What did I do to myself, you ask? Yesterday I cut down a tree.
One of those Christmas trees we had replanted in the backyard decades ago? It was bigger than the house. I figured it was time for me to do something about it. So I got out my chainsaw, cut a big notch over halfway through on the side away from the house, and was cutting the rest of the way through on the side towards the house.
Theoretically that should make it fall away from the house. What happened instead was the tree leaned back towards the house, pinning the chainsaw. I guess it would have worked if the tree grew straight, but its center of gravity must have been towards the house.
I yanked on the chainsaw. I pushed the tree. Wouldn't budge. I threw a rope around it and started pulling the tree away from the house. The trunk cracked at the cut, twisted, fell on the chainsaw and drove it six inches into the ground. That's just where I had been standing when I was trying to yank the chainsaw out. The tree kept twisting and falling. Away from me, towards my house, just like I didn't want it to. It landed against my house and balcony. Which stayed in one piece.
The treetop was pretty close to the telephone and electric and wires. So I took my aluminum ladder up to the balcony, planted it next to where I have all the firewood piled up, climbed up through the branches of the fallen tree, and used my metal trimmers to clear the branches away from the electric wires. I had to lean waaay over and hold onto the tree for balance to reach some of them.
That all went fine.
Then I went down on the balcony, put a rope around the tree, and tossed both ends down to the ground. No trouble.
I went down, grabbed both ends of the rope, and pulled. The tree slid against the house, didn't bother the wires, then fell down towards me. I ran to the side fast and it collapsed next to the house. Very nice.
It took me another few hours to cut up the branches and the trunk and pile them all below the balcony.
When I was done, I went up to the fridge, popped open a beer, and went out on the balcony to survey what I'd done. The stump. The smashed chainsaw. The electric wires, still intact. The scraped house. The cut-up tree. The branches everywhere. Things hadn't gone quite as planned, but it certainly could have been a lot worse. I leaned on the railing, beer in hand, and looked out at my yard.
The railing fell off.
I wasn't prepared for that. I yelled, windmilled my arms to try to keep balance, but it was no good. I fell off the balcony.
The railing had fallen on top of the tree branches and cut-up stump. And I fell on top of the railing.
My wife heard me yelling. She ran out the back door onto the balcony. The door hit the ladder. The ladder stood. Then it tipped away from the house. Then fell, flipping over the firewood. I saw it falling end-first towards me, but it narrowly missed. It continued falling, scraping against me, then rolling over me. The other end landed on the ground, and the rotation made it stand up again. Aaaand ... it lean away from me, and fell on the ground.
Meanwhile, the pile of firewood had been disturbed. It collapsed, and rolled off the balcony. And fell down onto me, the railing, the branches, and the cut-up trunk.
My wife looked down and called 911.
So, that's what happened to me yesterday.
This was in response to a prompt on reddit.com r/WritingPrompts, "I fell off a balcony yesterday."