The swans, geese and ducks were squawking over by the pond.  As the hawks were yelling about how they wanted my 15 year old wheaten terrier, Milo, to come on over for breakfast, I walked outside with my three other dogs, the chihuahua, the beagle, the llasa cocker mix and a bag of garbage.  I would carry Milo down the steps later.  Being a divorced woman for over seven years, I thought I learned how to handle multiple scenarios at once, like the time I washed my hair and shampooed a dry clean only dress together in a cold shower with liquid dish detergent. 

It appeared to be another otherwise typical country morning, one I thought I wanted so much that I would jump to escape the constant clawing attention of men for. I was tired of being thought of as a MILF, with midnight calls.  But that day, I had the classic slip and fall situation.  I went down the wet stairs like it was the end of a rickety roller coaster ride straight out of Coney Island.  Every part of the right side of my forty something body got a direct hit.  When the elbow clashed with a splintered step, my head accepted a Tylenol ache.  My big fat backside took the brunt of the fall.  The size eight hips that I keep forcing into my size four jeans went hippety hoppedity.  After I human tobagonned down, I came to a stop on the ground at the exact grassy knoll spot where the puppies liked to poop.  I had wet, smelly, muddy pants, garbage still in one hand and three leashes in the other.  How’s that for multitasking!  The little canine howling monsters looked straight at me with faces that I thought said, “Wow, Mom, can we do that again?”  One of the barkers, the llasa named Fenway, was so pleased that he licked my face.  That was the only kiss I'd accepted in months.  It happened quickly.  I’d just realized the pain.  I screamed I wanted out of wilderness living.  Maybe being alone is not what I was striving for.  The deer lifted their heads from their snack of flowers and ran off.  I was the only known human on the tree-filled property.

The EMT arrived in his whirling, lit up and loud SUV ahead of the police and the ambulance.  The man in uniform questioned me about what day it was and what country I lived in.  He said it was to make sure the crash did not effect my mind as much as it had, to my guess, a much softer part of my body.   I knew what was going on.  He was evaluating concussion possibilities.  As a teenage figure skater, I had plenty bangs to my head coming down from jumps and spins. 

But instead of opening up a conversation with asking me who the President is to which I  answered, “Yes.  Unfortunately, I do know,” and then continuing with, “Ah.  So you’re a Republican" and I quipped, “No.  The problem is I voted for the guy,” medic man should’ve asked, “How many Hershey bars are in the freezer?”  The answer would’ve been, “None, silly.  Me and my hips devoured them at breakfast.”  It wasn’t like I had any morning after bubbly in bed to enjoy with some shrimp and chocolate.  He was the first man to be standing by my apartment in a long while.  I felt like a doe in heat blazing for the six pointer who came to save me from myself.  After all, he was questioning a formerly hot single unemployed woman born at the end of the baby boomer timeline, who considers her bible to be Stephanie Dolgoff’s book, “My Formerly Hot Life.”   I used to be catcalled.  Now all I had to contemplate was the probability of my silent heckling of some musclemen if I ever saw any again.  I didn’t care what day it was.  Things like that lost its importance to me.  A Saturday could’ve been a Wednesday in my world.  There is no Monday to Friday, with Wednesday being the “hump” day.  Weekends are overrated, with no dates or trips to the mall.  And considering my dissatisfaction with three wars, gas prices, the ten dollar bill worth less at the supermarket and President Obama’s knife in the back to Israel, I sometimes wonder what country this is.

Did I have a “crush” on the scorchingly warm EMT guy?  Wilderness woman yearning for a hunk?  I had to trust this man more than a chocolate babka because I needed to get to the emergency room to make sure I didn’t break any bones.  My 18 year old Toyota was failing, much like my net worth.  The starter and the transmission were stalling.  I seemed to be sitting still.  And like my chipped tooth, the exhaust fell off.  I would find out later that I had a bruise on my backside the size of a softball.  As for Mr. EMT, I never found out what color eyes he had, too afraid to look at them.  Last time I did, the guy broke my heart.