What am I doing?!

I am normally a pretty big fan of the snow, and I love it that Spokane has four distinct seasons--it's one of my favorite things about living here. But the weather is gray again today, and we got another inch of snow a couple of days ago, and the old snow still isn't gone yet but instead is constantly oscillating between melt and re-freeze. Yuck.

I have fallen three times in the last month, all on Wednesdays. The first time I can't really blame on the snow, although right now I would like to be able to. I was running on the treadmill at the gym and I wanted to adjust the fan. But I hate stopping and restarting the treadmill, so what I always do is lift myself up with my arms, put my feet on the edges of the treadmill so that they're no longer on the actual conveyor, and then jump off. No problem. Then I do whatever it is I got off for, like have a drink of water, tie my shoe, move a fan, etc., and jump back on the same way.

Well, I got off the treadmill without incident, and adjusted the fan, but then it was like my whole mind went completely blank (and stupid) and the next thing I remember, my foot is just inches away from stepping directly on the moving treadmill--I'm trying to get on it the same way I would if the conveyor were motionless. I had one split second to think, "What am I doing?! I am going to fall! This is so stupid!" and then I did. One foot down, one huge fall off the back of the treadmill, three undesirable spectators, and two huge gashes of skin missing. I didn't get very hurt, but I think I might get out of this with two nice scars. It must have looked so funny, because it really was just the stupidest thing in the world. It clearly wasn't a balance issue, a speed issue, or any of the other things that contribute to most falls off treadmills (and that, in fact, contributed when I fell off once before...), just pure unadulterated idiocy.

Two Wednesdays later, I fell in a parking lot after youth group. I was just walking to the car, not taking any foolish chances, and then I was lying on the ground. I think I escaped that one without a single scrape or injury though, and only had two witnesses that time.

But then...I fell when I was running last week. There's a foot bridge that goes over Hamilton and I run over it quite a bit. I was out for a run with someone I work with and two guys she is friends with who I don't really know. Going over this bridge right now means essentially running down a hill covered in a sheet of ice, so we had just slowed down to walk, and then, right at the very moment I started walking instead of running, down I went. Five witnesses this time: the three people I was running with, plus a homeless man WHO HAD ALSO FALLEN right there and was still lying on the ground, plus the EMT who was there to rescue him!

The fortunate thing for me is that I have been able to get back up on my feet and soldier on after each of my embarrassing falls, because the only thing that has been really hurt is my pride. I have seen other falls though...one particularly funny/tragic one about two weeks ago. A large middle-aged lady and what looked to be her much smaller but equally middle-aged spouse were crossing the street downtown, and they walked onto one of those vast sheets of ice that you can never get any traction on. So the lady goes down, and she's frantically reaching out to her husband to try to catch her balance, and she drags him down with her. So there they are, both lying flat on the sheet of ice He manages to get up, and he's trying to help her, but she can't move! And since she can't get her feet down on anything that's not icy, he starts DRAGGING her across the sheet of ice to a clearer part of the sidewalk. She didn't seem to be hurt at all so it was mostly just a tragically comedic moment for me...one I think I deserved after all of the fall-related entertainment I've been providing others with recently.

(Note: I've also fallen twice in Albertsons, but those falls weren't on Wednesdays and were more than a month ago so I'm not going to share those embarrassing details here.)