Why, nothing, of course.

I might as well open with two confessions: first, that photo is a little misleading. It’s not, thankfully, Lucy Sparkletoes who has the broken arm. Nor is she an introvert. But who wants to open with a splint and oddly colored fingers?

Second, I’ve been away so long that WordPress has managed to become almost incomprehensible to me the user. So bear with the odd font sizes etc. I may have nothing to do, but it will take a whole lot more nothing to do to get me to try to learn a new way of writing a blog post.

Since pretty much my entire readership consists of family members, you probably know all about what happened. But for anyone else, I’ll just say it isn’t as strange as it seems to learn that Floyd and I went out for a little skate around the neighborhood. We do that periodically. We MET skating. At my peak I skated up to 2000 miles per year. And I very rarely fall.

If you go back three years in this very blog you can read all about that time I shattered my right wrist while on a walk, so. In a way this experience was similar, with all the “Yup, you’ve done it again,” and “Nothing by mouth after midnight” stuff.

This one did bring a new experience, though: having a fracture reduced! (Squeamish people skip ahead.)

The people at our lovely ER were wonderful, of course, and very generous with IV morphine. Still, when they came to tell me the fracture would need to be reduced, and they wheeled in this, this medieval looking device that looked like they might tie my fingers to it and run out of the room with them, I wasn’t too stoned to realize that sounded pretty bad.

“No worries,” they said. “We’ll give you something so you won’t remember a thing.” Riiight.

I fell off my skates, you guys, not off a pumpkin truck.

Actually that procedure was excellent! It was like general anesthesia except I was pleasantly dreaming the whole time; and the arm felt way better with those bones more or less back in place. So if you ever need a broken limb reduced, do not fear it – especially if you are in my closest ER.

Flash forward a week and, much to my dismay, I was told and could see very clearly that those bones were nowhere near as in place as they should be. Not to mention a little fragment that was quite far from where it should be. So.

SQUEAMISH PEOPLE CAN COME BACK NOW. THE WORST IS OVER.

“At least it’s my left arm this time,” and “This one is nowhere near as bad as the last one,” are statements that truly scrape the bottom of the optimism barrel, in my opinion. Just like, “It’s a good time to be in quarantine.” But there you have it.

Now all I want to be able to add is, “I had to visit numerous health care facilities and didn’t come down with COVID-19.”

Meanwhile, spring arrived in fits and starts and chilly and hot and rainy and dull and gorgeous.

So a lazy retired introvert with a broken arm gets to sit in the front yard a great deal, where there is almost always a breeze and the agave flower stalk across the street grows every day like a mammoth asparagus that will soon be topped with yellow flowers and a million honeybees. It’s a very good time to look forward to things.

It’s been a joy to watch the young families all around us make the most of a very challenging situation. They have spent time making things, and playing, and producing beautiful sidewalk art; learning to ride two-wheelers and skateboards; and letting their 4-year-olds holler nonsense at each other across the street.

Of course there is much beauty in the here and now; I feel extremely privileged to be in a suburban neighborhood with plenty of space for walking. Travis and I have gone around a few blocks many times over the past months, and now that my arm is so much better we’ll be able to roam a bit wider. The greenbelt remains Floyd’s purview, however, now that the snakes have awakened for the season.

Speaking of Floyd and his #1 helper, while I’ve been indulging in 800 varieties of indolence, Floyd has been hard at work building a model airplane. It is a model of his own design, dating back to the ’80s; he’d been thinking of building it for quite some time. It’s not nice to get the gift of time from a potentially deadly virus, but not much to be done about that. Might as well make the most of it.

I cannot imagine making anything so detailed and meticulous. The battery is the heaviest part of the whole thing, and all together it is just about precisely nine pounds. Floyd mowed a runway in a nearby field (no worries, the rattlesnake den is YARDS away) and on the one occasion Travis and I went to witness a flight, that dog ran like a wild puppy trying to corral the flying machine. Fortunately we each have our assortment of pain pills for afterward. 100% worth it, said Travis.

Back on earth, the usual spring explosion of flowers. One of the advantages of a native/well-adapted garden is it can fend for itself quite well. I’ve had no inclination for weeding or bug-chasing, so there sidewalk garden has had to make what it could of the season.

Fortunately the bees are not confined to their hives.

I’ve been listening to Jane Austen novels on repeat, and watching cosy mysteries one after another. Miss Marple spends an inordinate amount of time battling weeds, imo. She would never approve of the tangled mess at the end of the Unruly Gardener’s driveway.

I’m sorry I don’t have a photo to do them justice, but we’ve had masses of these beautiful purple flowers all over the place. You might think someone with nothing to do should look up everybody’s name, or at least download a plant identifier app; but there is a very slippery slope between nothing to do and doing nothing, and as you know, I find the world a pretty slippery place.

Back in the Time Before, Travis and I made a couple of trips out to The Natural Gardener; for once I treated myself to a couple of dahlias – the world’s most photogenic flowers.

Pure eye candy for difficult times!

I am not much of a rose gardener, but I do have a couple of graveyard (read “ABANDONED graveyard”) roses. I must admit they tempt me to go in search of some really fragrant varieties but we are not allowed out and I meant it when I said “lazy.” Why else would you plant roses that thrive on neglect?

My crown of thorns, the one plant I would rescue from a house fire if I could move it, sailed through the winter draped in plastic down at the open end of the greenhouse. I’ve had it since it was a tiny baby and it has never for one minute been without flowers.

Look, you stay healthy too, okay? Stay at home if you possibly can and be extra nice to the people who deliver what you need right to your door. My most recent delivery person said that shoppers are being extremely rude. Don’t be those people!

Send all your best thoughts to the people who are fighting on our front lines in hospitals and clinics and grocery stores, and find out if you have anything a neighbor might need.

And wear your mask!