{"id":1093,"date":"2015-01-19T03:51:14","date_gmt":"2015-01-19T03:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/?p=1093"},"modified":"2015-01-23T23:27:40","modified_gmt":"2015-01-23T23:27:40","slug":"fall-from-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/?p=1093","title":{"rendered":"Fall from Grace"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1559335_10152909711295260_744965008_o\"<\/a>You know how sometimes bad things happen for good reasons? As in, something bad happens to you, but you realise later that it was actually a really good thing that the bad thing happened? Well, that happened to me a few weeks ago and I\u2019m still saying prayers of thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

About a year ago, I decided I wanted to lose weight and after a few weeks of intermittent fasting<\/a>\u00a0and walking the dog, I dropped over 20 lb (about 11 kg), which is a lot. I was very pleased and I looked fantastic\u2014so far, all good news.<\/p>\n

Then, about six months after I lost the weight, I got the chance to take a new job writing books, which was even better news. As it turned out, however, I was amazingly stressed out about this opportunity\u2014it was one of those moments when I had been given a chance, and I could either seize that moment and shine or blow chunks and destroy my future prospects.<\/p>\n

The good news is that I was able to rise to the challenge and I wrote a couple of books that put me in good favour with the publishing company. The bad news was that my method for coping with the stress was to eat every single thing in my house\u2014before the end of the year, all the weight I had valiantly lost was back. And then some.<\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s fast forward to a couple of weeks ago when my husband and I ditched the kids to attend the wedding of a good friend of ours. It was to be a momentous occasion, mainly because we love our friend and we were both so happy for him\u2014but also because my husband\u2019s boss and his boss\u2019s boss (who had come down from Canberra) would both be in attendance.<\/p>\n

I was fairly nervous about the prospect because I had never met the boss\u2019s boss before. He\u2019s not at the very top of the food chain, but if my husband worked in heaven, in celestial terms, I\u2019d say my husband would be one of the lesser cherubs. Relatively speaking, his boss\u2019s boss would be akin to one of the archangels, a Michael or a Gabriel, the sort of guy who probably has The Almighty on speed dial and texts Him for weekend brunches.<\/p>\n

Basically, I really wanted to make a good impression.<\/p>\n

To that end, I chose my outfit for the evening with extreme care. After much debate, I decided on a cute, slimming wrap-dress that looks pretty good on me, even when I\u2019m pretty fat. The dress looks especially good with Very High Heels, so I busted out my really ridiculous pair of nude stilettos\u2014I was planning to make my husband PROUD!<\/p>\n

(Let\u2019s pause for a moment to review the definition of the word \u2018hubris\u2019 which means \u2018excessive pride or self-confidence\u2019. Many a literary hero has been laid low by hubris. Remember that.)<\/p>\n

The night of the wedding, my husband had planned for us to meet up with his colleague (the archangel) and his partner. It was late afternoon and we wouldn\u2019t be driving, so we decided to start our early evening rendezvous with a nice glass of bubbly. And a second. And maybe a slosh of a third.<\/p>\n

Now it was time to go to the wedding. As it was, the ceremony and reception were to take place at a gorgeous little venue in the outskirts of Ballarat, in an obscure little place the bride and groom feared no one would be able to find. Also, there were heaps of hotels in central Ballarat but very few within proximity to the wedding venue. To accommodate everyone, then, the couple had arranged for a bus to collect guests from the middle of Ballarat and bring them en masse<\/em> to the wedding festivities.<\/p>\n

As both bride and groom are Irish, the pubs in central Ballarat were filled with guests who had all had the same idea as we\u2019d had\u2014meet up for a quick one before getting on the bus\u2014so when we left our little pub, we were among a large gathering of people sauntering slowly towards the bus.<\/p>\n

I knew we were going to have to do a bit of walking, so I\u2019d come prepared. I learned long ago that, while I do love my Very High Heels, I can wear them for only so long, so I\u2019d brought along a little pair of sandals in my bag for walking any longish distances.<\/p>\n

As it was, I thought the bus was picking us up right outside our pub, so instead of changing into my sandals, I kept my heels on. I was certain I could totter the few feet from the door of the pub to the bus, surely.<\/p>\n

As soon as we were on the sidewalk, my husband spied the bus, and this was when my plans to make a good impression went awry. The bus was easily a block and a half away. If I\u2019d known, I would have done a subtle shoe change under the table in the pub. Now, in front of Gabriel and his partner (who were both dressed to the nines, by the way) and the rest of the wedding party, I couldn\u2019t very well stop and change my shoes\u2014THAT would be embarrassing.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d only gone about ten steps when I learned the true definition of Things That Are Embarrassing (as it turns out, changing shoes is WAY DOWN the list). I was walking ahead with Gabriel\u2019s partner, the two of us chummily chatting as we walked arm-in-arm, with my husband and the archangel behind us.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s when it happened\u2014my left stiletto got stuck in a crack in the sidewalk, my foot came out of my shoe and I fell over.<\/p>\n

You know how some moments feel like they’re happening in slow motion? Well, this was one of those moments. One minute I was sauntering along, making a great impression in my fantastic dress and my even more fantastic shoes (hubris!!!), and the next l-o-o-o-o-o-n-g minute later, I was on the ground.<\/p>\n

On my back.<\/p>\n

See, I didn\u2019t just fall over<\/em>, friends and neighbours. I actually rolled<\/em>. There\u2019s a British expression for it\u2014to fall \u2018ass over tits\u2019, but when they say it, they usually use it as a metaphor, an extreme exaggeration used for effect (that\u2019s called \u2018hyperbole\u2019 in literature, but I digress).<\/p>\n

I actually, literally fell first on my shoulder and then completed a full roll to land on my back. It was gymnastic, like something you’d see in the Olympics, maybe in a luge run gone terribly wrong.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m a positive person and I like to look for the silver lining to every black cloud. As I lay there on the streets, in full view of everyone else going to the wedding, most especially the man who is in a position to impact my husband\u2019s future career for the next several years, I realised how thankful I was that I\u2019d gained all that weight back.<\/p>\n

The fact is that I don\u2019t get a lot of nights out with my husband anymore, and I\u2019d planned to make the most of this evening. We\u2019d left the kids with his parents and we weren’t picking them up till the next day, so I wanted to make this night a memory. I won\u2019t get too graphic, but I will say that, if I had been even 5 lb thinner, I would have been wearing teeny tiny panties (at best) under that dress.<\/p>\n

Being as fat as I was, however, I\u2019d opted for full body spandex Shapewear, the type that goes from my knees to my neck. I might have looked sexy in my dress from the outside, but underneath, I looked like I was wearing a medieval bathing suit. People go scuba diving wearing less.<\/p>\n

Which turned out to be fortuitous in the extreme\u2014if I\u2019d been wearing the other panties, the memory makers, that fall would have turned into a full on biology lesson of gynaecological proportions, right there on the streets of Ballarat.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the sort of thing you can\u2019t un-see, not even for an archangel. Ok, especially for an archangel.<\/p>\n

As it was, I managed to fall on my backside instead of my knees, and with all that extra cushioning, I didn\u2019t hurt myself too badly. Yes, I did stub my toe quite badly when my foot came out of my shoe, but I was able to cram my shoe back on before the bleeding started, so that was good news. Even better, I managed to not pull the archangel\u2019s partner down on top of me (for the record, that, I think, is how people end up getting \u2018accidentally\u2019 pregnant).<\/p>\n

In the end, we had a fantastic night. Gabriel and his partner were able to laugh with me and not at me, and before they left, the archangel said to my husband, \u2018The next time you come to Canberra, be sure to bring your wife!\u2019<\/p>\n

There are many lessons to be learned here\u2014know your heel limitations, remember that changing your shoes is less embarrassing than eating shit in public, maybe keep the bubbly to a minimum when you\u2019re walking on circus stilts, always wear gigantic underwear.<\/p>\n

But I think the most important lesson is the one King Solomon famously wrote in the book of Proverbs: \u2018The highway of the upright is to depart from evil; he who watches his way preserves his life. Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before stumbling.\u2019<\/p>\n

Brother, you got THAT right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know how sometimes bad things happen for good reasons? As in, something bad happens to you, but you realise later that it was actually a really good thing that the bad thing happened? Well, that happened to me a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1093"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1099,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions\/1099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}