Ah, the Joys of getting older...WHAT???

I remember my mother saying one day, "do you know what the advantages to getting older are?" Expecting pearls of wisdom to fall from the lips of the woman who had taught me everything I know about life, in my ignorance, I waited for the answer. Then she spoke. "Nothing. There is no advantage to getting older at all. Now all I do is wait to get old. End of lesson, grasshopper." Oh my, and now I find that they were pearls of wisdom after all.

I don't know if you've noticed, but I haven't been posting quite as often as I once was. It was because my shoulder was bothering me so badly, that just moving my left fingers was painful. I type fairly fast (67cwpm) and it's hard to slow down just because of a little (OWWW) pain. I was attributing the pain to the RA I suffer from. I have flares, and assumed this was one of them. Since I am right handed, the pain didn't interfere to badly at first. But as the days wore on, it got worse and worse. I never once associated it with a fall I had taken a few weeks before. It had been raining and we had been out on date night. While he was putting the truck away, I came in with the "kitty bag" of shrimp. Wearing my Crocs, I stepped on the kitchen floor and was immediately lying flat of my back. Now, I worry about falling more than the average person, since I had broken my neck a few years ago and had been paralysed. So, I lay there, wriggling fingers, toes and lifting my head...the trouble is I'm like a turtle on it's back...I have trouble getting up. I really didn't want Mac to find me like this, and was struggling to get up off the floor. Well, he came in and immediately began yelling, "what happened? Are you alright?" There I lay with shrimp everywhere, cats ignoring the person lying in the middle of the floor...all they wanted was the food. Damn them...no help there. So anyway, Mac helped me up, I seemed to be fine, all my parts were working that were working before the fall. And now comes the rest of the story...

We had a car theft in the neighborhood night before last. What does this have to do with my shoulder? Well, I'll tell you...someone stole our neighbor's car, driving it right through their Christmas decorated yard, into the ditch and up on to the road. This occurred about three a.m. (the time that their pit bulls (OMG PIT BULLS) were barking loudly enough to wake the dead...and them. Assuming (there goes that word again) they were barking at an animal, they simply turned over and went back to sleep. So, yesterday morning Rene asked me if we happened to be up at about 3 a.m. I mean, really people, I know I get up with the chickens, but even the chickens have better sense than to get up before sunrise. So, my answer was no. That's when I learned about the car theft. So anyway...yesterday evening I was on the phone with my other neighbor, Joanne. We discussed the car theft, the need to lock cars, because even if we do live back of beyond, thieves do manage to find their way here. We live so far back in the woods that they have to pipe in sunshine...and so we get careless. So Joanne and I are yakking, I'm cooking supper and holding the phone on my shoulder (the good one) head tipped to the side to hold it in place, and putting the black beans on to simmer when suddenly the phone fell, I jerked to grab it with my left hand and I heard a distinct pop...it was loud enough that Pyewackit (the recently defeated Presidential Candidate) looked at me as if to ask, "did you fire that gun?" I think I may have screamed, because suddenly Joanne was asking me if I was alright. I could only speak through clenched teeth as the pain subsided, got off the phone and bent double. Mac came in and started asking if I was alright. I stood up, the pain gone now. All the pain. Even the pain from before. I looked at him and giggled. I reached my arm out, straight up, then rotated it without screaming. "Remember when I fell a few weeks ago?" I asked him. "I think maybe I might have dislocated my shoulder...I heard it when it popped back in." He grimaced. And then he asked the million dollar question. "You did throw those damned rubber shoes in the trash, right?" Errr...yeah, right...