Life of Wry

That’s tonight’s sunset. And this might be a pre-storm sky.. they’re predicting rain tomorrow and if that happens, it’ll be the first rain of 2012 and the end to a long dry spell.  I have to say, it’s been lovely, unseasonably warm and dry, but very un-wintry.  I would really enjoy some inclement weather.  I’d love to see about six months of wet and cold (that won’t happen), only because it looks like I’m going to be spending a lot of time over the next half year–at least–inside, sitting… and hopefully repairing my stupid achilles tendons.

A friend, Karrie, a physical therapist, came over today to provide a second (or really a sixth or seventh) opinion on what’s going on with my tendons. After hearing the whole story and doing an assessment, she affirmed that they’re messed up and it’ll take time and a serious commitment to get them back.  She estimated a year of immobility.  Really, she said that.  It was all I could do to keep from crying.  I was actually told a similar thing last week by an orthopedic surgeon, a podiatry specialist, who said these kinds of injuries are notoriously slow to heal, far dicier and less straightforward than bone fractures.  Almost cried then, too.  And promptly, reluctantly, canceled plans for Kilimanjaro this summer.

Immobility. Casts. Sitting. A year.

I have really messed up my tendons.

Sort of wish I’d gotten that message two years ago when all of this started. Honest to god, numerous sessions with numerous physical therapists never really got me to that realization.  It was only after my first visit with Dr. Fredenburg last month that I began to understand the degree of damage and what it would take to heal.  And even then, it took two visits with him to fully comprehend what he was getting at.

Not sure if this is because I didn’t hear what the therapists and the doctor were saying all along or whether they just didn’t fully grasp and/or convey what was going on.

If they said it, I certainly didn’t grasp it, and was way, WAY too casual about the tenderness and soreness and just thought I could keep walking and hiking and trekking and climbing (and swimming and biking and stretching and massaging).  I mean, soreness is not a foreign experience among active, athletic people, even oldies like me.  So I just thought, huh, I’m sore, so I’ll stretch and ice and massage and do the exercises the therapists gave me… and eventually it’ll resolve. In fact, I was committing violence upon my tendons with every cavalier step.  Engaging the joint and aggravating the tendon was preventing the fibers from healing, and on top of that, the assault to already-damaged tendons was leading to the formation of more and more scar tissue.

Wish I’d understood that.

Achilles tendons are super tricky.. they’re avascular, meaning blood flow is very minimal, which means healing can take a long time.  You don’t mess with tendons; if you stress them, you’re going to need to set aside adequate time to heal them, and if you don’t, they get worse.

Such, such, such a bummer…. if, you know, you have a mountain to climb.

So, check this out:

For some reason tonight, not sure why, I found myself in my Twitter account reading tweets I’d posted over the course of the last couple years.  (I haven’t tweeted much in recent years, so this wasn’t a lot of reading.)  I was quite surprised and sort of chagrined to come upon this tweet, posted on December 9, 2009:

Ran whole way. No stops. HILLS, BABY!

Turns out, in December of 2009, I had spent two weeks in Palos Verdes while my mom was undergoing open heart surgery.  I had set aside mornings for exercising, as I was spending the rest of the days in the hospital.  I started with my usual, hilly-ish walking route, but as the days wore on began to add a little running into the mix.  I discovered, after years of not running (post-pregnancy, loosy goosy knees..), I could run again (!), it felt fantastic, and pretty soon I was running with a vengeance…  And I guess I overdid it. Physical therapists will tell you, achilles injuries are most often the result of too much, too quickly.  Factor in age, hills, lack of stretching…  a predictable disaster.

Talk about a smoking gun.  The tweet shows pretty much exactly when and how I screwed up my achilles tendons. Great.

The real bummer is that I hurt myself two years ago.  I knew it then and saw a physical therapist within weeks of doing it.  Had I dealt with it correctly then, I wouldn’t be dealing with casts and splints and heating pads and ice packs and crutches and All This Sitting.

A great quote I read the other day went something like this: Don’t look back, we’re not going that way. 

Know what this is?  Me trying to make something for Peter that he’ll more or less eat.  Still.  At age 13.

This is an all white/orange lunch:  apple & mandarins, pasta w/ cheddar cheese, milk and oj.

(He ate it all.)

Lately, he favors cuisine that is deep fried and sticky.  Current favorite:  The Lemon Chicken from House of Chang. The chicken’s battered and fried and the sauce is incredibly sweet.  He’d eat it nightly, but we limit his phone orders & delivery to once a week. They are so familiar with his order, they don’t even ask for his address any more.

He also loves the Orange Chicken at Panda Express.  Same deal…deep fried and sticky sweet.  Ugh.

We tried.. we really did.

When you’re wearing casts on both legs, you sit a lot.  And when you’re having unseasonably sunny weather for January, you get nice light shining on your furniture.  So, with those two things in mind, here’s the view from the chair (this was yesterday, late afternoon).

I do love the Palms.

Electric blues guitar falls into the right-place-right-time category for me, music I thoroughly enjoy live, in a funky venue, but which I probably wouldn’t listen to while writing or driving or whatever.  Last night, Guitar Shorty, upstairs in the old opera house in downtown Winters, drinking beer and rocking out?  Super fun.

Guitar Shorty, a 70-something guy, brother-in-law to Jimi Hendrix (yes, really), is the kind of guy who plays the guitar with his tongue, wanders through the crowd, jumps up and down (a bit stressful to watch), and has a great blues voice.  Guitar people say he’s pretty good, not genius like his brother-in-law, but damn good.

Nice to be in Winters and show Jay a good ol’ time.

Aunt Joy.  The consummate hostess and homemaker, teacher and counselor. Woman of taste and elegance. Active, athletic, headstrong, quick to laugh.

Uncle Vic. The distinguished professor and writer. Man of the mountains. Wise, generous, curious, ready with a smile.

Here are some images from our visit on Friday..

Making lunch:

Listening, talking..

Uncle Vic was my dad’s older brother.  He’s 89!

Time to eat:

Only Aunt Joy can paint a room black and make it look cheery:

Nice to have time in one’s life for puzzles:

I just like this one:

Poor California.  No snow. Record breaking lack of snow. Which made our annual snow shoeing trip to the top of a ridge (usually high above Donner Lake) to watch the sun set in the west and the full moon rise in the east a bust, at least as far as snow shoeing goes. Instead, we hiked on a dirt road to a place called Iron Point, and watched a lovely sun set, thanks to a few well placed bands of clouds, and a sufficiently dramatic moon rise over mountains and trees.

Started out at about 4:45 or so, unseasonably warmish, and goldeny:

Crossed Southern Pacific tracks, after an east bound train passed:

(Note to self: take train to Reno someday.)

Ambled down dirt road about a mile, mile and a half, and came upon this guy, seemingly out in the middle of nowhere.. looking like Ansel Adams, himself:

Climbed a hill on the way out to the point:

Looked west:

The locals among us had a name for this gap, but I can’t remember it.  Far below is the north fork of the north fork of the American River.  Really, that’s what they called it.  And I believe somewhere below is also Euchre Bar, and a strenuously steep trail we took once, a long time ago, and I still remember that pull out of the canyon.

Once at Iron Point, we had some hot tea with brandy and various, assorted snacks, keeping an eye on the eastern sky.

And after a while, la luna.  She did not disappoint:

This is always an exciting moment, as you can see:

(Actually, I’m sure this expression is related to something else entirely.)

Quickly, she (the moon) disappeared into a thin bank of clouds and looked rather ghostly:

While that was going on in the east, the sky in the west was looking like this:

Sun down, moon up and now behind clouds, toasts complete.. time to go.

We actually needed headlamps to see on the way back because of the clouds.  Often the moon’s bright enough to light the way, especially reflected off snow; but not this time.

And pretty much, that was that.  Back to the cars, back to Susan’s and Jim’s for a two-soup dinner.  Would have been Jim’s birthday (60th!) dinner, but the birthday boy was sick and went to bed.  Hrrmph!

Here is this year’s intrepid moonrise gang:

Jim J, Lee, Heidi, Bonnie, Susan, Jim F and Jay.  Peter, in full teenager mode, opted out completely, Rick and Linda met us at the house for dinner, and as I said, Jim R retired early.  Poor guy, missed his own party.

Apparently we do.

Probably not earning any parenting awards for this one…   we gave the okay to Peter to buy this thing, it arrived yesterday and was launched as fast as a 13-year old could tear into a package, insert six batteries and push a button (instructions, what instructions?).

Here you can get a better look at its double rotors:

If you think it holds still for even a micro-second, you’re wrong, it’s quite weaselly. It’s very difficult to get a picture of the Amazing Flying F&*%k … here’s Jay trying:

Curse you Thinkgeek.com  for all your cool tasteless techie toys and gadgets, shame on you for introducing my sweet, innocent kid to a world of hilarious useless, cheap, made-in-China time-wasting gizmos.  Gizmos with bad words on them, especially.

Early in the mornin’

See the little pufferbellies

All in a row.

 

Really early.  Like 2:30am early.  (Ever pick up someone at the train station in the wee hours wearing your pajamas?)

Picked up this guy (who appears to have curly hair all over his head, but really he’s sporting a late Frank Sinatra kinda cut):

Here he is (meet Jay) later in the morning (the daylight part of the morning), sippin’ coffee at my favorite coffee joint.

Awesome.

… very pretty.

My favorite part of our front yard.

We have an issue with our Meyer lemon tree, however…it appeals to a particular woman, an elderly woman, who frequents the Senior Center, apparently on a regular basis.  In years past, she’s come to our door to inquire about picking our lemons, very polite, and we’ve always said okay.  She can’t have them all, but she can have some. We’re willing to share a few. But last year and this, she’s shown up and just taken lemons.  Lots of them.  Like dozens.

Jim came home a couple weeks ago and found her helping herself to armloads and asked her to stop… she could have what she’d just picked, but please leave the rest.  He asked her if she’d asked me, and she said yes (she hadn’t).

So, that’s where we are.  The tree’s easily accessible from the sidewalk so I suppose we’re vulnerable to moochers.  But hey, I like Meyer lemons and the tree’s on our property and the least you can do is ask.  I’m sure I’d say okay, take a handful.  But not armloads.  And certainly not without asking.

That’s just impolite.

Which, reminds me, Jim, if you’re reading this, let’s go harvest the rest of them.. ‘k?

De-Christmasified in stages this year.  A week ago, I returned most everything to its appropriate box, but I agreed to leave the tree up through the vacation and, in fact, that was nice.  What’s not to love about a tree in one’s living room?  Without all the other Christmas bric-a-brac, the tree was just a tree in the living room.. it had ornaments but otherwise things looked back to normal.

But yesterday, I got to finish it off.  Ornament and tree removal.

Easy, quick, uneventful until right at the end..

Wondering whoever thought glass ornaments were a good idea.  Sure they were invented long before carpet came along.. what were they thinking?

One casualty, but an unfortunate one, with shattered glass scattered far and wide.  First expletives of the year issued.

Whatever.  Cleaned it up.  Jim took the tree out.

Packed up the last of the boxes, of which there are now seven, and re-located them on the mostly hidden ledge in the bedroom. Buh bye boxes.

Buh bye Christmas.

I’m a little too happy with this phase of the holiday, which suggests something probably not too good, but I’m not going to worry about it.  The holidays had their share of high points, and that’s good enough.  Will try and focus on that and quietly endure all the rest.

Besides, there is plenty to appreciate and reflect upon in the transition from one year to the next, and the solstice is planetarily, seasonally, symbolically cool and meaningful, so, see?, lots to dig.

What I’m really looking forward to now is a good inclement winter.  I have lots of reading and writing to do.