my neighbor's kitchen is not a slip-n-slide

An adventure in a neighborhood kitchen.

Innocent enough. Bruce and I went two doors down to hang out with our neighbors yesterday afternoon. The only one home was Steve, who was rapidly, frenetically putting together a marinade for steak he'd be later cooking for his wife and daughters. He doesn't fancy himself much of a cook, and struggled to find ingredients.

Every time I offered to help, his neverending hospitality took over. "No, sit back and relax with your wine! I'll muddle through." I eventually sneaked out (kind of) to grab a few ingredients they didn't have. Shortly thereafter, as Steve struggled with other ingredients, I attempted to round the corner from the living room into the kitchen.

Thing is, they have patches of loose carpet on their kitchen linoleum. Slippery ones. And I didn't take this into account.

Yep. Brooke fall down go boom.

And I still can't remember what I did -- I somehow kicked the corner of the wall, or something -- but the pain in my second right toe steadily increased. Later in the evening, as we wandered to another neighbors' for a party, I was clearly limping, and getting nice wine-colored horizontal stripes on that toe. (But not on any of the others.)

These neighbors drowned me in ice packs... I love our neighbors.

Six hours after the fall, my toe stopped hurting. It still hurts when I move it or touch it, but it no longer hurts on its own. And what did I do to it? It's nicely purple and blue, so there's a good chance it's fractured. (Steve, you didn't see that, did you? Please don't feel indebted to us...) And that foot can barely move from all of the swelling.

But, just like my previous broken toe incident, which I recall being *worse* than this one, I'll take a week off, then start hard core running again with taped toes.

However, I do row tomorrow morning without shoes. This shall be interesting...