Bye, Bye Cast!

So today was my two-month checkup with the podiatrist. I was nervous, but hopeful. Hopeful because last month the good doctor had seemed cautiously optimistic that I might be get to graduate from the cast to the boot today. Hopeful enough that I brought the boot with me, along with a sock.

Nervous because, well, you can't exactly see inside a cast (not that you'd want to) and I was less 0% and more like 3% of the time weight bearing by the last week. Okay, 5%. Still. I wondered whether Nurse Lonnie would cut open the cast and I'd find bones sticking out places or giant festering sores I somehow hadn't felt or smelt or basically any especially horrible thing that would lead them to put me back in a cast. So, nervous enough that I left the boot in the car because I didn't want to seem too presumptuous. Also because I couldn't carry it and steer at the same time.

Then Nurse Lonnie said the words that struck terror into my heart: "I hope you get out of the cast, too, because I'm all out of purple plaster. In fact, I'm out of everything but white today!"

So that pretty much settled it. I frantically scrubbed my naked, stinky foot with a couple of wet wipes and settled in to pray that my 8% weight bearing hadn't done too much damage. Because, (a) you can't wear a white cast after Labor Day, everybody knows that, and (b) white shows dirt and nothing collects dirt, sweat, and dead skin like a white cast you can't take off for another month.  <shudder>

Fortunately, my 10% weight bearing didn't seem to have done any harm. In fact, the good doctor was quite impressed with the excellent bone position and spacing, and excitedly contrasted last month's x-ray with this month's x-ray ("See! Look how much more consolidation there is!"). To be perfectly honest, I couldn't tell one x-ray from the other or really how the concept of consolidation applies to either picture, nor could I see the new bone growth he was allegedly pointing at, but believe me, I didn't argue. Had the man told me there was a miniature three-piece giraffe jazz band performing in there, I would have nodded seriously and said, "Oh, yes, DEFINITELY. I see the saxophone." Because whatever he saw was fabulous enough that he was going to let me leave the office without a cast.

I *never* push myself beyond my limits.
<cough...breakneck stairs...cough>
Nope, never. Not at all. I'd never
climb down 59 steps with a swollen,
fractured foot.

He did caution me to build up my strength gradually. I asked him when I could start going back to the gym again, and once we established that my equipment of choice was the recumbent exercise bike, he was like, "I don't care if you go ride a bike today--just don't get on a treadmill or run." I think we are safe on both of those, pretty much indefinitely. I still have the scooter for long distances (such as the trek in from the parking lot at work and shopping), but I can gradually wean off of that and hopefully at my next check-up (one month), I can get rid of the boot and transition to SHOES.

So I emailed and texted everyone the good news. For some reason, no fewer than three people immediately responded with admonitions to celebrate cautiously and not overdo it, including my own mother, which is ridiculous considering that I stayed to no more than 12% weight bearing the vast majority of the time, so it's not as though I'm the sort of person who overdoes things. It's like they don't even know me.

Meanwhile, somebody at home *was* preparing a lovely celebration for me. I came home, sat down, and put my hand in a lovingly prepared, freshly made hairball, comprised mostly of white fur, left thoughtfully at the foot of my bed.

While the culprit hasn't confessed, I think there is sufficient evidence to establish guilt or innocence, at least to the same standard as your average Senate judiciary hearing.

Bold, confident stare. Expression of defiant interest. Vividly colored fur.
The very face of innocence, with a twinge of recrimination for casting aspersions on her character.
Verdict? Innocent of all hairball hacking charges, and the court apologizes for even considering it, your majesty!

Expression of startled defensiveness. Immaculately groomed long, white fur. Wide staring eyes.
Ears pointed in opposite directions, as though looking for the opportunity to flee the jurisdiction.
Guilty! Guilty of all charges. 

So, there you have it--the cast is gone and I'm continuing my transition to healing. And tonight? Well, tonight, I bathe!

Fantasy Travel and Other Occupational Hazards of Boredom

So, here we are. Shark Week VIII: The Shark Flops Around Pitifully and Whines a Lot Before Sinking to the Ocean Floor in Boredom (also known as, Shark Week Meh).

This *could* be the last week of the cast; I'll find out later in the week when I return to the podiatrist for a second x-ray. Of course, he still cautions me that even if Shark Week is in remission, I will have a slow transition to full mobility, but frankly I'm just ready for progress at whatever speed it comes.

This sad  bottle of Kahlua,
hiding in shame and shadow
behind the frozen pizza,
moved here with me in April
2016 and has been here,
untouched, ever since.It may
have moved from the old
apartment in 2013. I am pretty
exclusively a social drinker. 

With the end of the cast and Death Scooter potentially looming nearer, I've been spending my copious free time thinking about what I'm going to do when I am past this nonsense. First and foremost, and if you've ever had a cast in Texas in the summer, I know you feel me, is a bath. A long, long bath. I've mail ordered some fancy bath salts and even a matching fancy bath candle. There's wine in the fridge chilling. (Of course, it's a bottle I opened 3+ months ago...I am the world's most indifferent alcohol consumer. But still. It's waiting.) It's going to be a bath. Definitely hours. I'm not ruling out days.

Next up is a party. My original book launch plans involved some lovely readings, potentially in several cities, at some lovely bookstores. Since I can't even get a box of books in the front door, let alone schlep them all over Texas, those plans were shelved. But now... I still want to do that, but I'm in the mood for a party. I think a victory over Shark Week AND publication of my first novel together call for a celebration. I found out yesterday that one of my staff has parents who run a chocolate fountain business. In this, I can almost see the gooey, rich, dripping skewer of destiny. Coming up with a plan (beyond a party with a chocolate fountain, which is not so much a plan as a craving) is going to keep me motivated throughout physical therapy.

So what else have I been doing?

Knitting. Lots of knitting. Some beadwork. Halloween decor projects from Pinterest (I'll post pics when they get completely done, probably tomorrow). And planning my dream vacations. So, where would I go, if money were no object and Shark Week was no more?

I spent a few hours planning a very realistic trip to Idaho. That may actually happen next year. We are not beach people. We are cool, mountain people. There's a place in northern Idaho where you can rent a bicycle and coast it down a mountain trail for 15 miles of fabulous scenery. There's a creepy prison that offers tours of its old gallows. There are B&Bs with their own hot springs. I think this needs to happen, but...


Somehow, perhaps as a side effect of Extreme Stir Craziness, I kept moving north on the map and wound up spending several hours planning a fantasy trip to the Northwest Territories of Canada. I want to drive the Dempster Highway to the Arctic Ocean at Tuktoyatkuk, see the aurora borealis from Yellowknife. There's a five day boat and camping trip to Herschel island; another that goes along the Canadian Arctic coast and ends in Greenland. Tuktut Nogait National Park in the summer is home to zillions of baby caribou and has no hiking trails...you just wander around, presumably with a compass. Most of the parks up there are only accessible by chartered plane. And, most critically, the summer daytime temperatures rarely rise above 77 degrees. Oh yes!

The Hornaday Canyons in Tuktut Nogait National Park,
Northwest Territories, Canada.
It is possible my podiatrist wouldn't approve.

At this point, I felt that perhaps I was giving a little too much love to the northern climes, so I packed my mental bags for New Zealand. I've always wanted to see Australia, but frankly it seemed too big and desert-y for a fantasy vacation. According to The Lord of the Rings, a reliable meteorological source, even in the summers hobbits can wear trousers and long sleeves and there are plenty of lush green forests, spectacular mountains, and elaborate dwarf-mined cave systems, although one has to watch out for balrogs. I didn't spend too long on my fantasy trip to New Zealand, however, after I read the part about driving on the left side of the road. I am way too easily confused for that kind of nonsense.

My first thought was, That sign doesn't help!
Which arrow am I?  The sign just shows a couple
of lonely arrows, moving always in opposite
directions, separated by a permeable barrier
they can never cross, a sort of existential..
oh, yeah. I'm the arrow on the left.
This is why I can't drive in Australia.

Also on my list, because New Zealand is probably too crowded what with all the Numenoreans running around singing lays and drinking mead, are the Orkney Islands. There are 70 of them, most accessible only by boat (which may be a problem with my reverse seasickness, but I'm willing to overlook it). You've got your standing stones, PUFFINS (squee!), and lots of rocky coastlines and remoteness. Oh, and summer highs are in the low 60's.  Also a plus--the islands are fairly small and I am quite confident I could go an entire vacation without getting lost!

Of course, the granddaddy of fantasy vacations is Iceland. (Do you perhaps notice a theme?) I've wanted to visit Iceland since I was in college and read The Vinland Sagas in World Literature. In fact, for many years, I picked up medieval Icelandic sagas in translation any time I saw them in a Half Price Books. This was more often than you might think.

I still have my Nordic legends bookshelf. I expanded beyond Iceland into Welsh, Irish, and other vaguely Viking-ish legends. There are a few interlopers (The Odyssey, for example), but it all started with The Vinland Sagas. 

Someday, that trip will definitely happen. Iceland has volcanoes, hot springs, fjords, a matriarchal culture, and Bjork. I've read a few modern Icelandic novels as well (on Kindle)--The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning, by Hallgrimur Helgason, which was darkly humorously awesome, and On the Cold Coasts, by Vilborg Davidsdottir (I know, I have in certain company drawn a line in the sand and said I will not read historical fiction, but historical Icelandic fiction is an entirely separate subgenre and definitely allowed), as well as the beautiful The Greenhouse, by Audur Ava Olafsdottir, which is lovely even though it mostly takes place in France.

So, while Shark Week is winding down, I'll be dreaming of cool, remote fjords, icy tundra, and walking freely without a cast, getting lost under the aurora borealis, and seeing all sorts of Arctic wildlife. And then--it's time to plan a party!

I remember

Of course, the call to mindfulness
may have been a government ploy
to encourage people to drive
politely and safely. If so, it worked.

To remember is, literally, to call to mind, an act of supreme mindfulness. As we drove through Quebec this summer, Je me souviens (I remember), the province's official motto, flashed by on every license plate. Down here in Texas, we demand remembrance ("Remember the Alamo!") but putting remembrance in the first person softens it, personalizes it, brings with it a sense of inevitability. I choose to call to mind, to remember.

This has been a week of remembrance--appropriately so, since it is Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, a time of remembering and questioning, bridging the past and the future. A lovely poet, biographer, and publisher, Devorah Winegarten, died September 10. Although I didn't know her well, she was one of those people whom you felt you did know well, because she wore her heart and her life on her sleeve and on the pages of Facebook and in book fairs, libraries and Rotary Club meetings all over the country. My favorite memory of her was at the Austin International Poetry Festival this year. She had lost her voice and wrote an amazing, beautiful, funny poem about the well-meaning (and annoying) responses of friends, colleagues, and strangers. She read that poem several times, in a hoarse whisper, pausing at the perfect moments with a gleam in her eyes, taking a mysterious affliction that had cost her her job and threatened her livelihood, and turning it into a smart, witty reflection on how as humans we get compassion so right--and so wrong. She was both sweet and fierce, in the way that truly great Texas women are, and she will be long remembered.

Me, 2001
Is there a statute of limitations on faking sick?
I mean, the agency that replaced the agency I worked for
then has been replaced by the agency I work for now. 
Also, I've since replaced the person I worked for then.
State government is confusing.

Of course, for most Americans, a much larger, national remembrance has gone on this week, as we all call to mind September 11, 2001. Like many, I can tell you what I was doing as the planes hit the towers. I suppose that sufficient time has passed that I can safely admit I was playing hooky from work. I remember walking through the living room when my then-husband (who was watching CNN) called out, "Hey, there's been some sort of plane crash!"

At the time, I worked more or less where I work now (give or take a dozen job changes and reorgs, so probably less rather than more), with the training department. I heard later that people panicked. Participants and trainers begged permission to leave class and go home, and staff at headquarters circled TVs for news.

Judy, 2002.
This is the photo I have in my office.
PSA for people who refuse to let people take photos of them:
Get over it. Someday, you'll  die and people who knew you
for years will scramble around frantically for accidental
photos of you and all they'll come up with is a picture of
you in a depressing state conference room holding an award.

The September 11 I most remember, though, is September 11, 2004. We were living in Pearland. A few days before, I was home sick (for real this time). The doorbell rang, and I opened the door to find my friend, Angie. She looked me up and down and said, less as a question than a statement,"You haven't heard, have you?" She then told me my best friend Judy Schober-Newman had had complications from a minor, outpatient surgical procedure and was in a coma in Austin. On September 11 her husband called to say she was taken off life support.

Judy and my youngest daughter share a middle name with Hurricane Helene, and that makes me smile. Both Betty and her namesake are/were forces of nature: smart, quick-witted, sassy, determined, passionate, and headstrong. Betty is perhaps more destructive. Both are/were intensely, fabulously creative.

Hurricane Betty age 5.
Crazy hair, messy, adorably destructive:
not much has changed. 

Despite the decade and more of water under the bridge, I still think often of Judy, particularly since rejoining the training department four years ago. It's hard not to measure yourself up against someone you loved and admired so greatly, particularly when she's dead and you've gone on to attain the job she wanted when she was alive.

At the time, I saw myself as the lesser half of "Judy and Diana," a sidekick--even before the survivor's guilt kicked in. And, I won't lie, I floundered a bit thereafter. Then, of course, I got up, dusted myself off, and started building a life I could be proud of, and, in the process, built a life that I think Judy would have been pretty proud of, too. So my remembering these days is perhaps more fond than sad.

I remember hanging out in San Antonio hotel rooms and bingeing on junk food and talking half the night. I remember some of the absolutely insane things she'd send me through interoffice mail (which I returned IN PERSON because...yay, continued employment). I remember the email where she reminded me, in all caps, that I am NOT SUPERWOMAN. This is a lesson I've had to continue reminding myself over the years, many times (because--crazy Virgo perfectionist FTW!), and, whenever I do, the voice in my head always sounds exactly like Judy.

No matter what our religious beliefs, the dead are never that far away, whether waiting patiently in the heavens or present in the scattered stardust of plants and trees. All it takes is a quiet moment, the right invocation, and we call them to mind.

Make the Mailbox Interesting Again

Although August may have ended in a strictly prosaic, calendar-based sense for most folks, August popped up today in my mailbox and may yet linger into the back end of September. If that sentence made sense, congratulations, Harry (or Sherry), you're a poet!

Postcards received from all over the country and beyond during August Poetry Postcard Fest 2018.
I am impressed with the postcards, the poems, and the fact that the lighting is such that you can't see the cat hair on the blanket. Bob loves this blanket. We call it the Mama Blanket because every time he climbs on top of it, he purrs loudly and kneads it before lying down. There are a LOT of white hairs on Mama Blanket. She is well loved.

For those who have never PoPo'd, August Poetry Postcard Fest is in its twelfth year. Organized by Paul Nelson of Seattle, it gathers people from all over the world who are willing to commit to writing spontaneous poems to strangers every day for a month.

Because these are poets we're talking about, the concept of "month" is somewhat loosely defined (in fact, the group's first anthology is called "56 Days of August"). You can start early--and people do--and you can go long--and people do. Some people write just to the others on their list so as to write 31 poems; others do "bonus" poems to people they know from other groups or respond to postcards they especially like.

This is my fourth year to PoPo. By now, I have a strategy. All year long, I add to my collection of postcards. My mother and a friend have donated old ones they found while cleaning out photo albums. I pick up free ones wherever I can (such as postcards advertising books at poetry festivals or readings, one from a Typewriter Tarot table, one from a hotel in Maine). And my favorite junk shop in Jefferson, TX, has a corner cabinet full of vintage postcards, some of which are as much as 80 years old.

As soon as the lists come out, I address and stamp my postcards, then place them in order on my bookcase, with the bonus postcards on top. Then the fun begins. The day before, I pull off the top postcard and put it on my nightstand where I can see it and think about it throughout the day. The next morning, I write. Mostly, it's the first thing I think about when I look at the image.

Sometimes, they're inspired by what's going on in the world. This postcard (from my 1989 vacation with Mother to Washington State) reflects my sorrow about the unkindness in the world.

Sometimes, as in this one, written the day after my 47th birthday, the reflections are more personal.

Meanwhile, my mailbox blooms with postcards from all over. Sometimes, I'll get one a day for a while, then none for a while, then a whole clump of them at once. 

Everyone has their own approach, creates their own structure and meaning to the festival. In a way, you get 31 different PoPo festivals each year, one for each person who writes. Some poets choose a theme. Some don't. Some buy postcards on eBay, while others illustrate, paint, make collages, or cut out postcard-shaped pieces of cereal boxes.

This year, six of the poets went political. A vintage postcard of cowboys on the range provoked a bald question about the border wall. On the back of an image of a New Orleans cemetery was a found poem containing quotes from the Washington Post.

Three poets wrote love poems so raw reading them felt like opening someone else's mail (even though they were addressed to me), one on the back of a hand-drawn bottle of kisses.

Five poets gave me snapshots of their daily lives. On the back of an art print was a quote from a fortune cookie. Turning over Niagara Falls revealed the domestic scene of melting butter dripping with the rain.  Another poet reminisced fondly about her sister in a red dress, inspired by the red blooms of flowers, while another asserted that the old boats that wait for you by the shore are the best kind of boats to sail.

Some of my favorite postcards were haiku, beautifully accompanied by hand drawn or painted illustrations. One poet accompanied a dark Whistler portrait of a woman with a vibrant poem about Tibetan monks creating sand mandalas--a powerful juxtaposition of attachment and nonattachment, of the material and the spiritual. 

My absolute favorite, a post card of a colorful Japanese print, contained a stunning poem typewritten with a fuzzy lowercase g that captures the subtle tenderness in the world that manifests in everything from the flow of rivers to the purring of a cat. It starts with dawn and ends with hope, and that, really, is what poetry is about, isn't it?

It may be September, but I'm not giving up on August just yet. One more postcard will go out in this week's mail, and I'm still hoping for more to come my way.