Slip sliding away

Well, how about this! Three days in a row. I think the most pertinent thing that happened today is that I fell down the stairs this morning. Thankfully, it was only 5 steps from the bottom and I did, indeed, fall on my bottom and not face forward. It is, however, surprisingly painful to fall down only five steps. I am going to have a monstrous bruise on my hip, there seems to be some sort of toe strain involving the fourth metatarsal of my left foot, and I'm pretty sure I wrenched both shoulders out of their respective sockets in the process of reaching back to try to stop myself. I think there are four specific things to blame:

 1. I had just woken up and had not had any coffee,
 2. I was awake until midnight last night watching people debate colors on a map,
 3. I was wandering around aimlessly because I could faintly hear a child calling for help in a bathroom, but my morning deafness impeded my ability to discern which child in which bathroom, and
4. My new birthday houseslippers. There was a serious malfunction. I now have a working theory that many falls of the elderly which result in hip fractures could be directly linked to malfunctions of comfy house slippers. Maybe I will write an email to the CDC requesting an epidemiological study. Then I will be published and will qualify for tenure.

 I was also forced to concede that, though I still have not figured out how to vacuum them properly, which has caused me to complain, I am exceeding glad for the carpet on the stairs. It would have hurt so much worse without it.

 I think that is it for today. We finished reading The Tale of Despereaux and we all enjoyed it. Hudson in particular is a little nervous about the idea of a dungeon, but we are all very glad that Despereaux prevailed against the darkness in the end. Harper even made a Despereaux out of a tiny mouse she had on hand: