Sorry Tina, But We Do Need Another Hero

Once upon a time I owned a used furniture store called Big Mouth Office Furniture. How it got that name is another story for another time. 

I dealt with lots of start up companies, some of which went on to become famous, others of which died the quick and painful death they rightfully deserved. I also became known for outfitting the offices of Hollywood movie productions who were temporarily in the Bay Area. Many films shot here had me behind the scenes putting producers behinds down where they belong. Usually the person who arranged for the furniture was the Location Scout and one scout in particular, let's call him Uncle Jim, used my store quite a bit. 

One day Uncle Jim walked in and handed me a list of equipment he needed for his latest project. Very unusually for him, he told me he was going to rent a truck and pick everything up (we usually delivered the furniture). I had no problem with that, but I told him I'd be happy to deliver. 

"Well not everything is going to one place on this shoot. In fact some of it has to be shipped over to Alcatraz.", he said. 

"Oh man, not another 'how'd they escape from Alcatraz movie'", I grinned.

"No, no, this time it's going to be guys breaking into Alcatraz to stop some guy from destroying the world. It's called The Rock."

"Sounds like a James Bond movie" I laughed.

"Funny you should say that, it stars Sean Connery" he threw off as he headed down an aisle to look at chairs.

I stopped dead in my tracks. Uncle Jim continued to walk down the aisle.

"I will make you the deal of all time", I yelled down to him.

Uncle Jim turned around. The look on his face was priceless; a combination of intrigue and at the same time exasperation. 

I was thinking I would give him everything he needed, for free, if only he could arrange for me to....

"Don't even say it if it involves you meeting Sean Connery. What is it with all you guys and Sean Connery? You're like the third supplier who'll make some great deal just to meet the guy."

What is it? It's simple. He's Bond. He's the coolest guy in the world EVER. Steve McQueen is the second coolest guy in the world and he's so far back you can't even see the dust his motorcycle is kicking up. Besides, he was dead at that point. Connery/Bond was THE hero of my childhood. As Sinatra was to an earlier generation, he was to my generation. I wanted to have his car, I wanted to wear his clothes, and most importantly I wanted to be as suave as him so I could get the ladies. 

I grew up in Los Angeles. You couldn't walk ten feet without running into at least a semi-famous person. Meeting "stars" was, is, and always will be, no big deal to me. But this was different. Yeah, I'd be a little awestruck, but that's not really the thing here. This was a chance to say thank you. Thank you for being someone bigger than life. I know it's a movie and he's an actor just playing a part that many others would take on over the years (though until Daniel Craig, none better). But James Bond is more than a movie role. 

He's a hero.

Since the dawn of civilization we've needed heroes. You could call him Lancelot or Gilgamesh or Henry V or Moses or anything else so long as his story was told and his story inspired us to be more than just what we are. Once it was epic poems told by nomadic reciters. Once it was five acts in iambic pentameter. Once it was radio waves through the stratosphere. When I was a kid it was flickering images up on the silver screen. How it's told doesn't matter, what matters is that the story is told and that that story inspires us to be more than we think we can be. 

The Bond films taught me there was a world outside my narrowly defined experience and that that world was wondrous. They made me want to see that world and years later as I traveled, Istanbul was not totally unknown to me, or the Caribbean or many other places I had already visited, privy to the exploits of 007. And when I walked into the casino in Monte Carlo I looked over to see if at the baccarat table was a tuxedoed  gentleman sipping a vodka martini with a beautiful woman whispering in his ear. Physically he wasn't there. Emotionally for me, he was. 

So yeah given the opportunity I wanted to meet him. It turns out though that his contract to do the movie was very specific as to who could be on set. And when he was not on set he was to have a standing tee time at Pebble Beach and a private jet to fly him there, end of story. I guess he's been through this whole grown men becoming stammering school boys in front of him enough to be tired of it. That's okay. Looking back I'm glad I didn't meet him in person. Heroes need to stay just a little out of our reach.

Top Ten Things I've Learned So Far As An Invalid

1. The cat really does sleep all day long.

2. You don't need as much coffee if you're just going to sit around all day.

3. The predominant commercials on daytime television all seem to be for law firms soliciting clients for personal injury cases or class action suits against pharmaceutical or medical device companies. 

4. On  a gray cloudy day like today, with rain but a moment away, it is better to be sitting in a comfortable leather chair while wrapped in a thick green sweater than taking a tour group out to Alcatraz.

5. Though the body may be bound, the mind can always run free.

6. Previously simple everyday chores become triumphs of the spirit when accomplished on a knee scooter.

7. Naps can never be overrated.

8. I'm seriously considering getting a pair of binoculars and going all Jimmy Stewart in REAR WINDOW on my neighbors.

9. When your wardrobe choices are limited to sweatpants and t shirts, getting dressed in the morning is a breeze.

10.If one forgets there is a cast on one's foot and crosses that leg over the ankle of one's good leg, the pain subsequently inflicted is one's own damn fault.  

A Beautiful Game

This is what its come to. I'm watching an English soccer match on a Spanish language station.

No I'm not talking about how bored I am. I'm talking about how addicted I've become to soccer. English soccer to be precise.

And the NFL better be worried.

It started a couple of years ago when ESPN began broadcasting Premier League games at zero dark thirty in the morning. As someone who generally is up at that hour I started taking a peek at whatever game, excuse me, match was on.

What I saw was a game  that constantly moved.  It was a game that even though there wasn't much scoring there was a possibility of scoring on nearly every play . It was a game played by men wearing nothing more than shorts a shirt and maybe some knee pads. But most importantly it was a game that was played for 45 minutes then they took a 15 minute break then they played another 45 minutes and that was the end of the game. An investment of under 2 hours and I was thoroughly entertained.

This in contrast to the NFL who's 60 minutes of play somehow magically turns into three hours of everyone standing around and about 25 seconds worth of total actual play. Not to mention the armor required that turns players into early prototypes for ROBOCOP. And the feeling I have that American football has denigrated into nothing more than societal approved violence. The game is no longer about trying to best the other team, but rather to injure as many of the other team as possible. Hell, you trip someone by accident in a soccer match and your team might find itself playing one man short the rest of the way.

Here's another aspect of the English game I enjoy, the idea that the three teams who finished at the bottom of the league get thrown out at the end of the season and replaced by the top three teams of the next lower league. Makes every game important. It rewards teams for playing well and punishes those who don't. That seems eminently fair to me.

But why should the NFL care that I'm no longer interested in their sport? Because my whole life I've been fifteen minutes ahead of the curve. I'm the canary in the coal mine of cultural trends. If I, someone who has followed your game my entire life, have found a sport I like better that is played at the same time as yours then how many others in the next few years will make that same discovery?

They'll be joing me down at the pub to hoist a pint or two, proudly wearing our Tottenham Hotspurs scarves.

Patience Patient

Being patient. It's something I have never been known for. And yet now I am in the position of having to practice it.

Being a patient. I've never really been one before. Other than the occasional cold I've never been sick in bed for any  amount of time. And yet now I am in the position of having to be one. 

I keep waking up each morning thinking about what I have to do at work and then realizing I don't have work to go to. That's if I can remember what day of the week it is. Then I go to swing my body out of bed and remember the cast on my leg and the knee scooter parked next to the bed and the fact that going to the bathroom is a protracted exercise in the precise manipulations of angles, tangents, and vector phases. 

And that's when I lose my patience. It's a momentary thing I admit, a primal scream against the reality I find myself in. Generally I'm able to continue on with my day. This morning though was different. It might have been the rush I was in to get it together so I could catch the first Premier League match of the day (yes, I get up early on weekend mornings so I can watch English soccer on the computer -- so sue me). It might have had something to do with all the fun I had last night when friends came over to share dinner and a few bottles of wine. It might have been mixing my pain meds with the wine. Whatever the reason I was unsteady on the scooter and in an attempt to open the door to let the cat in I fell. On the bad foot. 

Pain will teach me to be patient.

Food For Thought

First you need this:

Then you need this:

And lastly you need this:

And that's how you make an egg creme. And while it may sound simple, the making of a proper egg cream involves EXACTLY these ingredients. Substituting Hershey's Syrup for Fox's U-Bet is not an option, just as club soda from a can  instead of seltzer water from a bottle is not an option and skim milk instead of whole milk. You want to substitute fine, but don't call what you are making an egg cream.

Egg creams have attained an almost mythic reverence these days which I'm sure would have made the guys at the candy stores and soda fountains of it's native Brooklyn scratch their wife-beater t-shirts and mumble "Eh, whattaya gonna do?" As I said in an earlier post, when I was a kid and I did well at the doctor's office I got a pretzel, a coloring book, and an egg cream. Though I was born on Long Island, my parents were from Brooklyn and trusted only their old world doctor to care for the family. Thus said egg cream was dispensed from the window of a candy store near Troy Avenue in Brooklyn. Even then my father would grouse that the drink hadn't been dispensed into a dirty soda glass but rather into a disposable wax container and thus had lost some of it's soul. 

Because that's what an egg cream was, soul food. It meant love and family and care and tradition. In it's chocolate fizz was the tale of immigrants struggling to make their way in the new world of America, just as chitlins and mustard greens told of the struggle to break free of  slavery or even a cheesesteak spoke about wiseguys who scratched on the streets of Philly. Soul food is maybe the ultimate in oral history, each sip or bite a chance to renew relations with your past or to understand what others have gone through. It needs to be treated with respect. Don't put it in the museum that is fine dining. I don't care that the latest hot chef does "a superb take on a traditional dish". If I want ribs I want it served on a paper plate by a guy named Freddy who wipes his hands on the apron he's wearing before giving you change. I want my corned beef piled high between two slices of corn rye and just a little brown mustard as condiment. 

And where do you get this kind of experience? Sadly it's coming from fewer and fewer places. The real places, the ones with history as well as rib sauce on the walls are being plowed over. Now if they were being replaced with another groups soul food, well I could accept that. But they are not. They are being replaced by yet another Starbucks or even worse the ersatz soul food experience of an Olive Garden or a Chevy's. 

There is a movement in America these days of people trying to get back to fresh ingredients and to stop using canned or frozen convenience foods. How about we start a movement to go to restaurants that give us a real soul food experience.

In other words, if you want to call it an egg cream, then it better have those three ingredients listed above.  

Color My World

I have the best friends in the world. Not only are they putting up with me and this recovery, they are contributing to my attempts to alleviate my boredom. As one example, my sister-in-law Amy decided that simply calling this blog The Coloring Book wasn't good enough. She actually went out and got me a coloring book. Two of them in fact:

I looked them up on Amazon. Do you know you can get a used copy of each for one cent? Wouldn't a used copy of a coloring book be self defeating?

So not having had kids who would use crayons in the house for at least a couple of years, I was faced with the quandary what to do with the coloring books. Ah, my ever resourceful wife came to the rescue. She got me the big box of Crayola, the one with 64 crayons and the sharpener in the back. Problem was the purchase of same brought up issues from her childhood. I just want to go on record here that you only got the box of 16 and not the big box because your mother was, well, cheap. You weren't poor, she could have afforded it, but we all know that Jack Benny spent like a sailor on shore leave compared to your mom.

The modern art coloring book contains several of my favorite pieces, but my absolute favorite is this one:

This is Broadway Boogie Woogie by Piet Mondrian, to me the culmination of modern art's attempts to capture motion and vibrancy on canvas. Each square, each color, is placed in perfect symmetry to convey the notion of throbbing, pulsating movement. You might think it would be easy to recreate this, after all it's just squares of primary colors, but have one square out of place, one yellow instead of red, and the entire painting would fall apart. It took Mondrian over a year to complete it. I would not blaspheme by even attempting to copy it.  

Art is such a personal experience to me. In the summer between graduating high school and going off to college I spent two weeks in New York seeing Broadway shows, visiting relatives, and wandering the galleries. One day while in the Museum of Modern Art I turned the corner and there in front of me was Picasso's Guernica. I was well versed in the history of the painting, it's depiction of the chaos and horror of war and Picasso's demand that it not be allowed back into Spain till Franco was ousted. And here it was in front of me, stretching across two walls, the silent scream of the woman with the lamp, the bull's head, the bodies strewn across the bottom, the horse's head. I felt dwarfed by it, as I think anyone would feel when seeing it. But to just come across it, to stumble upon it, literally my breath was taken away. Here was the worst of humankind and at the same time the best of humankind. It makes you examine not only your feelings about the immediate subject, but just what it means to be human. That's what the best art shows us. And that's why it needs to be taught in our schools, why it's not a "frivolous extravagance", why we need to make it available to all and not to just a fortunate few. It's as important to know Guernica and Broadway Boogie Woogie and Girl With The Pearl Earring and all the masterpieces as it is to know multiplication tables or how a bill becomes law. 

The Pictures Don't Lie

Contrary to popular belief, in the immediate aftermath of my surgery I was NOT put into a cast. Rather I was put into a splint to allow the swelling to recede and any residual bleeding to ooze out. 

Oops, hope you weren't eating dinner while reading that.

So today I got my first outing since the surgery. I got to get in the car and drive up to San Francisco for my first follow up appointment with the surgeon and if everything looked good I would have a cast put on. The surgeon's name by the way is Alicia Knee. This is a picture of her:

In the movie of this experience she would be played by my friend Tamara Zook due to the fact they were obviously separated at birth. Also they share a personality.  When I first met her it seemed strange to have the woman who stood comically toe to toe with Robin Williams and Billy Crystal and gave as good as she got (see FATHER'S DAY)  telling me how she was going to re-sculpt my foot, but a few jabs in the ribs from Betsey reminded me that Tamara was not in fact going to be doing the surgery and in fact was on the road with (shudder) I LOVE LUCY LIVE ON STAGE. 

But I digress. 

It felt so good to get out of the house. I don't think I've ever spent this much time cooped up in one location. I was so happy I wanted to put my head outside the window and feel the wind on my face. I wanted to let my tongue loll out and put a giant smile on my face. Betsey said that was not socially acceptable. I acquiesced as she had a rolled up magazine in her hand when she said it.  

It was a beautiful day for a drive and everything was going right. We sailed into the city with little traffic hassle and even found a legal parking space right out in front of the California Pacific Medical Center. I even discovered that the knee scooter and San Francisco hills could produce some fun activities that I doubt I would have tried without being under the influence of heavy pain medications. I scored an 8.7 from the Russian judge but the French judge only gave me a 6.3 so I finished just outside the medals. 

At last we made it into the office. I was excited to see what was underneath all the bandages that had weighed like a cement shoe on my foot for the past four days. I wanted to see the miracle of modern medicine that would have me walking proud and proper in just a matter of days. Here is a picture of what I saw. I link to it rather than show it just in case you are still eating dinner.

It was fascinating to see though. My foot might look like something Dr. Frankenstein would have cobbled together, but Dr. Knee said it was all normal. I finally got to hear just exactly what had gone on in the OR during the surgery. I know that she had told me while I was in the recovery room, but I also apparently was singing quite loudly at that time so anything she might have told me I honestly don't recall. Apparently when the tendon snapped into place with a giant PLOP, the surgical nurse announced "That's the sound of freedom". I thought that was rather poetic till I was informed that the surgical staff is made up of former military medicos who were more than likely referencing that it sounded like a gunshot. Oh. Well. Never mind. 

Since everything looked good on the outside it was off to X-Ray to snap a few 8x10s just to double check the inside. Here's what they showed (and if you're still eating dinner, jeez finish up already):

It may be modern medicine and the miracles associated with it, but what I see is a couple of wood screws in my heel and a metal plate on the top of my foot that has me thinking TSA is going to give me a good going over the next time I fly. But according to the experts it all is good and so at last I got my cast. Dr. Knee made me promise I wouldn't Beadazzle it, which I guess is a problem with her younger female clients. I said at most it would be sporting a SF Giants logo when I see her in two weeks. 

Zomb-Ease

Since it's President's Day I'm taking the day off. 

It's tough to take a day off from taking three months off. 

In the meantime, take a look at a product I hope to be representing in the future:

Text and the Modern Invalid

Not so many years ago, if you were laid up the way I am, your options were pretty limited when it came to boredom killing. There was daytime TV, filled with soap operas, game shows, and "happy" talk shows. Or if you were the intellectual type you could raid the local library and catch up on all those classic novels you'd been meaning to read since high school. 

Ah, but the joys of technology have made recuperation into an all you eat buffet of entertainment options. Currently I have at my disposal my computer, my tablet computer, my smartphone, my cable enabled television, my internet enabled television, my blue-ray player, and my mini-DVD player. I can stream movie upon movie from Netflix, listen to radio stations from around the world via Tune In, get any book I fancy with a touch of the Amazon button, listen to any recording ever made on Spotify. The boredom killing business has never had so many options.

In addition I can reach out to as many friends and family as are computer connected to me. Facebook, texts, phone calls, this blog, they all add up to being alone without ever being alone. But here's the question -- is that a good thing? Is it natural? Doesn't the healing process involve some amount of alone time, just you and your body getting back in touch with one another? When Mr. Cat is sick he skulks off to the far corners of the house and has no wish to have contact with anyone else. "Going off to lick your wounds" is a long standing practice in both animal and human culture. 

On the other hand there is the school of thought that the power of group healing is a real thing, that having a group of friends sending you psychic energy, praying for you, or even just thinking about you, helps the recuperation process. And if so, then technology is just helping to facilitate that power to reach out. I am a believer that the power of the human mind is unlimited, but on an evolutionary scale we have only begun to tap into that power. If the adrenal gland can make it so mom can lift the car off her trapped beneath child, is it so far off to believe that a group of people can make one person feel better just by sending good thoughts his way?

So I'll take all the good thoughts you care to send. And in the meantime, I'm off to binge watch HOUSE OF CARDS. 

The Calcaneal Osteotomy Plantar Fascia Cha Cha Cha

Now the tale can be told. The deed is done, the trail is blazed, and there is no going back.

You gotta get up early to have a professional put you to sleep these days. Five in the morning I took what will be my last unimpeded shower for the next three months. Shaved, got dressed in "flat shoes and loose clothes" (as per instructions), left my wallet, keys, money, et. al. in the drawer, and walked out into the morning darkness. The smell of the eucalyptus trees in the cold was bracing and refreshing, a perfect send off. I turned to Betsey and said "Why is it all of our adventures in life start out early in the morning, before the sun has come up?" She laughed.

The Surgery Center was the only light shining from inside the gray block building, and while filled with people it was oddly quiet, the blanket of worry fully tucked around the spouses, children, parents, and friends of those of us headed beyond the great white door in the back. But we live in a pay for play world, so before you can have your Calcaneal osteotomy plantar fascia tendon lengthening and ligament repair first you have to pony up the dollars, or at least the co-pay, for the operation. And of course sign page after page of disclosures, agreements, and other assorted legalities associated with medicine these days. I'm probably not that far off to say that I don't think anyone has ever fully read each one of those pages before surgery. The best I could do was scan the legalese to make sure I wasn't given them unfettered access to my bank account or permission to use my genetic material for further research purposes with recompense to myself or my heirs. Then it was back into the green sea of waiting room chairs to await my name being called. 

It wasn't too long a wait. A pleasant looking nurse named Brooke lead me through the great white door, calmly informing me that I was to go into the restroom on the left where a surgical gown and slippers awaited me. She gave me instructions on how to adjust the gown which I was grateful for since none of it made much sense to me. The gown had vents in it so they could pump warm air into it when I was in post-op, a new fangled development I was unaware the medical industrial complex had come up with. The vents I initially took for the arm holes, which made donning the gown more difficult then one would imagine. Only after figuring out the map coordinates for the gown was I able to put it on properly. Not very stylish, but effective for the job.

The pre-op room was filled with others who had negotiated the puzzle of the gown. Brooke guided me to an overstuffed chair and proceeded to give me the prescribed interrogation (what's your name, what's your birth date, what are you here for, etc.) before starting the IV of tranquility juice. The surgical nurse came by and did the interrogation again, then the anesthesiologist did the same. Of course the tranquility juice was beginning to take effect, so my answers were coming a little slower each time. 

At last it was time to head to the operating room. Unlike the movies there was no gurney or even a wheelchair, no chance for me to groggily look up to see a vision of my loved ones promising to take care of me. Instead I had to walk the green mile down the hall to the OR. I was feeling slightly cheated. At least they didn't make me carry my own IV drip bag, the surgical nurse being kind enough to do that. My room was at the end of the hall, past every other room. Just like the airport, I thought to myself, my flight is always at the furthest gate.

Walking into an operating room is like stepping onto another world. It's so white it hurts the eyes. There are these strange suns orbiting the surgical table, providing more light then anyone could possibly need. Unlike so many other places filled with people, there is a pervasive sense of purpose to each ones movements, yet it is quiet as can be. There is not even the hum of activity, only the quiet.

I got on the table, was given the interrogation once more, then the anesthesiologist put the mask on my face and said "You'll be asleep in twenty seconds". I thought how I doubted that. 

The next thing I knew I was in the recovery room with Brooke asking if I had any pain. Pain? I didn't know what I felt. Well there was some cramping in my foot. Actually it was really bad cramping. Actually it was really really bad cramping. Holy crap my foot hurt. Oh man it hurt. No problem said Brooke and over came a young doctor with a dose of nerve block and suddenly my foot didn't hurt anymore. Then again I couldn't feel anything from the top of my calf on down. Which all together wasn't a bad thing. It was only then that I saw a clock and realized I had been out for a lot longer than I had been told it would be. My surgeon came over and related how she had found a huge amount of scar tissue that was so difficult to cut through that they had to use some kind of special surgical tool. Oh and instead of surgical staples, she had to use screws. Great, I've gone from office supplies to hardware.

My time was up, I had to get out of there to allow for some other needy soul. The wheelchair finally made an appearance and out into the brilliant afternoon sun I went. Getting into the car was surprisingly easy, but then again I had been practicing for the past several days on how to do such things on only one leg. I should mention here that though I was given crutches to prevent me from putting any weight on my foot, I opted to get what is called a knee scooter. It looks like a child's Razor scooter with handle bars and handle brakes. One puts there bad leg up  on the seat and propels with the good leg. 

We got back home with me falling into an almost sleep along the way. The scooter took me from the car to my bed where I collapsed. There wasn't even time for Betsey to ask me if I wanted anything before I fell into a deep sleep. I had never wanted to sleep more than I did right then.

Young and Impressionable Children Avert Your Eyes

Bowing to the pressure brought on by the public, I present the before pictures 

                                         

I don't get to view my leg from this angle very often. Actually to be totally truthful I had never seen it from this angle before. Now I can understand why my doctor looked at me quizzically and asked how I was able to walk.

See how the right foot is nice and level? That's how you're supposed to stand. See the left foot? That's not good. And yet it is the way I normally stand. Painful to look at, isn't it? By the way, there is no exaggeration here. This is no Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot kind of thing, no blatant Academy Award begging going on here. Though I probably could get a good shot at a zombie role somewhere.

What's Mine Is Mine

So here's something strange to think about. I'm going to miss my pain.

The doctors tell me that once I recover from the operation I'll not have the pain I experienced pretty much every day for the last many years. And I'm thinking I'm going to miss it.

Pain, something that tells your mind that your body is having a problem that needs to be attended to. It's nature's wake up call. When it's not there, that's a good thing. It means your body is at peace with your mind.

And yet.

This pain is mine. It belongs to me. It's part of who I am. Without it, will I be someone else? Men who wear beards for years on end only to shave them off one day in a fit of pique are often not recognized by even their closest friends and relatives. I once changed the way I combed my hair and my father didn't recognize me. Will I recognize myself without the pain?

For a large number of the people I know, I am defined by my limp. "Oh you know who I mean, the guy who limps", it's an often used descriptor for me. I may not have much, but I have my limp. And my pride. And a 55" Panasonic plasma big screen TV with Smart Connect features and 3D.

And I have my pain. It's something I own, it belongs to me and I'm allowing someone to take it away from me. She'll be wearing a mask when she does it, like a stagecoach robber in an old Western taking the strongbox at gunpoint. Instead of gold dust the box contains the strength I have used to overcome the pain.

Giving it up will be giving up a lot of who I have been. Will I be a better person without it? I don't know. I just know that for better or worse I won't be the same person.

Welcome to The Coloring Book

Today is my birthday, the 56th anniversary of my birth. On most birthdays I'd be either working or spending the day having an adventure my wife planned out. She's very good at planning out adventures.

Instead this birthday I'm the one planning. Planning on having my left foot re-sculpted so I can once again walk like a normal human biped. Actually strike that. A successful operation will mean I'll walk like a normal person, perhaps for the first time in my life. Currently my foot is such that I walk on the side of it, my big toe riding high and the left side of my foot callused, the tendon stretched into uselessness. As you might imagine, it's quite painful. Amazing thing about the human body though, once you've had the pain long enough, you get used to it. That is until I place my foot wrong, or walk on an uneven surface, or walk for a long period of time. Then the pain shoots up to my eyes, hot daggers dragged mercilessly up the back of my leg till I beg for a moment to avail myself of the opiate of deep breathing and visualization of my "happy place". And a hit of Advil always helps too.

Once upon a time I went to an orthopedist who prescribed an orthodic "device" to insert into my shoes. It was supposed to force the left side of my foot up and the big toe back down. Like a comic book super villain pestered by the futility of mere bullets to harm him, my foot would grind down the device till it cried uncle. After several versions over the course of several years and way too many hours of physical therapy provided no relief, I gave myself over to the idea of a surgical repair. .

I had nothing better to do for three months anyway.

Yes, that's three months of recovery. Half will be with no weight allowed on the foot at all, then half with very limited weight bearing. Basically bed ridden.

There aren't enough books, movies, and music to make that bearable.

When I was little, if I needed to go to the doctor I would be rewarded with a pretzel, an egg cream, and a coloring book. While the pretzel and the egg cream were greatly appreciated, it was the coloring book that made all the difference. It was what took my mind off the pain of the shot, or the fever, or the stomach ache. And yes, I was one of those kids who colored inside the lines.

But I did like making the sky green and the trees orange and the boy white and the girl black.

This blog will serve as my adult version of a coloring book. 90 days from Friday I  hope to be back at work with a new spring in my step and a song in my heart.

Here we go.