I'll spare you the photo of my stitched up ankle.

When we went back a week and a half ago for a follow-up on my ankle surgery, the PA checked the incision and exclaimed, "This is beautiful!" I responded, "You and I have very different ideas of beauty." It took her a minute, then she laughed. I've been told my deadpan delivery often makes it difficult to tell that I'm joking. The surgeon came in and agreed, and told me I could now start putting weight on it. I asked if I had to keep wearing the Shrek shoe, and she told me if I could fit my ace bandage-wrapped foot into a regular shoe, that would be fine. Because when they said, "It's blue, so it goes with everything," they actually meant, "It goes with nothing any sane person would ever consider wearing."

I was mostly glad to be done with that bloody walker. My husband was promptly dispatched to buy a cane. When he returned home with it, I tested it out by shaking it in the air and shouting in a crotchety voice, "Get off my goddamn lawn!" It worked.

I returned to work last Monday in our first snow of the season. The roads were fine, the dusting just made for pretty scenery. I used the cane for the first couple of days and then found I no longer needed even it. I was so excited to be mobile that I stopped at the grocery store and came home to make a Mediterranean cabbage and potato stew. That actually doesn't sound all that good, but it was delicious. We went back to the podiatrist this past Friday to get my sutures removed. I covered my eyes and whimpered a little because I'm a weenie about things like that. But a compliant weenie - I did not move a muscle. My ankle was very swollen and I was instructed to keep walking but to wear a compression sock during the day and to elevate my foot when I am sitting down. Done and done. Every day it gets a little better.

So for the time being, my days of lying on the couch watching mindless television while the cat stares me down are done. And I'm glad. I continue to read a lot, but I am more and more ready to just resume my life as much as possible. Now, if only spring would get here...