Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. Ever since I was little, there was something magical about a night where I was allowed to run amok through my neighborhood while pretending to be someone else. An entire day devoted to wearing anything I wanted, combined with the excuse to buy loads of new and exciting makeup was just too much for me to handle and it quickly became my favorite holiday. The shit loads of free candy also helped, as I am impossibly addicted to all things that contain enough refined sugar to kill a horse, but I digress.

Ever since then, I've loved it. Even at twenty-seven, I still cherish going to the store and buying screaming red lipstick, fake eyelashes that are a mile long, and various other sparkly and glittery trinkets. This year more than any other since I've been back in Chicago, I was looking forward to buying a million pounds of candy and a bitching costume and making this the epic holiday that I adored.

I arrived home with a few (dozen) shopping bags full of all of the things a good Halloween requires, and logged into my computer.

And had the following conversation with a good friend of mine:
TweekerchickQC: I just got home from shopping! I'm so excited!
GoodFriendOfMine: ....
TweekerchickQC: It's almost Halloween! I'M SO ASITED.
GoodFriendOfMine: ....
TweekerchickQC: GUESS WHAT I'M GOING TO BE!
GoodFriendOfMine: A cripple?


And that is when it occurred to me.

It is impossible to make a walking cast look cute. Or scary. Or sexy.

What happened to your foot, you ask? (Or not, but yet again I'm the only blogger I see around here so pipe down, asshole.)

Absolutely fucking nothing happened. I've been walking an assload more than I used to because of my Fancy New Job In The City, and the dress code here is a little less casual than my last job (still casual though), so most of that walking has been done in heels.

Very tall heels.

Very sexy heels.

But very tall heels nonetheless.

I assumed that I had twisted my ankle by falling off of a heel or something, but I couldn't remember anything actually happening. I walked around for a few more days¹ before winding up in such blinding pain that my own mother, who one time told me I was overreacting about a cold and refused to take me to the hospital (it was pneumonia, by the way), insisted I go to the Emergency Room. After waiting while I watched some woman explain to the doctor that the reason she was holding her child's arm over his head was because he cut himself and may have nicked the artery in his little finger, and she was the single solitary reason he had not bled to death right there in the emergency room, I finally got back to a room.

After being poked, prodded, x-rayed and twisted into various contorted positions, the doctor looked at me and pulled his glasses down on his nose. He puffed his cheeks out, causing him to look like Santa if Santa was the most stereotypical Jew on the planet and put his clip board beside me.

"How you have managed to walk on this for a week is amazing".

Turns out, I have tendonitis and a 3rd degree sprain. (Did you know that sprains have degrees? I did not. Apparently, "3rd degree sprain" is a Latin term for "pump her full of drugs and send her careening through the streets of Chicago in a 10 year old Malibu".) The one thing I told Dr. Santa Weinstein was that I couldn't function in my Fancy New Job In The City on crutches, and I couldn't be on drugs that made me so ridiculous I couldn't function.

He insisted on crutches. I asked if there was an alternative. He said I could use a cane just like "That doctor on TV". After an interesting discussion in which I explained to him in excruciating detail what part of his body I'd cram a cane up if he didn't knock off the shit I left on crutches with a prescription of OxyContin. I was not amused.

A different doctor later gave me a walking cast.

Which has ruined Halloween. Halloween is the night of sluts, skanks, sexy costumes, booze and candy. It's college all over again, and I can't participate because I can't mix booze with any of the pain medications I'm on, and there's only one costume a gimpy leg works with, and I don't have the time to fashion a fake gun so I can go as that chick from Grindhouse. It is impossible to make a walking cast in any way cute or sexy. Trust me, I've tried.

This sucks. Send candy.

notes

¹ Fine, it was a week. Happy Chris?