And So He's Building New Stairs

The humidity around here finally dropped from 99.9% (it wasn’t quite raining) to a mile 50% over this past weekend.

I decided that since it didn’t feel like we were breathing through a wet cloth, it was a good time to paint Alyssa’s dressers, something I’ve planned to do for, oh, two years. I know, please don’t judge.

Anyway, I pulled the drawers out of the dressers, emptied them onto the floor (yeah, brilliant, huh?) and then Alyssa and I lugged the dressers down the stairs, through the kitchen and into the garage. I made another trip up the stairs to start bringing down the empty drawers and on my way up for the second of what I knew would be at least three batches of drawers, I enlisted Lyss’s help again because, yeah, I didn’t want to make a third trip up those stairs.

We gathered the drawers. She picked up two and I managed to carry the last three and we headed down.

We made it to the kitchen where Lyss opened the door to the garage and I started out.

And that’s when I slipped going down the garage stairs and landed in a pile of tangled legs and dresser drawers.

Tom was in the garage at the time and shouted in alarm. He moved the drawers off me so I could gingerly start to stand up and assess any potential injuries.

He asked me if my head hurt. I told him it didn’t and asked why he wanted to know. He said he’d seen my head bounce off the wall as I fell.

I couldn’t feel any pain in my head because the worst pain I felt was in my left lower back. There was a shooting, burning pain there. I asked Tom and Alyssa if I’d scraped up my back on the way down the stairs.

They both assured me there were no marks but taking the steps back up to go sit down, I knew I’d hurt my back pretty badly.

Yeah, for the rest of Saturday night, I was pretty much glued to the giant recliner in our living room. I knew I’d have to get up at some point to use the bathroom but each time I tried (before I actually HAD to get up) the pain sat me right back down again.

Finally, there was no question. I HAD to get up and it took some time, a few gasps of air and a lot of grimaces of pain but I made it to the bathroom.

After doing pretty much everything Saturday evening, Tom decided to take a trip to Menard’s on Sunday. He’s going to build new steps in the garage, you see.

Why? Well, because I didn’t fall just because I’m a clumsy fool. Yes, I am a clumsy fool but that’s not the only reason I fell. I fell because the idiot who owned our house before we did built stupid stairs in the garage. The stairs are three steps high. The first step down from the landing of the stairs is about four inches. The next step down is about eight inches and the last step to the garage floor is something like ten inches. So yeah, it’s just a fall waiting to happen; but especially when you’re carrying something big and cumbersome and can’t watch the stairs to gage where to put your foot next.

Tom’s planning to build nice normal stairs that have seven or eight inches steps from top to bottom. His OCD demands uniformity and when it comes to stairs, I’m kind of glad he’s all about being precise.

So I’ll just be over there in the recliner while he saws and hammers and glues and builds. He’s a good guy, that Tom is.