I finally got smart and went to the chiropractor so he could realign my back since I threw it all out of whack favoring my wrenched knee for the last few weeks. So much better now. He had his assistant use ultrasound on my back and hip after he adjusted things, and then put on some sort of special tape that's supposed to help it heal. So far, so good. While she was doing that she put some special pad (infrared maybe?) under my knee that was supposed to reduce the inflammation. Well, that worked a miracle. I felt so much better last night and today, I can't even tell you. I was even able to do 20 minutes of step aerobics on the Wii Fit this morning without it hurting. (I know you are totally fascinated by the ups and downs of my recovery; that's why I'm telling you. It would be cruel to make you wait until after the weekend for a report. ;-] )
Have you been writing? I haven't today, but I'm going to. Cross my heart. Now that I've got chicken soup made so I don't starve at work all next week, I can settle down to play with words a bit. I've got a flash I want to polish up and get submitted before the weekend's over. I just realized something; if I send out one submission every week, just one, that's 52 in a year and that's a respectable number. I like how what I wrote last night turned out. I almost quit before I started because when I looked at the picture nothing jumped out at me, but I reminded myself that any writing is good writing so I just plunged it, and look what came! I think it has possibilities.
April 16--Tachibana, Japan. Ellen stared at the islands offshore. They looked like great creatures rising from the sea with their graceful forms and rounded shapes. She thought of her son, Luke when he was small. How his imagination had built fantastic worlds and beasts out of the common things he saw. He had entertained her for hours with his tales of magic and dwarfs and beasts that spoke and flew. Luke had never needed toys to play for him, he made his own worlds with a box of Legos and a handful of stones and twigs he collected in the yard. Ellen had learned quickly to always check his pockets before she put his jeans or shorts into the washer. One memorable time she had reached in and pulled out a very indignant looking frog. She had shrieked and dropped it. Luke had come in, caught the frog, and then he had scolded her for scaring it. She had been sorry when he damped down that raging imagination to better fit in with the other children. He never lost the twinkle in his eye but he'd grown into a nearly predictable man. Ellen sighed. Yes, she missed her imaginative boy. She leaned over to her seatmate on the tour bus. "I think those islands out there look like a swimming dragon, don't you?" Her neighbor, a retired minister's wife from somewhere in the middle of Ohio and a woman who had evidently had her imagination surgically removed years before, just glared at her. Oh dear, Ellen thought, now I've done it again, she'll tell everyone what I said and they'll spend the rest of the trip avoiding sitting by me. I should be used to being the odd one by now, but I'm not.
Trust me, those islands totally looked like a swimming dragon.
--Barbara
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