About Me

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West Virginia
When I started my retirement travels in 2009, I wanted a way to share it with family and friends as it was happening. Hence, "My Travel Journal". However I realized I wouldn't always be on a trip and wondered what to do with the blog in between times. My daughter pointed out, wisely, that travels can also include trips to the kitchen to try a new recipe, trips to visit family, trips to my neighborhood Starbucks, or a fun day trip with a friend. You're welcome to join me on any of these journeys! I've set up individual pages for each of my major trips (see tabs above).

Also, I have an Etsy shop where my current needlework resides. The last pieces I posted here were in 2013! So if you'd like to see what I have accomplished recently, go to (and I apologize for having to copy and paste):

www.etsy.com/shop/thedollhouseneedle

I recently added an "Italian Word a Day" thingie which shows up at the bottom of every page. You see the word and can click to hear it pronounced. I've been enjoying it and I think my accent is improving as time goes by.

February 10, 2013

A brief history of my right foot

It's been a while since I last posted.  I got elected to my condo association's brand new Board of Directors and have been really busy with that - well, busy trying to absorb lots of information, decide what we should do (lots!), what we have the money to do, (not much!) and what to do about all of it.  I'm enjoying it actually but find myself kind  of exhausted by the end of the day.

But having injured my right foot today, I was reminiscing as I always do when I injure my right foot, on my numerous previous injuries to that poor beleagured appendage and pondering why it's always that foot that suffers outrageous fortune.  And I decided that I don't know why it's always that foot, but since it is, I should probably record for posterity all that has happened to it (that I can recall) so that if there is ever an international summit meeting on injuries to appendages and facts and figures are needed as to just how much abuse an individual appendage can take, this information will be available to aid and assist.

It started when I was quite young.  My first memory of a serious blow to the foot was during one of my summers at my grandparents' farm.  The farm was sold while I was in the sixth grade, so it was before that.  I had, at my grandmother's request, gone to get one of her handbags out of a dresser in one of the bedrooms.  Pulled out the drawer and apparently was unfamiliar with my own strength because the drawer came all the way out, and dropped down to the floor with the bottom edge catching my (unshod) big toe a good one.  Ooh, mama!  that hurt!  Lost the toenail that time which by the time that happened, the pain was gone and I found it a very interesting experience.

The next one I remember was when I was a grown up woman and I have to wonder if I'm forgetting some in between since I seem to have that foot in the wrong place at the wrong time with some regularity.  But, be that as it may, this was probably about 35 or so years ago.  I worked part time as a church secretary and had been sent to the grocery store to get, strangely enough, a big 48 ounce can of orange juice.  Mission accomplished, I was tripping gaily to my car in my sandals when either the bag ripped or I just dropped it and down it came.  It might not have been quite so painful if it had hit my foot with the side of the can but it didn't - it again hit with the edge.  Of course, then again, it might have been as painful - I never tested it to find out.  I lost my toenail that time also...

Moving right along, it was probably about 5 or 6 years later that Bob and I had bought a real fixer-upper of a house and worked and worked on it.  It had an enclosed back porch and the second story of it had been built by a dummy apparently because they put windows across the whole back wall of the porch, but didn't put any supporting studs between any of them and they were the old fashioned windows with lead weights.  Duh!  So the whole wall had bowed out, the floor had an alarming downward slant and we wanted to get an extra room out of it.  We didn't want to spend a bunch of time and money on it so after we made the necessary repairs, we decided to install paneling.  Bob was ready to cut and put up the next piece and I went to get it for him.  I, of course, had no shoes on.  I carried it horizontally since I had three doorways to go through.  At some point on the trip, I dropped it and I'm sure you know where.  This was probably the most horrendous of the injuries that foot has sustained.  It fell, on edge of course, right at the base of my big toe and I (who have a fairly high pain threshold) hollered, screamed, cried, sobbed for quite a while.  I assumed I'd lose my toenail that time too but for some reason I didn't.  Think it would have been better if I had because that toenail has never been right since - it sort of shifted sideways or something.

Anyway, the next major injury has already been reported on this blog and that was the ankle twisting on my first trip to Italy.  Another very painful injury although it didn't involve my big toe.  Nor did it ruin my trip although I sure thought it was going to.  It got very impressively swollen, with the whole foot and partway up my leg turning black and blue.  I did it the very day I arrived from the states and I stayed almost 3 weeks and was still fairly colorful when I got back home.

So now, today.  I had my nice Sunday at Starbucks and then puttered for a bit at home.  Decided I was starving so fixed me some lunch.  I was going to have a can of soda and decided since I've been having trouble with my fingertips turning numb when they touch cold things that I would wrap a paper towel around the can and so I did but then discovered I didn't have a rubber band to hold it in place in the kitchen.  So, for some strange reason, I felt compelled to carry the paper towel wrapped can with me as I went to my bedroom to get a rubber band out of the desk.  And, you guessed it, on the way, it slid out of the paper and landed on the top of my foot.  And that pretty well answered the question about "would it hurt less if it hit with the side rather than the rim?" because it did land on its side and it certainly did hurt.  Not on my big toe but on that top bone that the underneath is called your arch.  So that was a first and it also is very, very painful in case you're wondering.  Hurt really badly for about 10 minutes and now has just settled down to a dull ache and trouble walking. 

I used to jokingly (sort of) say that I might just cut that big toe off someday and then it couldn't keep getting hurt.  But if I'm now going to start hurting my whole foot (as the last two injuries seem to indicate), I don't know that I'd really be prepared to cut off the whole thing.  Probably not.  But also, typing all this out makes me realize that the injuries are coming faster ("Jaws" music plays in the background").

Even in my suffering, I think of my faithful readers and so will leave you with a picture.  I made my egg strata tonight and got out my frozen  broccoli florets (Birdseye, mind you) and am so put out with the quality of them that if I could figure out how to send them the picture, I would.  But instead I'll post it here.  It doesn't really show well in the photo but a lot of the pieces look like some varmint has been here before me and chewed all the "floret" part off!

Pitiful, right?  Just little stumps...

And because you are now thinking "good grief, the pain must have made her crazy - who wants to see mangy broccoli non-florets?", here's a picture of sweet Sophia holding the horse she painted when she came for her visit last summer.  For all I know, I may have already posted this before, but she's much cuter than the broccoli!



So I'm going to sit here and try not to walk around very much for the rest of the evening and wish that I had some ice cream in the house which I don't.  sniff, sniff...  And since I've been sitting a while, it's hurting more which makes me realize I should be elevating it.  Poor, pitiful, me...

May your feet carry you through life in good health and happiness and may you never have more injuries to one foot than I've had so that I'll be able to go down in the record books! :)

'Night all...

4 comments:

Chinch said...

Poor, poor pitiful you indeed! I hope putting it all out there in a public forum means that you have had your last right-foot-event. And Sophia is darling.

Christopher said...

It certainly was perhaps your most wince-inducing post... That poor foot! You poor thing! I hope it is feeling less painful today...

January said...

Poor Mama. I think the subtitle could be: A Case for Close-Toed Shoes! I think that time you dropped the paneling on your toe was the first time I'd ever seen you cry! And that broccoli is just adding insult to injury, isn't it? I hope your foot feels better (and stays that way).

Mary Lynne said...

Love the sub-title, January! And I think you're right - I remember you being so distressed at this raving, sobbing mother - your poor, tender heart didn't know what to do to make it better. :)

xo

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