yes, our visitors are gone. it rained the entire time they were here except for monday, which was overcast and coolish but not rainy. i pronounced it perfect beach weather for people with an infant, so swampdaughter, zoe and i took them to little talbot island. it was nearly deserted and wonderful.
no, i have not yet replaced my keyboard, so i can’t use any of my passwords that require a character that is uppercase or contains a capital letter, which would be almost all of them. i can’t sign into my email. i can’t use quotation marks or colons or parenthesis or exclamation points. i can’t do online shopping. aaaaaaaaargh–imagine all caps and exclamation points here. actually, you could just imagine correct punctuation and capitalization all through this and save me the 15 bucks for a new cheap keyboard, but nooooooooo. sigh, that wouldn’t do a thing about my passwords, either. damnit.
‘but swampie’, you may say. ‘why don’t you just get off your lazy butt and go to the store like a normal person’. i would love to, but i had a close encounter of toe to ladder as i was racing barefoot to the dryer monday evening in order to avoid ironing. yes, people, i was actually running through the house to get to the dryer before the clothes wrinkled and, heaven forbid, require ironing. i forgot, as i was running past the ladder, that the ladder’s legs splayed out at the bottom for stabilization purposes. my foot was impacted between my fourth and fifth toes. the fifth toe obligingly bent all sideways under the impact, and the pain was pretty intense. picture me howling like a coyote, clutching my toe, hopping about on one foot like a demented crane, and shouting really, really bad words that will probably keep me out of the higher portions of heaven. yes, indeed, i’ll be doing the equivalent of tossing manure in heaven after that little incident if they deign to let me in at all.
my little toe is still roughly the width of my big toe, but the color has turned from black to a kinda sickly purply bluish. the bruising and swelling extends over to my big toe in the front, and down the side to the middle of the arch. i walk around with my foot turned sideways so that the weight goes onto the base of my big toe with my little toe in the air. i’m able to do my feeding chores outside but not a whole lot else. it takes awhile. the only shoes that i’m able to tolerate are a pair of rubber boots for waaaaaay bigger feet than mine. they look like clown boots. luckily it’s wet and rainy so even somebody in clown boots isn’t too remarkable.
swampman arrived home from work tuesday and asked me whether i would ride to tractor supply with him. ‘um, okay, sure’, i answered. ‘i want to check their price on layer pellets anyway’. we went. i determined their feed price was more than i was currently paying, so i passed. as we were leaving, swampman turned to me and said ‘so, you’ve had a pretty bad week. i’ll take you out anywhere you want for dinner. price is no object.’
‘why didn’t you tell me that plan before’ i asked. ‘i’m wearing stained khaki workpants and clown boots. it really doesn’t matter in tractor supply, but that does limit one’s choices of fine dining establishments versus drive through.’
‘i wanted to be nice and surprise you’ retorted swampman. ‘if i called you in advance and requested that you be wearing clothing that was acceptable for dining out, that wouldn’t be a surprise, now, would it. but, if you really want to hobble around the kitchen, just tell me now.’
hmmmmm. clown boots and stained khakis versus cooking and cleaning the kitchen. lazy struggled with ego and kicked its ass. it was no contest. lazy wins every. single. time.
swampman was all mellow this morning as he drove through the gate that i hobbled down to open for him so he wouldn’t have to climb out of his truck on his way to work. ‘would you still like to go into town to get you a keyboard’ he asked. ‘i’ll drive you tonight.’ hmmmmm. ‘sure’ i agreed eagerly. i was going to try to drive into town today anyway, clown boots and all, to replace it. ‘okay, be ready at the gate this afternoon, and we’ll go to home depot on lenox.’
‘wait, what’ i asked vainly. he had already driven off. i’m not sure whether i’m getting a new keyboard or a new hammer to destroy the old one. dang. maybe i should go today in my clown boots in this wet weather anyway. if the damage wasn’t to my right foot, and if i weren’t a teensy bit concerned about whether i would flinch if i had to stomp on the brakes because somebody did something incredibly stupid on the highway in front of me, i’d already be gone.
A1A South 