Things I did this weekend that I have never done before

In no particular order:

I drank mint tea made with just mint and water (it was pretty good!)

I went naked in a hot tub, and also I bruised my butt while moving from one seat to another in said hot tub.

I curled my hair using this tutorial and it turned out pretty well. I only left it in for a couple of hours; now that I understand the mechanics a bit better I know how to get better results (like leave it in longer next time).

I accidentally used rolled barley instead of rolled oats when making a blackberry crisp. It was much crunchier than expected, but still edible.

I ate Salvadoran food.

I watched Robin Hood: Men in Tights and wondered why Cary Elwes doesn’t always play comedic dashing fantasy men because he’s good at it.

I accidentally ingested some rancid Grape Nuts. I do not recommend this.

Leah and Simon should ask us to housesit more often. Next time, though, maybe leave a warning label on the Grape Nuts.

What can happen in 90 seconds

Some time several months ago, Dan and I were at the feed store where we buy our cats’ food and litter when we came across a rainbow-striped cat harness with leash. Since for the first time we’re living in a house with a big fenced yard, we had started to talk about the possibility of trying each cat, one at a time, on the harness outside for a couple of minutes to see how they liked it. Both cats are avid watchers of what we call the Kitty Show (aka watching out the various windows and sliding glass doors and looking at all the wildlife that traipses through the yard) so we thought they might like to try some (brief, supervised) time outside.

Neither cat seemed to enjoy the experience overly much during the couple of initial outings, so we kind of forgot about it for a while. Then, January happened, and it was warm-ish and sunny and didn’t rain for nearly a month. We thought it might be fun to see if either of the cats was interested in outside time again. One day in mid-January, Dan put the harness on Loki and brought him outside the back door. Somehow, the cat managed to wriggle out of the harness, knock over several yard tools, run through a leaf pile, and hightail it back in the house, seemingly within the blink of an eye. All told, he was probably outside for about a minute and a half.

A few days later, Loki started scratching.

He scratched, and he bit himself, and he started pulling fur out of his back. He was acting like he had fleas, though I couldn’t see how he could possibly have them, since we’d been in the house for months with nary a sign of fleas anywhere. I checked him for flea poop and monitored Robin but I couldn’t find any sign other than Loki’s obvious discomfort. I found one flea in our bed early on, but neither Dan and I nor Robin seemed to be getting bitten at all. We realized that he must have picked up a flea during that 90 second jaunt outside (in January) (in barely 60 degree weather). We’d never had to worry about fleas at all in Denver, since there aren’t really fleas in Denver, and the cats were always indoor-only there. But squirrels and neighborhood cats run through our yard all the time, so I guess somehow there was a flea that managed to get on Loki during that minute and a half. Eventually, we decided that we’d just treat them both for fleas and be done with it, so we got some of that Advantage stuff and dosed both felines, washed the bedding and the rugs and vacuumed the carpets, thinking that would be the end of it.

It wasn’t the end of it. He kept scratching and digging. I didn’t see more flea poop on Loki, so I brought him in to the vet thinking maybe he had a flea allergy and he’d need a steroid shot to feel better. The vet found flea poop that hadn’t been there when I’d checked, gave him the shot, and told us to give him another dose of Advantage and flea powder the carpets in the house. So we did.

The shot, which wasn’t cheap (and neither was the vet visit) didn’t seem to give the cat any relief. He was starting to look all manky and bald on his back. We dutifully flea powdered all the carpets. Then one day I had gone into the bedroom to fold laundry on the bed, and I watched in horror as three adult fleas emerged from the fluffy, down-filled spread we had on the bed, the one thing that we hadn’t washed when we washed everything else because of the down filling. ARGH. It was disgusting, to watch the fleas come out to try and feed on me. I killed them all and immediately dragged all of our bedding outside and threw up in my mouth and then I threw the spread into the washing machine and washed it on hot. I’m sure the fluffiness will never be the same, but I’ll never be the same after seeing those fleas pop out from between the fibers of the fabric cover.

All of the bedding got washed again, and we vacuumed and flea-sprayed down our mattress and the bedroom rug again and the furniture in the living room. And Loki went after Robin.

We’ve had Robin now for over 14 months. During that time, we’ve had periods of time where the cats ignored each other or seemed to have interest in one another but generally left one another alone. We’ve also had times during which Loki goes after Robin ever chance he gets. Those times seem to coincide with stress, and I think the stress of having fleas for the first time in his life must have been more than his poor little walnut brain could handle, because since the flea problem started, Loki has been more vicious in his attacks. We’ve tried the things we’d learned second-hand from an animal behaviorist – praising him when she walks through the room and he doesn’t chase her; squirting him with a water bottle when he’s considering going after her; isolating him in a room when he does chase or attack her. Until the flea problem began, Loki seemed to be getting it through his head that his predatory behavior toward the other cat was unacceptable. But once that began, all bets were off.

The day we washed and vacuumed and sprayed everything again, it was sunny outside and I’d gone out to pull some weeds when I heard the telltale yowls and screams of a catfight. I ran back in the house to find that Loki had cornered Robin behind the bed in the spare room and was going at her singlemindedly. She managed to get away; he chased her. I had to throw a book at him to distract his attention enough to get him away from her and I shut him in the laundry room. She seemed rattled as usual but we didn’t notice anything amiss until the next day when she hissed and cried anytime she was picked up, and started obsessively licking a spot on her side. Of course, it was a Sunday, so no vets were open and we decided we’d watch it to see if it abscessed because we didn’t want to have to bring her in for another expensive trip to the vet if we could help it. We went online and ordered a plug-in Feliway diffuser to see if that would help with the aggression, thinking at the very least it couldn’t hurt.

Days passed, and her sore spot, a tooth puncture, didn’t seem to bother her anymore. But it developed a lump, so we knew she needed antibiotics. The vet scolded us for not bringing her in sooner, shaved the area, removed the scab, and flushed the abscess, telling us to keep an eye on it. That was on Thursday last week. By Sunday, the weird spot on her skin that we’d thought was just dark skin (she is, after all, a spotted/striped cat) opened up to be a large draining sore and of course, it being Sunday again, no vets were open. We called an emergency vet service in Santa Rosa asking for advice, and the lady told us to keep her from licking the spot using some sort of a cone collar. We put the cat in her carrier and drove her with us to Santa Rosa to keep her mind off the sore spot (instead, she protested the injustice of her confinement in the carrier and her transportation in the car) while we looked for a place that would sell us a cone. Instead, we found a donut-style inflatable collar at PetCo and when we got her home we put the thing on her.

She has never looked so pathetic.

Sunday night, after wobble-walking around and learning she couldn’t eat or drink out of her normal containers, Robin bravely emerged from her perch on the refrigerator to hang out with us on the couch. Loki was resting on the back of the couch behind us. When he saw her coming at him with that giant thing around her neck, he instantly attacked, and it was all we could do to get them apart as he chased her through the house. The poor thing couldn’t jump up to her normal safe places or protect or defend herself with that inflatable donut around her neck, and he managed to get a ton of fur off her.

He spent the night in the laundry room with his litter box and his food and water, while we cried and petted poor Robin in her donut and tried to figure out what to do next. We can’t let him keep attacking her (it’s not fair to her to have to always be afraid of being attacked) and we can’t stand the idea of giving up either of the cats (though honestly, we’re more likely to find a home for Robin if necessary; she’s sweet and loving toward people and she’s less than two years old. Loki is seven, great with people, obviously very aggressive and territorial toward other animals, and he’s already bitten a human once (me).) Sunday night was mostly sleepless, as pathetic donut Robin slept between us in the bed while I woke up every time she moved, afraid she’d be able to maneuver around the leaking donut (it had sprung a leak during the fight) and lick the open sore on her side.

Monday we brought her back in to the vet. They shaved more of the area, washed out the open sore, and gave us more antibiotics. And we talked to the vet about what we might do with Loki. He gave us a prescription for kitty antidepressants, saying that a couple of months on the pills might help change his brain chemistry so he’s less likely to see Robin as a threat or prey or something to be aggressive toward. And supposedly, they work best in conjunction with the Feliway diffuser. Meanwhile, during the time Robin’s open sore is healing and she’s wearing the donut collar, we’re going to keep them separated 24 hours a day like we always have when we’ve not been in the house. We’re trading off keeping her in the back of the house (with food/water/box and a bed and toys) while he’s in the main part of the house with us, and keeping him in the kitchen/laundry room (with food/water/box and a bed and tons of Kitty Show to watch) while she gets to have time with the humans. Maybe after she’s healed up and she’s had a full week on antibiotics, we can try heavily supervised time when both cats are in the same physical space. And by that time he’ll have been on the antidepressants for several days.

I don’t feel great about medicating Loki, not only because we’re messing with his brain chemistry (urgh) but because getting him to take a pill is not easy. And he has to take them every day. While he’s taking the antidepressants, we can’t be away for more than 24 hours because if we have a hard time pilling him, anybody he doesn’t know as well is going to have a BITCH of a time doing it. He bit me bad enough to give me nasty scars on my hand back in December during one of their fights, and I feel like approaching his mouth is just asking for trouble, but so far it’s gone OK as we’ve caught him sleeping and he’s not aware enough to put up that much of a protest. I’m hoping to find some pill pocket treats that might make things easier for giving him the daily pill, but that’s more money spent. And if giving him a pill every day for two months makes it so both cats can live in relative harmony without having to rehome one of them, it will be worth it.

A one sentence review, after viewing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Why did we need another Forrest Gump in which Brad Pitt reprised his character from Meet Joe Black?

Justifiable Homicide

*

One of the stipulations for getting to live in this big (mostly) empty house is that Dan and I agreed to help my mom out with some of the major projects that need to be accomplished to make the house sale- or rentable. Since we had no furniture, internet, or television for the first week+ we were here, we spent most of our time working on the first big project, which was to paint my sister’s old bedroom. Somehow, back in the early ’00s, my mom took leave of her senses and let my sister paint her bedroom red with black trim. The worst part is that the large built-in book case/desk units in the room were also black, which meant a lot of small fiddly painting, and because the room was mostly red and black, we knew that it wasn’t a matter of just a simple coat of paint.

Before…

We knew it was a big job, so we decided to consult an expert. A friend of mine worked for an independent paint store for many years, and knows more about paint and the paint business than anyone else I’ve ever met. I sent her an email describing the situation and asking for recommendations and advice, and she wrote me a novel in response that outlined all of our options and choices, with helpful commentary. The first thing we had to do when we got here was to check how many layers of paint were on the walls, since I knew there were at least three and maybe as many as 7 or 8, depending on how many times it had been painted since the last time it was stripped. (The house is pretty old, with at least 3 owners prior to my mom, so it was possible that we’d have lots and lots of old paint to deal with.) My friend had given me a plethora of options for paint stripping, so we were prepared to have the room closed off for many days while waiting for a stripper to do its job. When we did a bit of chipping away, however, we discovered some faux wood paneling on some of the walls covered with three layers of paint, so we knew stripping wouldn’t be necessary.

Giant ball of used tape!

The second thing we did was to go to the Ace Hardware in town, where my mom said was a list of all of the various paint colors she’d used in the house in the past 20-odd years she’s been here. We decided to use the same color on the walls in the bedroom as in the hallway and living room (“Powdery mist”, aka a light tan color) and all the trim in the same color (“linen”) as the trim in the whole rest of the house. My friend had told me that if we didn’t need to strip the paint, we would for sure need stain-blocking primer to help cover the black and red, and Ace was kind enough to tint it for us to match the color we’d eventually paint.

So once we’d bought the tape our friend recommended (“The green stuff is cheaper and if your project is going to last a week or less, don’t bother buying the blue stuff”) and taped everything off and put down plastic, we began by priming all the red walls and all the black trim. And then we started on the first black built-in. Only a few minutes into our project, it was clear that Laurel was going to have to die for her sins. Painting every surface of every cubbyhole in that built-in was absolute torture – we had to do it all by hand, sharing the same bucket of primer, Dan doing the above bits (and only getting a little bit on my head), me doing the below bits (and cursing at the tedium).

2 coats of primer on walls, one coat of primer on built-in

Trim primer’d, walls/built-ins painted

It was toward the end of the first coat of primer on the first built-in that we began to plot our revenge. And then we started on the second built-in, which has a desk and an underside that I had to lay on my back to reach, while primer dripped on my face, and the murderous fantasies began.

Walls painted, trim primer’d

We ended up doing two coats of primer on everything, to ensure we wouldn’t have to use a ton of (more expensive) paint, and then we did two coats of paint. So we painted each and every one of those built-ins over and over and over and by the last time, we had all kinds of elaborate torture situations dreamed up, and decided that my mom and the friend who helped her paint deserved horrible, horrible death as well. Finally, after working on it for several hours a day together, we finished the last touch-ups on the trim five days later.

After!

*Dan wrote the above poem using the fridge poetry. It really says everything that needs to be said about the sucketry of the paint project.

So how is Petra?

Monkey asked a few days ago how Petra was (in response to my “things I am thankful for” post, I believe, where I wrote “healthy pets”).

The thanks I was giving was for Loki being healthy. Petra is still sick, and while we have been treating her for a serious e.coli infection, which it’s possible it’s all she has (and if that is the case, she’ll have cheated death 3 times!), it’s not likely. She’s rallied a bit and put some weight back on now that we’ve been giving her lots of wet food and kitty treats. The past few days it’s been cold, and Petra never acts like she feels very good when it’s cold outside. She’s always been kind of standoffish in the winter; we think the cold makes her stump hurt. So it is difficult to tell how much of it is that and how much is that she doesn’t feel good because she’s sick.

We have been continuing to give her subcutaneous fluids and antibiotics and a potassium goop shot into her mouth via large syringe (which she Does Not Like), and recently added a 1/4 tablet of Pepcid AC to help keep her stomach feeling OK so she doesn’t puke up as much water. There has still been some troubling behavior, and she finishes the current round of antibiotics on Wednesday, so that’s when she’ll be going back in to the vet for a recheck.

There is a test that will tell us definitively whether or not Petra has cancer. It is very, very expensive and invasive and is something we just aren’t willing to put her through. Because if she does have it, all we’d do is continue what we are doing. And if she doesn’t, she’ll get better.

The in-between is really frustrating, though. Our holiday travel plans (which we hoped would include going out to California for Wombat’s birthday and staying through Christmas) are still on hold until we know more for sure. Neither of us wants to leave a very sick kitty, even with offers of assistance that have come from more than one place. If she doesn’t have much longer, we want her to be in her own space and stressed as little as possible, not upset that her humans are gone or being in someone else’s space.

I’m desperately homesick right now; we haven’t been to California since May (the longest I’ve ever gone since moving here) and I miss my family and our friends in California fiercely. I am going to be so, so incredibly sad if we can’t go for Christmas. And I feel guilty that I’m thinking about that rather than thinking about what is best for Petra. But damn, it’s really hard for me right now. Good thoughts appreciated. And for any of you reading this who might reasonably expect a knitted gift from me this year, know that Petra seems to be infusing them with extra love and attention. The past two days she’s been curled up in my knitting and it may never look the same.

Petra: likes and dislikes

Things Petra likes:
Dan

Sunny spots
Warm spots
Catnip
The water from a can of tuna
one particular brand/flavor of kitty treats
very small pieces of turkey bacon (sometimes)
being held
being held like a baby by Dan
throw rugs (for flopping upon)
being petted backwards
having her left ear scritched (she doesn’t have the left back leg, so she can’t scratch her left ear!)
licking plastic (mmmm, plastic)

sitting in unusually shaped containers
warm soft things, especially if they smell like Dan

playing in bags
playing in boxes
sitting on paper
string toys

snuggling with Loki
warm days
watching squirrels and birds on The Kitty Show (aka when the back door is open or when she climbs up in a window)

the blue chair
cushions
moths, mostly to meesh at, sometimes to hunt
reflections or flashlight or penlight on the wall

bathing Loki’s head for him
seeing what Dan is doing at the kitchen counter or sink (I hold her up for this)
sniffing flowers and greens
sniffing things in general
fresh water

drinking out of the glasses that the humans are using

the bird that lives at Dan’s parents’ house

Things Petra tolerates:
Me
being held like a baby by me
dancing around the kitchen with me
being bossed around by Loki

Things Petra Does Not Like:
Taking pills
being jabbed with a needle every day
Flying Kitty
cold weather
being sat upon by Loki
when Loki bites her stump
when her stump has phantom limb pain
the cat carrier
riding in the car, especially on the highway
when there are no rugs to flop on
loud barking doggies
sitting on laps (she seriously Will Not Do This unless she is scared shitless)
sitting on most furniture
being on our bed

Legacy, but not the good kind

Neck and back problems run in my family, so much so that my uncle became a chiropractor because of the pain he saw his mother (my grandmother) go through. My mom has had neck/back issues her entire adult life, and my sister had back problems starting in childhood. My first back/neck injury occurred when I was in high school, at a swim meet, somehow managing to mess things up during a flip turn. I saw a local chiro for months after that and was forced to wear my backpack on both shoulders (so uncool!) It acted up again during my first job in college, shelving library books, so much so that I was unable to get out of bed some days. Over the years, I’ve had twinges here and there, but then three years ago, I was in a car accident. A stupid kid rear-ended me at a stoplight. I got whiplash, work paid for me to see a doctor and a chiropractor for a while. I dutifully did all of the things the chiro told me to do to rehabilitate my neck and shoulder. Despite this, my neck has yet to heal fully and every so often it’ll suddenly get all stupid whiplashy again, which sucks because a) it hurts a lot, b) sometimes it resolves itself on its own but other times I have to go back to the chiro and pay for it my own self, and c) it keeps me from doing things I want to do. Like hike 14ers, which we have still yet to do this summer.

Our weekend had no plans, and turned out to be spectacularly uneventful because I couldn’t even comfortably go throw a frisbee around in the park. Sitting, standing, walking, and (especially lying down) hurt. Our biggest weekend accomplishments turned out to be going grocery shopping and walking to the Mayan theater to see 500 Days of Summer (which I really liked, at least enough to be thinking/talking about it the whole walk home). I spent Saturday in a small-to-medium amount of pain and Sunday in a pretty serious amount of pain, which was alleviated to some extent by walking in the sun to and from the movie.

But while it was a nice long walk, it wasn’t nearly enough. We started out the summer taking hikes every weekend, but recently it seems as though there is always something else to do or something (like my stupid neck) getting in the way of our adventures. I spent all last week traveling around the state and was only reminded further how many awesome things there are to do here, especially this time of year. I feel sluggish and some amount of despair, because not only does my neck hurt but that means I can’t do my normal routine, let alone tackle a crazy weekend hike. It’s been far too long since I played with my camera or posted any photos.

I get to see the chiropractor tomorrow. I hope one visit takes care of the current problem and that next weekend’s adventure is a go.

Where I was

Last week, we had some friends over for dinner on Wednesday night who are moving from Colorado to California, and they brought their 2.5 year-old son who spent most of the evening chasing the kitties around, declaring “Kitty!” as the kitties ran away, confused about this small monster who smelled like and resembled a human but was surely way too small to be one. He liked the magnetic letters on our fridge and insisted on having a drink that looked just like the mojitos the adults were drinking, which I served him in the only plastic cup we have, which is covered in horse holograms from Churchill Downs in Louisville.

We enjoyed dinner, especially spending time with our friends, and bemused at their reactions to and apologies for their son’s behavior; he was actually very well-behaved and acted like I would expect a two-year-old to act, but I think since they knew we aren’t around little kids very much that it might be kind of weird for us. Luckily we like them and we like him and all went very well.

The next day, Scarlett came back to town in order to look for an apartment and get some last-minute things settled for her upcoming move to Denver for grad school. Her boyfriend joined her this time, and we spent the weekend showing them around and cheering when Scarlett found just the right place and signed the lease (only half a block from our place!) and eating pub food and ice cream. In the middle of their visit, I had to fly to Durango for work (flew down Sunday night, flew back Monday after a day-long training). The trip to Durango was short and relatively uneventful: I had breakfast at(and bought coffee beans for Dan from) Carver’s; I had dinner at a fantastic Himalayan (Indian/Nepali/Tibetan) restaurant. I stayed in the Strater Hotel though my room didn’t resemble a brothel but rather perhaps the vomit of a wedding cake. Our training was over in plenty of time for our afternoon flight, but something kept our plane overly long in Denver and it was really hot, so despite the plane being not even close to full there were some sort of weight restriction issues that I didn’t fully understand and we were told that five adults had to volunteer to take a bump to the next flight or the plane couldn’t take off. Since I live in Denver, I volunteered. I got a $200 flight voucher and got to sit in the airport for an extra few hours, which was OK once I got the free wireless to work. I got home a lot later than expected and didn’t get to spend as much time with Scar and Jason as I would have liked, but that evening we played a game Dan got for graduation called Zauber Cocktail which was super fun, and we all went to bed late, and I called in late for work on Tuesday.

Tuesday evening Dan drove up to Glenwood Springs with me for my Wednesday training, and we had more pub food and stayed at the Hotel Colorado, which (as I’ve mentioned before) is supposed to be haunted, but the only unusual thing we noticed was the lack of cool air in our room. Man, was it hot. We got up early so we could have breakfast at the place we like and on the way back up to our fourth floor room my neck suddenly took a giant crap, right before I had to start my training. After that was over, we drove back and got home at a reasonable hour, but my neck was still killing me and remains so.

I have one more training to do, which is tomorrow in Denver. The upside is that no travel is required. The downside is that there will be more than 60 people there. I’m used to training groups of 15-30, so 60+ is going to be a challenge. Wish me luck, internet.

Yet another tale of camera woe, plus, what we did in California

First, a short tale of woe: I lost another camera. It fell out of my backpack as I was walking to work last Thursday. I’d had it in the small pocket at the bottom, where my phone charger also was, from traveling (normally it would have been in a larger pocket). I pulled out the charger on Wednesday night and forgot to zip the pocket back up, and completely forgot the camera was in there as I walked to work on Thursday. In fact, I didn’t notice until noon when I planned to upload my photos from the trip and blog about them.

Dan looked everywhere at home. It wasn’t there. All the photos I took in California, plus the camera itself: gone again. I put up signs on Thursday afternoon along my route back home. I went into or called everyplace that I thought someone might have taken the camera to (the Capitol, a middle school) if they found it outside. On Friday I called pawn shops and filed a police report. No dice.

So once again we went on a trip and I took a whole bunch of amazing photos that are now gone forever. Also, I went online to find another camera (I wanted the same one, a Canon Powershot A720 IS, because I really liked it). When I bought it in March of 08 it was about $200. Now, to buy the same camera new, it’s over $400! Ridiculous! Even the slightly used/refurbished models were over $200 on most sites. So I looked on Ebay and found the camera and bid on it and won! My first ever ebay auction, and I was the winner! I should be getting the camera by some time next week (I hope).

Meanwhile, I don’t think I’m a talented-enough storyteller to amuse the 4 readers of this blog with tales of our California trip. I will say that it was the most relaxed trip we’d had to the Golden State since sometime in 2006. There were no parties we had to plan, no weddings to plan or attend, no graduations. I got to eat the baby as much as I wanted, and watched what may be the best movie ever made about reform school girls with Leah and Simon. We became rock gods via Guitar Hero World Tour (Me: singing, drums. Dan: guitar) with the Irish German. We attended a 30th birthday party at a great pub in Berkeley. We got to see lots of friends and family members and spent hours lazing outside at another great pub. We ate greasy burgers/burger-like items, Ethiopian food, gelato, noodles, and microwave burritos. We experienced the newly-refurbished and -reopened Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, and saw everything but the planetarium. My knee mostly behaved. I learned I am terrible at darts. And we got to hang out with my friend Patient Zero Matt from the old message board, which was totally awesome because we hadn’t seen each other in five years! The best part was when the three of us went to (yet another) pub to meet up with Scarlett at the end of an evening, and it turned out Scarlett and her boyfriend Jason knew Matt from attending the wedding of some mutual friends. Craziness, and small world.

I can recreate some of the shots I took some other time when we’re in California (mostly they were of the UC Berkeley campus and the new Academy of Sciences), but it’s just not the same thing. I took some great ones. I hope someone, somewhere, gets enjoyment out of them.

Two steps forward, one step back

I’ve been enjoying this whole “playing on a softball team” experience, as it’s something I’ve never really done before. I did ballet as a child and never participated in any team sports (other than what I was required to do in PE). In high school, I was on a summer community swim team, but swimming is far more of an individual sport than a team sport. I’ve never been a part of team cameraderie, worn a team shirt, or had the opportunity to care how other people did in a physical activity. But the practices and the games we’ve had thus far (at least, the 2 I’ve been able to attend, having been sick last week) have been a lot of fun.

Someone told me recently that adult softball is the sport most likely to cause injury. Yesterday was one of those days where I felt like a newspaper headline come to life. First, a teammate caught a ball with his hand rather than his glove, and the stitching on the ball sliced open the skin between two fingers. He was one of our best players, so it was a real injury to the team. Then, I hit a grounder toward first, ended up avoiding the first baseman and got to first base safely, only to somehow end up doing a partial split and messing up my knee.

At first I was kind of in shock. I couldn’t get up. My knee wouldn’t move. And then it started hurting. I’ve never had any knee injuries before (hips, ankles, neck, shoulder, back, and calf, but no knee) so I wasn’t sure what I was feeling or what I had done. I iced it until Dan came to pick me up using the bag of ice from the other team’s cooler, sitting in a daze, trying to cheer on my team and razz the other team while trying not to think of exactly what a bad knee injury would mean. I’m still getting over a bad cold, have only been to the gym once in the last ten days, my clothes still aren’t fitting right and I’m starting to feel depressed about it. And then I go and hurt my knee.

We went home and I put my leg up on the couch, took some aleve and iced my knee some more. It started taking a little more weight so I had hope that when I woke up this morning it would be fine. Unfortunately, that is not the case. It’s not as painful as yesterday and not swollen, so those are good things. I have it wrapped under my pants and I can walk slowly and with a limp. It hurts the most when I straighten it and put weight on or when I bend it too far. It crunches a little. I’m going to take it easy today, put it up when I get home, and hope for the best. I gotta say, I’m a little tired of sustaining injuries to my limbs prior to trips. We’re headed to California this weekend to attend a friend’s birthday party and hang out with our friends and our internet nephew, Wombat. Keep your fingers crossed that I’ll be feeling OK to walk on it normally by Saturday.