Agony of de Feet

I just had the most hilarious doctor’s appointment and had to share.

I’ve been having some foot pain that’s gotten progressively worse, to the point I resorted to seeking medical care.  This is a Big Deal, because I don’t like people to touch my feet unless I’m married to them or have given birth to them, so the list of Feet Touchers is a very short one.  

This past Monday, I went to see my primary care physician to see if she could fix it, but it wasn’t and I was referred over to a foot fetishist podiatrist. I was supposed to have x-rays done before seeing Dr. Tootsie Wootsies, but either I spaced that or it wasn’t clearly brought to my attention, so I showed up at my appointment this morning feeling anxious about waggling my naked feet at a stranger AND I had already disappointed the higher ups by not getting the ordered x-rays.  Whoops.  I felt like I had a check mark by my name on the chalkboard and was an infraction away from losing my recess time. 

I sat in the special foot exam chair, which is mainly an uncomfortable recliner that is far enough off the ground it should probably have handrails, safety straps and a retractable fire escape in case of emergencies. I had my socks and shoes off and felt MORE naked than I do during a gynecological exam.

 Dr. Tootsie Wootsie came in and his appearance caught me off guard.  Without putting too fine a point on it, let’s just say that his looks didn’t match up with his name, which I will not be blabbing about here.   He looked like a professional lacrosse player sporting a lab coat, in his mid-30s, and had a goatee that barely escapes the definition of ‘soul patch.’ I really, really wanted to ask to borrow his old Stone Temple Pilots or Smashing Pumpkins CDs to see if it got a reaction, but I refrained. 

Dr. Tootsie Wootsies put on the required gloves and manipulated my foot into a variety of poses and configurations that was oddly fascinating to watch, a little like Cirque du Soleil, which causes me to be entranced and repulsed at the same time. Then he pulled out a couple cotton swaps, the kind with a looooong wooden hand holds and a pathetic bit of cotton on the end, and he broke one in half. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be jamming the splintered cotton swap under my nails or suddenly had the need to pick his teeth.  Instead, he poked my foot a few thousand times to make sure I didn’t have any nerve damage.   The good doctor determined the pain  wasn’t related to joints/arthritis, tendons, muscles, nerve damage or poor circulation.  We had a mystery on our hands.  Feet.  Whatever.

The hilarious part came when he spoke to me about the possible causes and what the pain felt like and when and how and duration and he pumped me for adjectives, only, he wasn’t directing his comments at me.  No, he looked at my feet nearly the entire time.  It was very hard not to giggle and I imagined why it was preferable to talk to my feet than my face.  I mean, if I had to pick my best physical feature, it’d be my eyes, with my feet coming next-to-last. (Last place is a three-way tie between arm fat, varicose veins and a surgical scar.) But he just kept on staring at my feet, talking away, like my big toe was going to sprout a mouth and answer him.  My foot nudity anxiety was abated and my outlandish sense of humor began to run amok in the playground of my mind.  Was he thinking up nicknames for my feet?  Rose and Gladys, perhaps? Did I have an unusual toe shape that he couldn’t help but stare at?  Were the secrets of the universe revealing themselves in my bone structure?   I just don’t know, but I had to stop pondering the possibilities because I was finding it hard to answer his questions while my mind ran away with absurd ideas.

I left with an ankle brace and the promise of more information once the forthcoming x-rays were reviewed.  I hobbled back out to my truck, no better off than when I had arrived, but hey, at least I had some blog fodder, and until I know more, I’ll be rockin’ the orthotics and communing with my friend I. Buprofin. 

Achoo!

I really, really wanted to give a blow-by-blow account of a yard/book sale I had over the weekend, but… it’s Spring. The wind has kicked up and I’ve been battling mega allergies and sinus headaches and all those annoying things that keep me indoors, laying on the couch with a cool wash cloth on my face.  In lieu of an entertaining account of yard sale day, I bring you the condense version:  it was good.  And here’s a photo, taken towards the end of the day, showing how I’d been cleaned out of nearly everything except books:

 

For those of you who may be co-miserating with the Spring Allergy Experience, there is this:

 

A Little bit of Awesome for Your Monday

 

I ran across this comic on Pinterest, and it was a good reminder, no a great reminder, and silenced the doubt.  Of course, it also made me think of this:

So I laughed at that a bit more, went and found a copy of Good Omens on my shelves, which I need to re-read before World Book Night  since I have the good fortune of handing out copies on the 23rd, and then got back to the task at hand feeling more cheery.

The Jig Is Up

Every parent I have ever met lies to their children.  Or, if you prefer, misleads them or omits the truth.  These little lies can be about the existence of Santa Claus or or that you must be an adult to eat Pepperidge Farm Cookies.  The little lies are usually employed as sanity savers in the Parenting Tool Kit.  Mine has to do with Ice Cream Trucks, and I was found out.

My sister-in-law, who I consider nothing short of genius for coming up with this, had told her boys when they were little that the roaming Ice Cream Trucks that come through neighborhoods to tempt children were Music Trucks.  Music Tricks are driven by nice men & women who like to play songs for kids as they drive around. When I learned that little gem before having The Hobbit, I recognized it as the Parenting Gold Standard that it is and knew I’d be using that misleading bit of information as a parent.  The neighborhood we live in is frequented by ice cream trucks, up to four at any given time, chasing each other at slow speeds with tinny music box tunes filling the air.  NO WAY was I going to be telling my kid “No, you can’t buy ice cream from the convicted felon driving the truck that probably has a pee bottle stashed in the freezer,” multiple times a day all summer long. (Ok, I admit, some ice cream truck owners are probably hardworking people just trying to make ends meet, but I’ve always been creeped out by ice cream trucks.  They’re one step away from serial killer vans in my mind, only with dessert and a bad playlist.)

 The Hobbit has been told, and believed, for all his four short years that those colorful vans are Music Trucks.  At least he did, until yesterday.

The three of us were in the truck and on our way to the grocery store.  Fakefish and I were sitting up front in the truck and the Hobbit was strapped into his car seat.  We were waiting at a red light and the kid pipes up with, “Mom, did you know that Music Trucks sell ice cream? They’re ice cream trucks!”  Damn.  Damn, damn, damn.  We’d been caught, and it had been such a GOOD cover story for so long.  

There was a silent exchange of information  between us parental units as we tried so, so hard not to laugh, but it started escaping and bubbling out. Thankfully Fakefish recovered first (usually it’s me who holds it together a little bit longer or can stifle the laughter.  I’ve had more practice.) AND the Hobbit couldn’t see our faces.  Fakefish said, “Wow?  Really?!?!  I never knew that!  Did you know that, Mom?  Ice cream trucks.  wow.”  (And The Oscar for Best Surprise Face goes to – my husband!) I was shaking with laughter, practically howling and probably looked barking mad if anyone had paid attention to me. I managed to throw out a somewhat convincing, “You learn something new every day.”  There was a slight pause and Fakefish asked, “So who told you about the music trucks selling ice cream?”  The Hobbit replied, “Granny.”  

More frantic eye communication and silently mouthed words flew back and forth between the lying liar fire pants parents in between bouts of laughter.  Busted.  Totally busted without a leg to stand on.  I have a feeling it’s going to be a loooooong summer.

Weekend Project: Keyhole Garden

Last spring I found a photo on Pinterest of a Keyhole Garden, which not only grabbed my attention and got pinned to a board but led to Research and a burning desire to make one.  Due to back-to-back-to-back colds & flu from December to May last winter & spring, my spirit was willing but my flesh was weak, feverish and snotty and there was no way I would be able to revamp my raised beds.  So, my long suffering and supportive husband did the next best thing and built a Keyhole Garden at his mom’s house.  You can read all about that here.

That experiment was so successful (translation:  veggie overload) that in the autumn we decided it would be a good idea to revamp those pesky square and rectangular garden beds come spring time.  Spring time arrived.  Let’s redo the garden, I said.  It’ll be fun, I said.  Turns out, I’m a liar.  But, we got it done.

Putting in a Keyhole Garden isn’t brain surgery and is a whole lot easier if you’re putting it in a space that is not currently occupied by a metric ton of dirt and cinder blocks.  We had to disassemble the current raised beds, move all the soil, reconfigure the walls and then put the soil back.  Don’t do it this way if you don’t have to.  It really, really, really sucks.  Pick a nice empty spot and lure as many friends & family as you can to help, using deception or promises of food if necessary.  The more hands you have to shift dirt and straw, the faster it goes.  Then, in the immortal words of Mike Rowe, Get Read to Get Dirty.

This is the start of the wall building.  You can see the bale of straw in the foreground, and I got the bright idea to use every available large plastic container I could round up and fill them with the soil we had shift.  When we ran out of containers (storage tubs and plastic kiddie swimming pools), the rest of the soil was shoveled onto tarps.

 

Obligatory Dog Photo.  This is Shadow, our 13 year old Australian Shepherd/Blue Heeler.  She was a.) delighted to have all her people! outside! all day! and b.) confused as to why I had filled her pool with dirt instead of water.

Dirt, dirt and more dirt.

Oh hey, would you look at that!  More dirt!  I commented to Fakefish that our backyard slightly resembled a Peace Corps work project.  He piped up with the Peace Corps slogan, “The hardest job you’ll ever love.”  I responded with, “That’s the Peace Corps?  I thought that was being married to me.”  Turns out, it’s really hard to get dirt shoveled into place when you’re laughing so hard you’re crying, but we recovered and carried on.

Here’s some visible progress.  Most of the exterior walls are up and you can see the Keyhole, or what we refer to as the Compost Volcano, rising up in the center of the garden bed.

Another view of the mostly constructed walls.  We left the third layer of blocks off the front portion because it’s necessary to step in and out of the garden bed at this point.  We had already shoveled what felt like a metric ton of soil and I had no desire to add Pole Vaulting to my bag of tricks, because that’s what it would have taken to get me over the wall if it was three layers high all the way around.

We lined the sides and bottom with cardboard.  The cardboard helps the soil retain moisture and is an inexpensive way to build up the layers of the garden.  I had been saving boxes all winter to use for this, which was slightly inconvenient, but I was glad I did so I didn’t have to scramble to locate enough cardboard when the time came.

Once the cardboard is in place, a substantial layer of straw goes on top of it.  We found it was cheapest to buy the straw from a feed store at $7 per bale.  We only needed one bale.  If you don’t have as much soil hanging around as we did, more cardboard and straw can be used but should be layered with dirt as you go along.

Water Break!

After the hay layer, we added the following layers:  soil, mature compost, straw, soil, steer manure, and topped off with soil.  The compost keyhole in the center was filled only with straw, and I will be adding more straw and  more steer manure to the compost hole to get it going.  Just like any compost pile, this one will be given kitchen scraps and yard clippings as we move through the season.

Here is the completed Keyhole Garden bed, which is now ready for planting.

 

 

 

Nascar and In-Laws

This is what happiness looks like.  Last weekend, my husband and mother-in-law were Living The Dream and went on a Nascar ride along at the Stockton 99 Speedway.  The ride was with the Rusty Wallace Racing Experience on a quarter mile track.   (In case you’re interested in details like that.)  Not only was it worth every penny, but now they’re eyeballing super speedways and the Sonoma Raceway.

This is the second Nascar driving experience I have watched from the sidelines.  My brother-in-law did one at the Kansas Speedway a few years back, only he took the driving option.  It was interesting to see the differences in the two operations.  Granted, it would be like comparing the State Fair to the County Fair, with the essential premise being the same but more flash and splash at the larger track.   Still, the Inner Speed Demon was pacified and my loved ones got to have their Ricky Bobby moment (I wanna go fast!).

 

 

 

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