Archive for June 14, 2017

Superhero Armor

Welcome to the new website! This is where I’ll be blogging from now on, maybe not daily, but when I have something to say. If all I need is a short news bit, that will be a “news” item that shows up on the front page. There are still a few things to work out, like making the social sharing buttons work with my hosting provider. I need to get back to adding content because I could tell while moving things over that I’d really slacked off on that front.

The verdict on my knee was that the kneecap went out of alignment. It’s not dislocated, like it was back when I needed surgery before, but it’s out of whack, and that’s pulling everything around it out of place and making it less stable. Surgery for this is a very last resort. For now, I’ve got this lovely brace that holds the kneecap in place. There’s a sleeve that has a reinforced area around the kneecap, and then the brace that goes over it that really clamps down on the kneecap. It’s hinged, so it’s pretty flexible and mobile. It looks like the beginning of some kind of costume. I can’t quite decide if it’s the start of a superhero uniform, fantasy armor, or if I’m being assimilated by the Borg.

knee brace

I’ll also be doing physical therapy to strengthen the muscles around the kneecap and get everything aligned. My dance may actually have been helpful in keeping it all strong. Even though the problem started in dance class, it was apparently something that would have been likely to happen anyway, and the dance may have held it off. I’m looking forward to getting back in shape. For now, the brace means I can walk without as much pain and with a lot more stability, and the doctor didn’t say anything about me having to hold back on activity — in fact, that’s part of what the brace is for, so I can be active.

So I guess my summer will be spent writing and exercising.

Helplessness

I think I had a pretty productive day yesterday. I got a good start on rewriting based on my new idea, though I then figured out what I needed to go back and fix in what I rewrote yesterday.

Today, though, will likely be my “get stuff done” day since I have that appointment to see a doctor about my knee, and that will probably kill my writing time. While I’m out, I can run all my weekly errands so that Wednesday can be a good working day.

I tried to unwind a bit by watching a movie last night. I’d recorded the 1948 production of The Woman in White from TCM. I read the book when I was immersing myself in Victorian literature before I wrote Rebel Mechanics (and when I thought it was going to be a lot more gothic than it turned out to be), so I was curious about the movie. Unfortunately, movies of that era were somewhat lax in anything resembling authenticity. The story is set in England. Almost all the characters are British (except for the Italian). In this movie, almost all the main characters were played by American actors, who weren’t even trying for British accents. Most of them were using that “mid-Atlantic” accent of the era, though one sounded like he was maybe from Georgia. But then most of the supporting characters either were British or were doing passable British accents, which made it even more jarring. I had to turn it off midway through. It’s a frustrating story to begin with because it’s centered on the concept of helplessness, with some of the main characters entirely under the power of others, and then there are some of the attitudes of the period that make you want to smack the characters’ heads together. But when you throw in the accent issues and the melodrama that came with that period, I just couldn’t take it.

I guess the helplessness thing was also getting to me because I’m seeing a doctor today about my knee problems, and I really hate seeing doctors. I’m braced for the “there’s nothing really wrong, it’s all in your head” treatment. Or else the “why didn’t you get something done sooner” lecture, to which the answer is all those years of constantly being told there’s nothing wrong and it’s all in my head. But at least maybe today I’ll get some answers and the start on a path toward fixing it. I miss being able to go on long walks, being able to go hiking on uneven surfaces, being able to dance. I’m getting out of shape and I can feel it, and I hate that.