Yes, you should get a post every day the week before the launch.\u00a0\u00a0 But there’s a couple of little glitches.\u00a0 And here’s the big one.\u00a0\u00a0 Wednesday night I came home from choir practice with a very painful big toe on my left foot.\u00a0 “Oh, it’s just that I got a fold in my sock,” I thought.\u00a0\u00a0 No.\u00a0 It woke me up this morning before 5 am (it was quarter to five when I finally looked at my watch)\u00a0 hurting like the dickens.\u00a0\u00a0 Swollen, exquisitely tender, throbbing.<\/p>\n
The words “happy camper” did not apply to much of today.\u00a0\u00a0 When R- woke up just before six,\u00a0 and wanted to know why I was lying there looking miserable, I pointed to The Toe.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It’s just a paronychia (an infection originating in the space between the edge of the nail and the toe-flesh) , and normally something I could deal with more calmly.<\/p>\n
But. \u00a0 I’m supposed to be in San Antonio for a conference on Saturday, all dressed up professionally to be presented to college administration people to promote The Speed of Dark<\/em> as a good “first year reading” book.\u00a0 Which it is.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But I have to drive there (in weather that’s supposed to be iffy) and walk around wearing what I call “lady shoes” (not heels–but dress flats)\u00a0 and nice slacks and jacket and not looking like someone whose toe feels as if someone’s pounding it with a hammer.\u00a0\u00a0 Because if you’re standing or walking on a toe that feels like mine felt this morning,\u00a0 you will show the strain.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I was looking forward to this gig…and now I’m hoping the blasted toe doesn’t suddenly need to be lanced and drained while I’m alone in the hotel room.\u00a0\u00a0 Letting it form an abscess and then draining the abscess is standard treatment.\u00a0 (Yes, I can.\u00a0 No, I don’t want to.\u00a0 I want it to quit hurting and go away. )\u00a0 And meanwhile, the weather changed again, so of course a weather-related headache came and filled my head.<\/p>\n So today, at six fifteen, we were working on what could be done for The Toe.\u00a0\u00a0 What my mother did for ingrown toenails (much the same problem, though this toenail isn’t ingrown)\u00a0 was stick my foot in a basin of hot water and Epsom salts.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I stuck my foot in a basin of hot water and ordinary table salt (also works) and R- hunted around on the internet to find out a) which bacteria was most likely and b) which antibiotic we had in the house was appropriate.\u00a0\u00a0 The hot salt water soak lessened the swelling (a little) and the pain went from “I may have to yelp”\u00a0 to\u00a0 “uncomfortable but bearable.”<\/p>\n I did a faceplant in the bed and slept for several more hours, then got up and went to work, periodically lying down with my foot elevated (at which point I dropped needles from whichever project I was knitting on),\u00a0 and then did another hot soak in the afternoon.\u00a0\u00a0 Another good thing about the hot soak is that it encourages the dispersed infection to “point” (to actually come together and start expanding toward the weak spot–the skin softened by the hot soak–so it can be drained easily.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If it points tomorrow, R- can lance it and I may be able to wear regular shoes by Saturday.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It might also shrink.\u00a0\u00a0 Or I may be in my clunky black shoes.<\/p>\n But tomorrow must include trip prep, and should also include at least an hour of birdwatching because it’s the first day of the Great Backyard Bird Count, which is a major census event in our wildlife management program.<\/p>\n Some physical things are annoying\/interrupting out of all proportion to their size.\u00a0\u00a0 Toothache, for instance.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s really hard to ignore a toothache, even for a moment.\u00a0\u00a0 An infected toe–they really hurt, and they’re what you need to walk on, only if they hurt enough you don’t want to.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The broken finger that idiot mare Blue Moon gave me hurt, but was easily ignored after a few hours by taping it to the next finger–I was typing pretty quickly after that, on a manual typewriter.\u00a0\u00a0 The broken sacrum (idiot horse and idiot me combined)\u00a0 was ignorable with a pillow on my chair and not playing line in a football team.\u00a0\u00a0 (Blocking practice with a broken sacrum is not a good idea.\u00a0 Ram the top end of your spinal column–well, shoulder–into the opposing line and the shock runs right down your spine and explodes in your pelvis and your legs go to jelly and you fall on your face.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Who knew?\u00a0 Coach was furious–what did I mean risking myself riding horses over fences? )<\/p>\n So–so far I haven’t given any character a paronychia.\u00a0\u00a0 And with only one more book to write in this group, I may not do it in Book V.\u00a0\u00a0 But someday, some character who really needs to be on his\/her feet and 100% is going to be dealing with a miserable painful toe.\u00a0\u00a0 I will not suffer this alone: I’m going to share the pain with one of them.<\/p>\n I had planned to write three posts tomorrow,\u00a0 to carry you through the last few days, because I don’t know if I’ll have time to write them at the conference, but…now I”m not sure I’ll have time tomorrow, as that’s become (in my internal schedule) a frantic mix of finding, deciding, washing\/ironing\/packing\/cleaning out the car\/cleaning up myself…and treating The Toe.\u00a0 I’ll do my best.\u00a0 Apologies if I don’t get all the posts out on time.\u00a0 And apologies for a post that’s really–by my own standards–off topic.\u00a0 (Except the bit about using life experience in writing…that’s on topic.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yes, you should get a post every day the week before the launch.\u00a0\u00a0 But there’s a couple of little glitches.\u00a0 And here’s the big one.\u00a0\u00a0 Wednesday night I came home from choir practice with a very painful big toe on my left foot.\u00a0 “Oh, it’s just that I got a fold in my sock,” I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[112],"class_list":["post-1493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-beyond-writing","tag-life-beyond-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1493"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1493"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1494,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1493\/revisions\/1494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}