My dog is hovering.  She wants a walk but I’m afraid to, since viewing the MRI today and seeing the “edema on the bone.”  When I saw all that white stuff and he said it was supposed to be black, I immediately thought cancer.  I couldn’t slow my head down long enough to remember what that word meant.  It wasn’t any kind of cancer I could think of.  I was wracking my brain, coming up empty, thinking it must be rare, when he started talking about shots and cortisone. 

“So it’s not CANCER?”

“No,” he said looking at me like I was nuts and flipping over the blue page, with my history on the back.

“We can do a shot today and wait two weeks, and then you can decide if you want to repair the meniscus or pass.  I can’t say for sure that putting in a couple stitches will change anything.”

I was off the cancer, remember how my friend said the shot of cortisone really hurt.

“So what do you want to do?” he asked.

“I want the shot but I don’t want it without taking a pain pill first.”

“What?  You won’t need any pain medication.  It doesn’t hurt that much.  I numb it up first.”

“I heard it hurts like a mother.”

“That’s crazy.  Hey, you don’t have to do it.  I don’t care one way or the other.”

That got me. 

“Okay, but when I go to the dentist it takes forever for the Novocain to kick in.”

He wasn’t listening.  He had his back to me, making that tapping noise I hate, getting air bubbles out of the syringe.  Christ, I hardly had time to work myself up to a full-on worry.  He’d caught me by surprise.

“This is just a bee sting.”

True enough, I hardly felt it.  He yammered on, using words like arthroscopic and meniscus while I wondered how pissed he’d be if I changed my mind about the shot.  He’s supposed to be the best and I might need him down the road.  My other knee has been a little off, too.  Maybe it was best to just go along.  It was just a shot.

“Now try to relax and don’t move.” 

There was an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one.  I exhaled as the needle went in.  He drove it in deeper than I expected.  I was glad I hadn’t looked, thinking How long is this sucker anyway?  It was a deep, dull pain, but alarming because of the intensity.

“This is the color of the fluid I was talking about.”

Duh; edema=fluid.  How could I forget that?  I looked up and wished I hadn’t.  Eight CCs of yellow stuff but the worst was realizing he was going to have to switch that out for the cortisone.  I hate when they take blood and have to change syringes.  You know that needle’s gonna get pushed in further or pulled or both.  But, again, I hardly had time to get worked up when he said “Put your finger here.”  He stuck a Band-Aid on it and told me to apply pressure for one minute.  Then he was gone.

I felt a little queasy but left with a less-swollen knee.  I can’t tell that the cortisone is doing anything but my knee didn’t hurt that much to begin with.  It only hurts when I move it wrong.  And then it’s this excruciating, electric zing where I’m immobilized for a minute or so.  Then it’s sore for a while and there’s more fluid behind my knee. 

Getting old is so time consuming.  First you have to figure out how to work around gray hair.  Then you’re faced with hair that’s perfectly dark but in all the wrong places.  Fine, another five minutes added on each morning with the tweezers.  You need all new make-up because your skin tone seems to be a shade duller.  Sit-ups are mandatory, every day, not to mention an hour walk, just to get back to square one.  I’ve been doing this with a cane so that my dog can’t crash into me when she leads the dog chasing her straight for my legs.  That cane makes me feel like a hundred years old but I can get her to heel with it so it’s worth it. 

Glasses become something you need at every turn.  Pretty soon it’ll probably be a hearing aide.  When my allergies kick in I can’t hear a damn thing.  Now my joints are going.  All this and I’m still going to show up tomorrow night looking like a million bucks.  It’s the high school graduation for the youngest and the first time I’ll see my ex and his fiance together.  The last time I saw him was in 2004.  Between the Seattle trip and this graduation I have put some time and effort into coming up with the perfect outfit and accessories and a body to be proud of.  I reached my ten-pound goal on Friday and as long as my knee doesn’t give out when I greet my replacement, I’ll have pulled it off. 

Protected post follows.  I think I have everyone on the list.  Let me know if I don’t.

Edited to add:

Still waiting on Xanga but Brenda states “If a post was always protected, and none of it ever surfaced in a public post, there ‘s no way Google or Yahoo or any other search engine would be able to find it.”

Please note Brenda’s comment on the post below, concerning Bloglines and the RSS Feed.  I have contacted the Xanga team and asked them to comment.

I got this from a reader:

“Bloglines.com is a syndication feed- and from what I understand, anyone, anywhere can read your blog without the privacy settings (meaning your protected post is public).” 

If you want to change that go to:http://www.xanga.com/private/editaccountprivacy.aspx

I just fixed it so that only Xanga people can read me.  I need to be able to post protected.

I’m torn.  I click on Bloglines and it looks tempting.  I would like a bigger audience, who wouldn’t? 

Or would I? Just seeing all these hits I’m getting from who knows where makes me wonder how wise it is to write such personal stuff.  I actually try to discourage new readers by not returning comments.  I ‘can’t hardly’ do justice to your posts, as it is. 

 I like my little group of friends.  We all know and care about each other and I feel safe with you, saying whatever comes up.  But it’s not just us, I see.  It’s a whole bunch of strangers. 

So then I think, why not go for a more public profile?  But that’s ego talking (nod to R:) )  When I truly consider writing for strangers, about my lif — I can’t even finish that sentence because it’s so stupid.  That’s what I’m doing with the book.  And it’s one of the reasons I worry the book is not as interesting as the blog.  I mean lately I worry about it; that the book feels somewhat stale compared to the blog.  I feel like the writing is good but it’s like talking to myself.  Plus it’s old news.  Well, that’s just something I’ll have to keep in mind; keeping past tense alive.

So what do y’all think about Bloglines?

I had a breakthrough tonight; I twirled.  And not three minutes from my house.   In my new quest for blues bands I might find, locally, I got on the Internet.  Actually, I was checking out the band from last weekend, and when I saw they were playing in the town next to me I drove over there tonight. 

Okay, keep in mind I am a block away from where my dad’s lumberyard was.  Where I drove tonight was the town across the river from where I went to high school and our big rival.  I grew up hearing this town was rock bottom.  And tonight I can vouch for that.

The biker bar had more class than this joint.  That’s the beer talking.  The biker bar had better energy.  Those toothless girls and those guys in motorcycle gear — I don’t know, it was just a better mix.  Plus the band was better.  I thought I might see the sax player tonight because that big, black singer was supposed to be there and I hoped he might join her again.  But she was sick and there was a new singer in her place.

This band tonight was good instrumentally, they had a different bass player and the guest singer was great but between the place and the people — laid back doesn’t quite portray these idle poor.  There was a bag lady in the very back who tottered out toward the end. 

At first no one danced, but once the guest singer got up there I couldn’t stand it and up I went.  All by myself.  I’ve never done that before but once I got out there it was just like being on stage again.  Only this time I didn’t give a shit.  I practiced.  It was a pretty big dance floor and I thought what the hell.  I practiced spins.  I tried figure eights.  I did all those big moves you can never do on a little dance floor with other people around. 

I wish my teachers could have seen me.  At the club I used to go to they always asked me to perform and I always said I wasn’t ready.  I only liked to dance to music I had choreographed, not being comfortable winging it with live music.  It’s odd, after all this time, and in such an unlikely place, I finally did it.  I can still smell my perfume:  Boucheron.  It’s a little heavy and I chose it for when I was wearing a costume.  The last time I had it on was 2000.  Even though no dancers saw me tonight, and it wasn’t belly-dance music, I smell like it counts.

CapnK8  has posted the first issue of Wingspan Quarterly, this being the link to my short story they included:  Apartment Hunting   Check it out, they did a really good job.

Other than the tags I should have used at the end and one missing quotation mark, I am happy with mine.  When I first read it I wasn’t but with time I’ve decided it’s okay for my first published work. 

I’m sure I’m the last to figure this out but today I noticed where it says Footprints so I clicked on it and all it revealed about the visitor was “Bloglines.”  When I clicked on that, hoping I’d see a name, there was a blank form.  How is it you are able to know who visited?  Or maybe you don’t but I thought one of you mentioned that you could.  And what is the difference between someone coming from Bloglines — What the hell is that anyway?  Is it just like Blogger?  Or is it a combination of all of them?  And then I saw individual states so I figured those were from Xanga.  Any information would be appreciated.

I just want to know one thing.  Does this sound psychic to you?  I’ve been practicing to this old rock and roll station, remembering all the great concerts I was too stoned to enjoy or recall, much past the first couple of songs.  What a waste.  So I’m remembering seeing Jimi Hendrix in Seattle, the time I hitchhiked up there with my boyfriend’s roommate, dropped acid and spent most of the time freaked out in the bathroom.  Anyway, all of a sudden the very song comes on that I’m recalling.  The acid hadn’t kicked in yet and I was standing beneath the stage, almost as close as I was to the sax player the other night.  Dancing to the radio, I was struck motionless as I stopped to consider that maybe I just had my first premonition.  Does this sound like I’m off my rocker?

I spent over an hour with a highly medicated cancer patient today.  She was on drugs her psychiatrist had prescribed.  Drugs she’s been on for a while, before the cancer showed up.  Now she’d doing all those along with the cancer drugs, and I could just imagine what her head must feel like.  She made sense to me, though.  Her perspective is just a little narrower.  Like moment to moment. 

Last night was the best fun I’ve had in I can’t remember how long.  It was our third time there so, sitting in our usual booth, I felt at home.  This band was R and B and guess who else was there?  When the singer announced there was a special guest in the audience, a saxophone player and singer, my friend and I looked at each other.  The odd thing was I expected him to be there.  Sure enough he took the stage and we hit the dance floor.  I was dancing right next to his mic and he smiled hello.  When he sings rough it’s like he’s blowing the sax with everything he’s got.  Well, not everything.  He has a deliberate way about him. Come to think of it when he sings softly, which soothes me, it’s that same quality the sax has, kind of muffled.  It’s a soft, thick, rich sound. 

 I watched him and thought way to go.  He had gone back to the place where the band he plays with would not be invited back.  He picked a successful woman’s band, with a lead singer he knew would invite him up.  The last song he invited himself up after she was through, saying he wanted to give the man’s perspective.  I love the way he did it.  It was his chance and he took it.  He didn’t push his way up there and he didn’t ask.  He sweet-talked her, starting a dialogue. He’d worked out this whole routine, playing off what she’d just sung.  The band adapted and the audience loved it. 

He did such a good job on the last song I wasn’t even dancing.  I just stood below and clapped to his rhythm.  He had the audience goin’ nuts.  When he’s with his band he doesn’t get to sing that much and half the songs don’t use the sax.  After the show I was talking to the singer, a very large black woman, maybe in her late 30s, the one who invited him to come up and sing.  I asked if she had a website so I could see where else she was playing.  About that time he came up and joined us, (finally, because I waited all night for him to come find our table.  He was sitting around the corner from us at the table the band shared when they took breaks.  I know because when I was dancing I’d sneak peeks at him watching me.  And let me just tell you how good that felt.  I’ve never danced for a man before.  I mean one that I knew.  It was always competitions or shows, so the only men were husbands or boyfriends.  The few times I danced in a restaurant it was for other dancers.  So to see the look on his face and to know I’ve still got it, I imagine it was how he felt with me standing below him clapping).  Anyway, the three of us stood there and I said how good they were together.  At the end of the last song he’d turned to her and started singing back-up harmony, that soft sound.

When he came up to us he talked to her first.  Then he put his hand out to shake, the way you would with a business acquaintance you hadn’t seen in a while.  “Hey, how you doin’?” he said. This was in front of her and sounded much more Black than when I’d talked to him before.

 The last thing he said to her was “So I’ll see you Sunday?”  Prior to that I’d asked him where his sax was which was a stupid question but I’d had a few drinks.  He said “I have to figure out something new to do.”  I know this will sound narcissistic but I am beginning to believe there’s a reason he met me.  I wonder if his taking steps to make a bigger place for himself is the same reason I am practicing in my kitchen.  When someone is watching, someone you think is cool, and they really see you, it’s validating enough that you want to be better for them. 

 His hand was rough, like a laborer’s, and I wondered where they’d been that day.  I couldn’t believe what he had on.  It suited him somehow but I swear he looked like Pinocchio.  Either that or one of the boys in the Sound of Music, singing in the meadow.  The guy has a thing about costuming.  And shoes.  Every time I see him he has a different pair of shoes on.  He has great shoes.  Thank God he’s married and Black and probably too young.