Saturday, December 18, 2021

Saturday, December 18, 2021  

 

 I slept well, only got up a few times during the night.  Hobbling to the bathroom made me aware of how bad my leg was.  While the hip is a problem, the ankle is worse.  I have complained about it for a while to practitioners.  I was told that the problem came from my hip. Regardless of where it comes from, I have arthritis in my ankle. That is not going to be fixed by a total hip replacement. It may even make it worse. Okay, I'll ask.  

   I've been learning the choreography to Hot Honey Rag, the finale from Chicago.  I was shocked at the problem I had doing the Charleston, the opening steps.  When did I become so uncoordinated? It's not just that it is difficult to make some of the hip rotations involved. I couldn't figure out the footwork.  Damn! I'm going to conquer this.  One of the problems is the traction of my crocs on the tile.  My shoe gets stuck, resisting the foot slide I need to execute that move.  I worked on the hand motions for the first sequence with the Charleston yesterday. Today as I came back from one of my short periodic walks, I could do the footwork with the arm movements in my driveway without holding on.  I will get this performance under my belt by my next birthday in December 2022, when I turn 82. Ha! I also want to learn the shuffle that's all the rage on the Internet. 

   I took an Ibuprofen and beamed the infrared lamp on my calf. Voila! My ankle felt as good as new. Very confusing.

   I had three appointments scheduled for today.  All three cancel. Adolescent D texted me yesterday asking if he could skip.  That was wonderful.  He advocated for himself- or I hope so.  I hope it is something he wants to do and not just a family event he will participate in.  Not that he doesn't enjoy family events; he does.  His family means a great deal to him.  The other would be preferable because it would mean that D thought of D alone. I'll find out. We may reschedule for tomorrow. 

      I washed Elsa.  The skin on her torso looked good. Her neck is a different story. I believe it is all from the flea protection. I will have to find another way.

    This morning I got a text from M & W's mother. She wanted to cancel because she had to deal with her kids' ukus.  I had to look it up -lice.  Yeah, that's a full day's project. 

  Yvette called in the morning.  There had been an outbreak of Covid in the My Bar crowd. The owner, Rocco, had brought it in.  Two friends who were also participants in our driveway yoga were ill. Everyone was getting tested.  Yvette had already been tested and was negative. She said it was inconvenient.  I said it would mean that Damon and family might not come. That was way more than just inconvenient.  It made me sad to think of them not coming. I felt I had to call Damon right away so they could formulate plan B for their Christmas holidays.  

     As I started to tell Damon about my situation, he interrupted me.  He had been contacted and told he had been exposed.  When I spoke to him last, I was under the impression the trip to London had been canceled. As it turned out, only Cylin and August's part of the trip had been canceled. Damon went on the work part.  He said he was going nuts not traveling at all. He justified his trip since he was the executive producer on the movie.  He didn't really have to go.  As it was, he came home a day early because the director had to leave early.  He was French; France was closing their border to England in a day. He had to get back home. I'm not sure if he went by the chunnel or the ferry, but he said some aspect of the trip took two hours. He compared it to the evacuation of London during WWII.  

  Despite the possibility of Damon not even coming, I continued washing windows. Damon's an excuse to get some deep house cleaning done.  I washed a large window in the library - only four more areas to go: the bay window in Mike's library, the louver bathroom windows and shower door in my bathroom, the sliding doors to my bedroom, and one regular window in my closet areas.  Then I will be done. Oh, no. I have two large double windows in the guest room. Yvette will help me with those and with the bay window.  Those require some climbing and crawling to get to. The ones in the guest room require me to get on the roof to clean the outsides.  I have to concede my balance is not what it used to be. How much is age, and how much is to a degenerating hip/ankle? I don't know.  

    I did some more practice on the Hot Honey Rag.  I can coordinate my upper and lower body for the first sixteen counts.  I think I have it, but am I able to do it fast enough to keep up with the music? Haven't tried that yet.

   Last night, I started watching Season 3 of Durrells. I recognize a plot point; I had seen it before. Damn! I didn't remember a thing up to this point. That's the bad news. The good news is I got to enjoy it again.