The Gift

So did I tell you about falling down the stairs and breaking my over-sized bottom? No? Then prepare to stifle your laughter please.
You see one chilly morning last week, there was a knock on the door and I went to open it, but found it locked with no sign of the keys to be seen. So I shouted through the glass that I would only be a moment and deciding that the keys might just be on my bedside table I skipped up the stairs, grabbed them and in a hurry to see what delight the delivery man was bringing me I hopped down the first flight of stairs, rounded the corner and skidded all the way down the second flight on my bum.
For a moment I lay there and silently wailed in anguish, then remembering there was a man at the door who could see me sprawled across the hallway I dived up like a Jack-In-The-Box, greeted him manically, grabbed his offering and promptly burst into tears as I shut the door.
For oh my giddy aunt, what pain I was in. And what pain I was going to be in! For despite considerable cushioning in my nether regions, I had done my tailbone a damage and something as simple as sitting down was about to turn into the kind of screechy trauma that had my whole family laughing three thousand times a day.
And how they laughed. And I gritted my teeth and slid off each chair and turned over on the floor and levered myself back upright and they laughed and laughed and I felt very sorry for myself indeed and threw something of a hissy fit one day and stomped as fast as a person with a bashed tailbone could stomp up the stairs and threw myself around the bedroom like a buxom Scarlett O’Hara and Finn was sent upstairs to open negotiations with me and I was utterly resistant to his charms and told him to go away and to tell the man I loved to go away too and to take his gorgeous son with him and Finley laughed and I laughed and he said I will make you a cup of tea if you promise to be nice and despite not having done anything at all but be very injured, I promised to be nice regardless and so it went on, none of us realising that matters were about to get worse.
For in my efforts to prevent pain to my tailbone, I inspired a rather nasty case of some sciatica like affair that is currently living in my left buttock and radiating in nasty waves all the way down my leg and sitting for longer than ten minutes causes tears and walking makes the matter worse and going to sleep comes easy but an hour later I find myself awake in shrieky pain and all-consuming nausea and then spend the rest of the night sobbing quietly downstairs for no amount of anti-inflammatories or heat pads will fix me and anyone who dares to suggest a solution is given very short shrift because I am a wounded animal and there is just no reasoning with me.
Who knew I could be such a betch? Heaven knows not a soul has escaped my wounded wrath. Finley asked for something to eat (THE BLOODY NERVE OF IT) and I got very cross indeed and took his phone off him. Poor Stevie casually mentioned that he may not go to university and I lost my marbles because doesn’t he WANT A FUTURE and Ste did everything in his power to help and I nit-picked, caused fights, resisted punching him with a chicken because what doesn’t he understand about me NOT LIKING CHICKEN BREAST IN SAUCE and all in all became deeply unalike-able because I am all peopled-out and I cannot sit down long enough to work and I cannot sleep and the house is a pig-sty and my BUM IS KILLING ME.
God bless them all. (In fact God bless you all for reading this far when it is quite clear I just want to throw an online tantrum). Yesterday poor Stevie went home looking shell-shocked and no doubt muttering about my metamorphosis into wicked Step-Mother, Ste who has been off work for a month unwell himself, looked a little terrified of me and Finley insisted on me getting dressed and taking him out for a Frappachino. Which I did. Looking like a twitchy Mad Mary and ready to take on anyone who dared to mess with me. And Finn sipped more Frappachinos than he should and I sent a sandwich with a complimentary piece of plastic back with a growl, and my gorgeous boy counselled me on my rather erratic behavior and we laughed at me and then we went home and as I opened the door I could smell something that smelled suspiciously like lavender and as the house has recently been fragranced by little more than cabbage I paused in bewilderment and advanced with hobbled caution, only to find that Ste had channeled both Mary Poppins and Martha Stewart and turned our pig-sty into a palace.
Not the kind of tidying and cleaning men left to their own devices usually go in for, but a thorough, every corner dusted and sparkled, every last bit of nonsense vanished, every floor brushed, every candle lit, proper palace and after a week when I felt so utterly incapable, I simply couldn’t have asked for a more wondrous gift. Especially when I saw that the dreaded chicken had been cooked for Finn and there was a Ragu bubbling on the stove for us and (oh yey) a bottle of wine decanted on the sideboard ready to do alcoholic medicinal battle with my pinched nerve and hopefully keep me calm after a thorough talking to by my fourteen year-old man child.
You see, I might be a broken-bottomed betch but I think they love me regardless.