Putting My Best Boot Forward

                As I type this I am sitting in my lounge chair, on my balcony, and drinking a cup of coffee.  The weather is 80 degrees with the wind whispering of the storm to come.  Sounds marvelous right?  What I left out was that my left foot is propped up with a bag of Trader Joe’s frozen white corn masquerading as an ice pack.  I am also continuously forcing myself to not open the bag and pour them directly onto my foot while speaking in a British accent to poorly re-enact a scene from one of my favorite movies.  It’s swollen, it’s painful, it’s a weird color orange, a flesh colored band-aid marks the spots of my multiple injections, and when I attempt to put weight on it I feel even more unstable than usual (hard to believe I know).  The exciting part is that this is supposedly….. the end.  Now as all things medical there are chances of sequels, but I’m of course hoping that this was more like a short story.

                Over the course of the last two months I’ve had multiple appointments, three X-rays, two CAT scans, and one boot cast (I like things listed sequentially).  I went from working holiday hours of forty plus on my feet to ‘limited light duty’ of maybe twenty five and contemplating picking up work on my back to help keep the lights on.  (Of course things were never that dire, I just wanted to use the phrase ‘work on my back’ somewhere in this rambling.  It makes me giggle.)  The diagnosis from my delightful podiatrist was a broken foot bone.  Yeah I cracked it.  As many times as people asked me while wearing the cast I’ll admit I never did find out how exactly I broke it or when.  I was hoping that when we got to the 300 mark the answer would magically appear and I was indeed ‘doing something fun’ as everyone had hoped.  In all seriousity I probably knocked the damn thing against the coffee table, or I stepped funny on a stair and then just kept walking through the pain, because I’m brilliant.  In my mind I was of course saving baby gorillas from poachers or I fell off the stage after being asked to judge ‘Northern Territories Next Top Lumberjack’ (ß I wish this were a real thing.  *sigh)

               For four to six weeks I was sentenced to the cast.  I could remove it only for showering and sleeping and let me tell you, I was soooo thankful for that (and so were all those around me). 

                “For the next four to six weeks you’re going to have to limit your physical activity to swimming, rowing, bicycling, and other low impact sports.  Running, jogging, jump rope and Zumba are all out of the question.”  This is what my podiatrist explained to me while I stared at his gold chain strategically viewable due to the extra button unbuttoned.  (Well played sir.  One more and you’d feel uncomfortable, right now only I do a little.  But I can’t.  Stop.  Staring.)  Now clearly my doctor took one look at my size ten, six pounds away from being ‘overweight’ body and thought, ‘This here’s a girl that’s into Zumba’.  I almost feel guilty that it was false…. Almost.  I instead did something that is completely unlike me and I did what I was told.  Shocking right?  First thing in the morning I put on pants, then the boot.  Every night I wore it until I climbed between the sheets and dreamed of a world filled with two working feet.  I wrapped it in a very stylish plastic shopping bad when venturing out into the winter that we actually had this year in Ohio and I definitely tried my damnedest to put my best boot forward every day. 

                On check up day I was loath to tell my doctor’s gold chain, I mean face, that my foot was not only still a considerable pain in the…. foot, but that said pain may have increased even though during my boot confinement I followed all the directions.  After my second CAT scan (which I lovingly refer to as a very slow, very expensive carnival ride through a hole) it was finally determined that the bone had healed but that my foot bones had been dry humping this whole time.  This is also known as the arthritis.  Thus the pain.  Man do I know how to mess up a foot!  The tunnel light is that today I walked, ok, hobbled into a hospital to have a date with some injections.  (Not the hot beef kind either!  Zing!)  After finding my way to the EPIC suite (and that’s not me trying to throw out some hipster lingo to make myself feel younger after having the arthritis, it’s really called EPIC) I signed my life away and sat in a room with two other ladies having foot issues of their own.  I’m no mathematician but I’m 80% certain that our combined ages would be in the 190 range.  The TV was playing a health show to help inform us about other concerns and at the bottom scrolled, “Up next, 7 ways to have a better sex life!”  I figured I knew what number one was….. find a willing participant (after much debate in the last 24 hours I’m quite certain that willing is a key word.  Yelling SURPRISE first does not make it some sort of a present and less rapey.  Schucks thought I had found a caveat.) I was wrong, the first step was ‘hanging her head over the bed’.  REALLY?!  That sounds more like the first step to getting me to pass out, but I suppose that could make it better for the other person.  When they called my name I was more than a little excited to be done in the lobby, watching a ‘sexologist’ in a room with grandmas was making even me uncomfortable. 

 

               “Please sign this form.  All it says is that you’ll try not to fall down while you’re here.”

                I signed that paper while in my head thinking, ‘you’re lying Angie.  If anyone is going to fall down, it’s you.’  Don’t tell my mom I’m a liar, but I did get to keep the socks with treds on both sides.  Maybe in case I'm crawling?  Then they wheeled me back, ‘numbed’ my foot, a very tall, large handed, not bad looking radiology tech put my foot under the X-ray and they went about injecting me with what I can decipher from the medical jargon to be ‘free range organic grass fed unicorn tears’.    My sister (otherwise known as One of the Greatest People on the Planet aka OGPP- I just made that up) came with me and drove me home, helped me walk up the stairs with my very swollen, very painful, weird color orange foot and put me in this lounge chair complete with a bag of frozen corn and a netbook. 

Which now if you’ve managed to make it through my long winded story will bring me full circle to my point (I had one).  To some it may seem I have an unending supply of optimism and positivity, but being forced to slow down and walk one.  Step.  At.  A.  Time.  Gets old, real fast.  I had days that I faltered, I’m not superwoman, but with the help of all the wonderful people I’m blessed to have in my life I made my way to this lounge chair now.  I easily could have let all the appointments and missed work drag me down, but instead with the help of a very amazing cast of characters I was able to make it a funny adventure instead of an ‘ordeal’.  Thank you, everyone.  I’m humbled and honored to be so blessed.  No one should be as lucky as I, but you know what?  I’ll take it.  CHEERS!!!!!

Happy in the Face

            “So I don’t want to be rude or anything, but that guy smelled like Mexican cologne.”  Says my sweet son to I while we are walking to our car after the most favorite Sunday tradition of ‘Books and Brunch’.

            “Mexican cologne?  Like hot sauce or salsa or lime and cilantro or something?  I’m confused.  Is this some hip preteeny slang thingie that I know nothing of?” 

            “OMG mom!  I said, ‘Maybe too much cologne.’  I’d accuse you of being racist, but I’m certain you were just stereotyping.  If you were being racist you would be implying that you were better than someone, which you would never do, you were simply making a bad joke.  Can you play the song ‘Thrift Shop’ on the car ride home?”

            “Yes, yes I can; bet I can out ‘car dance*’ you.”

           

            “Maybe, but only because you can move all funny.”

            We proceeded to get into our rusted out green 94’ Honda, turn up the volume on my ipod to full blast (partially to drown out the fact that the exhaust system may or may not have taken a permanent furlough and because, well, it’s a super fun song) and made our way back to our modest two bedroom walkup.  I looked at my son while we were firmly immersed in our dance off and thought….. happy. 

            I have this most wonderous guy friend who, not only puts up with my endless forcible huggings, but also is consistently sending me life lesson quotes and bits of wisdom that help keep me on my path of positivity (I liken it to inflatable bumpers in a bowling alley, I’m going to end up at the pins, but he helps keep me from starting as a gutter ball, which would be helpful in nonfiction bowling for me by the way).  I was sent a great link to the ‘22 Things Happy People Do Differently’ a few days back and I read the blog/article like a check list for life.  (I linked, you should read it.)  I am not going to list off all 22 because that seems a bit of overkill and I know from experience of talking with my son that after the first five most people start to drift off….. ‘Am I catching a ‘niner’ in there?’  Even with my fountain of feelgoodedness I find that I struggle with a few of the 22.  Living in the present and meditating seem to be my Achilles heel of straight up 24/7 merriment (right now I’m hovering around a 22/6 ½ ratio, which isn’t bad I must say.)

            H-A-P-P-Y  Such a grand feeling that comes from just those five letters.  It’s an emotion that seems to be constantly sought after, like there is some great journey past the Eye of Mordor, beyond all the seven seas, through a wardrobe and then only with the help of the great Yoda do you find yourself sitting at the finale of a trek surrounded by happy.  I don’t buy it.  I like my happy like I like my bourbon, plentiful and always within arm’s reach (maybe even being poured by a lumberjack….. but then we’re just getting into my own weird fantasies.  Everyone know lumberjacks don’t pour bourbon, they squeeze it out of the charred oak barrel and directly into my mouth.  Ok, I’m digressing).  I take the little robots of happy I find all around and I build a great Voltron Defender of the Universe, ready to hug rape a smile on your face or shoot off general bits of ridiculousness that cause permanent laugh scarring.  I also find that any time you can reference a fairly obscure 80's cartoon you're winning.  (I'm reasonably certain that this one was also showed in the states, I have a nasty habit of referencing Canadian TV shows I grew up watching under the false pretenses that they were wide spreadly watched in the US, my friends love to point out when this is not the case.  Again, digression.)

What I'm round-aboutly getting at is that a lot of little things can add up to one big pile of smile.  The coffee mug that my lovely little Val bought me, makes me smile.  This song on my ipod that was in a movie I watched and a boy held my hand, makes me warm.  That ‘good morning’ text I send every single day, makes me laugh.  My son, my family, my friends, my job, my cat, my duvet cover, the smell of my favorite coffee, fabric softener, bacon, cuddling, kissing, a pot roast in the crock pot, chicken tortilla soup from the Trolley Stop, the feel of the Century Bar, the fact that I’ve been referred to as a neurotic serial hugger, the middle of an exciting book, yelling when the Red Wings score, car dancing, singing (poorly) while I cook, laughing until my face hurts, the poems “Hector the Collector” and “Lester” by Shel Silverstein, getting dirty (like in the dirt gardening dirty, of course the other ‘dirty’ makes me happy, that makes everyone happy), sitting still in the sun, my cowboy boots……..  My list could go on until infinity, because I make it.  The question if I’m really always in this good of a mood comes up more frequently than I would think that it should, and let me tell you my best not kept secret to happiness in one little sentence; I don’t wait around for someone to serve me ‘happy’ on a platter with an apple its mouth, smelling of bacon, roasted and ready to go; I go out and ninja chop awkwardly until it produces the desired results, then I dance like everyone is watching whilst wearing duct taped shoes.  It’s all around you, even on the bad days, you just have to be strong enough to find it. 

*car danc-ing: n. a type of dance that is most likely a series of hand motions strung together in a way similar to that of a seizure or Madonna in the video for Vogue. 

            

I'm Ready For My Close-Up

                “Well Angie I have all the information I need here.  She should be in shortly.  Oh and you can keep your clothes on; she prefers to meet people for the first time dressed.”

                “Oh, that’s the way I aim for my new encounters to happen as well, it just doesn’t always work out as planned.”

                So this week I decided that to make myself feel better about lugging around this fancy new boot cast I’d go ahead and schedule a check up with the ol lady part doctor.  I figure that there are few things in life that cheer a lady (yes I just referred to myself as a ‘lady’) up more than to have a few strangers checking out her most prized possessions.  While waiting for the big moment I did what every normal person does and I proceeded to text my friends and family from the mauve themed lobby to keep them apprised of the upcoming events.

Val: “Are you all ready for the visit today?  Have everything all tidied up?”

Me: “Nope.  Instead of cleaning I just Febreezed.  The commercials lead me to believe that it’s the same thing.  Do you think they’ll notice?”

Val: “I like the classic scents like vanilla amber.  I don’t want them to get the wrong idea about me.”

Me: “I used Dragonfruit, I think they’ll find me exotic.  Next time I’ll use cucumber melon, to really give them something to think about.”

Ok, I’ll admit it, of course I prepared everything for company.  I figure that way the doc will think, ‘Hmm, not a lot of visitors, but it’s good to know she’s still holding onto hope.’  I am a very positive person, so hope is kind of my thing.  Keeping with the optimistic theme here I have a couple of ideas I’d like to throw out there to maybe spice up the experience a little.  First off, might I suggest that all tests be performed in the same theme as feeding a small child, “Here comes the airplane headed for the hanger…” sort of a thing; in a singsong voice of course.  Second, I still have a large amount of leftover Halloween candy (I don’t like sweets.  Don’t judge.), so was thinking of maybe packing some of that away as a little surprise for the doctor.  Like, “Here’s a little something for visiting, please come again soon.”  Or even a fortune similar to that found in a cookie, “Good news from afar may bring you a welcome visitor.”  See?  Fortune vaginas.  Might be the next big thing.  You never know.   The last observation took place after I traded my pants for a sheet of paper and relaxed (‘relaxed’ is a stretch, but what else do you call it?  Waiting with bated breath?) back on the table.  On the ceiling above was a very adorable picture of a puppy and a kitten playing ball together.  Very cute.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m just as big a puppy pic fan as the next girl, and I felt the kitty nice had a bit of comedic value (probably because I’m super infantile on a good day), but maybe a nice picture from ‘Lumberjack Monthly’ might’ve been a better choice for upcoming experience.  I mean I understand real life human babies to gaze upon, after all it’s kind of an office where those sorts of things come from, but baby animals lean a little toward the side of creepy.  Which by the way, if anyone knows where I could get such a thing as ‘Lumberjack Monthly’ I’m all ears.  Seriously.  All.  Ears. 

Dr: “Now Angie, I didn’t see anything in your chart about birth control.  What method are you currently using”

Me: “The ‘jobbing’ method.  You know, hand jobbing and blow jobbing…..”

Ok, so this is what I should’ve said.  Instead I said, “The no sex method.”  Still got a halfsies laugh and both are very effective.  One is just a lot less work and mess than the other.  I’d say mine is more the lazy girl’s way.  Also notice that after seeing me with no pants we’re on a first name basis.  I think that’s pretty standard procedure.  I’m just happy I didn’t receive some sort of cutesy nickname out of the deal, like ‘Enchanted Forest’ or ‘No Man’s Land’ or ‘Union Station’.

Dr: “Because you’re over 30, if all your tests come back normal you don’t have to come back for 3 years.”

Me: “Wow!  Really?!  That’s great news!”

Dr: “Well unless you have any new partners.  Then you should come back.”

Me: “Oh…” 

*prolonged silence*

Me: “So what you’re saying is, we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other?.....”

*super awkward silence*  followed by *nervous laughter*

Dr: “Well, Angie it was nice to meet you.  If you just want to get dressed and take this paper up to the front desk they’ll get you all checked out.  Oh and if you don’t hear from us in two weeks you can just assume that everything checks out great.”

Me: “Thanks.  The pleasure was all mine.”

So after having my landscaping checked by a stranger, I felt like while I did pay thirty five dollars for the experience at least I found out another of the many benefits of being over 30, 3 years between visits.  I mean I’ll still have to have my boobs felt up in a nonsexual manner (correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is referred to as ‘1^st base’) once a year, but at least I’ll get to keep my slacks in place.  Which is nice.  I wonder if I should’ve bought her a drink though, or maybe I’ll just send her flowers….

Mortification Emancipation

“Mom, please just drop me off here.  I can walk the rest of the way.  Please????”

                I was somewhere in the vicinity of 12 years old.  Clearly on the verge of knowing everything and getting dropped off for my first (maybe second, or even third, kind of a moot point) middle school dance.  On that fateful night there could’ve been a blizzard with torrential rains and a half mile of mud pits and I still would’ve asked to not be dropped at the door, all because of my fear of getting a little red in the face.  (Plus, let’s be honest.  It’s middle school.  Everyone else got there in their parent’s car.  What did I think I was doing by not?  That I was beamed down?)  Looking back it seems, well, stupid.  When immersed in the all consuming life of being a preteen parents are most assuredly the most embarrassing people/things ever.  And I mean E.V.E.R.  The fact that I was NOT the 1 out of 67 girls that got her boobs in before high school, or that makeup was akin to understanding hieroglyphics, or even that in the 90’s we thought that yellow pants were a great idea; no none of that held a candle to parents. 

               

                “Have a great day at school Alex.  Make sure you pay attention, be polite and only who has the power to embarrass you?”

                “Myself.”

                “Oh and don’t get caught picking your nose, because that really will be embarrassing.”

                This is my mantra, “Only I have the power to feel embarrassed.”  I repeat it to my son so as to help him through life.  Mostly because while I thought my mother was embarrassing, I really am embarrassing.  So my son really got the short end of that stick.  Poor guy. 

                A few weeks ago I was out enjoying a night of good people and fun times when I found myself walking across a dark parking lot in sixty degree weather with a fine gentleman (maybe ‘gentleman’ is a strong word, but a fella none the less.  One that I don’t not like.).  As we strolled along to our respective cars we chuckled and conversed until suddenly I felt my left foot go completely airborne.  As if in a slow motion movie scene I tried to overcorrect and my right foot joined the left in a little reenactment of the Wright Bros first flight.  Next thing I know I’m hands and knees on the ground with no excuse as to how I ended up in such a position except that maybe gravity was playing a little joke on me, or that I was merely trying to figure out the EXACT make up of asphalt by getting a closer look.  So I did the only thing I could think of to rectify (I love the word ‘rectify’) the situation; I jumped up and looked right into his confused face and said, “Well, that was fun.”  And proceeded to laugh, a lot, and with vigor.  I wish I could say that I dropped it like it was hot (I think that’s what the kids do), but I’m pretty sure I just dropped it.  The walk finale was rather uneventful, which was nice.  I must say that if I had spent the rest of the stroll being immersed in mortification I would’ve missed the rather confused one sided conversation that went something like,

“I was just walking along talking to you and all of the sudden you were just gone!  I looked around and the area seemed to be free of hazards; I’m not entirely certain how you did that.  There weren’t any cracks, no bumps, not even a little puddle.  Its sixty degrees….. so ice is out.  Hmmm.”

                Over the years I’ve come to embrace my red-in-the-faceness instead of trying so hard in my youth to avoid it.  I drop things (like my whole body), I fall down, I say things that involve vast amounts of back pedaling, and I’m not always the most fashionable person in the room, but I find that laughing about instead of lamenting if others are laughing at, it is a much more enjoyable way to live.  Plus I think of all the things I’d miss out on if I let the fear of embarrassment hold me back.  So I don’t.