Yesterday I said that if today the foot doctor didn’t release me from this boot, I’d indulge in today’s National Cognac Day and National Donut Day to drown my sorrows. Well, she didn’t release me from the boot, and after a couple of hours with it off and just wearing the splint (while bike riding and stopping by the store and going to my sister’s house to water the plants while she’s away), when I got home, I couldn’t wait to put the boot back on again. I felt safer in it. Yesterday putting the boot back on made me feel like a bird having to go back in my cage; today it felt like a helpless babe seeking the comfort of the womb again. What a difference a day makes, eh.

Funnily enough, it’s also National Shopping Cart Day, and I made use of one when I stopped by Safeway on my bike to buy a couple of things. I ended up having to lean on it to take the weight off. Today for some reason my ankle has started hurting—after three weeks of not being in much pain at all. Even still, it’s not pain so much as my ankle saying, “Hey, we got healing going on down here! Don’t push it!”

Not only have I had to bail on a backpacking trip (although that was because I feared for my hip giving out and THEN I twisted my ankle), but I’m also having to bail on a hike tomorrow along the Potomac River with the same group that sponsored the backpack trip. I toyed with going anyway, but in the end, my Higher Caretaker Self prevailed. Since Hubby and I are going to the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay in July for a week, I want to be out of this boot by then, so I will continue to be medically compliant.

On a brighter note, I talked with Mamacita today, whose mood has been so pleasant (those drugs are really doing wonders). We’re all of us relieved she’s found relief and is settling in. And the tiler finished the shower upstairs, delivering us from the 1990s decor at last. On Monday they install the faucet, grab bars, fan and light, and the fancy bidet toilet seat, just in time for our upstairs tenant to return. I will definitely be reporting on the wash and dry bidet with heated seat.

This evening we hung out at the puzzle table and listened to creepy radio plays. My current endeavor is a little more challenging than the previous puzzle, with all the white pieces. Hubby was reading about all the benefits of doing puzzles, so here’s to quality family time and mapping new and better neural pathways in the brain, and making me smarter and better able to think critically.