Guilty as Charged

It's always something. - Gilda Radner

Guilty, guilty, guilty.  Yes, I admit it - I'm guilty!

I feel guilty just logging on and writing this post!  I'm overwhelmed with GUILT.

Forgive me, friends, for I have sinned.  It has been 5 1/2 months since my last blog post.

What can I say?  Life happens.

Just a couple of weeks after my last post, my dad had a car accident and shattered his right femur.  The Sister and I spent a week at the hospital, hunted down the wrecker service that towed his big ol' Caddy away from the scene, emptied the car of its contents (please consider the fact that the parental unit is a terrible pack rat, and the Coupe DeVille is a boat of a car, and it was FULL of STUFF), took care of medical and auto insurance issues, and arranged for his transfer to the physical rehab facility where he lives.

That was just the first week.

Needless to say, my training for the Monumental Half Marathon, which had been going GREAT, fell completely to pieces.  I'd decided to try anyway, but the morning of the race, it rained, and I decided it was A Sign From God to stay home, so I did.

While he was in rehab, I visited often, checked his mail, wrote checks for his bills, deposited his checks, brought his whatever he wanted from his apartment, and attended his doctor appointments and care conferences with him.

When the rehab people started making noises that it was time he move back into his apartment, The Sister and I went into overdrive.  We tackled the piles of mail and magazines Dad had stacked on every flat surface.  We moved Mom's old bed out of the second bedroom in the apartment and had The Husbands take it back to Dad's house.  We moved some of the remaining furniture around to give him room to maneuver with a wheelchair, and made the second bedroom into an office/music room.  It's amazing how much room we gained by just getting the bed out of there.

Two days before Christmas, we moved him back into his apartment.  We had to tweak the furniture arrangement a bit to suit him, but thankfully, he mostly approved of what we had done.  After the surgeon approved his transition to a power chair, he was a much happier camper, since he was more mobile.  But he wanted to GO places, DO things, and SEE people!  So I researched public transportation options for him so he could attend church and his Masonic stuff.

We had sort of achieved a "new normal," so I started training for the 500 Festival Mini Marathon.  So, of course, I got good and sick for nearly a month.

I'm finally back to training, and doing okay with it, but I've been staying inside on the treadmill.  Can you say "BORING?"  I knew you could.  The TV and DVD player are my new bestest running buds.

Dad's actually doing VERY well, and he's doing a lot of the things he like to do, but he's getting antsy, and wants to DRIVE.  He wanted us to bring the other car down to the apartment "just in case" the surgeon says he can drive after his next appointment in a couple of weeks.  There has been significant bone growth since the accident and surgery, but he's still not allowed to put any weight on that leg.  I doubt the surgeon will allow him to drive before he can do weight bearing exercises, but I guess we'll see what we see when we see it!

Big Shoes to Fill

 Well, actually I don't have the big shoes yet, but I do have big feet to fill them with!

After my last long run, I came to an uncomfortable realization - my shoes weren't comfortable.  They seemed comfortable - plenty cushioned, not too wide, and all that - but the longest toe on my right foot was definitely NOT happy.

I have that wonderful feature (or is it a FEET-ure?) called Morton's toe.  There's nothing wrong with that; all it means is that my big toes aren't my longest toes, but rather their immediate neighbors are.  Actually, everyone in the house has the same feet-ure, except the cats, of course, including That Man, and he's not even a blood relative!

Anyway, the end of my poor longest right toe was sore all day after that fateful long run.  It's slightly numb, even now.  It's entirely possible the nail will eventually turn black and fall off.

Sexy.  I know.

So I've concluded that once again, my feet have grown.

This is not fair.  I'm too OLD to outgrow my shoes!  And I already have big feet.  Not wide, but LONG.  I thought I had big feet when I wore size 8 1/2 in my twenties - larger than all my friends' shoes.  Then in my thirties, after delivering The Boy, I was forced to replace every pair of shoes I owned with size 10s. In my forties, for no apparent reason, after losing 30 pounds, I started needing size 11s.

Today I had the fun of trying to find size 11 1/2 running shoes.  Most stop at 11, after skipping over 10 1/2.  A few come in 12s, but that's just too long.  Too much slop leads to blisters.  Been there, done that, got several t-shirts thankyouverymuch.

However, I'm in luck!  The shoes I've been buying do indeed come in 11 1/2, but not the deeply discounted ones from last year, oh, no!  Only the newest version (which costs $60 more than the relatively cheapoid ones from last year) or last year's Special Order version (which costs "only" $50 more than my cheapies).

Ouch.

I bit the bullet and ordered new shoes.  It made my hair hurt to contemplate it.  Particularly because I had TWO PAIRS OF BRAND NEW RUNNING SHOES IN THE CLOSET, ON THE SHELF, IN THE BOX.

Thank goodness for Road Runner Sports.  They have a 90-day love 'em or return 'em guarantee.  I had bought both pairs less than 90 days ago, so they are packed and ready to ship back home to meet their maker!

I have a message for my feet, though:

Stop. 

Growing. 

NOW!

Connections and Coincidences... Hmmmm...

“Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.”
― Albert Einstein, The World as I See It

“Coincidences mean you're on the right path.”
― Simon Van Booy, Love Begins in Winter: Five Stories

“We know that attention acts as a lightning rod. Merely by concentrating on something one causes endless analogies to collect around it, even penetrate the boundaries of the subject itself: an experience that we call coincidence, serendipity...”
― Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, a character in the TV show, NCIS, has 51 rules to live by.  Rule #39 is "There is no such thing as coincidence."  Sometimes I wonder.

This past couple of weeks, I've experienced some seemingly random coincidences.

About two weeks ago, I got together with some friends for lunch, and brought some gazpacho for everyone to sample.  I had earlier told them I had made some, and they were intrigued by the idea of a cold soup.  So the next time we gathered, I brought some along so they could try it.

I spent the following weekend at McCormick's Creek State Park in Spencer, Indiana.  Our church choir had a retreat there, and we went through all the music planned through the end of December.  I went a day early so I could hike the trails.  I got on my smart phone and looked up restaurants in the area for some ideas.  One place that popped up over and over was the FARMbloomington restaurant, a "farm-to-fork" place - local meats, local, seasonal produce, all freshly prepared by chef Daniel Orr.  Interesting, but I didn't want to drive the fifteen miles to Bloomington through the thunderstorm then raging outside.  So, I decided to take the lazy way out and eat right there at the Canyon Inn.

That Sunday, I went to the Indiana State Fair to visit a friend working the food demo stage.  When the next show began, I decided to see what was on offer.  The presenter was chef Daniel Orr.  He was demonstrating two soups.  One of them was gazpacho.

Early last week, I started listening to an audiobook, Prague Winter, by Madeleine Albright.  In it, she talks about Czech president Vaclav Havel and the "Velvet Revolution" of the late 1980s.  I'm also reading an e-book, The Compromise Trap, by Elizabeth Doty.  In it, she talks about Havel and the Velvet Revolution.

Earlier this summer, That Man observed that we don't see many opossums any more.  I agreed.  I hadn't even seen one at the side of the road, playing possum or otherwise.

Dad's birthday was a couple of weeks ago, and I gave him one of my typical obnoxious (to me, hilarious) birthday cards, which featured a photograph of a man holding a huge, old, ratty-looking possum by the scruff of the neck.  ("You're HOW old?  ImPOSSUMble!"  Thank you, Hallmark!)

(Do possums have a scruff?)

This week, we saw a possum cleaning up the spilled sunflower seeds under the bird feeders.

Gretchen Rubin, the author of The Happiness Project, posted a question on FaceBook related to the Mars exploration by the rover Curiosity - what would you name a new rover?  I thought a bit, and left a comment - "Hitchhiker."

A couple of days later, I received a quotation via text message on my phone - "Time is an illusion.  Lunchtime doubly so." - Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

This happens from time to time, but I don't remember ever having so many linkages piled into such a short timeframe.  Or is it not such an oddity, but I've just been open to seeing the connections?

What "coincidences" have you noticed lately?  Do you believe in coincidence?

I'm going to have to think about this!

It's True Confession Time!

I have a confession.

The Girl came home this past weekend to go racing with That Man.  She stayed Thursday night and Saturday night, and then headed back north to Lafayette. 

I was going to put clean sheets on her bed, but she’s only slept on them twice.  So, I threw back the covers Wednesday night, sprayed everything with Febreeze, and pulled all the sheets tight!  

Cheater! 

I felt guilty about that.  WHY???  What the heck did I do that was so terribly WRONG?

I've been cogitating on it, and it hit me that my mom would have changed the sheets right away, and, of course, I have to live up to her housekeeping standards.  Why THIS one?  What about all the others I flout all the time?  But it's a Mom rule.  Change the guest bed sheets every time.

It was just so WEIRD.  There was this flood of guilt...for all of 2 minutes, and then I felt FREE OF THE EXPECTATIONS OF OTHER PEOPLE! 

I’ll wash them this week since she’s slept on them two more times. 

Really I will. 

Right. 

This week.

(And Now She Knows - HA!)