How did I do that?

Enjoying wine and tapas with friends

 

I spent the morning answering that question to doctors, x-ray techs, and all sorts of people. My answer was always, "I haven't a clue." It seems I have broken the fifth metatarsal on my right foot--that's the long bone that leads to my little toe. I noticed Tuesday night that the side of my foot really hurt; the next day I thought I'd bruised it; the next day I thought it really looked funny, and I should check with the doctor's office. They said they wanted to see me right away, so this morning I went to the doctor's office, where they diagnosed a probable broken bone and sent me for x-rays. Off to the x-ray facility, some 20 minutes away. They confirmed the broken bone and sent me back to the doctor's office, where they sent me to the orthopod's office, only they sent me to the wrong one. A snippy young girl informed me I'd have to go to their other office. Of course, I got hopelessly lost, had to call for directions, and ended up driving on a major highway which I avoid if at all possible. The doctor was pleasant--knew my brother--and said, "How did you do this?" He fitted me with an orthopedic shoe for my right foot, which I am to wear for six weeks. Not a fashion statement, and I had just bought such cute snow boots. Actually though the foot feels better in the shoe, and it's not too hard to get around in. But I was gone from 8:45 until 1:00 and was hungry, tired and frustrated when I got home.
As for how I did it, I really don't know. It's entirely possible I bumped into something, stubbed my toe hard, twisted my foot wrong. I am not the world's most graceful person, but I don't remember anything specific that caused me instant pain. I suspect it may be a spontaneous or stress fracture--no, it has nothing to do with emotional stress.
Tonight all the trauma of my morning melted away with an evening with good friends at The Wine Haus--we chatted, drank wine, and ordered tapas. I was extravagant and ordered the lamb chop small plate--so good! Had a lovely time in an informal, lively atmosphere, with a gorgeous Great Dane wandering around.
I'm going on a blog vacation. With the craze for new words--like Icemageddon--I wonder if you'd call it a blogacation. At any rate, I probably won't post again until close to the New Year, unless something burns in my mind and has to be said. I'll have my whole family around me, which makes concentration hard, and I probably need to clear my brain by cooking and reading with grandchildren and doing all that kind of thing. Maybe I'll have fresh new thoughts when I start blogging again--we can all hope.
Meantime, to all of you who follow my blog, I wish you a blessed Christmas and a bountiful new year. I wish I could hug each and every one of you, but please let my very best wishes suffice.

A blog vacation

Forgive my silence. I've been taking sort of a mini-vacation from blogging, partly because I didn't have that much to say--we live in tumultous times, and major news event has piled on major event: a tsunami in Japan with the resultant nuclear crisis, tornadoes in the American South with apalling loss of life and property damage, the joy of the royal wedding, and the bitter triumph of Osama bin Laden's death. It makes my head spin, but all the news is capably--and sometimes not so capably--commented on by others.
I meantime have been in my own little world, revising a novel, which will be my project for at least the next two weeks. So you'll hear from me sporadically. I seem to go in novel-writing spurts (not the sign of a professional, I fear) but right now I'm delighted to be back in the familiar world of what I hope will become my second mystery, No Neighborhood for Old Women. If I hadn't said so before, yes, it's a deliberate play on Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. The story behind it has to do with Literary El Paso, compiled by my good friend Marcia Daudistel, to which Mr. McCarthy declined to contribute. It's okay--Marcia's book is doing great without it. If you have ever lived in or visited El Paso or have an interest in bicultural writing, you should read this beautiful book.
But back to my mystery--I'm pondering why this character did that, was this event mentioned with a lead-up or did it just spring into being, are my characters being true to themselves? Too introspective? Too much description (I get carried away about Craftsman houses and old neighorhoods)? Too little description to set the mood? Rewriting is thorny business, sometimes much harder than that initial "just get it down on paper" phase, and I'm deep in it. Some of the problems come because I'm a pantser--I write by the seat of my pants instead of from an outline.
I'm also taking time to enjoy North Texas in the spring--to my mind its best season. This morning, with the top down on the car, I went to the nursery and Barnes and Noble, both trips I enjoy. I have my porch pretty well planted now--got fountain grass this morning, but it's too much for me to plant. Greg will do it next week. My sweet potato plants--those hardy, wonderful, oh-so-green things--have developed some kind of wilt. Greg suggested by phone this morning that I'm over-watering, and I admit I'm prone to doing that. So just now I only watered the marjoram, which was wilting, the basil, which like lots of water, and the parsley I just planted. Beautiful day to putter on the porch.
Alas and alack--isn't that a wonderful phrase?--some of my front yard flowerbeds are alredy past their prime. The spirea is fading, and the ox-eye daises are gone as are the iris, but the coreopsis is blooming, and the miniaure crape myrtle should bloom any time. And then there's that profuse plant on one side of the garden that blooms and blooms--but I can't remember the name. Anyway, it's still to come--like my crape myrtles, those are late bloomers.
The rest of the day is free--to work, to make macaroni salad for Mother's Day supper at Jordan's, to cook that piece of salmon in the fridge and eat some of that asparagus--maybe dining al fresco on the porch. A good day, and life is sweet.
If I'm absent from the blog, please bear with me for a while. I promise to be back in full swing by June 1.