Cactus Flowers at Sunset

About 3 weeks ago I dropped off some slide film I finally finished up.  The problem was I couldn’t advance my film or rewind it halfway through the roll.  Off to the neighborhood repair shop, and voilà!  Just a this and a that, and the film worked.  I advanced a few and finished up the roll.

This is a view of my neighbor’s garden – he has one of the finest “southwestern” gardens I have seen because it is well kept and not full of weeds.  At sunset, with soft light, a row of blooms – quite lovely.

I was hoping to get a lot of photography done this week since I am off from work, but instead I decided to break my wrist and finger on Easter Sunday, just to do something different.

Broken Bones & Painting: False Fronts

Two days ago I was cleaning the kitchen up, even to the point of cleaning the oven and stove top – huge job for a Sunday morning.  The other half was on call all day, so it seemed like the perfect time.  We weren’t able to join family that day, so do something useful.  All was going well until one of the dogs lay down behind me, and when I turned around, over I went.  I took a standing lamp with me, fell over the arm of the couch, smacked my arm and hand on the treadle sewing machine, and ended up on my back.  I knew my hand was messed up – it hurt!  Off to the urgent care to have 3 questionable fractures, one in the wrist and 2 in the middle finger.  Monday confirmed fractures, but only 2, both chips.  Not too bad.  But, now I am all bound up with a splint on my finger and one on my wrist.   My right wrist.  I am right-handed.  Oh, woe is me!

Happily, my dog was more surprised and less damaged than I.

Spring break and the plans are to do all sorts of fun things.  Like paint.  And that is what I have been attempting to do today.  It is not easy to draw a straight line or hold a brush, much less type, with normal dexterity.  In a way that is really good as nothing can be considered “serious” when nothing is feeling coördinated.  There is a real disconnect, like when your face is all numb from anaesthesia at the dentist.  Believe me when I say drawing in  splints make straight lines somewhat improbable.

And here are the results, pictures taken step by step as I waited for things to dry.  I was on the patio whilst painting – someplace relatively safe as the dogs aren’t allowed in this part of the yard.  The focus is on imagined shadows, not great art.  Click to see larger.

A Message from the “Officially” Fallen

It’s official:  two fractures, neither of which is especially serious.  More uncomfortable than anything, and inconvenient.  I have a splint for the middle finger, where I have a chip fracture on the joint above the knuckle.  The wrist fracture is a bigger, non-displaced chip fracture on the distal radius – the bone just below the thumb.    I have a removable splint for each, rather than a cast.  This will make bathing much easier.

I can function much better in this new and stylish black splint, even drive and draw and hold a brush.  I go back on the 24th for follow-up.  Overall, 4 to 6 week healing time.

The Fallen

 

Take a dog. Take a turn.  Trip over dog.  Fall forward.  Fall onto your back after hitting the sewing table with your right hand.

Probable broken middle finger on right hand and a broken right wrist, per the local urgent care, but best go see a hand specialist Monday or so, to confirm or deny.

I am right-handed.

Happy Easter!

Thursday Morning

This has been quite a week or so.  I am so glad I get the next ten days off from work, starting at 5 p.m. tonight.  I am just about done in!

You could say it began two weeks ago.  A pipe broke under the shower pan in the master bathroom.  Three days later, half the carpet in the bedroom is gone, the shower stall is destroyed, and the leak is fixed.  Now all that remains is arguing with the insurance company, choosing tile for the bathroom, ordering tile for the bathroom, ordering flooring for bathroom and back third of the house, painting the bathrooms and bedroom, and installing new vanities, possibly one or two new toilets, new mirrors, and new lighting in the bathrooms.  Maybe it will be done by the end of April.  The other half is going bonkers with all the estimates and people coming and going.  Besides that, I had a 3-day painting workshop (yay!), a nasty cold and flu, and now Josh has the cold.

So, what is going to happen during the break?  A few appointments.  Lots of art if I am lucky.  Lots of photography, too.  Choices being made for tile and paint – the flooring is already chosen – and writing big checks for all this stuff.  And researching what “contiguous” means in context of California insurance law – but that is another story!

And, of course, organizing all the bits and pieces of my life that have fallen apart over the last few weeks.  I never realized how disorganization is like a perpetual motion machine – it is entropy at its worst!