Well, Kansas City decided to have itself a little temper tantrum last night.
And by little temper tantrum, I mean tornado sirens going off, winds reportedly reaching 80 to 90 mph, trees snapping, shit flying across yards, and an entire neighborhood looking like Mother Nature had finally had enough of everyone's bullshit.
It was intense.
We had a massive branch ripped right off our maple tree, and when I say ripped, I mean ripped. This wasn't some old, dead branch that had been waiting for an excuse to fall. It was fresh, healthy wood that the wind apparently decided didn't need to be attached to the tree anymore.
Naturally, it landed on the house.
From what we can see, there doesn't appear to be any damage, but we haven't been able to get up there and inspect everything yet. Looking around the neighborhood, though, we were pretty fortunate. There are broken trees and branches everywhere, roads littered with debris, and several houses and vehicles with trees on top of them.
It's genuinely awful seeing that much damage so close to home.
But apparently, the storm wasn't quite finished with me personally.
Because, you see, I made the brilliant decision to go outside and rescue a Halloween decoration.
We have these little glowing cat eyes suction-cupped to our front window, and one of them had been ripped loose by the wind. I figured I'd just pop outside, unplug it, grab it, and run back into the garage.
Simple enough, right?
Wrong.
Travis opened the garage door for me, except he didn't open it all the way. He stopped it about halfway up.
This is an important detail.
So there I am, out in the pouring rain with the wind doing its best to launch me into the next county, trying to rescue my poor little Halloween cat eyes. I grab the decoration, turn around to make my grand escape, and suddenly there's Travis.
With an umbrella.
Standing directly in my way.
Bless this man, because I know he was trying to help, but WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!
I'm trying to get out of the rain, he's trying to shield me from it, and we're both apparently participating in some kind of poorly choreographed slapstick comedy routine.
So I dodge around him and make a mad dash for the garage.
Remember that important detail about the garage door?
Yeah.
I ran straight into the fucking thing.
Headfirst.
And let me tell you, that shit HURT.
At first, I figured I'd just smacked my head really hard. I stumbled into the garage, grabbed my skull, hopped around a bit, and did that ridiculous little dance people do when they've hurt themselves and don't know what else to do with the pain.
You know the one.
I thought I was fine.
Then Travis asked to see my head.
So I moved my hand.
And apparently, my hand was the only thing keeping the entire special effects department of a horror movie from making its grand entrance.
Blood.
EVERYWHERE.
Down my face, onto my shirt, just absolutely pouring out of my head.
It was honestly kind of impressive.
If it hadn't been MY blood, I probably would have appreciated the whole scene a lot more. Very Carrie. Very practical effects. Ten out of ten for presentation, zero out of ten for personal enjoyment.
Thankfully, we had enough first aid knowledge between us to get things under control. We cleaned up what we could, applied pressure, got everything wrapped up, and I settled in for what would become a very long night.
There was absolutely no way I wanted to venture out to an emergency room in the middle of that storm unless I absolutely had to.
So I took some acetaminophen, stayed sitting up, and waited for morning.
Which brings us to today's exciting adventure.
Urgent care!
After getting everything looked at and cleaned up, I learned that my little garage door incident had left me with a rather substantial laceration on the left side of my head, just past my hairline near my forehead.
And apparently, that required staples.
SIX OF THEM.
I've never had staples before.
There's a first time for everything, I suppose, although this particular milestone wasn't exactly on my bucket list.
They gave me a whole trifecta of numbing medications before stapling my scalp back together, which is a sentence I never thought I'd be casually typing into a blog post.
So that's fun.
One out of ten. Would not recommend.
Now I'm home, my head hurts, I'm exhausted, and all I really want to do is curl up against Travis and sleep for about a thousand years.
Unfortunately, he actually had to go into the office today.
He stayed home this morning to take me to urgent care and make sure I got patched up, and I appreciate the hell out of him for that. Even if his umbrella-wielding rescue attempt did turn into a comedy of errors.
I love that man.
And now, to add insult to literal injury, I apparently have to wait about three days before I can wash my hair.
Three. Days.
My hair was already gross from sweat, rain, and general storm-related chaos. Now it's got dried blood in it, too, and I just have to exist like this for a while.
Fantastic.
I'm going to look like some feral woodland creature that got into a fight with a garage door.
Which, I suppose, isn't entirely inaccurate.
Anyway, that's where we're at.
The neighborhood is a mess. There's a giant branch on the house. I've got six shiny new pieces of metal holding my scalp together. And I'm running on almost no sleep.
I had other plans for this week, but apparently the universe decided I needed a little unscheduled character development.
I'd like to formally decline any further character development for the foreseeable future.
I'm tired.
I'm sore.
And I would very much like to be done with the bullshit for a bit.
At least the Halloween decorations survived.
Mostly.
