I did the same thing this morning that I do pretty much every morning: I step outside with two buckets of water, ready to take them down to the chickens and the rabbits.
There were only two small differences to my daily routine. First, my daughter and I picked out new buckets this past weekend. They are slightly bigger, holding about three gallons each, instead of about one and a half. Second, I had on shoes, not my boots. I just wanted to set the buckets outside, and was planning on putting on my overalls and boots right after.
Instead, I stepped down the first step, realized that the buckets had thrown me a bit off balance… and toppled over the wedge heel on my shoe. In what was surely a spectacular fall, I followed the first ankle roll over with the rest of my body, splashing both buckets onto my pants and sweater, down the steps and onto the driveway.
After crawling back into the house and pulling myself together, I sat for a few moments, wondering how I was going to get water down to the chickens and rabbits—now that I could not walk on my right ankle.
Happily, just about then, I realized that I had a bit of a saving grace in this whole situation: my daughter has remote half day on Wednesdays.
Good ol’ COVID saved the day. With this little silver lining of her presence, I was soon set up on the couch with three bags of ice and an elevated leg. (And even better: the ice and Advil seemed to have brought about a near miraculous recovery and I am even hobbling around nearly normally. Well, at least for the inside walking that I plan to do for the next 24 hours or so!)