one-person-party !

I didn't drink the float last night. It's still in the freezer. I had thought only a drip or two had escaped, but his morning found it was a little more than a drip. I actually thought the stain looked a bit like a blood stain, but fortunately, there had been no flowing blood at the time of the fall.

There is a big black, blue & red bruise area beneath the joint behind my right big toe and of course lightly sore knees and muscles and a few light scrapes, but I think I'm going to live.

I almost.... got out of 2023 with a super pleasant last day, but you just never know when life is going to throw you down. I do still feel fortunate. I could have fallen down the steps backwards or over the rails into the bushes and etc., all which could have been much more tragic.

So here I am in 2024 walking a little gimpy, but still walking. I hope everyone has a most wonderful 2024, full of happiness and hope. I wish for you to have enough of what you need.

Love you ! Mean it !

Jacey