Night before last I was young and with a pretty blonde girl. We had been together, but perhaps in a group of college or high school friends, and she was saying goodbye. The last thing I remember is she was smiling and I think trying to tell me that this was more than just I’ll see you later. But I was happy and she was smiling and I told whomever it was with me that she liked me and I really liked her, and we would be together again. But of course we never were.
As I was going to the bathroom my leg was hurting and so I ran my right hand along the dresser top and kept my left on the footboard rail. The stiffness lessened slightly with each step until I got to the little step, up to the toilet, and then I really felt the pain in my right knee. It almost felt, across the middle of my knee cap, like it would give away. As I sat there I rubbed my hand along the muscle and it felt cold and tight, what little feeling there was because the nerves were not connecting normally. There was a lack of feeling. When I got to bed and lay on my left side with the hurt knee on the bed in front of me; a sharp pain and the ache was worse. I got up and went back to the medicine cabinet for two Tylenol.
Day before yesterday I was cutting the grass. It was 6 to 8 inches tall, due to the spring rains and our being away in Roanoke for a dozen days. In fact it was raining when we got off the train at 4:30 that morning and was still raining when I picked up the mail just before noontime. But the wind was blowing and the sun came out and by 3, they were qualifying at the track. An hour later I decided it was dry enough to cut the grass. I had to go slow, even with the mower set as high as it would go, but had no trouble and was finished in an hour. I put the mower in the garage and was coming up the walk when something happened in my right knee, it felt like it was going out from under me but it didn’t, but I hurt and was limping then as I came into the house. I took two Tylenol, fixed my evening martini, put on a light jacket and went out on the front patio to enjoy the late evening sun.
As we drove out of the driveway yesterday morning, on the way to our usual Sunday morning breakfast, Andy our young neighbor was standing at the gate likely getting ready to take his morning run. He was saying something to his wife who was sitting on their back porch. Marcia exclaimed, “She is wearing glasses!” We had never seen her in glasses before. I smiled to myself and a saying from my youth popped into my head, so as we turned out into the street I said, “Guys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.” With that, she, my wife, was mad. “Why are you upset?” “I wear glasses!” “So?, I was just saying a phrase I heard in my youth, it had nothing to do with you.” “But it means that women who wear glasses are ugly.” “Well, but that isn’t what I meant, Krista isn’t ugly.” (We have often commented to each other about how handsome and pretty our young neighbors are.) That comment didn’t help, so it took me at least ten blocks to convince her that it was just a random thought like my strange brain often comes up with and it didn’t represent how I felt about her, my wife.
Yesterday evening we went to a Chinese restaurant, she likes Chinese.
It turned cool Saturday evening and last night the temperature got down to about 40. At first I was with some people and there was snow on the ground and we were walking around a semi-trailer. Then we were in a small tent which had a stove and a rug on the floor and it seemed to be home to someone. As we walked out of that tent we were in a huge tent which had lots of people walking around and there were groupings of furniture where you could sit ant talk, it seemed like a hotel lobby and apparently there were several of these small tents attached to it. I got up to go to the bathroom again, still hobbling on my knee. When I came back, I pulled the bedspread up for more warmth and went back to sleep.
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