Nightclothes and all.
Tripped on a hose. These sandals I run around in are loose, and I’m also getting to that age when my feet fail to lift to the height my brain tells me they’re lifting. It’s quite curious…My brain says I stepped over it, but the foot fails to clear it, because of the toe of the sandal: but I can’t blame the sandal. My brain, every sense I’ve got, tells me the foot, sandal and all, ,will easily clear the obstacle—and it won’t, because my foot hasn’t lifted the height my brain told it to.
I tell you, age is a bitch. I think the same as I always did, I do as I always have, and now and again the body just fails to do what it’s supposed to do. I suppose I need some sandals that don’t have as much toe, but what I could really use is a 20 year old physique. Ain’t it a shame youth is wasted on the young?
Anyway, I fell on the rock edge, dinged my wrist, soaked an arm and shoulder, and scared hell out of the fish, who’d come to be fed. They don’t know what landed in their pond, but they’re sure they don’t want breakfast at that particular spot.
TO make matters nicer, I’d dosed the pond yesterday with SludgeRemover, which is, basically, blackish sewage.
Yum.
Headline: Famous author falls in pool, eaten by fish.
As someone who also has legs that do not always work I empathize.
ISTR seeing on the news there’s an Oriental form of pedicure that uses “cleaner” fish to nibble away at dead skin.
Those who think older age is great must have had horrid early years. As you say, everything feels the same, the body just doesn’t work the same.
I think things like falling in the pond are as bad for the ego as the body. So far so good; I haven’t fallen in the fish pond, but did manage to fall in the pool this spring.
What brand SludgeRemover are you using?
Ow! How’s the wrist?
Getting older is not for wimps 😉
Ouch! How badly did you ding the wrist? Did you cut, scrape, or just hit it on something? To paraphrase a not-so-successful rapper, “Ice, Ice, Ice”…..
Poor fish! Maybe a few days to settle down, and they’ll be back where they were.
Ice, Ice, Baby….
Proper homage would involve vanilla with the ice. One supposes ice cream or gelato would be quite nice, nice, baby.
(Sorry, I’m the exact generation for which that particular one hit wonder, uh, hit.) (Too bad he did not handle things well thereafter.)
Hmm, I’ve been through that with the feet, ankles, knees not going quite where the brain says they did. Runs in my mom’s side of the family. “Your mother wears army boots!” Well, mine did. Hiking boots. As a soft cast or for caution’s sake. Also handy in an art and frame shop. 😀 So…y’know, my perspective on these things is a little non-conformist. 😉 (What can I say? Linseed oil and turpentine make me homesick / nostalgic. 🙂 They smell like home.) — So I’m familiar with how the ol’ noggin says the feet have gone one place and the feet have actually gone just slightly another position. (I will have to watch for this as I get older too. My advantage has been, because of my eyesight, I try to be more aware of what my body is doing relative to the rest of the planet, but alas, it does not always happen as one expected.)
Falling in the pool…. I’ve done that at my old home. Including (yeukk) once when it needed cleaning. There was algae. There were amphibians…. Thankfully, one did not have a close encounter of the shorts kind…..
Humor aside — I hope you’re feeling fine, especially your wrist and ego.
Re sandals — I’d recommend tennis shoes / sneakers or else “flats.” Or house shoes / slippers that hug the heel and toe, so they don’t flip-flop. Unfortunately, this is hard to find for women and somewhat hard to find for men.
Though you could claim your sandals committed…sabotage. 😉
Ahem, yes, sorry. 😀 Well, at least the koi had a little novel-ty in their routine?
I think I’d better stop. There could be a toll for driving on the internet superhighway with an expired pun license. 😀
Best Wishes.
oh, my ribs…
I s’pose that fine would be an… auto-bain am den Web-Autobahn.
Ouch. I must’ve strained something. Credulity, likely.
“You’ve got to snap the quip to make Pegasus prance.”
I used that quote to a friend a few weeks ago. His response was roughly, “Who says that!? Nobody says that!” Reputedly, Robert Frost said that.
Well done, BCS!
—
CJ: I give you a 9.6, -0.5 for scaring the fish, -0.1 on the scraped wrist, +0.2 on the good humor. Nice execution, but the landing needs work. 😉
Were it not for youth, where would we be? Stuck in adolescence? The horror! 🙂
If they could just clone your body except without a brain and hop your brain over into the new young body so you’d have an older, wiser brain in a body that you knew what to do with it as well as what not to do with because you’d already made all the mistakes with the old body . . . . oh, if wishes were horses, we’d be knee deep in it. . .
Baron Luigi Bharaputra’s clone factory on Jackson’s Whole? Yuck…….
I suppose it could always be worse. I misread it as “tripped on a HORSE” and thought why the heck do you have a horse in your backyard!
…and i thought I was going to have to post OT some where!
I had my right knee replaced on Tuesday. I shall need the other knee when this is fully healed and I can gather my courage. They replaced the lower end of the femur and the upper end of the tibia. They can usually save the patella, but in my case, it had become too damaged. Both knees were severely enough damaged that the doctor could see no difference in severity, but the right was troubling me more, so we went for that first. Apparently, it was much more damaged than the X-rays showed, and the surgeon became amazed that I had been walking at all.
This will be my excuse for the displaced foot situation for at least a year. Too bad it’s not elastic enough to carry off the usual foot-in-mouth problem, let alone the knee-in-mouth one!
Oh, Tommie, I hope rehab goes very, very well! Knees are more complicated than hips, but they’re getting really good at them. Walking without pain will be a good thing!
Tommie, the hardest part is the physical rehab. I know it’s difficult to bend your knee, but eventually, when they take out the staples(?)/sutures, you’ll have to start working on it.
What I did for all 3 of my knee replacements (doesn’t THAT sound interesting?) was to lie on the bed, put my ankle on a pillow and then try to straighten my leg as much as I could. When it came to bending the other way, that was a little easier, as I could hang it over the side of the bed and let gravity help me along. I also would get on my hands and knees and rock back as if I were trying to sit on my heels, but don’t do that with any force, gentle rocking is the key. Eventually, you find that you can bend the knee well past the 120 degrees they shoot for. My worst case was still 137 degrees, so while it won’t be as good as the original, it’s still more than enough for every day activity. Figure about 6 weeks or so if you work at it every day. It’s uncomfortable, but if you don’t try to go too fast, it reaps major benefits down the road. Best luck on the rehab!
I busted a kneecap. Had it wired back together. That’s the worst I’ve had to deal with so far. My physical therapist was a German lady with the most wonderful hands. She gave my knee massages to break up the scar tissue. I referred to this as Yodeling Practice. However, they had this clay pack they heat in the microwave and put on your knee, before therapy and that was the best part. Even after you complete your rehab, you will go through a period where you are very aware of your leg, and what/where you are walking and you will feel very fragile, but this will gradually fade. Hope you heal without complications, have a good rehab outcome and experience the happiness of being able to walk on that leg without pain.
As well designed to the purpose as a hip joint is, knees make me give the concept of an intelligent designer a long cold stare. Once you get past a certain amount of wear and tear, they are one of the first joints that is likely to give out under everyday usage. Sorry to hear so many people are needing work on theirs!
My mother had a knee replaced – there was effectively no cartilage left in it. Six months later she was going up and down stairs.
But she did the physical therapy faithfully, too. (They actually started before she was completely awake after the surgery.)
CJ, truer words were never spoken about youth being wasted on the young! Take care of yourself and keep the wrist iced.
@Tommie, Hope your recovery is swift. My left knee was replaced in Oct of 2011. It took three months to start getting around with either a walker or a cane, and almost a year before I started feeling good about it. I’m just about able to sit in a lotus position with it now. Unfortunately, one of the problems with the surgery is a change in gait, and the toes pointing out when I swear my feet are facing straight ahead. Expect to hook your toes on stuff. Once the left knee healed it became obvious that the right knee was badly damaged as well. Right knee will be done sometime this year, but my orthopedic surgeon has retired and half of his medical staff was laid off so I am having to start from scratch with a new surgeon, etc.
Ouch! CJ, I know it is hard on us to start being sooooo very very careful, but these examples hit home. My grandmother, who was walking 2 miles a day at age 90 to and from her senior center would tell me (in Russian) “Old age is no joke.” The transliteration is “stadis nyuradis” as well as I can slip from Cyrillic into the common alphabet.
Now, at 67, I say that much earlier than I ever heard it from her! We live in a good house for aging in place, have added the necessary hand-grabs, etc., and still I worry when my brain thinks I’ve cleared a step but my foot says, “nuh-uh”.
Ain’t it a pain? I love your gran!
Tommie and Ready, I have a habit when I have to remember something (like watch the foot!) of wearing a bracelet or ring or other piece of jewelry, the whole meaning of which is, remember!
I’m sore today, got a bruise beside my eye, scrape on the wrist, a sore shoulder, sore hip, sore ribs, and a fist-sized bruise on my shin, but hey, the fish are still looking at me askance…I think they were quite traumatized: all lined up for food and they were dive-bombed!
They might have mistaken you for that old villain, the bald eagle…
Amen, cousin! I’m with you on this age thing.
When I had my lumbar synovial cyst, my doctor mentioned that our legs know how to walk on their own, more or less. They had Christopher Reeve up in a harness walking on a treadmill. (In a similar way, I’m pretty sure a cat’s tail is somewhat loosely connected to its higher brain functions and has a secondary direct connection to the centers of its emotional state, e.g. perhaps the amount of adrenaline in its blood stream.)
I’ve been finding my walking has become pretty sloppy myself.
When’s the next bus to Cyteen? 😉
Here, CJ, this should take your mind off your booboos — This thing is seriously cool. It has a memo/reminder function that you can set to appear on a certain date to remind you of things you need to do on that date. About 2-1/2 inches in diameter is the default size, but you can increase the size to fill your screen.
For you steampunk enthusiasts, the guy who programmed this did other widgets.
You do have to have the Yahoo widget engine them though.
I went to bring some potted plants in yesterday when it got hot outside, and fell off the (three inch high) porch. Slightly scraped elbow and knee, and I can’t blame anyone but me. (I also trip over shadows. And when I get tired, one foot wants to drop.)
There could be only one thing that some creature lunging at them with all claws out could want! They have been sharing eagle/hawk and mountain lion/cat stories around the feeder, I see!
@Ready, Joekc, and Owl,
I was a dancer for a while… I’m at 90 and 137 right now.I know that I shall be almost wary enough for a while, and then give over on it, but I think that what I most want right now is for the bruises to stop being solid and hard. It will be easier to work at it when my fertilizer burned imagination stops giving me images of my leg cracking open like perfectly roasted skin-on pork.
You might find the second one is easier, Tommie. My mother had her left knee replaced a year ago in June, and the right knee this past March. She knew both needed to be replaced and had planned to have the right knee done first, but a bad fall damaged the left knee so badly that it had to be done instead. Due to the weakness and pain in the right knee, the physical therapists couldn’t push her as much as they wanted to, but she faithfully continued her exercises and tried to walk as much as she could while waiting for the second surgery.
Once the 2nd knee was done, she was astonished to be up and around almost at once. The second knee was much easier, she said, because a) she knew what to expect, and b) it was stronger than the other leg had been before the first surgery, because even with only 1 good leg she had been able to walk more and keep the muscles strong.
While going thru the physical therapy, she likened her left leg to a strong piece of fencepost, with the new right knee a weakened post, but the left one was so strong it could easily hold the other one up. the ‘old’ new knee made the recovery for the ‘new’ new knee much easier.
I combined the first sentances into one and read it as “Tripped on a Nighthorse.” 😀