cami's nature

Friday was by no means a normal day for me.

It started out OK but from there it quickly turned to pain and drama...

I don't know where to start...

Should I tell you about the birthday cake I baked for my brother?  That I forgot to set the timer for?  That took forever to bake?  That finally came out of the oven completely perfect?  That wound up in a shattered glass baking dish between the oven and the refrigerator?  Or should I just tell you about the hour I spent picking up tiny splinters of glass and amazing smelling yellow cake crumbs?  Or should I skip right to the part where mother nature told me to go fuck myself?

Yeah... I think we'll go with the mother nature part, after all thats the part that explains how I wound up bruising the arch and heel of my foot...

You can't do that baking a cake.

(no really

can't.  I probably could but I didn't so let's skip ahead ya?)

After the cake baking debacle I had to leave to pick K up from school.  The sun was shining with not a cloud in sight so I thought it was a sign that things were looking up...

I walked along at a leisurely pace following my normal path towards her school but when I was about 4 blocks from school I noticed something odd in a front yard.

There, at 2 in the afternoon in full sun, was a raccoon.  A pretty big raccoon.  Now I'm not a raccoon lover or anything but I was enchanted and amazed to see this big bushy raccoon in some one's yard in the bright sun.  I noted to myself that raccoons are nocturnal so what is it doing and I watched it for a moment.  It seemed to notice me and immediately froze.  Thinking nothing of it I continued to watch it...

It didn't like that.

At all.

Apparently it took my staring at it as a threat and charged me.

Did you know that those little fuckers are FAST?

I turned and ran not wanting to be mauled by a raccoon or find out how painful a round of rabies shots actually would be.  It chased me for a brief time... not long enough for me to panic or get winded but long enough for me to land funny on one foot.  I think I may have stepped too hard on a rock or a fallen branch.  I'm sure it was  something lying between me and the sweet freedom of not being attacked by a raccoon.

(A raccoon, that I would later find out from a friend who lived two houses down from the scene of my incident, that just had babies...  No wonder it was chasing me down... it was trying to protect it's kids.  We're cool mama raccoon...  we're cool.  I don't want your kids... you keep em)

Then... and you know there's a then, as I was walking up to K's school passing by the baseball field, feeling thankful that the raccoon hadn't lept at me instead of just running, I was walking a little more carefully, tenderly as my foot was aching and I looked down to see where I was stepping only to see my feet placed astride

a very little snake nothing at all like the one above...

However... I'm a little nervous around snakes (whatever their size) so I screamed longer louder and higher than you could imagine.  A woman getting out of a car behind me?  Almost fell over and then gave me the stinkiest stink eye ever... I think she thought I belonged in a nut house.

It was a big scream.

It was a small snake.

Still.  I believe mother nature was trying to tell me something and I took the hint.  I collected my kid and after a very brief stop at the grocery store I headed straight home and I did not leave my home until Sunday afternoon...

For fear of loss of life or limb...

And also?  Because my foot still really fucking hurts...

***

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