Thursday, September 1, 2011

One Writer's Bad Summer Vacation

Okay, this was right up there with the worst summers ever. The June weather was cold and dreary, then there were tornadoes in July. Our power was out for multiple days, multiple times. We tossed everything in the fridge and freezer twice. Then it got beastly hot.
On July 16th, my daughter's wedding was the brief, bright highlight of the summer. She absolutely glowed with happiness in her pouffy white cloud of a wedding gown, and even though the night before, half the cars at the rehearsal dinner were towed away by the "Lincoln Park Pirates," the wedding went without a mishap. Well, almost.
Around 10:30, I was happily boogeying my way around the dance floor when suddenly my feet were entangled by the legs of a young man doing "The Worm." My shoeless feet rolled on the concrete floor, but I stayed upright, more or less. Trouble was, I was in severe pain. I limped off to a corner where I was brought ice and enough booze to numb a gorilla. Back to the dancing for another half hour, then the evening wound down.
The next morning, I was in ER with a broken right ankle, broken right metatarsal, and bad bruising on my left foot. Crutches, RICE, and a very tolerant husband got me back on my feet by mid-August.
Last week, I was out walking Woki, relishing my freedom, when--CRACK--I misstepped and rolled on the left foot. I hobbled home, half a mile, swearing like a drunken gorilla all the way. Sure enough, I broke the other frickin' ankle, so I'm now housebound, on crutches, with not much of a leg to stand on.
I'm going to be spending a lot of time with Dr. J. and the PT boys at Sports & Spinal Rehab, and it will be late autumn before I can even think about running again, which makes me crazy.
So in true writerly fashion, I'm looking for a way to spin all this into a good story. Let's see: first there were tornadoes. Then I was falling through space and all I could see were a pair of legs with red Converse sneakers. The beautiful blond girl in the pouffy white dress couldn't help me, so I'm off to see the Wizard of Os.
Oh, crap.
Three flying monkeys named Agent, Editor, and Publisher just popped in to say that story has already been done.



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