See Right Through Your Plastic Mac

As far as I can tell, I've been in physical therapy twice a week since before Christ roamed the earth with his trusty dinosaurs. Mr. DBK asked last week what my complaint was, since apparently I complain with great enthusiasm but few specifics. My bad. Back when the sports doctor stared at my X-rays and turned pale, he saw three separate problems: an S-I joint wildly out of alignment, arthritis in the hip joint he'd expect to see in a person approaching retirement and the whole hip was twisted to the left. The X-ray didn't show two angry muscle groups staging their own protests. On the one hand: it was a tremendous relief when contact with the medical profession didn't leave me frustrated and the professional scratching her/his head. On the other hand: FUCK! It sounded like I was looking at hip replacement. Let me tell you something about replacement hips: they dislocate with flexion greater than 90 degrees. That would certainly leave a mark on my illustrious career as a dirty whore.

It would have been hypocritical to write about greener living when I was driving everywhere. I came very close to buying a cane and I probably will in the next year or so, but with a lot of therapeutic work, a few adaptations and a stream of obscenities in my wake that'd make a sailor proud, I can now walk to and from work most days. Hooray and all, but I'm not prepared to get back on my carbon footprint soapbox yet until I work out why one muscle group won't fall in and the therapist is frustrated. So: twice a week, the therapist sticks her elbow into knotted spots near my rump that would elicit screams if I were a normal person, but I laugh. Someday, this will be a rip-roaring story. Why wait?

Pete and I are shopping for an umbrella clothesline like Pete's mother had. It was second base when we played kickball in his backyard. That was a great thing: hitting your head - clang! - on second base. Drying clothes outdoors is good for us because it'll save gas and electricity. One of the tenants hang-dries her clothes inside her apartment, which is just silly. We can benefit, she too. Clotheslines run between $50-$100. Soon, I think!

Another thing we're working on is a leaf shredder. We live under huge old trees and in the fall, Pete counts on raking up at least a dozen of those municipally distributed bags of leaves, while I thank Kali there's a halfway decent chocolatier in town so I'm nibbling so-so bonbons while he's working that hard. So anyway, it dawned on me that if we shredded leaves we could stop buying mulch at Lowe's. Hooray and all, I bet I could get a mowing attachment on a Segway, if I put my mind to it, but I might need my mind later. It would be silly to lose it now.