May 12, 2016 3 min read

I woke up to a green bean on my pillow, a single soggy bit of vegetable lying there where I sleep. Groggy, I tried to blink it away, but there it was. What the??

Oh, right. The green beans.

This started Saturday night. Descending the stairs in stocking feet, I slipped, went airborne and landed on my bottom. The hard landing was following by a bump, bump, bump down the rest of the stairs. It was spectacular.

The thing about rear ends, though, is where is all that fat when you need it? My generous cushioning did not cushion the fall, and I landed on my tailbone, that triangle of rear-end real estate that happens not to have fat on it. I may have cracked my tailbone, and isn’t that a redundant way to put it, but at the very least I bruised it. And it hurts.

I’ve found the best icepack is a bag of frozen vegetables. Ever since learning frozen vegetables are as nutritious as fresh ones, I’ve had a freezer full of bags of them. And so I raided my vegetable stash for an ice pack for my behind.

I can sit for only 20 minutes at a time, which will account for the brevity of this column. The rest of the day I’m either pacing around or lying facedown on the bed with ice on my tailbone.

Frozen peas are the best. All those little marbles allow the bag to conform to the topography of my back. Next best thing is a bag of frozen blueberries, but they are expensive. Once thawed, the berries must be used rather quickly, and nobody can drink that many smoothies in one day.

When the peas are thawed I use the green beans, but only the cut ones. The long French ones never line up properly, leaving annoying gaps.

Unfortunately, this has been a multi frozen-vegetable-bag week around here. The farmer had some painful dental work and needed to ice his jaw. Tuesday night, we were down to our last bag of peas. I let him have them.

When you have an injury requiring ice, you get to know the contents of your freezer really well. I found steaks I didn’t know we had. Also, some Nutty Buddy cones which, as it turns out, make terrible ice packs. Not that they should ever be wasted on such a thing.

So how did the green bean end up on my pillow? I think it had something to do with the dog. Since my injury, Howie has slept in the bed, probably offering moral support. I’m guessing he got hungry in the middle of the night and wanted a snack. There were a few other beans at the bottom of the bed, but most were uneaten. Nobody really likes to eat frozen green beans. Not even the dog.

It’s going to take another month for my tailbone to heal. They say that regular icing will speed recovery. A whole month? That’s a lot of green beans.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.