My Left Foot . . .

Last week one of my Facebook friends brazenly posted that she had gotten on her elliptical after a hiatus and glowed with exhilaration after her workout.  She ended the status update with, “Hello, old friend.”  I felt happy for her.  That is, until I started to suffer from the backlash her simple comment started.

Apparently, her elliptical called my elliptical to gloat.  My elliptical has stood, userless for going on ten weeks. . .maybe twelve.  I mean, I enjoy the elliptical as an option.  It allows me to run without any direct impact on my knees and avoid the inevitable shift from health-minded jogger to breathless loper which is a visual no one needs to see.  But, when it comes to summer, give me a good outdoor walk any day over a workout in the mancave.  Thus, the elliptical hasn’t seen much action and now, jealousy was rearing it’s ugly head.  It started off using a soft tact, “Have you see your Facebook friend?  She looks SO healthy!” it said.  I smiled, after all, I am recovering from ankle surgery and a broken bone.  I’m not ALLOWED to have a relationship with exercise. That machine knows how to push my buttons though.  Gradually, I shed the cast, the crutches, and finally the boot and the elliptical stepped up it’s taunt.  “Are your jeans a little tight there?” it asked.  Yes, I thought.  “How is the walking coming?”  it asked.  It’s getting too cold to walk, I think, and well, my Achilles needs to be stretched.  “I can do that for you,” it purred, “Just take it slow.”  I started thinking about the benefits and out of the blue, my left foot gets totally ticked off and jumps in-

“Where the hell have YOU been?” it asked right foot.

“Um. . .I’ve been a little wrapped up.”

“Well while you’ve been “wrapped up,’ I’ve been doing double duty and I’m a little sick of it.  Do you know how much weight I’ve had to bear?  Seriously, just look up!”

“Yeah, but you’ve been able to wear a cute shoe while I have been bound in the ugly black boot.”

“I haven’t even had a pedicure because of you,” my left foot hissed, “and I broke my pinky toe doing all the work and couldn’t even whine because YOU weren’t around the pick up the slack.”

“So, what are you saying?” Right foot inquired.

“I’m saying, get your heel on that elliptical machine and start moving because if I have to haul her butt around one more time, I will make sure you NEVER WALK AGAIN!”

So, I got on the elliptical and started to move for the first time in several weeks.  It felt great . . .for about fifteen minutes then, my left foot took off out the door.

“Hey!,” right foot yelled, “where are you going?”

“I’m going for a massage.  You just keep going, I’ll be back in about 6 weeks!”  

My elliptical retreated to the corner to pout.  I’m sure, though, it won’t be long before it starts mocking me. And I thought the surgery was painful.

But Weight. . . Is There More?

Most of you are well aware that I have spent he past 6 weeks somewhat  incapacitated.  I had surgery to remove a bone spur that had grown between two bones of my ankle joint rendering my foot unable to bend in a natural way and, ultimately left me stuck in a prone position for 3 weeks with another 3 in a Herman Munster boot.  I've called this time my unfortunate incarceration.  

Having been here before, but in a much worse capacity a few years ago. With the whole Achilles reattachment that resulted in 6 weeks prone, I vowed that this time I would be much more vigilant about trying to keep active somehow so as to avoid the whole  issue of  "spread".  Aspirations are a great thing. . .reality is the great equalizer.

I don't step on scales.  Those numbers are useless to me.  I weigh 120 pounds.  I know this because my driver's license says so.  I am proud that I have been able to maintain that weight all these years.  But what happens when you go somewhere where they "need" you to step on a scale?  Like say, the doctor's office?

For years, I insisted on standing on the scale backwards and admonished the nurse to NOT say the number out loud.  Why do I need to hear that number when I have a document that says it anyway (and will for as long as a good friend of mine runs the DMV locally)?  But, I am proud to say that at 49,  I have seized ownership of my free will and simply tell the nurse who says blandly, "Step on the scale please,"  No.  

The way I see it, I know when things have changed enough that it needs to be recorded.  We all know it.  You know that day when suddenly your jeans require air drying instead of being put in the dryer - well that's not the signal.  The signal is the day you cannot pull them up beyond your muffin top (which we all know is a delicate term for Dunlop's Disease - as in my belly dun lopped over my belt.)  Conversely, when you have been working hard and been successful enough to actually have to go buy clothes because everything you have hangs on you?  That would be a signal too.  I'm not saying you have to face that number (because you already know it's 120) but you can turn your back to the scale and tell the nurse to keep her mouth shut.

Which brings me to the here and now.  I have been, essentially, a body at rest (which, according to one commercial, tends to stay at rest) and even though I was extremely conscientious of what I ate and DID NOT EAT, I am sure the inevitable has occurred.  How do I know?  Well, the good news is that I can still put on my jeans.  The bad news is I kinda feel like Jabba the Hutt.  I have a doctor's appointment today and my hope is that I can lose the Herman Munster boot (which I am sure must weigh 10 pounds on it's own) and then I can get moving again.  However I will not get on a scale. According to my criteria (the jeans that I can still get on), I still weigh 120 pounds and my driver's license proves it!  

Judi Coltman is author of Is It Just Me? or Is Everyone a Little Nuts! available through Amazon, Barnes & Nobel.com, and www.judicoltman

Marine, Man, and Child

The streets of Byron, Illinois are lined with flags. Hundreds of full sized, beautiful, new flags.  I don't know how they got there or who put them there, but I do know why they have come to line the streets of our little town.  Today another flag will come to town, draped across the casket of Marine Lance Corporal Alec Catherwood.  Alec graduated from Byron High School in 2009, the same class as my youngest child. Yeah.  He was a young man, a brave young man who's goal was to become a marine yet, he was a baby.

This is not our town's first loss.  We lost Marine Lance Corporal Andrew Patton in a roadside bomb in Iraq a few years ago.  Another brave young man.  Another baby.  Byron is a small town, a really small town and when a tragedy like this occurs, we are ALL affected.  Right now, I am experiencing this as a parent.  I know many people in town whose children have joined the service and gone to war and shared in their worry when their kids are shipped out and the joy when they return home.

It is not my inention to get political here, but, as a parent, I simply cannot accept this loss without  commenting on all of our soldiers.  I recently saw a photo of several flag draped caskets lined up in the hangar after being returned to the states.  The cutline read: Can you tell which one of them is gay?  It could have asked if we could tell which one was democrat, republican, male, female, black, jewish, or ADHD.  The point is, it doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter.  They are all brave, they put themselves out there to protect our freedom and they are young men and women who belong to someone.  They are husbands, wives, fiances and, they are our babies.

 There is a pall of melancholy covering not only our town, but our surrounding towns as we prepare for Alec's return.  We are not only bringing home a marine today, we are bringing home; a friend, a fiance, a  son.  God bless the Catherwood's.  You are in our collective heart.  That's just the way small towns are.

Travels With Lucy and Ethel

During the "growing" years of our progeny and the humorously perceived youth of our spouses, my BFF Cindy and I created, participated in and cajoled our spouses into a number of "crazy" ideas.  When the phone would ring and BFF Cindy would ask for Dave, he knew he was done for and had already been signed up to do something (dress like a cowboy and square dance at a Hoedown, ride across the western region of the United States on a bike, or wear a powder blue ruffled tuxedo 2 sizes too small complete with a kleenex corsage, to name a few) he wanted no part of.  He called us Lucy and Ethel and if that follows, then when he knew he was going to feel like an idiot, he was Fred.

So, when I had my first orthopedic surgery, I was granted my first pair of crutches.  I named them, appropriately, Lucy and Ethel.  Lucy is the left crutch and usually leads with Ethel following dutifully behind.  I've had Lucy and Ethel through knee surgery, achilles surgery and now an ankleysomething or other.  So, when the rehab people came to give their spiel about mobile apparatus, I waved them away out of respect for Lucy and Ethel.  This ain't my first rodeo folks.

Yeah.  About that.  I made it out for about 2 hours Saturday night, was up and about Sunday for a time and was ready to take a double dose of pain pills by Sunday night NOT because my foot hurt, no!  It was because my shoulders, neck and forearms hurt so bad, the thought of standing up with crutches was reducing me to tears.  What a baby.

Not one to give in however, I went for a ride in the car to pick up a pizza on Monday.  Feeling spunky, I hopped up the two steps from the garage to the kitchen, tucked Lucy and Ethel firmly under my arms and fell, face first onto the kitchen floor. Lucy flew forward while Ethel had gotten caught on the door jam.  Apparently I swore rather loudly as I hit the ground but I was laughing and crying so hard by the time my husband (scared to death, I might add) got to me that he wasn't exactly sure what had even happened and he didn't think it was funny at all.


This morning, the Home Health Care people delivered a "knee cruiser" - sort of like a 4 wheeled trike where I can rest my casted leg on the padded part and use my good leg to make it go.  I can't lie, I feel like an idiot.  I think I'll name this one Fred.

weddings

It's a subject that makes for a teary eyed mess for both a mother and a father - most often for different reasons.  Her's being the event, his being the cost.  Weddings.  My good friend Vic is the Mother of the Bride (MOB) and while the brides father (FOB) is no longer her spouse, they have, over the years, figured out how to parent and co-exist in our small town.  Vic's husband, The Iron Man, has even been seen sharing a beer from time to time with the FOB and, no doubt, sharing a male generated joke about "their" wife.

The other night. The Iron Man was lamenting the loss of his masculinity in the fray of all the wedding talk - he couldn't even say the word "wedding" without rolling his eyes and swigging a beer.  November can't get here fast enough.  Well, it got me to thinking about weddings and the like and since my own wedding is the only one of 3 for which I have been a participant, I can only draw upon that momentous occasion for my commentary.  And when I compare that to the upcoming nuptials of Vic's daughter, it is apparent that some very clear wedding rules are no longer standing.  It kinda breaks my heart.

I won't deny that I had the wedding of the decade back in the 80's (with a bow to Karen, whose wedding was also a "todoo") and I still hold it up to most of the extravaganza's I have attended since.  I had an ivory satin couture dress, a cathedral length veil, a cadre of bridesmaids, a flower girl and ring bearer, a gourmet reception at Addison Oaks, a live band and fireworks and by rights, I was the focus of every single person ALL DAY LONG AND WELL INTO THE LATE NIGHT.  It was, I am told, the best wedding that most people ever attended.  While I did not even spend one minute at the open and flowing bar, opting for Tab on ice. . .I don't remember what isn't in a photo.  It was well before the video era so there is no footage I can cue up for recall.  I have nothing.  But a dress.  In a box.  In the basement.  That, and an album and my sister's Maid of Honor (MOH) dress - which is the crux of wedding rules being broken today.  Forget that my beautiful dress was a size 3 and that I couldn't fit my thigh through the waist anymore.  Forget that it has been hermetically sealed in a box with a window that shows a glimpse of the applique.  And forget what it cost.  If I were to do it all over again, I would still wear THAT dress.  A bride has that luxury.

What is so confounding these days is the plethora of acceptable pretty bridesmaids dresses.  In my day, the bridesmaid dress of choice was slinky, sexy without offending the churchy folk and usually made of quiana.  My color of choice was lavender.  The whole purpose of the bridesmaid dress back in my day was to include your friends in the big day without the added of worry of any of them looking prettier than the bride.  Oh, yeah, we all said these words: "You can wear it again.  You can cut it off.  It'll be great."

Do you really think that I didn't know there was no way on earth that any of them would be caught dead in the lavender quiana dress with the "Me Tarzan, You Jane" shoulder on one side and Grecian spaghetti straps on the other.  Did they really think I thought it would be easy to cut off and hem quiana with accordion pleats?  Puhleeze.  My MOH caught on to that in a big way and, in a fashion that only sisters can share pitched a fit - but that's another story ending with, 'it's in my basement along side the wedding dress box."

Vic will be a stunning MOB, her daughter will be the most beautiful bride ever (until the next), but after seeing her Bride's Maids and what they are wearing, all I gotta say is, "Honey, watch out!"  Huh, we knew what we were doing back in the day.

Where's My Hairbrush When I Need It?

Like every other kid who sang into a hairbrush, when I was still young, I wanted to be an entertainer.  A singer, actress, talk show host who could also do gymnastics like Olga Korbut (yes, I am THAT old) and ride horses whenever I felt like it.  The singing part wasn’t ever gonna happen and if you know me, I don’t even have to explain.  The acting part meant I would have to audition - in front of people - uh, no.  Gymnastics and horses required natural ability and well, a horse (which my father always nixed in the end after spending an entire summer visiting and considering the Bloomfield Open Hunt Club - huff and pouty face) and really that didn’t leave much else.  Sometime in that era, I started writing and announced that I wanted to be a writer.  

My writing portfolio has multiple layers containing the remnants of youthful, lovestruck and full -on gag worthy poetry,  heavy handed short stories and sketches that are so image and metaphor rich that the reader was often left with a certain level of dissatisfaction and a big ol’ question mark in the thought bubble above their collective head, the driest of marketing and sales materials, dullest of nuclear power articles and an occasional letter to the editor meant to point out some inequity in our local world.  I wrote a series of Beginning Guided Reading books for an educational program, a quarterly children’s newsletter, a collection of recipes and stories based on a region in the east and a youth fiction novel that my kids loved.  In short, I have written a lot and so always got a great laugh from the throng of people who read my (admittedly funny) Christmas newsletter and responded with, “You should write!”

So, my book has been out for a little over a month and I am sick of myself.  I have had to self promote on facebook (an action which asks me to post about ME) and every other social networking venue, I have had to announce and update my website and do interviews with local news outlets.  I’m not complaining, mind you, just a little sick of talking about myself  and I’m thinking that if I am that sick of myself, you guys must be really tired of me!  And to make matters worse, there is a certain man in town who I used to lust after that, every time he runs into me in public, points, squeals and runs toward me shouting, “Oh My God!!!!!!!  It’s Judi Coltman!” just because he KNOWS I will scowled (and blush a little). The last time that happened he was with someone who I have never met.  This virtual stranger innocently inquired what had I done to elicit such a reaction (albeit a facetious one) and when former lustee said, “She just wrote a book and now she is famous!” the stranger stepped back, took a long look at me and replied, “Oh, sort of like Susan Boyle!”  Hmmmm.  Susan Boyle.  That pretty much ended the conversation.

I hope to see many of you at the book signing at Hailey’s Winery on Friday, September 10, from 6-8 p.m.  I promise I won’t sing.

Do you think he meant Susan Boyle BEFORE the makeover, or after?  

Whatever, I’ll take it!

http://www.wifr.com/hometowns-byron/headlines/101887868.html

http://www.wifr.com/hometowns-byron/headlines/101887868.html