2009: Off to a Great First 24 Hours

You know the new year is going to be great, when

-at the strike of midnight, your friend jumps to cheer, and in doing so, knocks your sparkling cider all over your ball gown.

-a few minutes later, someone else drops their sparkling cider, which makes the previously-unsticky half of you sticky. (Oh how I hate being sticky.)

-you just can't seem to get anyone to dance with you (even getting a no when doing your own asking) and feel lonely, like you did last New Year's.

-you go sledding on New Year's Day and end up canceling your plans to visit friends, canceling all the rides you were going to give people, canceling your rental car, paying for someone to take the train so you can ride in someone else's car, and going home a day early because your leg looks like this (and you have similar-looking bruises all over from the fight with a fence):















Yes, there's also a section of open wound, that happened through a pair of thermal pants, a pair of fleece pants, and a pair of ski pants (no, Amy and Mom, no one had to cut through my pants).

Just moments after taking the last picture of yesterday's post, we came to an especially icy curve and were unable to slow down or turn fast enough, which sent us hurtling into a fence meant to keep people from flying off a cliff. As I was on the ground groaning, Alexa said, "Another sled's coming! Move!" and yelled to them to go slow. However, they also couldn't stop and we got run over by two guys who ended up helping me slowly down the mountain.

I'm just glad I shaved my legs for the ball on Wednesday. Okay, and that I still got to ski and go snowshoeing and dance before it happened. And that it wasn't worse, like the guy whose screams I heard even while listening to my iPod in the emergency room. He broke both bones in his lower leg and had to have surgery and stay in the hospital for five days.

The emergency room staff gave me three cool x-rays of my knee, an enormous leg brace, an admonition to have a checkup with a doctor in Leipzig in a week, and a verdict of a strained meniscus. Here I am showing off my leg brace on my mattress that a friend brought down from my bunk bed so I could actually get into bed:












People have been really nice to me--giving me their elbows to lean on, going shopping for me, etc. You should see how swollen the thing is now, and it just keeps getting bluer/yellower/greener/purpler (I tried to take a picture of it, but it just didn't do it justice).

The year can only get better, right?