Good Times, Bad Times

This entry is dedicated to Jill, the only person silly enough to come here to read. Silly and adventurous: she is Mexico City at the moment, having just traveled through Copper Canyon, a place I’ve always wanted to see.

Good Time #1: I had an actual Nice Day on Saturday: a lazy morning with Teej & R at the Rancho drinking tons of coffee, then kayaking at a lake above Nevada City. Since I haven’t yet asked their permission to put their pictures here, I’ll fuzz out their faces.

Good Time #2: Next, my Dad’s old low-slung Buick Roadmaster, carefully piloted, managed to climb up the washed-out road and on to the university where I got to see Lulu. I told her I’d take her to dinner if she picked the place. I am naí¯ve; it didn’t even cross my mind that we’d soon be seated in the fanciest restaurant in town. I did my usual fancy-restaurant thing of dropping forks, choking on food and crashing glasses together (unintentional) and flicking water across the table using Granddad’s famous teaspoon trick (intentional). We hung out for a while in her dorm room afterward, and hammed it up for the camera.

“Why do they call it ‘Dairy Drive’?”

Good Time #3: In West Virginia Mamma Ginna is turning 94 in ten days. I had fun making her birthday card:

Bad Time #1: High stress on work projects: three of them needing to be at an advanced state of completion before I leave for Nepal, but I don’t yet have all the resources to do so, despite the Herculean efforts of some. I’ve promised that we’ll make the deadlines — harder through my mood of gloom and frustration — and I will keep my word.

Bad Time #2: I’ve been spending an unprecedented number of hours with doctors and health practitioners of various stripes, primarily trying to get tuned up for my trip to Nepal. It’s not working.

Here’s a story called The Tale of the Stupid Foot:

Once upon a time an old girl had messed up her foot. “Messed-up foot” seemed, sometimes, to be her middle name. Her friend suggested that she visit a new-age healer dude. “What the hell,” she thought. “I have nothing to lose.” Across the bridge she drove, past Folsom Prison to an office filled with toys and a dog named Molly. First the gentleman asked basic astrological essentials: when, where and why she was born. Then he cupped her heels gently in his warm hands, declared her sufficiently healed to go to Nepal, smiled and asked for $110. The moral of the story: You always have something to lose, even when you think you don’t.

Thanks to the wonderful acupuncturist Cheryl recommended, I finally got to see a local foot doc, a real one, who confirmed the diagnosis of insertional Achilles tendonitis/-osis. As if that weren’t garden-variety enough, he said that painful lump on the knobbly bone at the back of my heel is bursitis. I thought only cranky old ladies get that: “Oh, merciful heavenly days, Myrna. My bursitis is just killing me.” If it’s going to hurt this much, they really should call it something better. Leave your suggestions in the Comments box, below.

Anyway, the doc said he would’ve injected my heel with cortisone and stuck me in a cast for three weeks but it’s too late for that. Now my choice is: do I trek in potential pain or toss the trip out the window? How bad might that pain be: an annoyance I could push aside while taking in scenic and cultural richness, or a prima donna that demands center stage? Frankly, I’ve never been too fussy about pain unless it’s likely to result in permanent damage, so I’d feel like a wimp if I canceled on that basis. Yet after Sunday’s Marin hike, my heel strongly suggested I rethink the matter.

Jill: In the incomprehensible eventuality that I don’t go to Nepal, maybe I will take you up on your idea to meet somewhere in Central America, as long as I don’t have to use my feet for anything other than decoration.