The Case of the Extra Foot Bone

My husband began having problems with his left foot during the summer after mowing the center of the long driveway. He attributed the pain to wearing the wrong shoes, and eventually the problem seemed to heal itself.

Last Thursday he was "wrestling" a big, heavy tractor tire. I could see him through the kitchen window and went out to yell at him, "Knock it off! You're going to hurt yourself!" I was right, of course. A few hours later his foot was red and swollen, and he could barely stand on it. On Friday he went to work on crutches, and I called my favorite orthopaedic surgeon, Dr. Heninger for an appointment.

Before we went in yesterday (on our federal holiday off work), I told my husband, "I can tell you this has something to do with your posterior tibial tendon--the old PTT." Well, guess what...I was correct. The diagnosis after x-ray is that while he was blessed with an extra bone in his foot where the PTT attaches, his very strong PTT tore a piece right off the extra bone! Now he's scheduled for surgery on the 22nd. While it's not ideal for him to be having surgery while I'm away from home, there were two considerations that weighed in favor of plowing on: 1) we've already met our deductible for this year (due to my own surgery and physical therapy expenses) and 2) we're going to Pennsylvania for Christmas and Paw Paw needs to be healed before wrestling with the grandkids.

We've said it before and we'll say it again: Getting old is not for sissies, even if you do have extra bones.

Sisters Retreat II, or Gatlinburg Gala

My three sisters and only sister-in-law, who ironically is the only one of us bearing the family name, met for our second annual retreat September 9 in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Also in attendance was a good friend who is unofficially adopted into the otherwise exclusive group.

Our accommodations were outstanding! Sometimes when you book lodging based on internet information, what you get is not necessarily even similar to what you saw in the images online. This time the photos were an honest portrayal of the article. We were delighted and very comfortable in our huge cabin ("lodge" seems more appropriate). Because this was post-vacation season (two days after Labor Day), we had virtually no neighbors. A group of "bikers" arrived on Friday, but our observations of them were that they were dentists or CPA's. Sister 3 (by birth order) could tell that by the way they parked their Harleys.

We spent our days roaming through the shops in Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and Sevierville (Dolly Parton country), looking at pottery and other assorted craft items. There was a classic car show going on, so it took nearly as long to drive through these small towns as it did to travel from Indianapolis to Gatlinburg, a 400+ mile trip. One afternoon we hit the outlet mall. In the evenings, we mostly ate and sat around on the deck overlooking the magnificent Smoky Mountains. A good time was had by all, even though Sister 3's strawberry rhubarb preserves were confiscated by the TSA people at BWI Airport when she tried to carry them on in her bag back to Chicago. I managed to arrive home with my pumpkin butter rolled up in a pair of jeans inside my checked luggage.

Now, where will we be in 2010 for Sisters Retreat III? While we discussed the options, no decision has been made. Bar Harbor, Maine?

Murder in the Kitchen

On Friday morning before Bryan left for work, he murdered an intruder in our kitchen.

For several days I found little clues (tiny, tapered, and black) on my counter tops (yuck!) left by the culprit. When you live on the frontier, you can expect wildlife of all kinds. Fortunately, most do not actually come into your house.

We put out some poison, a green cylinder of stuff that reminds me of dried out Play Dough. During the night I heard a racket, and discovered the next morning that the poison was missing.

While I was putting away clean dishes, I opened the door of the cabinet above the range. Much to my surprise, there was a furry little critter in a large glass mixing bowl, staring at me. If he'd been dressed in a chef's hat, I may have mistaken him for Ratatouli.

"Come quick!" I called to Bryan. I grabbed a round baking sheet and slapped it on top of the bowl, although I think at this point the prisoner was already trapped.

I won't go into detail about the execution, but it involved water. Considering the other alternatives, such as tossing the prisoner to the cat, I feel this was a humane method of disposal. I wonder if he was a relative of the one that chewed through our electric line to the pump.

Good-Bye, Michael

There will probably be more Michael Jackson music played today throughout the world than any other day in history. He left a large legacy and many memories for all of us. When I taught seventh grade English in a rural Indiana school in 1972, about half the girls in my class had crushes on Donny Osmond, and the other half on Michael Jackson. Both young entertainers were 14 that year.

When "Thriller" came out, we rented the video and shared it with Bryan's dad and mom. That proved to be a mistake; they thought it was "lewd". We thought it was remarkable.

When I remember Michael Jackson, I see him as he looked before the surgeries and the strange behavior that defined him in the later parts of his mysterious, complicated life. I focus on that wonderful voice and the moon walk, and the good that Michael Jackson did in the world, as I hope the Lord will do in my case when I leave this earthly life.

Yet More on the "Water Issue"

On the 9th day without water, I thought things were resolved. However, as Murphy's Law predicts, the solution was not as swift and easy as we'd anticipated. Eventually, after about six visits from the Pump Man and the enlistment of two Electrician$, the diagnosis was a break in the power supply. That may not sound so serious, but our well is a thousand feet from our house. And, the electric line is buried 3-4 feet in the ground. Were we faced with digging up the entire line to find the problem?

Fortunately, one of the Electrician$ had an expensive (just how expensive, we'll learn, I'm sure) device that, when stuck into the ground, detected EXACTLY where the line was leaking juice. When Bryan got home from work on Thursday afternoon, he used the front loader on his tractor to expose the wire. Friday morning the Electrician returned, spliced the line (that appeared to have been gnawed by a rodent--no doubt executed on the spot and justly so), and the Pump Man finished installing the new pump.

On the 19th day we had water, and it was good.

Big Yellow Taxi

Nine days ago, on May 31, 2009, water ceased to flow at our house. Oh, the canal water still surges past the front of our property and under the bridge, but there's no merry sound of water being sucked down the drain or the toilet flushing. True enough, Bryan had been watering the garden regularly, but we have two 1500 gallon reservoirs that should not have gone dry. Our well was commissioned only about three and a half years ago, and we are not in a drought.

On Saturday the well digger who dug our well came. The diagnosis was that the pump at the well head was not operating. Of course, since we didn't opt for the "extended 5-year warranty" at the time we purchased the pump, our warranty was for only three years--not three years, five months, and seventeen days. (The product information claims that it is not uncommon for this particular pump to work for twenty years. Yeah, right.) Today, at a cost to us of only $1385, the well man is installing a new pump.

Having taken sponge baths for days (and even more days for Bryan since he didn't have the privilege of escaping to a luxury hotel in Kansas City for a week), making a 30-mile round trip to a hot springs resort to take a real shower, spending hours in the laundry mat doing five loads of clothes, filling 2-liter soda bottles and plastic milk jugs with water from work and church to haul home, and flushing the johns with water from 5-gallon buckets hoisted out of the canal, I don't think I'd mind spending $5,000 to see water come out of my kitchen sink faucet!

So, in the words of Joni Mitchell: Don't it always seem to go--you don't know what you got 'til it's gone. Amen to that.

Kansas City! Kansas City, here I come....

It's been awhile since I took a business trip--to Atlanta last fall. Next week I'll be in Kansas City, MO, traveling on Monday and returning home on Friday. One of my good friends from work will be on the same trip, so I'm looking forward to palling around with her in the evenings. I think we're booked on the same flights, too. This is an instructional 3-day session they call "Train the Trainer." When I get back to work the following week, I'll be responsible for passing along all the tidbits of knowledge I glean during the class in Kansas City to a number of others who will teach our professional CPE in August. Based on the trickle down theory, I'd better pay attention next week.

Preparing for a trip entails a little more for me than just making sure I have clean underwear and packing my bag. I can't remember much about what it was like to go on a business trip when I had five kids at home, but the amount of preparation that is required to leave a husband is considerable. For one thing, there is a requirement that he take a dessert to work each and every day as a substitute for lunch. I'm not talking about some Little Debbie snack cakes, mind you. We're talking HOMEMADE. He likes variety, too, so that means at least two different desserts so he can alternate. Recently his group had a carry-in and he advised me that, since I have a "reputation to uphold", I'd better come up with something that measured up to their expectations. Once when I was too busy to make something and sent some left-over store-bought Cub Scout treats, he reported that everyone wanted to know what horrible thing he'd done to be in the dog house.