Long Time, No Blog

The Sprain took two months in a walking boot-cast to heal. It wasn't pretty but after six days in regular shoes I guess it was inevitable. The weather locked me in & my lack of options locked me in. I shut down in order to survive myself. The only things I was interested in were farm games on Facebook, chick lit novels & dessert. I had to hire a walker for Daisy for several weeks. Do you know how wrong that felt?

My ankle hurts a little today but I guess that's inevitable as well. As soon as I began to be more mobile, even in the boot, I began to pursue errands that had piled up. Today I walked all over Montague Street & environs, getting my hair cut & going to the bank & picking up a prescription. I wore shoes that weren't bad for my still-swollen foot but weren't as supportive as the others I've opted for. I find myself tired this evening, too tired to attack cleaning the top of my desk or looking for some software that's gone missing (which has entailed cleaning where no man -- but all the dog hair -- has gone before). I'm writing a dull blog at the plaint of a friend. I'm afraid my words are few.

For the duration of the Sprain, I depended mostly on my cell phone because my portable phone didn't work & my back up old-fashioned phone threatened to trip me & has no capacity for storing numbers. This meant I didn't make many calls either. Finally, today, I went to Radio Shack with the two-year warranty I'd for once taken out on it. The manager opened up the receiver and reconnected the battery.

Can you say stupid?

It's been that kind of winter. Telephonically challenged. I misplaced the software for my new camera & even though I couldn't go voyaging for snow photos & even though I wouldn't admit it to myself, it was like another language gone missing. The Radio Shack manager also suggested I go to the Canon website & simply download the software.

Score two for stupid.

But in my mobile state, I'm itchy to...I don't know what the verb is. Live? Join my species? I love my Canon but it's a big hulking thing so I bought an Olympus that was on sale and will fit in a pocket. It will be good to start speaking & conversing in images again.

We won't talk about my weight although I may be more gloomy about it than the reality. My therapist said he didn't see a change in my body.

My therapist also edged around the possibility of hospitalizing me for depression. That scared the shit out of me. I worked very hard to rise above that need. Laundry one day, bed the next -- for a week or so I vacillated between getting dressed & staying in bed with Daisy, who has been a real trooper through this. In retrospect, which is really only two weeks or so, it seems as though my "accomplishments" included laundry, doing the dishes, taking a shower. I will remember this winter as the Sprain but I won't remember much of what I did beyond raising vegetables on Farmville & the grit in bed that the dog & I collaborated on because I had to wear the boot all the time. Oh, & Vicodin. That was nice.

Life is going from zero to sixty now. I'm seeing Riverdance tomorrow night. Friends from Seattle are in town for the next few days. I leave for Seattle & Portland to do book stuff on Wednesday. Somehow or another the publisher of Berkley has handed off the form & price of my next book(s) to me & my editor. My agent called earlier to tell me to make an appointment with my editor to figure it out but a day of errands left me too tired to really understand what the hell this means. It hurts my feelings that Angry Fat Girls has had such a lousy run of it, that even my fucking hometown newspaper hasn't reviewed it. It's a more important book than Passing for Thin because it is NOT a fairy tale & the hope it offers is the hope each of us has to find in our own truths.

For a couple of difficult months, my truth has been a small dark ghetto. I didn't have hope. I barely had endurance. But endurance had to be enough.