Ankle Still Sensitive, Use Longer Half of Pro-quality Stick

August 27, 2010.  Friday.

Situation:  Last evening I ended up mowing the whole lawn.  My foot felt good and I just kept going and going; I only had to move at a slower speed than usual. But when I finished and took my sock off, my ankle had a purple stripe on it, and I was again hobbling a bit around the house.  Last night, after she worked, Moi went down to Jazz’s for the night to be closer for an appointment with a doctor who treats her for her hypothyroid condition, so again I have the morning chores to do.  For some reason I wasn’t able to get to sleep till close to 4 last night, so I don’t wake up until 9, long past the time Moi wakes up to let Mwayla out.  While I’m sitting on the toilet, Mway paces back and forth, wags her little tail, bends forward to stretch her front legs; fortunately I don’t find any poop in the house.  I check my foot again; the purple stripe is still there, and when I press the top of the foot I feel a jab of pain.  Yesterday I hung my walking clothes on the clothesline after the walk; they are still damp when I put them on.

State of the Path:  I look for a new stick to throw: a birch branch on the ground catches my eye, but although Mway has dragged this around the yard and even fetched it there, I consider it to be too big for a fetch in the clearing.  Finally I choose the slightly larger half of the old “pro-quality” stick as the best one readily available.  I decide I need a walking stick too, and I’m happy to find the one I used during the winter still propped against the side of the house.  The chickens are clucking and crowing in the coop; I figure I’ll let them out when I get back.  Out on the path, I’m immediately dealing with wet weeds bent over in the path.  Since I haven’t a stick that’s good for whacking them, I can do nothing but push my way through them.  Faint cobwebs splatter against my face; I brush them away and sputter my lips.  I stop to look at the “creeping bush clover” plant; I note that it seems to be growing through a sumac sapling, something I’d forgotten last night.  Its tiny flowers have not yet opened for the day; I take one quick look at it, and try not to think about it anymore.  It seems to me, as I walk toward the creek, that there aren’t many bees and other insects out yet;  too early for the bugs, too early for the flowers, I reflect, I shouldn’t feel bad that it seems too early for me too.  I hear what sounds like crows in the field beyond the creek – or is it some other type of bird I hear squawking in the trees along the creek.  Despite myself, I cannot help looking for the other “creeping bush clover” plants; I look at them briefly, and I don’t know what else to do.  Along the ground at bug land lie little square meshes of dew-covered cobwebs (the type of thing that might have inspired Jazz to do her “fairy” drawings when she was a teenager).  As I walk toward the clearing and toward more sunlight, I see a bee or two, maybe a grasshopper here and there.  Walking through the high weeds before the strawberry patch, I lose my balance on a dip in the ground, and I feel in my foot a faint replay of the same pain I felt when I fell down the stoop.

State of the Creek:  I stop for a moment before the big locust trees, look across a pool of water at a rotting log that lies along the creek bank beneath some jewelweed, and I think how good a place this is for something or other to live in and around in.  I note how quiet it seems, no sound of water flowing, for instance.  But then I hear cicadas (or whatever they are), and I reflect how not too long ago I would have heard them right away, but now I have to make an effort to hear them.

The Fetch:  Up at the clearing, the sunlight, which in the summer afternoons beats down so harshly, feels this morning so nice and warm against my damp clothes.  I toss the stick into the wet goldenrod, and soon Mway is fetching the stick more times than I care to throw it, especially when I’ve not had much sleep and before my morning coffee.  When she starts coaxing me to play “Put it down,” I begin to wonder if she’ll ever stop.  Although I want to stop playing it, I start to deliberately shout “put it down” just to see how long she’ll keep up with it.  She outlasts me, and eventually I have to simply turn around and start back to the house.