In about eleven hours, I’ll sink into my airline seat and thankfully remember the one thing I will have forgotten. I’m fairly predictable on this. Something will be forgotten. So, to finally identify the one thing left behind or undone is generally a great relief. [Read more →]
OK. I’m back in physical therapy and have the nifty red stretchy band to prove it.
Rehabbing my right ankle was definitely on my “to do” list. I’ve done the MRIs, adjusted and readjusted my “foot plant” when running, cross-trained like crazy, and seen actual doctors (not just watched ones who play one on TV), but it took Zach’s recent injury to get me through the rehab door again.
The bad “sprain” he suffered in his last soccer game turned out to be a couple of torn ligaments in his left ankle.
The doctor pronounced it similar to a torn ACL injury of the knee in severity. Yikes. A Grade 3 tear of his ATF (which I promptly called a “third-grade tear” to our shared amusement)… The doctor also remarked that the tendency to sprain was “genetic” which garnered me an ironic “thank you” from my son (Last night, he expanded the sentiment, promising to write a blog titled “Chronicles of a Genetically Disadvantaged Child.” Funny guy… He gets that great sense of humor from me too, you know).
As the doctor spoke to Zach about the long-term ramifications of not properly treating his injury, I cringed and found myself newly motivated to dust off my own physical therapy prescription from about six months ago…
I run all the time. My right ankle also hurts most of the time. I don’t usually mention that, because I figure people will simply notice the apparent correlation and tell me to stop running, and it’s just not that simple. I think and “write in my head” when I run. I become a better person when pushing myself along wooded trails and can then give the world at large, and my household specifically, the best possible version of myself. So, I’ve learned to manage the pain and cross-train.
But, I’m ready to try for something better again.
I was too young to fully appreciate my first blizzard. Meaning that, as a teen-ager in 1978, I was more concerned with its relevance to my life than its details. A friend commenting on that epic (to Ohio) storm, remarked on how “the great snowfall” had landed upon a significant layer of ice to which I replied, “Really?” I remember little more than an abbreviated in-school schedule, and my recollections have that turn of events tied more specifically to “The Energy Crisis.” At that stage of my life, blowing and drifting snow would have found me more concerned about its effect on my hair than the roads. Shiver. Glad most of us get the chance to grow up a little…
And this past weekend, we got a brand new blizzard to reminisce about for the next thirty years or so. I noticed the details a little better this time. [Read more →]
It was one of those remarkable “sunburst” moments. As I passed the kitchen table yesterday, I made a mental note to refill the wire-rimmed napkin basket (hang on; no “sunburst” quite yet). This brain “jotting” landed at the bottom of a list that included buying bananas, organizing tax documents, wiping Lily’s nose prints off of the backyard windows and finishing the family chore chart so that I can be a kinder, gentler and more consistent delegator of duties. Thereby remembering to assign window cleaning to one of the kids, leaving me free to buy the bananas. Or something like that…
Last night however, when I glanced at the kitchen table with the vague memory that it needed something besides dinner for four, the basket was filled. Stunned, I walked over to touch the neat little stack. Napkins. I hadn’t asked anyone to put them there. The astonishing event had happened entirely without me.
Rays of light all over the place… [Read more →]
