Leaving before it kills me…
In eight hours I’m leaving sunny Australia for the neverending gloom of the U.K. As if that weren’t depressing enough, I tripped on a sidewalk running to catch a bus yesterday and wrenched my ankle, which is now the size of a grapefruit. I can barely walk. I’m talkin’ serious pain here. On the plus side, my sister would’ve loved it. (She finds pratfalls to be the height of comedy.) I mean, painful though it was, I can see the inherent physical humor in a person trying to simultaneously run, turn, and remove a bus ticket from a backpack, which leads to said person tripping on a crack, stumbling forward, skinning her knees and hands, and finally belly-flopping on the pavement right in front of her astonished boyfriend, a bus driver, and about 30 bus passengers of various nationalities. And let’s not forget the other catastrophes of this otherwise wonderful holiday: I fell on my ass in Snookums’s garage (resulting in an egg-sized bruise on my bum), I had a land leech attached to my right foot (which left a bump that began to itch like mad a week later), I was caught in the worst floods Australia has seen in fifty years, and I got fried to a crisp after spending a mere 20 minutes in the sun (resulting in peeling shoulders and my having to cover myself in SPF 30 every time I set foot out-of-doors). Like I said, it’s probably best that I leave the country before it kills me. The next time y’all hear from me, I’ll be home in the boring (but safe) U.K.