It's Always Darkest Before You Turn On The Light

  I went to the doctor with a back pain.  Wait, that sounds like the doctor had a bad back. Hang on...I had a pain in my back so I went to the doctor.  That's better.  Carry on. Having waited the customary 6 hours in the waiting room (well it IS called the waiting room), I was led into the smaller waiting room, where I spent another 3 hours reading old copies of Good Housekeeping and fiddling with the little instruments in the glass jars. I had just nodded off and was dreaming that a large trout in a tutu danced into the room, slapped me upside the head with an old sock and called me Dolores, when the doctor sailed majestically into the room, looking immaculate in a starched white uniform, and asked what ailed me.  I would have thought the fact that I was bent over like Quasimodo would have given her a clue, but I decided to humour her. After explaining that my back was stiff and sore, and ramming the message home by making all kinds of painful sounds, the docto...

  It was a bright, crisp morning in January.  I opened my eyes to a winter wonderland.  The sound of sleigh bells echoed in the air, and laughing people skied past my window drinking hot chocolate and pelting each other with marshmallows.  But this illusion was faint and transitory.  (I read that sentence in a book and have been dying to use it somewhere.)  It WAS snowing, though, and that meant one thing for certain - it would freeze overnight and tomorrow I'd have to deal with ICE!  (Insert dramatic music here.) I realized I was now faced with the prospect of once again demonstrating my complete inability to cross the street without having an end-of-life- experience whilst simultaneously screaming at innocent passersby to either help me or get out of the way.  Arming myself against the vicious eastern winds proved not to be a problem, as I merely wore so many layers of clothing that I looked like I was about to be launched into deep space. ...