The current bane of my existance...

 

On May 21, I was walking to Walgreens to get pistachios for my lunch salad & tripped on bowed sidewalk & fell on my wrist.  I didn't make it to Walgreens but did manage to make it back home & then drove myself to a neigborhood doc in a box urgent care center.  They took xrays & the doctor came in & said "Yep, it's cracked but it will heal on it's own".   They treated my bloody & skinned knees & gave me the horrible monstrosity above.  And he told me to see a orthopedic guy.  But me, being cheap me, figured if it was supposed to heal on it's own, why spend the money?

So about 3 weeks later I had a regular appointment with my regular doctor & I showed her the xray info to see if she could tell me where the break was so I could monitor the pain.  Frankly, she flipped out, said she was not an orthopedic person & sent me for another xray  & sent me to the orthopedic guy in her office.  When I saw him, he told me where the break was & that if I'd seen him immediately he would have done surgery.  Not exactly the blow off diagnosis I got from the first doctor.   But he also said it was healing well & should be fine & prescribed hand therapy.  

The bad news about the physical therapy was the 2 hand specialists were headed to vacation for the next 2 weeks. I had one appointment & PT Mack gave me some water therapy exercises & told me to stretch it.  Then we have another appointment next week.   The therapy seems to be working & things are definitely better but while I think the break is healed, the other side of my arm hurts with soft tissue damage. And I"ve been faithful with the brace although I have it off now.  I'm under the impression that moving the hand is better than it just being stable when the break is all but healed.  And I'm not using muscles anywhere near the break typing here.  But I'm mostly wearing the brace & I can't wait til the doctor says it's all healed & I can toss it.

Update: Tuesday, July 5.  Ding dong the brace is gone!

Rain. I barely recognized it!!

 

It been months since we had any significant rain.  Maybe 3 storms in the past 5 months?  It's horribly sad.  I'm not a farmerr but I hope it's not too late to plant.  It's not good, that's for sure.  Today's rain came out of nowhere.  The news guy at lunch said maybe but  yeah, right.  He's said that before.  But til it's falling from the sky I don't believe it.

It was delightful.

I was thinking as I watched water flow down the street...as it's designed, to go toward the place where it heads to a playa lake.  It's a city thing.

I grew up in the country, mostly.  We lived in town for a little while when I was growing up but even there was dirt roads.  I used to love watching the water either sit on top of the ground, waiting to soak in or if there was a lot of rain, it woud flow down as the ground went.  Sometimes it would even bring out little frogs everywhere!  And in the country, the smell was fresh & clean but sometimes in the city it smells more like wet dirt & grit.

It's gone already & God only knows when we'll see it again.  But I was happy because I was about to go water my tomatoes & peppers & God said, "I've got you!".  

Did I mention we had rain today?

Black Cake **Book Review**

 This book is another recommendation of the book blog on Instagram & another that I read sight unseen...no clue what it was about before I started it.  It got good reviews.  And it's kind of fun to be surprised.  But after  the last 2, I'm thinking I might need to at least read the back of the book. 

The book starts with teenagers Covey & Gibbs in an unnamed Carribean island.  There is a lot of focus on swimming & surfing & being teens but as the book goes on it's clear it's filler.  After Gibbs goes to London to college, Covey's no accound dad sells her to marry a gangster to settle debts.  Luckily she escapes after the groom drops dead at the wedding.  She runs to London to find Gibbs.  Somehow they don't reconnect til years later. But they have to live life in secret because someone from their small island might recognize them in London, a city of 7.8 people in 1965 & we know that happens all the time.

Later they end up in California under assumed names & lead a relatively happy life with 2 selfish, self centered children.  After the death of both parents, the truth comes out and there is an older sister that even dad did not know about.  And apparently I'm wrong...after hiring a investigator to research the baby she was forced to give up to adoption by the English government, all it took was one look at a picture on the internet & all the sister mysteries were solved.  Hell, it works on Maury!!  At the end, they all ate black cake, full of fruit & booze, the continuity of the book.

I've become more convinced that writing a book must be a joint of effort of a writer who has a good idea & an editor making them add stuff so the book fits in a mold.  Just add 125 more pages!!  Filler, filler, filler.  It doesn't matter if adds to the story.  It doesn't matter if it makes the reader want to pull her hair out because they've come this far & want to see what happens at the end.  Luckily here, it was easy to skim to the end.  And we did find out who the murderer was. 

Oh, and lets add a little diversity of racial profiling in the last quarter of the book because where does it go if it's not woke?

Sorry, Charmaine Wilkerson.  You tell a good story.  I hope you get to a place in your career where you don't have to pad your book because it was walking on it's own legs, til it wasn't. 

Lubbock Matadors Game

 

Yes America, it's true.  I went to a soccer game. 

Lubbock has a professional team called the Lubbock Matadors. I don't necessarily understand soccer.  I know the point of the game is to get the ball  into the goal.  There is lots of running.  The clock goes up instead of down.  I've seen parts of World Cup matches where no one tries to score because scoring would put them in a different bracket & that is a mentality I don't get.  Who doesn't try to win?  😱  But it was a beautiful night in Lubbock & I decided to go.  I'd looked before & thought the tickets were really high but now I see that I was looking at the season ticket rate.  The game waas only $10.   I met a person I'd met from Twitter before out there & sat with her & her daughter.  And as a competitive person I always like a good game even if I don't get the rules.  The final score was 1-1.

Matadors (picture from team Twitter )

The team has some ardent fans & I love seeing it.  They have a group called the Mozos who march in before the game with flags & drums & they have a guy with a bullhorn who leads chants through the games. 

Mozos & strangers all on theiir phones

The team has one more game left & I'm planning on going.  It was fun!

Before the game they have a tailgate alley spot & Lubbock Police had fancy Camaro cars with their lights on.  I got to sit inside (on my own volition) & ask questions about the functions of the computer in the car.  Officer Hernandez, a spring chicken who smelled good, would not let me drive.  😏

Talk, Talk, Talk

I have many, many faults & one of those is I am a talker.  Because I live alone & have no people left, I go days & days without a conversation with anyone, not even strangers. So when I am around people sometimes I have too much to say.  I even know when I'm doing it & sometimes can't stop it but to be fair I try to temper it.

Today, I was leaving Costco & a lady had a cute service dog & I commented on how cute he was.  He was a harrier, a dog type I've never heard of.  She was telling me about him & how good he was on the ranch.  Turns out she & husband live down near Spur & we talked about that for a few minutes.  And then we went our separate ways.  And those 10 minutes made me happy.

I had also gone today for a haircut & it's always a short time because mostly we just get my bangs cut.  And then I went to the nail shop for an eyebrow wax.  As I was waiting a customer was having a dialogue with the person doing her toes the entire time I was there.  The toe tech also does eyebrows so I'm somewhat familiar with her & I know she is Chinese & her English is pretty good but even then still a little limited.  I'm pretty sure she was not understanding everything the woman was saying but she nodded alot.   And I thought then...these days there are a lot of people who need someone to talk to.  Nothing deep & soul spilling...just someone to listen to them--us--for a little while. 

The Twitter quote at the top is very true too.  Loneliness is hard.

This Time Tomorrow *Book*

I found this book on an Instagram blog called 'LoneStar Reads'.  You can tell by my book list post that I tend to get in a rut & I'm always looking for new reads.  My friend Linda recommended this blog.

The book is called 'This Time Tomorrow' & I did someting I'm not sure I've ever done...I read with no info.  I didn't read the virtual back of the book.  I had not read a review.  I had absolutely no idea what this book was about.

This book is about Alice Stern, an about to be 40 school administrator, single,New Yorker who is dealing with her dad's illness. Alice grew up with a single dad who wrote stories in the past about boys who time traveled.

For the first half of the book. this was the gentlest read I can remember in a long time, even if I still didn't know where we were heading with this book.  Then we hit Alice's 40th birthday.  She heads to her dad's house after a drunken evening & can't get in the house so she ends up sleeping in an old guard house which turns out to be a portal for time travel.  Alice wakes up to celebrate her 16th birthday with her healthy dad & her high school friends.  She takes the time to make some changes...she goes after the boy she always wanted.  She tries to change some of her dad's habits to try to make his health better.  But the spell only lasts one day.  We are good to here.

But then Alice tells her dad about the time travel & he's thrilled because he's done it too.  And there are long discussions with his cronies about the situation that are only confusing &  way too long.  Basically, Alice ends up going back & forth from 40 to 16 with different scenarios of what happens to her life.  It's all very confusing.  And she never seems to be in a happy place. 

Finally, at the end she lets her poor ailing dad rest & stays at 40 years old, without the boy she always wanted.  Truthfully, I'm not 100% where her life is headed & was too confused & indifferent to go back & read it again.  

Time travel seems to be a very popular topic right now, probably thanks to the popularity of  Diana Gabaldon  & her Outlander series. DG has done this very well.  Not everyone has that talent.  Sometimes the story is just confusing.

But the first half was a very gentle read.