Life in My Foot's Hand

Struggling this week with my sore foot. I'm really hating this boot cast but it certainly does take the pressure off my heel. However, it does not make for stylish ensembles when I get dressed in the mornings.

On Wednesday, at the doctor's office, I was told that the thickening caused by inflamation has put pressure on the nerve that runs down my leg and into my heel just behind my ankle bone --which explains the weird sharp pain on the inside of my foot, just behind where the plantar fascia fastens to my heel. The doctor says that 85% of patients with a compromised nerve end up in surgery. I am not happy to learn of this statistic and have opted to try everything else first. I asked about orthotics, maybe having a special arch made, and he said he would be willing to do that, but that he really hated to have me pay $450 for door stops. In other words, he doesn't think they'll help me. Because, as he explained, my problem is not mechanical. It's due to aging, and losing the elasticity in my plantar fascia. Bummer! But what he did agree to try is physical therapy.

So with orders in hand, I walked down to the PT office, and the lady there told me they happened to have an opening that same afternoon. I took it. I had no idea what to expect, and was sort of thinking whatever it entailed it would probably hurt. I was right and wrong.

I arrived on time and a perky little girl took me back to an examining room. She removed my boot and sock off, felt around on my foot, punched with her thumb into tender spots, then probed up my calf and told me that she could tell the muscles in that leg were weakening, beginning to atrophy. Having lost a mother-in-law to ALS, just the word atrophy put fear deep in my heart. But this wasn't the same thing. This, the perky therapist explained, was due to the fact that I have been favoring that leg for months, not using it much, because of the heel pain. Yep. That's right. I was amazed she could tell that just by feeling behind my leg.

She had me lie face-down on an examining table, then she plastered a lot of cold, clammy pads all over the bottom of my foot, set a timer for 15 minutes, turned out the light, and left me alone in the darkened room. Vibrations began to quiver my foot, particularly the heel. After a few minutes, it seemed that ALL the vibrations were aimed into my heel. I had an image of a laser weapon trained on the spur I knew was down inside there somewhere. I hoped it was breaking up, or disintigrating, or whatever this particular machine was supposed to do. A buzzer sounded and the vibrating weapon turned itself off. I laid there listening to the the young therapists outside flirting with one another. It sounded like a trailer for an episode of Grey's Anatomy.

The perky one -- named Vanessa, I found out in a bit -- came back in and was all soothing explanation and cool hands. She smeared a cold gel all over my foot, and began to rub a sonogram wand all around. This was supposed to send an ultrasound echo deep into my foot to desensitize the pain. It's important, according to my perky Vanessa, to interrupt the pain cycle so the area can expend energy healing rather than fighting pain. Hmmmm. Sounded suspiciously like some Eastern yogi speaking. The heating pad on my lower leg felt nice.

After the sonogram treatment, came a massage with Icy Hot. This was my most favorite part of the whole session. In fact, I would have like the entire hour and a half of PT to have been the foot massage. I almost fell asleep. I got chills up my sides several times. Heavenly hands.

Then came mean old Aaron, the single male, the flirter. He keeps all the little girls there in a turmoil with his blue blue eyes. He good-naturedly put me through a battery of foot stretching exercises that undid all the soothing benefit of Vanessa's wonderful foot massage. I would have left hobbling if he had sent me out the door after those exercises, but he had me lay me back down and rubbed a big ice cube all over the bottom of my foot. This worked to numb my foot enough so I could put my boot cast back on and hobble back to my car.

I repeated the whole thing again this morning, and will do the same three times a week for the next four weeks. I hope this actually does keep me off the surgeon's table. I would hate to think all the hard work done by my cheery PT team, and by my poor, shriveling leg and foot, was for naught.

Onward ....

Outrunning a Blizzard

Spent the night in Roswell, New Mexico. It was here that in 1947 an alien spacecraft supposedly landed and the corpses of aliens were strewn over a nearby field. The town has capitalized on the legend. There are alien-related things all over the place, including on the WalMart. Downtown is a UFO museum, which we arrived too late to tour. There are several alien bars and alien zones, whatever that means. A drawing of an alien even gives the weather report in the newspaper. All pretty campy and funny.

There are blizzard warnings out for most of New Mexico over the next 24 hours. We’re heading for Texas. Probably San Angelo tonight, would be my guess. San Angelo is an oasis in the desert, and I like it there. They have a couple of good places to eat there. We stayed in San Angelo last year on an RV trip, and I called an old writer friend of mine, Elmer Kelton, who lived there. I was hoping we might be able to see him and his wife Ann, but they were busy. What I didn’t know at the time was that he was gravely ill, and not long afterward went into the hospital. He died a short time later. I felt the loss immediately, remembered our short phone conversation, and was glad we had at least had that. He was someone I admired. So it will be odd to go through that town and know that he’s no longer there.

Before we left home, I bought a battery charger for my laptop so I could use it in the car. The thing plugs into the cigarette lighter and then my laptop cord plugs into it. Makes a very high-pitched whine, and I’m not sure it should do that. But it does allow me access to my laptop beyond the internal battery life, which is down to about an hour now. My SO likes books on CD and he listens to those while I do whatever I want on the computer. I don’t know why it is, but I have a hard time with comprehension when I listen to those audio books. I used to like them, but no longer seem to be able to focus my mind on the story. Could also be that he and I have different taste in books. He likes thrillers and mysteries, and I’m not much of a fiction reader at all anymore. So I can do my thing, even watch a DVD if I want with my headphones, while he listens to his books. We don’t do either of these things, though, until we’re well into a car trip, after we’ve pretty much exhausted conversation. Both of us need our “own” time, and this is one of the ways we get it.

I’m really missing my kitty. I’m sure he’s missing me as well. I’ve talked to the cat-sitter a couple of times, and she says he seems content. I seriously doubt that. Sometimes wish I had a kitty-cam so I could see what he does when he’s alone. I wonder if he wanders through the house yowling like he does for the first few days after we have returned from one of these extended trips. It’s like he’s calling out to see if I’m there. I always answer him. I need my snuggle buddy and was thinking of that this morning as I laid awake in our motel room at 4:30 am. I’ll make time for a nap with kitty once I’m back in my place.

Onward ....

On the Road in New Mexico

Leaving Raton, NM on a cloudy, cold morning. The thermometer in the car says 28 degrees, but it feels colder than that because it’s more humid than we’re used to now than we’ve spent a week in Colorado. But this is a pretty town with some interesting history, and I hope we can come back this summer, maybe around July 4th when they have a big balloon festival with the mountains in the background.

We stopped here on our way to Denver, and in fact, stayed in the same hotel. They remembered us because of our dog. Not everybody comes with a big black dog with pointed ears. There wasn’t much of a place to walk her, but more than the other places we saw when we came through this town the first time. A frozen creek ran behind and below the hotel parking lot, but there was really no grass to speak of. She didn’t care. She finds something to interest her everywhere she goes. Great dog. She really is.

Last night, we asked the hotel clerk where to eat and he gave us a good suggestion. The restaurant used to be a candy factory and they had vintage photos on the walls. The chandeliers were made of old taffy paddles. Pretty unique. I had grilled Rocky Mountain brook trout and my SO was hungry for pasta. Both of us were full as ticks when we left, and then had a lazy evening at the hotel. He watched TV and I started a new book I’d brought to read. That was at about 6:30. By 9:30 I had finished it. Wonderful true story, and it inspired me, made me tear up a little at the end. I had the desire to jump up and start working on something. Been thinking about my WWII novel -- the endless novel -- an awful lot on this trip.

Before I went to bed I opened my email. Lo and behold, an email came from the filmmaker in response to my long and detailed criticism of her script. She was very positive about my objections to the changes and explained why she had made some of them, but was generous in offering to make new changes that would incorporate my suggestions. The only thing she was not able to accommodate me about was the location changes. That’s due to the fact that they’ll be filming in Alberta, and the mountains there are going to be very hard to disguise. So I get that and even have a few ideas myself about how to make that work better than it does in the present version.

So I’m feeling better about the whole deal and am prepared to sign a new contract with her. I have already expressed that I want this one to have a definite time limit. We’ve been at this for almost ten years now, and enough is enough. I still want to try to write a screenplay myself, think I could be good at it, although there’s nothing that says a screenplay, just because it's written, will make it onto the screen. I understand how hard it to get something produced. But it still would be fun to try to write one all the way through to the end, and I’m thinking could be a good writing exercise if nothing else. I will go ahead and buy that Final Draft software after we get home.

We’re on our way to Cimarron, New Mexico as I write this. The SO has a customer there, and an appointment to see them at 9:30 this morning, so we had to dash out of the hotel. If I get home with all I brought it will be a miracle.

Onward ....

Homesick in Denver

Tired and ready to head home. I guess I really am good for about 7 days away from home, and then I start getting homesick. Been this way almost all of my life. There's just no other place I love as much as my home, wherever it may be. In my adult life I have moved a total of 24 times. Some of those places never really became home. Wasn't there long enough, particularly in the Air Force years with my second ex. But just about any time I park myself somewhere for more than a few months, my internal homing instinct kicks in, and that place becomes the place where I belong. When I go away from it, after about 7 days I start to feel like a fish out of water, and begin to get testy.

That's where I am today. Testy and ready to depart. I think the dog feels just about the same way as I do. And really, I know the SO is also ready to go home. He's tired, not enjoying the market this morning, and was already talking about leaving as soon as it closes tomorrow, which is noonish. We will check out of this hotel in the morning before we go over to the Trade Mart, and leave from there as soon as humanly possible.

We stayed out too late last night. And I had one too many glasses of wine. My stomach's upset from it today, so I left before noon and brought the dog back to the room. We also ran into one of his "old buddies" -- yet another one I don't particularly like -- and got the same old "stories I could tell" routine. I'm just not sure what people are thinking when they make those sorts of statements. Certainly not about the way it makes the person it's directed at feel. It seems to be more of one-upsman-thing, like they're saying, "I know things you don't, nany nany boo-boo." I just said, "I've heard the old stories," and let it go at that, but it does get tiresome.

Still dealing with issues with this script of LILY. I have found some things in it that really are unacceptable to me. At the present moment I'm of the mindset that if some particulars cannot be changed, then I would rather not have my name attached. And of course, that would mean that a good bit of this thing would have to be changed or else they will have to just forget it altogether. The bait they dangle is $$$$ -- and I will admit that I'm not immune to it completely. But money has never been my primary motivator, and I don't want it to be now either. I would hate for there to have been a movie made of any one of my books that would make me feel ashamed. The way this script is right now, I think I would feel that way. So there it is. Probably the same dilemma all writers face when dealing with Hollywood. They just don't think the same way we do. In fact, it's such a huge disconnect that I don't even know if it can be bridged.

Yesterday, I went to a local mall here. I'd been there on other trips up here for market. While I was there, I found an Apple store. Needed a replacement battery for this laptop. The old battery has got to where it will not hold a charge for more than about 30 minutes. So I bought a new one, and while I was waiting for the ticket to be rang up, I perused the software shelf. There was a new version of Final Draft, which is a screenwriting program for Mac. I had an old version back before USB ports, etc. It's kind of pricey so I didn't buy it but I certainly was tempted. I really would love to try my hand at doing the LILY screenplay. I've read two different ones by two different screenwriters, now, and I just really think I could do a better job, stay truer to the book, and still have a slicker version of the story than either one of these writers have managed to do. I do understand how difficult it is to get something made, especially a story like this one that is historical in nature, has animals, and no CG! But I still don't think it has to be necessary to sell out the story. Sigh!

Onward ....

Foot Sore in Denver

Bummer! Nothing worse than having a bad foot at a trade show. We're in Denver for my SO's semi-annual trade show, and I have a horrible case of plantar fasciitis. Feels like a hot roofing nail is stabbing my left heel. I've been to the foot doctor already four times, and am due back on the 27th. I'm afraid I'm going to need surgery to correct this. I've had two excruciating injections into my foot, and am now wearing a brace, or removable cast, to cushion my heel, but it's helping very little. I'm feeling pretty depressed about it right now, and like a bit of an invalid. Ignoring it certainly doesn't help. I tried that for several weeks before I resorted to a doctor's visit.

It's weird how something to do with ailments or health problems can become such an issue. I had bought new high-heeled boots to wear with my skirts while I was here. That was a couple of hundred bucks wasted. And I'm really starting to feel like an albatross around my SO's neck, even though he's been so understanding and sweet about it all. But still ... what a drag to be partnered with someone who can't walk fast or well. It's driving me crazy. I hate to be out of commission, and it seems like I have been an awful lot lately.

On a brighter note, I saw an old friend yesterday. She knew about my foot situation and so she drove over to our hotel and we had lunch in the room. She stayed for about three hours, but it felt more like 30 minutes. We have always just jabbered our hearts out when we're together, and yesterday was no different. Time flew by. She's always so sensible, and sort of made me realize how unimportant, really, in the grand scheme, is my latest dilemma.

Without back-tracking over the last ten years, it's to do with a filmmaker who has had my first book optioned a couple of times and wants to renew. I have been thinking seriously about trying to write a screenplay myself of that book. It's never been done to my satisfaction, and this time is no exception. I've made a pretty big fuss in the last week, probably caused a lot of hard feelings, but I just hate to compromise the book's story. I really like this filmmaker as a person, just not crazy about her script. There are a lot of things in there that are so far afield from what I intended when I wrote the book. But my old friend said yesterday that I should renew one more time -- she said, what have you got to lose? And I've been thinking about that. I haven't finished reading the latest script yet, so I really can't answer my friend's question at this point. But the truth is, I just don't care that much and it's been causing me a lot of needless worry and upset.

Once our three hour visit was done, I took the dog out for a romp. My foot was hurting pretty badly, so I went around to an open space near our hotel, and let her off her leash. Snow is still on the ground from a blizzard last week, and she took off through the banks without hesitation. The dog has lived in Colorado before, when the SO lived here, and she's never minded snow. She just blasts out into it with such abandon and sheer joy. She makes me laugh and takes my mind off all this extraneous stuff. Life is, as the saying goes, too short. The older I get the more I realize the truth in that.

Onward ....

A Wounded Doe

This morning the SO went out to get the paper because it was 22 degrees and I slept cold all night, just didn't feel like getting out in the cold so early today, and the dog was bothering one of us to go. He was only gone for about a minute and came hurrying back in. "A doe's hung up in the fence," he said, and I could hear the worry in his voice. I asked what he was going to do, and he said he was after his wire cutters to clip her loose. No telling how long she'd been there.

I watched through the binoculars as he went across the inside fence to the horse run on our land, which was where the doe was, looking like something from a WWI movie, caught on the wire in No Man's Land. The doe struggled as he neared. It was obvious she was wounded and hung fast. It was her back right leg that was caught. He cut the wire in a couple of places and she bolted free. But she was only able to wobble a couple of feet, then fell again. Clearly worried, he backed away, watching her. She bolted a couple more feet, and fell up next to the fence. He thought he hip had maybe come out of its socket.

When he came inside, he said we should leave her there and wait to see what happened with her. All morning we kept getting up in turns to look through the binoculars. She was alert, lying down with her head up and ears forward. She seemed focused on the house. She broke my heart.

A few hours later, he had an errand to run and the doe tried to bolt away when he walked to the pickup. But she could only go a little bit and had to lie back down. It seemed to me that her problem was indeed in her hip. although I thought it might be broken. While he was gone I continued to keep the dog inside, much to her distress, and even called Daddy to tell him not to bring his dog if he happened to come by. He often will drop in on a Sunday. The doe remained in the last place she had fallen, but still in her upright-alert head position, looking around and soaking up sunshine.

My SO came home, and I could tell he had been fretting over the little doe the same way I had been. He said he'd thought it out and that we should go out as a team, throw a blanket over the deer, and lift her across the fence. On the other side, in the pasture there, she would be closer to better cover, water, and food, as well as the rest of her herd, and maybe she would make it. By this time she had moved down to the far corner of our property, behind where the SO parks the tractor. It's a low spot and the deer often go to this corner to leap over the fence into our yard. The doe was obviously familiar with this method of ingress and egress, and had moved down there to try to get over the fence. Of course, it was an impossible feat with her in her wounded condition, but she continued to try only to run headfirst into the wire fence. We had begun to worry that she would catch an ear in the barbs on the top wire. That's the only part of the fence that's barbed. The rest is wire mesh, or hog fence as it's sometimes called.

I was nervous about the whole prospect of doing this, not experienced with things of this nature like my SO is. He's a farm boy, has been around livestock all his life. I'm a city-slicker, good with dogs and cats, but not much else in the way of furry animals. I guess I had read but didn't believe the power of throwing a blanket over an animal. We took a big horse blanket out to her. She struggled up to the fence and collapsed. All the while, my SO was talking in soothing tones to her. He threw the blanket quickly over her, then knelt beside her with his hands on her sides. She immediately calmed. I spotted a place in the fence corner where it looked easy to unhook the wire, so we did that, and sort of guided her through it. She did her bolting wobble walk, collapsed a few times, looked at us so seriously. She had long eyelashes just like Bambi's mama. She blinked a few times and seemed exhausted by her ordeal. I choose to think she realized in some deep part of her brain that we were trying to help her. In a bit, she got up and was able to very shakily and in a wobbling lurch, make her way across that end of the pasture to the creek where we hope she will lay up and heal, near water and grass.

All of this has me thinking and reconsidering putting out corn for the deer the way we have been doing. It's easy enough to fill up bird feeders and enjoy them coming for a winter meal. They have wings. Fences don't affect them. The deer, on the other hand, have to jump the fence to get into the yard to get to the corn we've been putting out for them. They do jump the fence on their own even without the feeder, as witness when we returned from our trip to the mountains in October to a yard full of deer on several consecutive mornings. But the corn feeder is really almost too luscious for them to resist. It baits them in, and primarily for our enjoyment, so we can watch them across the horse fence in the little run part of the yard that we can see from the house with our binoculars. It now seems hardly fair to them to put them in harm's way. I think our little doe has taught me a lesson I won't soon forget.

Onward ....

Winter Sparrows, Cats and Dogs, and a Greenhouse

Chipping sparrows have taken over the yard feeders. When I walk outside in the morning, they rise in a great flock from amidst the rye grass. We have four seed feeders hanging from trees. They're emptied every other day -- except for the big green one I bought years ago because it was a so-called "squirrel-proof" feeder. When a squirrel steps on the perch, its weight closes the hopper, although I've seen them turn it upside down to get at the sunflower seeds in the mix. It holds 4 pounds of seed and takes about a week to empty. But the point is, the sparrows are here and they're ravenous.

A super cold spell is on the way down from Canada. The weather reporters have been gushing about it for days now. Supposed to bring temperatures in the teens and come in howling with 40 mph wind. Yesterday, I ran down to the feed store and bought two large bags of mulch and four of those new plant tarps made out of mesh cotton meant for covering entire flower beds. It got down to 31 degrees last night, ahead of the front, and I'm wishing I had laid the tarps out yesterday. I did get the most venerable plants mulched. I'd mulched them before the last big storm that came in at the beginning of December, but we've had so much rain most of the mulch had washed away or decomposed. Anyway, never can mulch too much, so I piled on more. I sure hope some of these plants make it through the winter. I'm still not certain about that but I keep treating them as if they're alive, and hopefully I'll be rewarded in the spring. The 8 bluebonnet seedlings are still alive down by the cattle guard. I even threw a little mulch out there, as well.

Meanwhile, I began building the greenhouse this past weekend. I got tired of waiting on the SO, and he obviously had no inclination to pitch in, so I just charged up the electric screwdriver, dug out the instruction manual, and dove in with both feet (to mix a metaphoric cliche). So far it's turned out to be a mostly painless venture. I have needed help from the SO twice, and only to brace something or give me a third hand. I've got the front and back completed, and the frame up on the sides and the roof gables. Today I'll tackle the roof vent. It's making me feel energetic and efficient but the truth is the instructions are detailed and clear so I am really just taking my time and reading each step thoroughly before I begin. Can't wait to get it finished and out of the garage. When my SO comes home on Thursday, I intend to have it done enough for us to carry the whole greenhouse out to the spot we've prepared for it beside the old dog pens. That's on the north side but we will place it so the shed housing the lawn mower will block the brunt of the wind.

I really hate it when he's gone, as he is this week on business. Not only do I miss our little routines -- reading the paper together and drinking our morning coffee, watching our silly game shows and then the nightly news in the evening, talking through supper -- I find both the cat and the dog get especially needy when it's just me here. They follow me around and vie for my attention. The cat will hardly move from beside my chair because he knows he can intimidate the dog into keeping her distance. I've got to go to town today, so they'll have to fend for themselves for a few hours and, hopefully, get along. It's like having two bratty kids!

Last night I ended up sitting in front of the television instead of working on my kid's book. There was a program on PBS about relationships and intimacy, and it hit a nerve with me so I stuck with it through two whole hours. I was probably procrastinating a little, too. I tend to do that when I'm not ready to fix something I've written. I still have it on my list to get the kid's book out in the world by the end of this week. I need to write a cover letter and that's always a difficult proposition for me.

Do I tell how I got the idea for the story, or do I just state my credentials and go with that? Not sure. Especially since I'll be sending the story along with the letter, rather than just querying. It seems kind of ridiculous to query a publisher when it doesn't take 5 minutes to read the entire manuscript, if that. I have been researching publishers and know enough not to send it to a house that clearly states they do not accept unsolicited stuff, or that they don't publish picture books. Which is what Workman says in their online submission guidelines. Too bad, since an imprint of theirs published my four novels, and since I know some of the editors there. In fact, on a trip to New York several years ago, they rolled out the red carpet for me when I called to say I was in town and staying down the street. They gave me a guided tour of the building and I even met Peter Workman himself. Of course, a history with a publisher doesn't guarantee acceptance anyway.

Frost has finally melted. I had better let the dog out before she pops. She's been patiently crossing her legs for over an hour.

Onward ....