Homesick

I took to falling down last week -- last week! it feels like years ago.

Once I stubbed my toe on an uneven sidewalk. I went down on my face, nicked my forehead, bruised both knees, grazed my hands. Two nights later I got my feet tangled in a hump of bad sidewalk and did it again, bruising my chin. The night after that, I got tangled between two cars and fell hard to my knees. There was a snap. My left ankle plumped out like a sponge. I could feel my right knee bleeding. It was a difficult walk home.

It was clear I couldn't walk Daisy let alone my usual coterie of dogs. She went off to Uncle and Auntie's house the next afternoon. Boomer's mom brought ice packs and groceries and the name of her podiatrist, then walked me over on Tuesday.

The x-rays did not show a fracture. It's worse: a very very bad sprain. I'm in a boot that I'm allowed out of to shower -- and no weight on the foot in the shower -- and I'll be in it for a month. The doctor was very stern: if I don't wear this Frankenstein foot for a month, I'll be in the hospital.

And I can't afford the hospital. That's why I waited two-and-a-half days to have it treated: I can't afford the ER either.

For a day or two I enjoyed being at loose ends. I'm making friends with television. I have a lot of sedentary work to do. Marian Keyes's new novel comes out today.

Right now, however, I would kill for a nap but am afraid I'd be too groggy for the AOL podcast I'm doing at four. I should be working on my book proposal but I'm oddly shaky. Is it restlessness channeling as nervousness? Post-morning dose of vicoden jitters? Yes, but it's more because I have a dangerous lump in my throat.

I miss my dawg! I miss her friends! I know I can't walk her yet and I know it would not be good for her to come and visit only to be towed away again. She's such a mama's girl that way. Much as she misbehaves for me, she freaks out when anyone else holds her leash, even when I'm right there. She would be depressed if she had to go away again.

My father isn't helping, either. Saturday night, when all I wanted was his take on whether my ankle was broken or not, he wandered off into an announcement that he thought he'd buy a foreclosure house in the Phoenix area and rent it to me. I'm seriously considering moving there so this was a lovely piece of news. By Tuesday he was announcing that he's selling his house in Arizona and moving permanently to back Montana. My head is still spinning.

Were my choice of geography up to me, I'd be moving to Seattle. I have a lot of friends there, and a lot of relatives. It's a real city. It's beautiful. The weather, while dim, is not often given to extremes.

Phoenix became real at Christmas. I could help my dad out. It's inexpensive. I know some people in the area. There is someone I'd like to know on a more consistent, lazy basis. As soon as I proposed this consistent lazy -ship and was not, to my dismay, discouraged, I wanted to A) vomit, and B) move to Ballyhillion on the northern most tip of Ireland. I'm frightened of being hurt. I'm frightened of myself -- of needing anyone, of my jealousies, of my insecurities, of my conviction of lesser-than. I'm afraid of being shipwrecked in the desert.

And that's just me. What's on the other side waiting to be frightened of???

Having a house seemed like a nice reason to go to Phoenix. I could board dogs and grow roses. I'd be near my father and old friends. A house seemed to equal something like a Life, making a -ship less loaded and back to lazy. I'm bereft at the loss what never was, at my father's move back to Montana, at...this thing I don't trust will leave me unscathed.

Then again, not having the obligation of being a tenant makes me free to pick up and flee to Seattle whenever I want.

Right now it's compounded by working on a new book proposal. I want to write essays about the non-weight side of my life. Funny essays. I need at least one to put it in my agent and editor's hands. I'm working on a piece about my father, who is a very funny man and a very quirky one. Unfortunately, I'm not finding him funny today. I feel betrayed both by his Saturday announcement and by the thought that he'll be in Missoula. The relationship I've had with him is about to change all over again and I'm finding that hard to cope with in the wake of losing my mother, losing my dog, losing my foot and my dread of losing a friendship to a -ship.

This blog is a procrastination, meant to keep me awake until I have to call AOL and productive while I ignore "Pa de Deux". Ironically, this is very painful to write and the essay is about how my father lives on his own planet. I'm calling this hoped-for collection Me: A User's Guide. If I do a good enough job, it should serve as a handbook for how to get money, tears and keys out of me. I hadn't intended for the piece about Dad to do more than entertain and teach a reader about what it means to be a Kuffel. I hadn't intended to work on it while feeling the earth shift under my one good foot.