Filed Under:Blog, family, Featured Post, Publishing, The Realm Below, The Space Between, Writing
Crunch Time
Posted By: Susan Rooke
Posted on: July 5, 2018 10:56 AM
I’ve been doing a lot of cooking over the past couple of months, as you could probably tell from the crawfish, the ice cream with chocolate shell topping, the vichyssoise and the Caesar Salad of the last four consecutive posts. (And let’s not forget the Sweet Batter Bread!) Sometimes that nesting, nurturing mood strikes me, and when it does, there’s no telling what will come rolling out of the kitchen. The house will smell delicious, there’ll be homemade bread in the toaster and something savory roasting in the oven or bubbling on the stove.
Well, it’s a good thing I got to indulge those kitchen cravings when I did, because now my cooking is on hold. Twelve days ago I broke a bone or two in my left hand while doing the laundry. And the important contributions an uninjured left hand makes to almost everything I do came as an unpleasant surprise to my right-handed self. For instance:
• Making the bed (However, I can still do a better job with one hand than Glen did [once] with two. It was sweet of him, though.)
• Showering, getting dressed and flossing my teeth
• Taking care of our Australian Shepherd Lucy and Queen of All She Surveys Phoebe (Thank heavens The Daughter was here for a visit when I hurt myself. She fed the animals and cleaned Phoebe’s Cat Box of Diabetic Doom for three days before she had to fly back to Colorado. Thank you, Katie!)
• Driving anywhere (Grocery shopping, PO Box checking, appointment-keeping? Cancelled. All of it.)
• Cooking, of course (Thankfully, Glen knows his way around a kitchen, so we’re not going hungry. In fact, we’ve learned that his breakfast tacos are better than the ones I make with both my hands.)
• But here’s the one that feels like the biggest hindrance: typing. Since the laundry accident, typing has become a task I have to perform almost entirely one-handed, although the injury is getting a little better. Slowly.
Glen calls me “Monkey Arms” because I have a history of flailing my limbs about and banging them into things. Years ago I broke my right hand in an inglorious moment during a throw cushion/glass-topped coffee table incident. (Don’t ask.) The result of this current round of gracelessness is that I’m behind on finishing The Realm Below. I’d still like to have it out before January 2019, but this is crunch time now; we’re in the butt end of 2018 already. I have a few thousand words to go, and then comes beta-reading and editing, formatting, etc. It may be doable, but I’m trying not to get overly stressed in case it isn’t. I’ll just have to give it my best shot.
So unless I make tremendous progress on the sequel to The Space Between over the coming two weeks, the July 19th blog post will likely be a rerun of an earlier one. (This one is post # 92, so I have a few to choose from.) Please forgive me, but doing that would give me a much-needed month to focus entirely on finishing the writing of Book 2 (and all that typing!). After that, the rewriting shouldn’t be much of a problem. Fingers crossed. I’ll also be saving time on some household chores. Like the laundry, for example, which I plan never to do again.
Some of you might be wondering, “But how on earth do you break your hand doing the laundry, Monkey Arms?”
In these two easy steps:
1. You remove Glen’s damp blue jeans from the washing machine and, using both hands, begin to vigorously shake the wrinkles out of them before throwing them into the clothes dryer.
2. You’re still shaking them when your left hand loses its grip on the denim, and you watch helplessly as this appendage goes crashing at top speed into a corner of the dryer’s exterior. *crunch*
(There was a third, verbal step, but it isn’t repeatable.)
That’s the method I used, at any rate. And guess what? It worked like a charm!
omg i am so sorry
Hand looks awful!
Hope you recover soon!
Thank you, Susan! Glen has been so sweet, insisting on driving me to the store and to have lunch with him. If it weren’t for him, I’d be up a creek. Either that, or Katie would’ve had to stay longer!
You poor dear. Glad you have Glen to swing into action, better breakfast tacos and all! Have you thought about voice recognition software? I know little about it, but it’s a pretty mature product by now. A cautionary note, be sure you are getting the best hand care possible, even if it means bruising your current doctor’s ego. These guys are big boys and can take it. You, on the other hand (no pun intended), only have one, well, really, two. My Sue cut a tendon in a finger and it was not properly treated and caused all sorts of problems down the road, even though she had the best care possible after the fact. That picture looks like a real ouchy!
Voice recognition software! No, I haven’t, John, but thank you for suggesting it. I’ve been using pen and paper, and typing is getting a little bit easier now too. I hope I won’t need to look into it.
As far as care goes, I haven’t had any. Stupid, I know. But when I broke my right hand years ago, the ER doctors couldn’t do a cast for some reason. Can’t remember why. They only wrapped it in something and put a sling on me. It drove me so crazy I lasted only about 3 days with it and then ripped everything off. I can’t imagine what I would’ve done with a cast. And now, our deductible is so high that every bit of care would come out of our own pockets. Since I won’t allow them to put a cast on it, I’d be paying for x-rays and for them to tell me that I have a broken knuckle at the base of my ring finger (and maybe also a bone nearby), which I already know. I have a feeling it’s going to be a bit deformed for the rest of my life. I’m afraid I may not be able to wear my wedding ring again without getting it sized. Sue’s problems caused by her cut tendon are very sobering, and I’m glad you shared that caution with me. I will keep an eye on this (actually, Glen is, because I can’t really stand to look at it) and hope that it continues to improve. If it doesn’t, I’ll have to bite the bullet and pay for someone to check it out. The photo was taken a day or two after the injury. The swelling has subsided, thank heavens!
Sigh. And this is why I’m so clumsy. It’s in my genes from BOTH sides! Speedy recovery, Mumsy!
And yeah, Daddy’s breakfast tacos were da bomb. 😉
I know, sweetheart, you got a double whammy. Sorry about that. But thank you for everything you did while you were here–I could not have managed without you! (Or without Daddy’s breakfast tacos. They were pretty darn good!)
Oh no! Hope you’re back to two-handed typing soon. The book will come out when it’s time, and we’ll all be glad when it does!
Thank you, Diana! That alone should be enough to get me back to typing two-handed again!
You know my position on the injury, so I won’t use this as an opportunity to nag you again, and I am greatly relieved to read that the swelling has gone down. I wish you a complete and smooth recovery. If it does result in deformity I think you should come up with a better story about how you got it, though- something with a little more oomph and glamour. Or even several stories that you can swap out, depending on the audience. Maybe that you were a double agent and had to karate-chop somebody to get out of a tight spot. Or you had to single-handedly lift a truck off of a little old lady to save her life. See where I’m going here? Get some fun out of the situation.
I’m sure the book schedule is a worry but I bet you will stay on track, due to your commitment and work ethic. May your dexterity increase soon so you can type/write/edit to your heart’s content. .
Also, it’s still too hot to cook, so if I were you I would just roll with this, for as long as you can. Until October if you can manage it.
ps: Glen is the best!
Hahahahahaha!! Oh, Claire, you do make me laugh! Maybe I could spin this into an injury suffered in a high-stakes poker game; I bet there’s a way.
That’s a great suggestion, but there’s only so many of Glen’s breakfast tacos that I could eat between now and October. Delicious as they are. He’s going to have to bring the smoker/grill home soon, is all I can say. He’s the best, though, that’s for sure! <3 <3
Yes! you’re on the right track w/ the poker game. And a bar room brawl! Arm wrestling competition! Roller derby!
Roller derby–that’s a really good one!
What an awful, miserable thing to do to yourself. I wish you a speedy recovery. After all, you need to be well enough to receive the clutz of the year award. I hear the ceremony is a trip.
Hahahahaha!! I’ll be a shoo-in this year. (Glen could’ve won it hands-down the year he ran over his right leg with his own pickup. In fact, he would’ve been the heavy favorite several years running!) Thank you for the good wishes, Julia. And thank you for dropping by to visit!
Sorry to hear about your hand! Been there. I broke my left hand 25 years ago & ended up in a cast. I hope your hand it heals well!
Thank you so much, Salina! I’m avoiding a cast at all costs. I don’t think I could stand it. (If it were my foot, maybe.) But so far it’s definitely doing better!
Susan,
Ouch! I have broken a few fingers, It hard to do anything without bumping into anything.
Sorry sweetie
Thank you, Michelle! Broken fingers sound more painful–yow! This is not bad as long as I don’t touch it. (Or look at it. Yuck!)