The Way of Tom, and my Knee

How amazing is that?  I, "a little old lady in tennis shoes" as some jerk once referred to me online, just downloaded that picture directly from my phone.  All self-taught.  These are demanding times.

I once read in a short story by T.C. Boyle that you never recover from anything that happens to your body over the age of 21.  That was a character speaking, but the character was a doctor, and my experience is that he was right.  I suppose my knee will be like that.  It just hurts a little when I walk much, but I have a lot of miscellaneous aches, what's one more?  On the upside, I can hobble around in a brace over a stockinette, as shown, or over long pants (otherwise the brace abrades my skin) and maybe someone will think I got it playing soccer.

I don't usually blog on Sunday. Well, I don't "usually" blog.  And I take Sundays off from everything that feels like work.  That means I don't check e-mail or run the Roomba or go to meetings.  Well, I never go to meetings.  It took me a while to figure out how to do that.

But Tom says that today "a lot of people" asked him after church how my knee was while I slept in.  I love that! That's why I told Kathleen Fowler it was okay to do a caring card for me after I fell, and many people signed it last week.  I looked at it carefully, and appreciate it.  Good PR is important.  And I want to publicly thank Marian Clover for calling Kathleen, who is one of our ministers.

I did have a little thought today, though, so I thought I'd share it in a casual way.  It is a reminder of Reality:  you are influenced by the people you hang around with, including your partner/spouse and your cat.  Or dog, of course. I don't mean to exclude anyone, whatever their animal companion preference might be.

That same cat---look at those eyes, the intense determination to make her Mom's tote bag part of her personal territory---that cat was, as usual, preventing me from changing the tablecloth, which is part of my extensive cat-allergy program.  I was about to raise my voice at her, but then I remembered how Tom solves these things.  I looked around for a ping-pong ball and of course there was one nearbye.  So I picked it up, showed it to Tashi, and whispered, "Get it!" in an exciting tone of voice, the way Tom does, and threw it out of the kitchen.  Cat bounds off the table and goes for the ball.  I get to change the tablecloth.  Bob's your uncle, as the English say.

I thought, This is the Way of Tom.  It's getting something done with the least effort, which is one of those physical principles:  effort is work.  I thought I should note it, because you pick up a lot of bad habits from your spouse, but on the other hand, sometimes you learn something.