Ouch!

Sadly, I cannot take credit for this pic.

My fair city (well, the city of which I am part of the metropolitan area!) is renowned for its cherry blossoms this time of year. I heard today on the news that they were going to be at their peak today and considering the fact that it was going to be the warmest day of the year thus far, I decided it would be fun to drive downtown and see them.

Drake has been preoccupied recently. He has been seeing a financial planner (with his wife) and trying to figure things out financially. This, along with waiting to hear about a potential job offer, has left him stressed. We met on Tuesday down by the River, but we took a nice long walk instead our usual car sex.

When Drake emailed me this morning and said "let's meet at the River unless I think of something else," I figured that he was probably too preoccupied for sex. The cherry blossoms, I supposed, would be a nice out for him and take off some pressure.

We agreed to meet at our usual chicken restaurant where we have become regular customers on Fridays.

My drive along the two-lane road to the restaurant was uneventful until the car in front of me suddenly veered out of the lane, across traffic (thankfully no cars were coming), careened across a grassy area, and plowed into a huge chain link fence outside of a school. I was going to look for a place to pull over to help, when I saw two other cars going the other direction stopping, so I figured the driver would get assistance.

When I got to the restaurant, I told Drake about my cherry blossom plan. Although he's lived here for almost 30 years, he has only been down to see the cherry blossoms two or three times, so he thought it was a fabulous idea.

We headed south in his SUV. Traffic was horrendous--as well as parking. We finally found a spot and we headed for the Tidal Basin--about a fifteen minute walk from where we had parked the car. We stopped at several memorials, although Drake finds memorials terrible and boring seeing that they all deal with dead people and war. I, however, find them fascinating.

We reached the Tidal Basin full of cherry blossom trees and joined the masses along the walkway. We were shoulder to shoulder with other pedestrians and I was often walking off the path onto the grass with tree roots jutting out.

I was starting to regret not wearing sensible shoes. I was parading around in sandals with a heel and no back, so I tottered a few times on the roots until I caught my foot on one and started to tumble down. Drake made a grab for me as the people around me all gasped and stopped as I collapsed onto the sidewalk.

Drake helped me up and several people stopped to make sure I was okay. I had fallen so hard, my sunglasses had flown off my face. I felt pain in my knee and ankle. I had a nice bloody scrape on my knee and I could see it was swelling. Ironically, Drake had been talking about a woman who had been texting and had walked into a fountain.

The woman behind us chastised Drake for not "protecting" me and for making me walk on the grass. He certainly got told and it made me giggle.

We continued walking for another fifteen minutes, stopped to view the new Martin Luther King Jr. memorial and headed back to his SUV.

Drake dropped me off at my SUV when we got back and we agreed to head across the street to a pub that has outrageously priced drinks (and no happy hour on Fridays).

I could see him relaxing after one glass of wine (we had agreed on only one glass each). We were amused that this is the first week in months that we didn't have sex. I told him that it wasn't too late, but he declined. He needed to pick up one of his sons and didn't have time. I could see he was tempted, though.

He mentioned that when he is 90 years old, I will be 71. I joked that I will pick him up for our "play date." Better yet, he said, I will pick up him *and* his wife. I'll take his wife to the local senior center to play mahjong and he would go with me to the River. We had a good laugh.

It was a pleasant day (even without sex and a lot of booze!)--although my ankle is stiff and my knee has a giant bump on it!