OHHHH, I wanna be an airborne ranger.....

*Coffee and a doughnut post*

Funny song if you're old enough to remember it from The Breakfast Club (sure does get stuck in your head though), but as a concept I find it painful. Don't get me wrong: The airborne part's okay, but that landing's really gonna get you. Every once in awhile, I suffer from self-inflicted stupidity *cough* delusions of grandeur. I forget about all my medical misadventures, which have greatly dissipated and become easier to ignore. I get the notion that I am, once again, Wonder Woman. As if I ever were, right? *snort* Um, no. Nuh-uh. Not even close. In any case, such was my frame of mind a couple of months ago; with a crammed calendar and a to do list that once again runneth over. *sigh* How do these things happen? Somehow it doesn't seem to matter how much "stuff" I erase from my calender, there's always five more things to take each one's place. Do you struggle with that too? The good news in all of this, is that what I was doing was definitely working (Terramin Clay, D3, and strength training for my Osteopenia). The bad news being that I verified this information in the worst possible way. Then again, this is me we're talking about here, right? Oh, yeah. *rolls eyes*

My recent road to recovery from various illnesses and afflictions spanning almost an entire decade (specific details coming soon to the Health Yerself page) has been largely managed with an anything and everything I can think of/find approach that might help my body get back into some kind of shape. That is to say, beyond the pathetic one it was in. I started trying to jog up the low rise to Cinnamon's bucket every afternoon in an attempt to improve my coordination a.k.a. gross motor skills (and they were, most definitely, GROSS). Initially my gait was a lurching, lumbering mess and I was incredibly thankful that nobody but the horses could see me. At first, Cinnamon stayed near his bucket watching me intently; probably trying to figure out what on earth the crazy lady was up to this time. HehHeh. Before long though, Cinnamon started meeting me at the gate and accompanying me up the hill. After the first few weeks, my gait began to stabilize and Cinnamon started jogging in slow-mo with his head down right next to me as though he was offering encouragement. Cool. As the months went by, my gait continued to improve and after almost a year, we were dashing up the hill in tandem.

Sooo, when I wind up stressed because I was stupid er, tried to take on too much at once, I end up blowing a physical fuse. Ever the busy bee, that's me. Not to mention slow learner. *sigh* Overloading the agenda is kind of like playing Russian Roulette; you never know precisely which stressed out straw will be the one to kill off the camel (or something like that anyway). It can manifest itself in many ways, but this particular time it happened to be with the dreaded "foot drop". Now if you've never heard of foot drop, it is a neurological issue where the front of your foot suddenly "drops" downward. It often happens in mid step, which causes you to trip or stumble and can easily result in a fall. It also makes you feel like an idiot. I hadn't had a problem with it for almost a year, hence it's disappearance from my memory banks (otherwise known as: sure didn't see that one coming). 

Well.

One Sunday afternoon a couple of months ago, tired but game, I was racing up the hill with my equine coach when my foot suddenly dropped. Since I was on an incline, I only had time to think ACK! before I found myself airborne. Because I was holding a feed bucket in my left hand - which went soaring in the opposite direction - my right hand was the first to slam into the ground, with the full force of my weight behind it. I heard a very unpleasant pop and rolled over on my back to lay there for a moment staring blankly at the sky. Man oh man did that hurt; I sure hope I didn't sprain it, but I think I did. Way to go, Grace. Yeesh. Heaving myself to my feet, I awkwardly swept most of the feed back into the bucket and turned to see Cinnamon giving me the fish eye from a safe distance. Apparently I had scared him half to death when I deviated so violently from the program, and he was now eyeballing me suspiciously lest I decide to exhibit any more alarming behavior ;o)

By the time I finished scooping feed for the next day with my left hand (and wasn't that an interesting adventure?) my right arm was throbbing horribly. I grabbed some horse bandages and went inside to put ice on it, because ice fixes everything, right? Not this time chickie. Raspberries. I got DH to help me wrap it up and went to bed. A smart person probably would have thought to at least pop some Tylenol, but apparently I'm not too bright because I didn't take anything which made for a very long night. Thankfully, the next day was a teacher workday and I could ask the school nurse how much damage I'd done. Turns out that I had a hairline fracture just below my right wrist. How special. I wound up with a Pepto-Bismol pink cast for about six weeks (shown at the bottom of this post if you missed it), and then this lovely splint for two more. I am still using the splint when lifting weights and unloading bags of feed, but I am essentially (thank the Lord!) healed. 

I learned how to fingerspell left-handed and that I will never, EVER be a southpaw ;o) I also discovered that an oven mitt makes a marvelous emergency mitten, and the equine/bovine OB gloves the vets use beat the pants off plastic bags in the shower for covering a cast. So there you have it, the whole tragic tale. *grin* Well there was one more interesting learning experience that came out of it. Because the fracture was so close to the wrist, I found myself completely unable to crochet. Obviously drawing and painting were out, as were the rest of my normal creative endeavors. It didn't take long for the DT's to set in. So what's a crafty girl gonna do? 

Learn to needle tat, of course! Although it felt like the last act of a desperate woman, it wasn't as hard as I thought it might be. I found an idiot friendly bookmark pattern to use for my first project:

If you can crochet, needle tatting is fairly easy to figure out. It's best to watch a video first and start with a large size thread. This is size 10, but I practiced with size 5 first. Here's the finished bookmark: Not too bad for a one-armed wonder, eh?

Up Next (I hope): The patio plumbing project (excuse me for swearing ;o) which will be to transform a rather uninteresting laundry tub into something that is functional AND fun for the visitor area before we install it. I would lament how late we are in just getting to this stage, but since God's timing is perfect who am I to argue, right? *laugh*  

As always, thank you so much for reading this far and have a blessed week everyone!