(As a shut-in, I have been collecting funny pictures of animals. This Super Groundhog is courtesy of the nice people at Polite Dissent, copyright 2006. It is a fine line between a hobby and madness, as Mr. Barry notes.)

I hate snipers, IEDs and fire in about that order. Floods are acts of the Goddess, and we just have to go with the flow. Not that anything is flowing, per se, though I am hoping for rain in Colorado later today. Remember the troops on the fire line. There are heroes all around us.

30% chance of T-storms is what they predict, which here in Arlington would not make me stick the Totes umbrella in my briefcase. Hope for rain, pray for the tired people on the fire lines.

We are all hanging around here, waiting for reports of the fire or the Supreme Court. They were lining up downtown starting at 0330 to get a spot in the court to hear the decision. This is the last official appearance on the Men and Women in Black for this iteration, and they are going to change history or something with the verdict on Health Care.

First, though, they are going to pronounce on whether it is a protected First Amendment right to claim to have been awarded military medals that were not.

I am favor of the First Amendment, but I think this one is easy. The citation that goes along with the fancy bit of ribbon and the stylized metal pendant that hangs on it is an official government document. Claiming the words on the citation to which one is not entitled is therefore a false official statement, which is illegal the last time I looked.

Fine the frauds, jail them, tar and feather and ride them out on a rail. Easy. But nothing is easy up there on the bench, I gather, and I don’t imagine today will be any different.

By way of contrast, I have no particular complaint today. I am on the existential side of the health care debate. I have been a fellow of fairly robust health and ignored the whole thing, relying on the military to take care of dog bites and the odd tactical health problem until this systemic failure of the leg.

That wild interaction with the surgeon’s knife left me….in Ground Hog Day (again). If I am writing the same thing again, I apologize. It all blurs together. I recall the first one this year- the real one, the second of February. I was still healthy and had not yet fallen.

Just a month later, the fall from grace rendered me The Gimp, and then ten weeks passed without real improvement until the day, five weeks ago yesterday, that Papa Doc looked at the knot of tendon bunched up in my thigh and announced that he was going wield the knife, slicing just so (he used his index finger to demonstrate) vertically from mid-thigh across the kneecap and down to the upper tibia.

That was a joyous decision in retrospect, since although it left me immediately helpless and drugged-up, since that day 35 days ago I have been getting better (slightly) with each day.

I probably came home too early, but it was good to be back, even if I was mostly in that accursed chair to wheel myself up to the computer. But each day in every way things have gotten better. The little butterfly strips have mostly fallen off, and the leg brace moves its appointed and adjustable 40 degrees. I can even navigate limited distances without the crutches when necessary.

But here on Day 35 I find myself wondering how it is different. The improvement is so slight that day-by-day it is hard to reckon exactly what is different. Yesterday I almost got cleaned up to go out, stop at Willow. Have a reason to shave and shampoo and sit on that crazy shower seat and get a good sluice down.

I didn’t. The kitchen is the same. Most of the food is the same in the refrigerator. The weather has been the same, partly cloudy and cool. The work thing is the same- just like a rat, I hit the e-mail and answer the same sort of questions. When the email runs out and the reports filed, I read. I have been reading the same author with the same character on five books, which are all blending together like the days themselves.

Some things are different, but those events are dreamlike, floating in and out.

Last night. I sat out in the last rays of the passing day, still close enough to the solstice that it was light until almost nine. The pool deck below is quiet. Lukas –the-Polish Lifeguard probably has a completely erroneous view of what life is like here. Quiet, not raucous. The vantage from the fourth floor allows me to peer down and see life as it might be without me in it.

Too dark by half, physically and metaphorically. I don’t feel depressed, mind you. Feeling better is real. I just feel untethered with the quite accurate feeling that I am floating above.

The Holiday is looming, and I will get on the physical therapy as soon as it is done and behind. I will set up the appointments today, and finish editing that stupid book I am working on and clean up a couple of lingering things from the estate. Then, with the course of recuperation fully half done, even at the most pessimistic rate, I will listen for the sound of the first song I hear in the morning on the clock-radio in the bedroom.

“They say we’re young and we don’t know….” 

One of these days soon it will not be those words. Like Bill Murray, one fine day and not far off, it will be something else altogether. The world will expand again from the little bubble of the apartment. I am looking forward to that.

Every day. Better and better.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com