(With apologies to Laura Joffe Numeroff, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
If you give a foot an injection, you might need a new recycling drawer to go with it…
So I had my day planned to include a highly anticipated elliptical workout (my “dry swim” as I refer to it — same body movements, no hair drama). Highly anticipated because between a wonky left hip and a janky right foot lately, my usual workouts are a bit painful. Ellipting and swimming are serving the purpose of pain-free cardio lately — and they are definitely less convenient than strapping on tennis shoes and going for a walk or doing a quick neighborhood stairs workout.
It’s been extremely busy the past month or so, lots of doc appts for me and my 89 year old mother, as well as pleasurable wedding related errands, and I only seem to have those one-hour slips of time in which to maintain my fitness. That’s important because I’ve already had my Mother of the Groom dress altered and the wedding is less than a month away. Weight maintenance is the key to a worry free day for this MOG.
Anyhow, as I was starting to say, I had planned to go to the foot doc, tell him the laser treatments had not helped the janky-ness in the least (might as well have been pointing a flashlight at my foot, honestly, and I would keep the $60 a visit), and then, I would head to the gym to ellipt whilst reading the later chapters of the incredible book, Perfect Eloquence, about Vin Scully. There’s even a special type of elliptical machine that has the correct distance for reading (not sure why my gym has three different brands of that machine, but only one works for my reading needs).
Oh, plans! They are so adorable.
So, in a moment of weakness, I acquiesce to podiatrist’s suggestion of a cortisone injection in the foot. I said I wasn’t ever going to get one again, since the last two times I did (once in my arthritic hip, once in my frozen shoulder), I ended up with a period. Yes. Both times. 6 years apart. The menstrual kind, despite at the time being about 12 years post menopause. (Apparently the cortisone can interfere with the progesterone in my hormone replacement regimen, and lets the estrogen run wild. Hence, a 50-plus woman had to go buy “feminine products.” Sigh. (And don’t start with the risks about hormone replacement, ok? I have read, researched and sought expert advice. Bottom line, most of the early studies about hormone replacement were performed on women who had already been through menopause. Yep, side effects included increased risk of cancers. BUT, when women start hormone replacement DURING menopause or peri menopause, the side effects go in the opposite direction — less risk of those cancers (and obviously if you can’t take estrogen because you have that kind of breast cancer or that gene, this would not apply to you). Like those pharmaceutical ads recommend, talk to your physician, but you’d be wise not to come and take away my estrogen patches. That saying, pull back a bloody stub? You get the idea.)
Anyway, I decide that maybe since my foot is really far (like 32 inches at least) from my ovaries, maybe I’ll get lucky. Or maybe if it happens, it’ll be quick. And maybe it’ll be worth it so that I can dance at my son’s wedding in shoes other than Berk’s or Hokas. Right?
So, he says after pulling that long-ass needle out of my foot, skip the workout today. No ellipting. Not even swimming. Just usual movement of the foot (going to the grocery store is ok. DANG). I resign myself to doing the weekend market run, getting gas in my car and rolling through the car wash, and doing a few things around the house.
If you’re my husband reading this, you just got a cold chill. Cindy, around the house, with time on her hands….He’s praying for intervention from the Holy Spirit right now.
So, as I’m putting away the groceries, I remember that the fridge light went out two days ago. I am fairly handy. Shouldn’t be too hard. Right? I looked in our stash of bulbs, and we even had the right voltage and wattage of halogen bulbs suggested in the manual!
So, foreshadowing here, I couldn’t even find where the bulbs were in the fridge. I found the diagram in owner’s manual, and reading that section, realized it was a little more complicated than you might imagine. I think there’s a joke in here: How many post-menopausal women on hormone replacement does it take to change a lightbulb?
So the diagram isn’t great (I’ve seen better from amazon furniture instructions), and I go looking for a video on YouTube, but can’t find one for our model of GE Monogram. So I pull out the very heavy veggie bin — fully loaded with the bounty I just purchased – and on hands and knees, I locate the hidden light bulb compartment.
I pull here and press there and partially reveal the recessed hold where the lights live. (Backtracking, I double check again that I have turned off the main power switch to the lights, as warned in the booklet). I put the tips of my fingers (all I can reach on the first try) and feel the lens of the halogen bulbs. They are tiny. Much smaller than the ones we have on hand. A secondary check of the manual: correct watt and volt, but wrong “type.”
Can we all just remember when light bulbs were light bulbs? You could actually see them in your fridge. When they went out, you went to the local grocery store and picked up a replacement in the hardware aisle. Do they still have hardware aisles in the market? No one knows. We all order from amazon.
Which is what I just did.
But as I was noodling the wisdom of changing it myself (because Joe can’t help — his hands would never fit back there) I wondered if it’s worth a service call to our local appliance repair guys to come and change the bulbs out (because I don’t care if these are supposed to last a lifetime, when we change one, we’re changing them all!)
**And then I think, you know, it’d be silly to have them come for that one thing.** We’ve been meaning to replace our non-functioning trash compactor with a slide open trash/recycling drawer for awhile now. How about I pull the trigger on that purchase, and they can change the bulbs when they come to install it?
Which in hindsight, doesn’t make sense because honestly, I want lights in my fridge sooner than I can get a new appliance installed.
But anyway, I called our peeps at South Bay Appliance and ordered the trash situation, and then he said the light bulb situation would be handled by service. And he transferred me, and as is always the case when people are really good at what they do, they were so busy that my call went into the endless loop of we’ll-be-with-you-in-a-minute recording, and that’s when I hung up and thought, I’ll call back later, and, well, maybe an electrician can do it. We’ve been meaning to change out the burnt out socket at the top of the stairs (I swear, it’s not the bulb — we still know how to do that — the whole thing stopped working) and I think, as long as they’re here, maybe we should buy those new pendant lights, because ours have NEVER worked (apparently the installer didn’t put enough voltage or wattage for that type of light and an electrician said we’d need to get different pendant lights with lower wattage or voltage or so something). **Someone check on Joe, please.**
So, I go on the Lamps Plus website, and they, like Macy’s, just happen to always be having the best sale of the year (I don’t think the word “best” means the same to all of us). Anyway, before I start in with another purchase, perhaps Joe’s prayers come through in some supernatural timeless way (before he actually knows to pray them), and I pause. I decide I’ll wait until the fridge bulbs arrive tomorrow and give it another try, with my hubby in the house to offer encouragement, to call 911 or to agree that this is above our skill set.
So, a thousand dollars poorer (purchase/shipping/tax/install) for the new trash situation that will be arriving sometime around the wedding – because of course it will. And still, I have a dark fridge.
And still have a foot that’s janky, with hopes of being less janky in the set of tomorrows to come.
And really hoping my progesterone holds out, but just in case it doesn’t, there’s red wine and dark chocolate in the house. **Pray for Joe.***
Thanks for listening.
Cindy
**This is the part that really is freaking Joe out right about now
McMusings 